Ceramic Wares and Water Spirits

Ceramics of Ancient America ◽

10.5744/florida/9780813056067.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 29-61

Author(s):

David H. Dye

Keyword(s):

Religious Beliefs ◽

Rock Art ◽

Mississippi Valley ◽

Lower Mississippi Valley ◽

Life And Death ◽

Protohistoric Period ◽

Ceramic Vessels ◽

Hernando De Soto

Water spirits as major Mississippian cosmic powers assumed various forms ranging from panther-like to serpent-like, and these varying visualizations were crafted as ceramic vessels, copper objects, rock art, and shell media. Evidence of water spirit religious sodalities is reflected in the numerous Lower Mississippi Valley “cat serpent” bottles and bowls found in northeastern Arkansas and southeastern Missouri. Their use flourished during the protohistoric period, the decades between the Hernando de Soto entrada and initial French contact. Water spirit vessels were crucial for transforming and in consuming medicinal potions for purification in water spirit rituals. In this chapter I discuss these Lower Mississippi Valley “Great Serpent” effigy vessels and argue that they were central to religious beliefs in Beneath World deities associated with the cycle of life and death and appealed to through ritual supplication and veneration.

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The Calumet Ceremony in the Southeast and Its Archaeological Manifestations

American Antiquity ◽

10.2307/281709 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 54 (2) ◽

pp. 311-331 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Ian W. Brown

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Great Lakes Region ◽

Mississippi Valley ◽

Major Focus ◽

Historic Period ◽

Lower Mississippi Valley ◽

Eastern Woodlands ◽

The North ◽

Protohistoric Period ◽

Historic Development

An extremely important institution among the Indians of the Southeast in the historic period, the calumet ceremony was first recognized by French adventurers in the Upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes region in the mid-seventeenth century. By the end of the century the ceremony was universal among Lower Mississippi Valley groups. A major focus of calumet literature in recent years has been on the timing of and the mechanism for the introduction of this ceremony in the Eastern Woodlands. Some have argued for prehistoric roots, while others have supported a historic development. A study of the spatiotemporal distribution of catlinite pipes is one way to address these issues, because such pipes are the principal archaeological expression of the ceremony. This paper focuses on the two most common catlinite pipe forms: disk pipes and elbow pipes. Overall, both forms are rare in the Southeast, but relatively they are widespread. The disk type has the greatest range and is also the earlier of the two forms, primarily being found during the protohistoric period. It is proposed here, however, that calumet introduction was coincident with the elbow catlinite form that first appeared in the Southeast in the mid-to-late seventeenth century. It is believed that calumet ceremonialism was spreading into the southern portion of the Lower Mississippi Valley at about the same time as the first French explorers were entering the area from the north.

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The Lower Mississippi Valley as a Linguistic Area

The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199945092.013.39 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 659-678

Author(s):

David Kaufman

Keyword(s):

Pacific Northwest ◽

South India ◽

Mississippi Valley ◽

Migration Routes ◽

Lower Mississippi Valley ◽

The Balkans ◽

Ancient Trade ◽

The Pacific ◽

And Migration

The Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) of North America was home to a linguistic area, or Sprachbund, on par with other well known linguistic areas around the world, such as the Balkans, South India, and the Pacific Northwest. Languages of the LMV Sprachbund included Siouan (Biloxi, Ofo) and Muskogean (Choctaw-Chickasaw) languages and four isolates (Atakapa, Chitimacha, Natchez, Tunica). These languages shared certain phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexicosemantic features. The LMV was also home to an indigenous pidgin, the Mobilian Trade Language, or Mobilian Jargon. For this chapter, I have examined grammars and vocabularies of these languages not only to identify the LMV as a Sprachbund but also to discern something about ancient trade and migration routes and patterns ca. 500–1700 CE.

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American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories, par Daniel H. Usner, Jr.American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories, par Daniel H. Usner, Jr. Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1998. xvi, 189 pp. $45.00 U.S. (cloth).

Canadian Journal of History ◽

10.3138/cjh.35.1.177 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 177-178

Author(s):

Nelson Ouellet

Keyword(s):

American Indians ◽

Mississippi Valley ◽

Lower Mississippi Valley

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Presumed Trade and Aberrant Pottery

Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology ◽

10.1017/s0081130000004901 ◽

1949 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

pp. 130-145

Author(s):

Alex D. Krieger

Keyword(s):

Mississippi Valley ◽

Lower Mississippi Valley ◽

Great Range ◽

Source Areas ◽

Site Occupation ◽

Foreign Origin ◽

Pronounced Deviation

The pottery in the following sections is not considered to belong to the Alto Focus complex, but to occur with it at different points in the Davis site occupation by trade or other means. If the writer appears to vacillate over what is and what is not trade pottery here, it is due in part to the problem of separating what could have been produced at the site (as extreme variations of resident styles) from what probably was not (because of some distinctive attribute which would mark it as foreign). In certain cases of pronounced deviation, a foreign origin is obvious enough, particularly when the source areas are well known. But where the whole tradition is similar as in the clay-tempered pottery of the lower Mississippi Valley region, and a great range of decorative techniques was employed for long periods of time, the problem is not easy.

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