Complex Societies in North America

THE AMERICAS IN ANCIENT TIMES HIST 1301 | History Complex Societies in North America Approximately 500 BCE marked the beginning of the establishment of permanent farmingbased towns by people in the American Southwest, who had previously relied on maize cultivation for decades as a means of subsistence. The area saw a proliferation of permanent, established settlements with spacious grain storage pits throughout the ensuing decades. Three primary cultural groups frequently make up the agricultural peoples of these villages: the Hohokam tradition in the west, the Mogollon tradition in the south, and the Anasazi or Ancestral Pueblo tradition in the north. They were in communication with one another and had a lot in common. Their early towns were made up of several circular and oval pit dwellings made of timber poles coated in hardened mud. These buildings were partially underground. These might have roof apertures that are reachable by inside ladders for ventilation. These dwellings offered a refreshing retreat from the sweltering outside temperatures and were particularly well-suited to the sun-drenched surroundings. They also effectively retained heat in the winter, when temperatures may drop below zero. The number of dwellings in a settlement ranged from a few to sixty. Both the intricacy of the communities and the style of the homes varied, though both tended to get more complicated with time. For instance, by the year 700, kivas—massive ceremonial gathering houses—had spread over the central and northern regions. These were probably the hubs of civic and religious activity in the area. The communities grew into more extensive groups of multiroom buildings made of stone and dried adobe clay in the years that followed 700. Similar long-term communities were dispersed over the greater Southwest by the year 900, and they included the states of Chihuahua, Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Texas, and modern-day New Mexico. The most remarkable towns that still exist are Casas Grandes in Chihuahua, Pueblo Bonito in New Mexico, and Cliff Palace in Colorado. Around 800, the people of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon gave up their pit dwellings for the bigger pueblo-style chambers, which led to the community's expansion into the expansive masonry complex that is still apparent in its ruins. Adobe clay-coated stone or timber frameworks were employed in pueblo construction. The flat roofs of the houses and other structures constructed in this fashion were typically designed to serve as terraces. The dwellings of Pueblo Bonito were arranged in a U pattern around the former pits from the pit houses, which were later transformed into kivas. At its height, this village may have had as few as one hundred residents, but its six hundred pueblo rooms could have accommodated up to a thousand. It peaked at approximately the year 1000. Pueblo Bonito was not just a substantial agricultural village but also a centre for ceremonial activities, drawing groups from the surrounding region no doubt for important events. Thirty-one burial sites and related artefacts found there demonstrate that certain residents were obviously quite important. Apart from Pueblo Bonito, the greater Chaco Canyon region was home to at least seventy more smaller villages. Up to 5,500 individuals may have lived in these villages overall. Similar architectural and ceramic designs, as well as the web of roads that wind through certain communities and emerge from the canyon like spokes on a wheel, imply connections between them. After 1130, a protracted drought forced the people of Pueblo Bonito and Chaco Canyon to leave their villages in search of other places that offered food. The ancient villages were deserted around 1200. In Mesa Verde, some eighty miles to the north, where there had more natural resources and a wetter climate, people constructed a series of remarkable cliffside homes. About 1190, work on one of the greatest towns, known now as Cliff Palace, started. According to archaeologists, this community was established as a defensive move as competition for few resources grew increasingly fierce. For the same reason, similar cliffside communities were established in various parts of the area. Cliff Palace was built of sandstone, mortar, and wood, with twentythree kivas and two hundred chambers. At times reaching heights of twenty-six feet, they stretch out along the cliff's edge. Cliff Palace probably had a population of one hundred or less, just as Pueblo Bonito. And the community flourished for slightly over a century until, in 1300, the inhabitants were compelled to leave it and the many other Mesa Verde communities due to growing drought conditions. The Mogollon tradition's villages lay far to the south of Mesa Verde. Nowadays, one of the most remarkable is referred to as Casas Grandes or Paquimé. Located close to the current Mexican border with the United States in a flat, dry area of northern Chihuahua, Casas Grandes became a significant agricultural centre in the fourteenth century. With a potential population of about 2,300 at its peak, Casas Grandes was far more productive agriculturally than its northern Anasazi neighbours. These individuals were housed in adobe buildings that were grouped together and encircled by a substantial enclosure wall. Casas Grandes is superficially similar to several Anasazi settlements because of its adobe style. However, the location truly has more characteristics with the Mesoamerican societies located further to the south. For instance, the remnants of a sizable I-shaped ball court in the Mesoamerican style can be seen at Casas Grandes, although there are no kivas there. Vibrant macaw feathers, which are frequently employed in