Research and Course Guides: Art and Design: Native American Art

Featured eBooks available via Spiva Library

Color in the Ancestral Pueblo Southwest by Marit K. Munson (Editor); Kelley Hays-Gilpin (Editor) Color attracts attention, evokes emotions, conveys information, carries complex meanings, and makes things beautiful. Color is so meaningful, in fact, that research on the color choices of Ancestral Pueblo people has the potential to deepen our understanding of religious, social, and economic change in the ancient Southwest. This volume explores museum collections and more than a century of archaeological research to create the first systematic understanding of the many ways Ancestral Pueblo people chose specific colors through time and space to add meaning and visual appeal to their lives.   Beginning with the technical and practical concerns of acquiring pigments and using them to create paints, the authors explore how connections to landscapes and sacred places are embodied by many colorful materials. Contributors examine the development of polychromes and their juxtaposition with black-on-white vessels; document how color was used in rock paintings and architecture; and consider the inherent properties of materials, arguing that shell, minerals, and stone were valued not only for color but for other visual properties as well. The book concludes by considering the technological, economic, social, and ideological factors at play and demonstrates the significant role color played in aesthetic choices.
ISBN: 9781607817208
Publication Date: 2020-03-30
Contemporary Native American Artists by Ken Lingad; Suzanne Deats; Kitty Leaken (By (photographer)) A celebration of key Native American artists. Contemporary Native American artists have a strong presence in the North American and international art markets. This talented group's work can be found in many annual events, an ever-changing array of fine art galleries, and a number of museums throughout North America. These artists give visible form to the past, present, and future of American Indian life. In Contemporary Native American Artists, key luminaries of the Native American art world are brought together through stunning photography and intimate portrayals of their lives and art.
ISBN: 9781423605591
Publication Date: 2012-06-01
Early Rock Art of the American West by Ekkehart Malotki; Ellen Dissanayake A CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE The earliest rock art - in the Americas as elsewhere - is geometric or abstract. Until Early Rock Art in the American West, however, no book-length study has been devoted to the deep antiquity and amazing range of geometrics and the fascinating questions that arise from their ubiquity and variety. Why did they precede representational marks? What is known about their origins and functions? Why and how did humans begin to make marks, and what does this practice tell us about the early human mind? With some two hundred striking color images and discussions of chronology, dating, sites, and styles, this pioneering investigation of abstract geometrics on stone (as well as bone, ivory, and shell) explores its wide-ranging subject from the perspectives of ethology, evolutionary biology, cognitive archaeology, and the psychology of artmaking. The authors' unique approach instills a greater respect for a largely unknown and underappreciated form of paleoart, suggesting that before humans became Homo symbolicus or even Homo religiosus, they were mark-makers - Homo aestheticus.
ISBN: 9780295743608
Publication Date: 2018-07-01
Transforming the Landscape by Carol Diaz-Granados (Editor); Jan Simek (Editor); George Sabo (Editor); Mark Wagner (Editor); James R. Duncan (Editor) This beautifully illustrated volume examines American Indian rock art across an expansive region of eastern North America during the Mississippian Period (post AD 900). Unlike portable cultural material, rock art provides in situ evidence of ritual activity that links ideology and place. The focus is on the widespread use of cosmograms depicted in Mississippian rock art imagery. This approach anchors broad distributional patterns of motifs and themes within a powerful framework for cultural interpretation, yielding new insights on ancient concepts of landscape, ceremonialism, and religion. It also provides a unified, comprehensive perspective on Mississippian symbolism. A selection of landscape cosmograms from various parts of North America and Europe taken from the ethnographic records are examined and an overview of American Indian cosmographic landscapes provided to illustrate their centrality to indigenous religious traditions across North America. Authors discuss what a cosmogram-based approach can teach us about people, places, and past environments and what it may reveal that more conventional approaches overlook. Geographical variations across the landscape, regional similarities, and derived meaning found in these data are described. The authors also consider the difficult subject of how to develop a more detailed chronology for eastern rock art.
