P
figurines, ceremonial paraphernalia, and ornaments
for the elite. Artisans create monumental sculptures,
such as the gigantic human heads excavated at the
San Lorenzo site. Measuring as tall as five feet and
weighing as much as 20 tons, these basalt sculptures
may be portraits of the Olmec’s rulers.
The Olmec culture largely disappears by A.D.
300, but through the Maya (see entry for CA. 300
TO 1500), Toltec (see entry for CA. 900 TO 1200),
and Aztec (see entry for CA. 1430 TO 1517) civiliza-
tions many elements of its social, religious, military,
and artistic traditions will survive for more than a
millennium.
ca. 1000 B.C. to A.D. 200Adena culture evolves in the Ohio River valley.
The Adena culture emerges in small settlements in
what is now southern Ohio and parts of present-
day West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and
Indiana. The inhabitants farm a few crops—includ-
ing pumpkins, gourds, and tobacco—but they are
primarily hunters and gatherers. In their plenti-
ful environment, they can rely on wild plants and
animals for food and still maintain a relatively sed-
entary existence.
The most distinctive characteristic of Adena
sites are clusters of burial mounds. Early mounds
include ridges formed along natural hills and free-
standing earthworks in the shapes of circles, squares,
and pentagons. The Adena people construct be-
tween 300 to 500 mounds. The largest, such as the
Great Serpent Mound (see entry for 200 B.C. TO
A.D. 400), require the cooperative labor of many
people. That some burial mounds are much larger
than others also indicates that some Adena have
higher status than others.
The contents of the mounds provide evidence
that the structures were built for religious rather
than defensive purposes. Used for burials of corpses
or cremated remains, many contain luxury goods
for the dead to take with them to the afterlife.
These goods include neck ornaments, slate pipes
for smoking tobacco, and stone tablets carved with
designs and animal shapes that may have been used
as stamps for body tattooing. Some goods also
suggest that the Adena are participants in a long-
distance trade network. A number of mounds, for
instance, hold bracelets, rings, and axes that Adena
artisans craft from copper imported from present-
day Michigan (see entry for CA. 3000 TO 2500
B.C.). The Adena culture will begin to disappear in
the first century A.D. and will gradually be displaced
by the people of the Hopewell tradition (see entry
for CA. 200 B.C. TO A.D. 400).“All preconceived notions
were abandoned... respecting
the singular remains of an-
tiquity scattered so profusely
around us. It was concluded
that, either the field should be
entirely abandoned to the poet
and the romancer, or, if these
monuments were capable of re-
flecting any thing upon the grand
archaeological [problem] con-
nected with the primitive his-
tory of the American continent,
the origin, migration, and early
state of the American race, that
then they should be carefully
and minutely, and above all, sys-
tematically investigated.”
—archaeologists E. G. Squier and
E. H. Davis on their excavation of
ancient Indian moundsca. 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1600The Woodland tradition spreads through
eastern North America.
With the domestication of wild plants native to
eastern North America, the Woodland culturalca. 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1600