Anasazi rites, were among the priceless trade commodities made in Casas Grandes. These suggest that networks of trade existed between the Anasazi people to the north of Casas Grandes. However, Casas Grandes was going into decline by the beginning of the fifteenth century, and by the end of the century, it had been abandoned. The Eastern Woodlands region saw its own cultural shifts at the same time as settled agricultural communities were spreading throughout the Southwest. Around 700, a new mound-building civilization known as the Mississippian tradition started to emerge on the site where the Adena and Hopewell traditions had previously been. Among all the ceremonial mounds in the area, some of the largest and most remarkable were built by this vast and highly developed civilization. The introduction of maize agriculture from much further south appears to have been the impetus for the Mississippian tradition. It's possible that maize first came to the Eastern Woodlands about 800, when tribes used to growing food plants like bottle gourds and sunflowers embraced the crop. By the year 1000, even the tribes that had never before employed agricultural methods were cultivating it on a regular basis throughout the region. Around the same period, bean farming spread throughout the Eastern Woodlands, and locals started using bows and arrows, particularly for small-game hunting such as birds. When these factors came together, the Eastern Woodlands saw a significant cultural transition characterised by the emergence of sizable agricultural settlements and the dissemination of shared technical, architectural, and cultural practices. Numerous communities emerged in the Mississippi River basin and even further afield in Georgia and Florida. The majority were tiny chiefdoms centred on one or a limited number of clay mounds. There were a few significant locations where the towns were extraordinarily enormous, with populations in the thousands. Occasionally, lesser villages were combined into larger chiefdoms. Archaeological findings demonstrate that these communities kept extensive commerce networks connecting their numerous urban centres and engaged in communication and trade. Artefacts have been discovered hundreds of kilometres away from the place where they were made, and similar architectural and artistic elements imply that cultural concepts were also widely distributed. The Mississippian site at Cahokia, close to present-day St. Louis, may be the most intricate and significant study site to date. The surrounding communities were tiny and existed in the year 600 or thereabouts. However, around 1050, the sizable urban centre of Cahokia started to form. It peaked around 1250 and then gradually declined. At its peak, Cahokia and the surrounding towns had a population of up to sixteen thousand, encompassed about four square miles, and had well over a hundred distinct mounds. A hundred-foot-tall temple mound, with a wooden building at its summit and a broad stairway up from the surrounding plaza, surrounded a network of smaller mounds at the centre. From the centre square, dwellings made of wood and thatch spread out into the surrounding fields of corn. A substantial defensive wall with interval watchtowers surrounded the wealthy residences and the core group of mounds. At Cahokia, other mounds functioned as both burial sites and stages for ceremonial activities. Similar to Mesoamerican customs, some of the rites involved human sacrifice. There were several dozen sacrifice victims' remains in one of the site's excavated mounds. The bones of two males, one buried face down and the other face up, were discovered by archaeologists at the base of this mound. Presumably a very influential individual, the man facing up had been put on a bed of almost twenty thousand shells arranged in the shape of a big bird. Hundreds of arrowheads, copper fragments, and many stones were among the artefacts buried with this "birdman"; these were components of chunkey, a ceremonial ball game that may have been as important to the Mississippians as the rubber ball game was to the Mesoamerican civilizations. The "birdman's" identity is unknown, although he belonged to Cahokia's elite and may have been a chieftain, shaman, or possibly a significant warrior. A notable aristocracy existed at Cahokia and other sizable Mississippian communities, having access to opulent items and an abundance of food generated by a sizable common populace engaged in agricultural labour. The capacity to demand tribute from other tribes and maintain control over long-distance trade channels that supplied exotic things like sea shells, precious stones, copper wares, and colourful bird feathers from far-off regions are probably the main sources of power for sites like Cahokia. Although Cahokia was clearly powerful, the settlement did not last very long. It had begun to decay by 1250, and in the end it was abandoned. But the Mississippian tradition itself continued after this. Following Cahokia's fall, places like Etowah in Georgia and Moundville in Alabama, among many others, flourished. But by 1375, these huge chiefdoms were also starting to fall apart. Long-distance trading routes vanished along with the greater Mississippian tradition. There were several additional tribes that emerged when the residents of the big villages spread farther throughout the Eastern Woodlands. Cahokia was long since vanished by the time the first Spanish explorers arrived in 1539. However, we know that there were still a number of lesser chiefdoms dispersed across the Eastern Woodlands based on the documents the Spanish preserved. Though they were obviously distinct from the former Mississippian chiefdoms, many of the cultural customs that had developed centuries before were still evident.