I found the chapters on effigy mounds pretty interesting. Obviously they are very symbolic but what is interesting is that there isn’t just one animal or human figure to represent the mounds but there are all different kinds that mean various things. There is “a system of symbols” but they don’t represent someone important who died (like pyramids in Egypt for pharos), but rather their surroundings. Hawks and falcon effigy mounds were made near areas with cliffs that had raptors and water spirit effigies near bodies of water. Usually when we see big statues or carvings in other cultures, it has been erected in the likeness of an important person or deity. The effigy mounds had evolved from earlier mounds because in the beginning the mounds were used for burying and marking the dead, although some effigy mounds were used for burying a lot were just simply designed mounds of dirt, so, they clearly had some other purpose. These mounds were not simply dumped onto the ground the mound makers had to calculate using the curves and grooves of the land and work with what was already there. There was clearly a strong purpose for building these more stylized mounds because there was a lot of effort put into them. The symbolism is clear and obviously very important since the mound makers went to such great lengths to make them.
You touched on a good point which was they placed certain effigy mounds in certain places. I think this really shows that it was a spiritual practice attempting to balance the world. Because they clearly had intention to modify sections of land with the spirits that they thought that area needed. I think it would be really hard to plot out what one wanted to build in a certain area then go through all the work of putting it together. It clearly took mass amounts of thought. It would definitely be really interesting to know what the natives were thinking when they built effigy mounds in certain places.
ReplyDeleteYou covered a lot of great points in your post. Going off your point of Geertz's definition of religion, you said how these effigy mounds represent the spirits of animals through their forms and act as a system of symbols; how do these mounds then act to establish pervasive long lasting moods? Throughout the book, Birmingham touched on examples of how the Mississippians where highly spiritual, and that these mounds representing spirits are said to have aided the dead into the afterlife. A long lasting mood could be how their will for helping each other into the after life brought these powerful "motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order".
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