Since 1993, scholars of the mound building cultures of the Midwest and Southeast have gathered at Texas State University at San Marcos to share ideas and information on the religion and symbolism of the Mississippian culture that flourished from about A.D. 900 until the arrival of the Europeans. Known as the Mississippian Iconographic Workshop, participants include archaeologists, anthropologists, folklorists, art historians, and Native Americans. In 2007, the first report of this research was published, Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms. This new volume features 14 articles written by 11 of these scholars.
The ancient Mississippians shaped one of prehistoric America’s greatest artistic traditions, creating beautiful objects out of copper, shell, stone, clay, and wood. Despite two recent exhibitions, Mississippian art does not enjoy the wide recognition it deserves. The authors draw heavily on ethnographic information from tribes of the Southeast, Great Lakes, and the northern and southern Great Plains. The use of this ethnographic record is a kind of Rosetta Stone for understanding the prehistoric meanings of these designs.
Visualizing the Sacred focuses on style regions, and it is organized along those lines. The Middle Mississippi Valley region centers on Cahokia Mounds near St. Louis, the largest of the Mississippian centers. Other regions include the Lower Mississippi Valley, the Cumberland Valley, Moundville in Alabama, and Etowah and the upper Tennessee Valley. Instead of presenting large conclusions, Visualizing the Sacred offers a series of smaller studies focused on local art forms and their contexts. These regions represent a network of interrelated religious systems that experience both continuity and change over time. This volume is hardly the final thoughts of a dynamic group of scholars on the Mississippian traditions, but it advances our understanding of this complex topic. —Mark Michel
