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December 9 - December 22, 2020
4. There is a strong tendency for animate figures to be drawn in profile view.
5. Cross-hatching is used sparingly for emphasis within figures.
Such rules of depiction contrast with other regional styles in Mississippian art.
Theme refers to the subject matter at the level of the composition; themes can be defined by their formal properties without knowing anything about their original referent or meaning. Motif also is a formal unit of subject matter but is defined at a smaller scale. A motif
is a component of a larger composition that can stand alone as a subject in more than one thematic context.
Design structure refers to structural rules for organizing and orienting the subject matter within a field given by the boundaries impose...
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The vast majority of this material falls into five primary themes (Fig. 9.6). The three zoomorphic themes are the winged serpent, the crested bird, and the raptor. The trophy theme includes compositions with skulls, scalp locks, human hands, and forearm bones, individually or in combination. Finally, the center-symbols-and-bands theme features compositions in which a variety of center symbols are shown intersecting with broad bands. These compositions often include the three-fingers motif, which can be shown to be a pars pro toto shorthand for the hand-and-eye concept.
few engraved vessels in the Hemphill style show other subject matter, such as the ogee, bilobed arrows, and (in two cases) human heads. We should note that in general human subject matter other than skulls is extremely rare in Hemphill art, and some subjects that are highly important elsewhere in the Mississippian world, such as the Birdman theme, are entirely absent.
the most common is a simple repetition of two identical figures on either side of a vessel.
The most common theme on Hemphill-style pottery is the winged serpent,
Lankford (2007a) persuasively argues that this theme at Moundville represents the “Great Serpent” in its celestial form, which Native peoples of the Eastern Woodlands associated with the constellation Scorpius.
Schatte (1997) identifies at least eleven stylistic groups within this theme, based on distinctive motifs and the details of execution. He persuasively argues that these groups form a chronological sequence, which in general proceeds from well-executed “naturalistic” forms to poorly drawn “conventionalized” ones.
Serpents are a common subject in Mississippian art; winged serpents are much less so.
The crested bird, sometimes identified as a woodpecker, occurs commonly on engraved bottles and cylindrical bowls at Moundville
Elsewhere the crested bird has been identified as a manifestation of “weather powers” that played an important role in Native stories throughout the Eastern Woodlands (Lankford 2007d:24–29); the same may be true of the Moundville images as well.
Based on a limited statistical analysis, Lacefield (1995:57–64) isolates four variants of the designs showing the crested bird. She suggests that these variants may in part represent a chronological sequence, with the most elaborate designs being early.
A number of engraved vessels at Moundville exhibit the raptor theme, which invariably includes the head of a bird with raptorial characteristics: a hooked beak, a jagged crest, and a forked eye surround
we suspect that these images represent a celestial raptor that was sometimes mentioned in Native stories about the Path of Souls.
The trophy theme encompasses a diverse set of compositions that have one thing in common: they all feature body parts arranged in a horizontal band around the vessel’s circumference, usually on a bottle or cylindrical bowl
The most common anthropomorphic parts are skulls, forearm bones, and scalps; their zoomorphic counterparts are raptor heads and tails
Whether these images represent trophies taken in mythic combat (Knight 2007) or are allusions to stories connected with the Path of Souls (Lankford 2007b), or both, is far from certain. Nevertheless, this seemingly catchall group shows a coherence in composition and substitution that justifies its status as a distinct theme.
At first glance, some of the compositions of this theme appear to be geometric rather than representational
The most common motif consists of a circular medallion, with four or eight cross-hatched bands radiating outward—what was once descriptively termed a “windmill” (Steponaitis 1983:62–63). But a closer look quickly reveals their iconic nature.
The overall effect is strongly three-dimensional, as if something is being depicted in the round. It is easy to speculate that this theme is some sort of cosmogram, with the medallions marking the six cardinal directions (four horizontal, two vertical) and the bands indicating connections between them.4
But the evidence, fragmentary as it is, suggests that Hemphill potters did occasionally depict human forms, if only in the theme of disembodied heads.
we can now show examples of representational designs on Moundville pottery that do not conform to these canons and therefore are almost certainly not locally made.
Moundville has a great diversity of copper and stone items that bear representational art, but much of this diversity has to do with long-distance interaction.
we are left with a remarkably homogeneous set of locally made objects.
The vast majority of copper and stone items that fall within the Hemphill style at Moundville represent a single theme, which we call “centering.” They focus on circular images that function as symbols of the center, with which animate subjects are sometimes combined.
The objects that exhibit this theme all feature a concentric design structure within which various center symbols are featured, often in combination with other motifs.
It should be noted that all of the stone pendants at Moundville are made of raw materials that are locally available (red claystone or gray micaceous sandstone), which strengthens our belief that these items were locally produced (Steponaitis and Knight 2004; Whitney et al. 2002).
A theme that occurs rarely in this corpus shows a human head in profile, found on two objects of engraved stone at Moundville.
Yet another subject among engraved stone pendants is the mace (Fig. 9.23c), a standard Mississippian icon of long duration.
Both are made of local stone: hence their assignment to this local style.
We do not assign many of the other copper and stone items at Moundville to the Hemphill corpus, because there is no strong evidence they were made by local artists.
Understanding the Hemphill style helps us not only to identify foreign artifacts at Moundville but also to recognize Moundville artifacts in distant regions.
at least two circular copper pendants at Etowah fit comfortably within the Hemphill corpus
a third, although atypical, also shows clear Hemphill influence
Hemphill-style pendants of red claystone, undoubtedly made at Moundville, occur at sites along the Tombigbee and Tennessee Rivers
And a number of Hemphill-style palettes, made of the usual gray micaceous sandstone (Whitney et al. 2002), have been found at sites in the Lower Mississippi Valley.
Especially noteworthy are two Lower Mississippi Valley palettes that present the conundrum of being made of the same material as the Moundville palettes and yet bear images on their reverse side...
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Although engraved shell is a medium of considerable importance almost everywhere else in the Mississippian world, it is difficult to point to any engraved-shell artifacts at Moundville that are unequivocal Hemphill-style productions.
The imagery is deployed in at least three ways. First, especially on pottery vessels, Hemphill imagery depicts a suite of themes, such as the winged serpent and raptor, that appear to relate to the “Path of Souls,” to follow Lankford’s (2007b) argument. If these images do refer to the journey of souls in the afterlife, then they are surely an echo of Moundville’s remarkable transformation into a regional necropolis after about AD 1350.
Second, Hemphill-style imagery as deployed on stone palettes emphasizes the theme of centering, which defines notions of the “center” as a sacred space. We believe that this theme of centering is consonant with the use of stone palettes as portable altars in the preparation of spiritually charged substances, perhaps to be used in ceremonies. Third, Hemphill imagery, especially with the theme of centering, is also found on items of personal adornment: pendants with socially restricted distribution. We think it likely, based on this distribution, that such artifacts were worn as emblems of
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Hemphill art emerges in the middle of the Moundville sequence, at about AD 1300 or shortly thereafter.
Hemphill-style art, once it appears, undergoes an internal stylistic development with a chronology lasting into the fifteenth century.
images are gradually simplified in the 1400s workshops are progressively dispersed, to the detriment of stylistic coherence. Certainly by AD 1500, and possibly earlier, the style had vanished in west-central Alabama.
most figural subjects in the earliest Hemphill art are closely related to, and ultimately derived from, what James Brown (2007c) has called Late Braden, although the Moundville artisan’s particular take on Late Braden is emphatically subordinated to the local context in the choice of thematic material.
In this sense the Hemphill art style at Moundville is largely, but not entirely, transplanted. Moundville artisans, once exposed to the powerful images of Braden-style art, selectively