ISBN: 9781785706288
Publication Date: 2018-04-06
Woodland Potters and Archaeological Ceramics of the North Carolina Coast by Joseph M. Herbert Pottery types, composed of specific sets of attributes, have long been defined for various periods and areas of the Atlantic coast, but their relationships and meanings have not been explicitly examined. In exploring these relationships for the North Carolina coast, this work examines the manner in which pottery traits cross-cut taxonomic types, tests the proposition that communities of practice existed at several scales, and questions the fundamental notion of ceramic types as ethnic markers. Ethnoarchaeological case studies provide a means of assessing the mechanics of how social structure and gender roles may have affected the transmission of pottery-making techniques and how socio-cultural boundaries are reflected in the distribution of ceramic traditions. Another very valuable source of information about past practices is replication experimentation, which provides a means of understanding the practical techniques that lie behind the observable traits, thereby improving our understanding of how certain techniques may have influenced the transmission of traits from one potter to another. Both methods are employed in this study to interpret the meaning of pottery as an indicator of social activity on the North Carolina coast.
ISBN: 9780817316389
Publication Date: 2009-10-30

Featured Print Books at Spiva Library

Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms by F. Kent Reilly (Editor); James F. Garber (Editor); Vincas P. Steponaitis (Foreword by); F. Kent Reilly (Editor) Between AD 900-1600, the native peoples of the Mississippi River Valley and other areas of the Eastern Woodlands of the United States conceived and executed one of the greatest artistic traditions of the Precolumbian Americas. Created in the media of copper, shell, stone, clay, and wood, and incised or carved with a complex set of symbols and motifs, this seven-hundred-year-old artistic tradition functioned within a multiethnic landscape centered on communities dominated by earthen mounds and plazas. Previous researchers have referred to this material as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC). This groundbreaking volume brings together ten essays by leading anthropologists, archaeologists, and art historians, who analyze the iconography of Mississippian art in order to reconstruct the ritual activities, cosmological vision, and ideology of these ancient precursors to several groups of contemporary Native Americans. Significantly, the authors correlate archaeological, ethnographic, and art historical data that illustrate the stylistic differences within Mississippian art as well as the numerous changes that occur through time. The research also demonstrates the inadequacy of the SECC label, since Mississippian art is not limited to the Southeast and reflects stylistic changes over time among several linked but distinct religious traditions. The term Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere (MIIS) more adequately describes the corpus of this Mississippian art. Most important, the authors illustrate the overarching nature of the ancient Native American religious system, as a creation unique to the native American cultures of the eastern United States.
Call Number: E99.M6815 A52 2007 - New Book Shelf
ISBN: 0292713479
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
First American Art by Bruce Bernstein (Editor); Gerald McMaster (Editor) Celebrates the rich aesthetic traditions of North American Indians through a series of concepts that define the aesthetic realm in Native American art First American Art celebrates the rich aesthetic traditions of North American Indians through a series of concepts that define the aesthetic realm in Native American art. The key concepts - ideas, emotion, movement, integrity, intimacy, composition, and vocabulary - were derived by a recent gathering of Native and non-Native artists and scholars, and replace the usual cultural area approach in examining this extraordinary collection. First American Art provides the welcome opportunity to explore and celebrate the aesthetic achievements, creativity, and diverse artistic traditions of North American Native peoples. By offering an aesthetic analysis of the underlying spiritual and cultural inspirations and values that inform these works, this book gives a more complete picture of what is meant by Native art.
