Visualizing the Sacred

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.

George E. Lankford is an emeritus professor of folklore at Lyon College. His books include Looking for Lost Lore: Studies in Folklore, Ethnology, and Iconography and Reachable Stars: Patterns in the Ethnoastronomy of Eastern North America.

F. Kent Reilly III and James F. Garber are faculty members at Texas State University–San Marcos. Reilly is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for the Arts and Symbolism of Ancient America. Garber is Professor of Anthropology. Together, they coedited Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography.