Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

North America

In many parts of the United States and Canada, archaeologists have
identified indigenous cultures that date back as far as 12,000 years ago.
Most of the surviving art objects, however, come from the past 2,000
years. Scholars divide the vast and varied territory of North America
(MAP14-3) into cultural regions based on the relative homogeneity
of language and social and artistic patterns. Native lifestyles varied
widely over the continent, ranging from small bands of migratory
hunters to settled—at times even urban—agriculturalists. Among the
art-producing peoples who inhabited the continent before the arrival
of Europeans are the Eskimo of Alaska and the Inuit of Canada, who
hunted and fished across the Arctic from Greenland to Siberia, and the
maize farmers of the American Southwest, who wrested water from
their arid environment and built effective irrigation systems as well as
roads and spectacular cliff dwellings. Farmers also settled in the vast,
temperate Eastern Woodlands—ranging from eastern Canada to
Florida and from the Atlantic to the Great Plains west of the Missis-
sippi. Some of them left behind great earthen mounds that once func-
tioned as their elite residences or burial places.

Eskimo

The Eskimoan peoples originally migrated to North America across
the Bering Strait. During the early first millennium CE, a community
of Eskimo sea mammal hunters and tool makers occupied parts of

MAP14-3Early Native American sites in North America.

Cliff

Palace Cahokia

Serpent

Mound

Ipiutak

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

PACIFIC

OCEAN

PACIFIC

OCEAN

Gulf of MexicoGulf of Mexico

Hudson

Bay

Hudson

Bay

Bering

Sea

Bering

Sea

Beaufort

Sea

Beaufort

Sea Baffin

Bay

Baffin

Bay

Labrador

Sea

Labrador

Sea

Bering

Strai

t

Bering

Strai

t

Color

ado

R.

M

issi

ssip

pi

.R

Ohio

R.

RioGrand

e

Mesa Verde

Chaco Canyon

Great

Basin

Southwest

Plains

Woodlands

Ea

st

er

n

W

oo

dl

an

ds

ANCESTRAL

PUEBLOANS

ZUNI

ADENA

HOPI

MIMBRES

NA

VAJ

O

ESKIMO

INUIT

INUIT

M

ISS

ISS

IPP

IAN

PUEBLO

CANADA

UNITED STATES

MEXICO

Alaska

0 500 1000 miles

0 500 1000 kilometers

Archaeological site

North America 387

Alaska during the Norton, or Old Bering Sea, culture that began

around 500 BCE.

IPIUTAK MASK Archaeologists have uncovered major works of

Eskimo art at the Ipiutak site at Point Hope. The finds include a va-

riety of burial goods as well as tools. A burial mask (FIG. 14-27)

datable to ca. 100 CEis of special interest. The artist fashioned the

mask out of walrus ivory, the material used for most Arctic artworks

because of the scarcity of wood in the region. The mask consists of

nine carefully shaped parts that are interrelated to produce several

faces, both human and animal, echoing the transformation theme

noted in other ancient American cultures. The confident, subtle

composition in shallow relief is a tribute to the artist’s imaginative

control over the material. The mask’s abstract circles and curved

lines are common motifs on the decorated tools discovered at Point

Hope. For centuries, the Eskimo also carved human and animal fig-

ures, always at small scale, reflecting a nomadic lifestyle that re-

quired the creation of portable objects.

Woodlands

Early Native American artists also excelled in working stone into a

variety of utilitarian and ceremonial objects. Some early cultures,

such as those of the woodlands east of the Mississippi River, also es-

tablished great urban centers with populations sometimes exceeding

20,000.