Call Number: E98.A7 F54 2004
ISBN: 0295984031
Publication Date: 2004-04-01
Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand by Richard F. Townsend (Editor) Along the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers, the archaeological remains of earthen pyramids, plazas, large communities, and works of art and artifacts testify to Native American civilizations that thrived there between 3000 B.C. and A.D. 1500. This fascinating book presents exciting new information on the art and cultures of these ancient peoples and features hundreds of gorgeous photographs of important artworks, artifacts, and ritual objects excavated from Amerindian archaeological sites. Drawing on excavation findings and extensive research, the contributors to the book document a succession of distinct ancient populations in the pre-Columbian world of the American Midwest and Southeast. A team of interdisciplinary scholars examines the connections between archaeological remains of different regions and the themes, forms, and rituals that continue in specific tribes of today. The book also includes the personal reflections of contemporary Native Americans who discuss their perspectives on the significance of the fascinating and beautiful prehistoric artifacts as well as their own cultural practices today.
Call Number: E56 .H476 2004
ISBN: 0300106017
Publication Date: 2004-10-11
Native American Art by David W. Penney; George C. Longfish "Native American arts and crafts are enjoying renewed appreciation and increasing recognition as a vital part of America's cultural heritage. This volume, a magnificent collection of full-color photographs and incisive commentary, presents the richness and celebrates the diversity of this centuries-old tradition and places it within a larger historical and social context." "The artistic tradition explored in this book emerged as the snows of the last Ice Age melted, nearly 20,000 years ago. Native American Art displays the astonishing array of both utilitarian and ceremonial objects produced by America's earliest peoples." "Native American Art features works from every part of the United States, executed in many different media. Lively descriptions identify elements that characterize the works of each historic period, geographic region, and culture, as well as reveal ideas about art, imagery, and spiritualism embodied in these works."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Call Number: E98.A7 P37 1994
ISBN: 9780883636947
Publication Date: 1994-11-01
Native American Art in the Twentieth Century by W. Jackson Rushing III (Editor) This illuminating and provocative book is the first anthology devoted to Twentieth Century Native American and First Nation art. Native American Art brings together anthropologists, art historians, curators, critics and distinguished Native artists to discuss pottery, painitng, sculpture, printmaking, photography and performance art by some of the most celebrated Native American and Canadian First Nation artists of our time The contributors use new theoretical and critical approaches to address key issues for Native American art, including symbolism and spirituality, the role of patronage and musuem practices, the politics of art criticism and the aesthetic power of indigenous knowledge. The artist contributors, who represent several Native nations - including Cherokee, Lakota, Plains Cree, and those of the PLateau country - emphasise the importance of traditional stories, myhtologies and ceremonies in the production of comtemporary art. Within great poignancy, thye write about recent art in terms of home, homeland and aboriginal sovereignty Tracing the continued resistance of Native artists to dominant orthodoxies of the art market and art history, Native American Art in the Twentieth Century argues forcefully for Native art's place in modern art history.
Call Number: E98.A7 N357 1999
ISBN: 0415137470
Publication Date: 1999-06-28
Visualizing the Sacred by George E. Lankford (Editor); F. Kent Reilly (Editor); James F. Garber (Editor) The prehistoric native peoples of the Mississippi River Valley and other areas of the Eastern Woodlands of the United States shared a complex set of symbols and motifs that constituted one of the greatest artistic traditions of the pre-Columbian Americas. Traditionally known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, these artifacts of copper, shell, stone, clay, and wood were the subject of the groundbreaking 2007 book Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography, which presented a major reconstruction of the rituals, cosmology, ideology, and political structures of the Mississippian peoples. Visualizing the Sacred advances the study of Mississippian iconography by delving into the regional variations within what is now known as the Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere (MIIS). Bringing archaeological, ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and iconographic perspectives to the analysis of Mississippian art, contributors from several disciplines discuss variations in symbols and motifs among major sites and regions across a wide span of time and also consider what visual symbols reveal about elite status in diverse political environments. These findings represent the first formal identification of style regions within the Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere and call for a new understanding of the MIIS as a network of localized, yet interrelated religious systems that experienced both continuity and change over time.
Call Number: E99.M6815 V57 2011 - New Book Shelf
ISBN: 9780292723085
Publication Date: 2011-01-15