American shamans as a hallucinogen. Comparing these pipes
to similar objects produced by recent Native North American
groups suggests that the pipes might also have been “sucking
tubes” employed by shamans to suck spirits of disease out of
a patient’s body. One pipe was sculpted into a fi gure of a man
whose strange body shape suggests dwarfi sm or a goiter. In
historic Native American groups deformed individuals were
sometimes viewed as having special connections to the spirit
world. One man buried in an Ohio Adena mound had his up-
per front teeth removed so that he could insert the upper jaw
and fangs of a wolf into the space. Was he a shaman thought
to transform into a wolf during his trances?
Th e Hopewell cultures of Ohio and Illinois (ca. 200
b.c.e.–ca. 400 c.e.) created massive square and circular en-
closures bounded by earthen mounds and ditches. Th ese
sites are free from domestic trash and objects associated with
daily life, suggesting that they had a ceremonial use. Th ey are
frequently located near springs, caves, mountains, and other
landscape features regarded as sacred by later Native Ameri-
cans, and some are aligned to permit observation of the sol-
stices and equinoxes as well as other astronomical events.
Small wooden buildings associated with these earthworks
may have been shrines or lodging for pilgrims visiting the sa-
cred site from distant regions.
We do not know what sorts of spirits were worshipped
in these enclosures. Human forms do not show up frequently
in Hopewell sculpture, but animals are shown in a realistic
fashion on carved stone effi gy pipes. Th ese sculptures face the
smoker when the pipe is in use and could represent the ani-
mal spirit allies of shamans. Stone and clay sculptures of men
with single horns protruding from their foreheads hint that
such ritual specialists were present in this culture. Ancient
West Mexican and 19th-century c.e. Plains Indian shamans
wore their hair in a similar fashion. In one Hopewell sculp-
ture a possible shaman is shown wearing a bearskin. Among
many later Native North American groups, bears are strongly
associated with healing. Hopewell burials yield bone tubes
that may have been sucking tubes and copper headdresses in
the form of deer antlers, possibly used by shamans in hunting
magic. At one Ohio Hopewell site, a face mask made out of a
human skull could have been part of the costume of a sha-
man, perhaps for burial rites.
Th e Hopewell peoples buried their dead under mounds,
frequently aft er keeping the bodies above ground in a shrine
or charnel (a building or chamber in which the dead are kept)
that was then ritually destroyed and buried. Th ey may have
envisioned such events as releasing the spirits of the dead into
the aft erlife and renewing the world and the community in
symbolic parallel to cycles of life and death in nature.
MESOAMERICA
During the Early Formative (ca. 1800–ca. 1200 b.c.e.) in
Mexico, village farmers produced and buried thousands of
small clay fi gurines. Most of these images represent women,
sometimes with exaggerated breasts and hips. Religious spe-
cialists might have used such objects as part of curing ritu-
als, perhaps aimed at correcting infertility in both land and
humans. Other fi gures from central Mexico show masked
and costumed males—perhaps the religious specialists
themselves.
On the Gulf Coast of Mexico in the modern states of
Tabasco and Veracruz, the Olmec civilization (ca. 1500–ca.
400 b.c.e.) constructed large sites with monumental architec-
ture that served as both political capitals and religious cen-
ters. Many archaeologists interpret Olmec religion as a kind
of shamanism, but with the Olmec kings taking on the duties
and traits of shamans as a way of justifying their claims to
power. Some small Olmec stone carvings show male fi gures
apparently transforming into jaguars, the most common
guardians or alter egos for Mesoamerican shamans. Figures
showing varying mixtures of human and feline features may
represent diff erent stages of the transformation. Th e hallu-
cinogenic “fuel” for this process might be indicated on oneJade votive ax of a fi gure combining human and animal traits and
thought to represent a supernatural being, Olmec, from Mexico
(1200–400 b.c.e.); the fl aming eyebrows mimic the crest of an eagle,
and the cleft in the head compares with the groove in the head of a
jaguar. (© Th e Trustees of the British Museum)religion and cosmology: The Americas 863