April 6, 2015

Free Book on Indian Mounds

GIVEAWAY #1

REMEMBER NATIVE AMERICA! The Earthworks of Ancient America

By Richard Balthazar

Five Flower Press, 1992

I’m pleased and proud to announce that I’ve now scanned the pages of this long out-of-print book for digital distribution. It’s available now for free download as a pdf file. All you have to do is right click here and select “Save Target (or Link) As.”

Surveying the periods and traditions of earthworking in Eastern North America, the book is an album of more than 120 monumental earthworks in 20 states: conical burial mounds, embanked circles and geometrical figures, animal effigies, platforms, and pyramids.

These earthworks are shown in rare surveys, maps, drawings, and photographs, many reprinted from “Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley” (1841), by E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis, which is itself now available online. Others come from “Report on the Mound Explorations” by Cyrus Thomas (in the 1890-91 Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology) which is also now available online. One of my favorite Squier surveys is the map of Newark works in Ohio:

Newark Works, Ohio

Some of the photographs of mounds are my own, and those and many others I’ve taken of mound sites since are included on this website in my Gallery of Indian Mounds. Here’s one of the newer ones, a shot of the splendid Pocahontas Mound, a pyramid in Mississippi.

MS Pocahontas pyramid

In addition, the book presents a bunch of my line-drawings of artifacts found in mound excavations. They and many more are up for easy individual download in my Gallery of Pre-Columbian Artifacts. One of my favorites, albeit disturbing, is a curiously Toltec-looking warrior about to behead a captive.

Warrior, Spiro OK

For free download of REMEMBER NATIVE AMERICA! as a pdf file, just right click here and select “Save Target (or Link) As.”

Now I’m going to steal this opportune moment and bore you with my rant about earthworking, which I believe is a truly primordial human instinct. Man, the animal who makes things, had to start somewhere. Originally, of course, things could only be made out of animal material, plant material, stone, or earth, and most of that only after first making the tools or utensils necessary for the manufacture. Since anything that worked, even plain old stones and sticks, would suffice for the job of moving dirt around, I suspect that the first implements (besides clubs for bonking folks and things) were probably whatever could be used to dig up food roots or enlarge shelters.

It’s but one short step from moving dirt around to piling it up. As far as we know, people started constructing earthworks several thousand years ago in most parts of the world. Everywhere you look, they raised piles of dirt in one form or another, often as tomb monuments. The ziggurats of Sumer were simply piles of mud bricks. Did the ancient Egyptians build in stone because you can’t effectively pile up sand? Just wondering.

The impetus to heap up piles of dirt may well have come from observing nature. Anthills and all that. Also, it stand to reason that if you’re digging a hole for some reason, you’ve got to put the dirt somewhere. What’s more, the primordial mind probably saw hills and mountains as the handiwork of some deity or other, and so raising earthen mounds likely had religious purpose, sympathetic magic and such. Piling the dirt in special shapes would only add to the symbolism, and it seems that the very location and orientation of the piles often was astronomically or socially significant.

I’ll end this rant by noting that ceramic technology is also in fact earthworking, another part of Man’s artistic relationship with the Earth.

February 4, 2015

FALCON WARRIORS IN TENNESSEE

After those last two effusions about Latin and Greek music, I was planning to write about one of my true loves, classical music. All in good time.

Instead, I feel like writing something about another, my love for the subject of pre-Columbian Native America. There’s a piece of Mississippian shell art, a gorget from Hamilton County, Tennessee (AD 1200-1400), that I personally consider the most evocative image I’ve ever found from that lost world.

I gather that the gorget now resides at the McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, but I made bold to do a line drawing of it for my old book, which I’ve included in my Gallery of Artifacts. It presents a pair of “falcon” warriors.

Falcon warriors – Tennessee

So what if it’s rendered in a rather “primitive,” or better, unsophisticated, manner. The original artist was working with the tools and materials available and did a remarkable job. It’s the concept behind the image that fascinates me. So much so that almost thirty years ago, I re-visioned these warriors as a bas relief in modeling clay in a, shall we say, more modern or sophisticated manner.

Falcon warriors

The model has lurked around (actually quite prominently) on my bookshelves, desks, etc. ever since, suffering a tiny bit of damage to the antlers and the seashell pendants, and growing an intriguing darkened glaze on its still soft surfaces. That just makes it more existentially real.

Still in love with the underlying concept, I recently played around with the above photo on my freeware program (GNU Image Manipulation Program) to try and bring out the image better. Apologies that I love purple and amethysts.

Falcon Warriors from Tennessee

I rather like the depth of the figures and wings, don’t you? It’s great to contemplate the details, like the pattern on the feathers, reminiscent of the barred pattern of the peregrine falcon. The claw-feet are quite like those frequently found in early Mexican iconography, and their flint “swords” have apparently been unearthed at many archaeological sites. The bun hairstyle and beaded forelock would seem to be standard fashion as they’re found in images from all over the Southeast and even on shell art from the Spiro site in Oklahoma. The deer-antler headdress is also rather frequent and may just possibly relate to the Celtic horned god of nature and fertility, Cernunnos.

Most intriguing is the fact that these warriors have each seized hold of a lock of the other’s hair. It’s tempting to think of this as perhaps a form of “counting coup” on each other in a battle, but I’m inclined to think it’s more of an affectionate connection, maybe between twin brothers who comprise the falcon. You could run on about duality and all that, I guess, but whatever.

And in that case, I really have to wonder if this warrior pair might possibly be a faint, distant echo of the Maya Hero twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Just saying.

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December 15, 2014

Tattoo Rant

Now that I’ve let everybody in on one of my most intimate eccentricities, I don’t imagine that the rest of them would shock you. So I’ll leave those disclosures for another time. Instead, I’ll save you the trouble of reminding me and do a rant right now from my un-inked perspective about tattoos, relying largely on my spa experience.

Besides the physical exercise, going to the gym in the daytime (as well as out dancing at night), provides many eyefuls of the tattooed and otherwise ornamented bodies of young folk. Sadly, I usually can’t discern details of the vast (and idiosyncratic) patterns or appreciate the artistic statements, since staring isn’t polite.

(As a sociological observation, I’ve been noting now at the EDM sessions of the local twenty-somethings that they don’t seem to be quite as taken with tattoos and piercings as are their elders. I’m even seeing more “kids” nowadays at the Spa without a mark on their bods.)

Certainly some folks of my vintage have tats, but I think I’ll make do with my cockadoodle. What I can’t quite grasp is the frame of mind somebody must be in to post some of the weird things I see as tattoos. Of course, chacun á son weird. Personally, I like more of the ornamental design stuff than the pictorial or narrative. (One guy has a fox chasing a rabbit across his belly.)

By me there’s something classy about the patterned armband or ankle-band, but for some reason I find those maniacal Maori shoulders and orientally intricate sleeves personally disturbing. But some of the full-back tableaus are impressive. Aesthetically, I’d prefer more cohesive patterns, something more of an overall design.

In my historical wanderings, I’ve run across lots of tattoos amongst Native Americans. There were some spectacular full-body tattoos amongst the extinct Timucua people in northern Florida. They were painted by the artist Jacques le Moyne (around 1565) while at the ill-fated French settlement of Fort Caroline. The best I can do for an illustration is a detail from an engraving of one of his lost paintings.

Timucuan full-body tattoo

Full-body patterns like that are probably more than most folks could put up with, I suppose. But I do wonder why facial tattoos are so neglected. They would be a sure way to (modestly) get people look at your body art. While enthralled long ago by the Indian mounds, I ran across some great line-art engraved on shell from the Mississippian site called Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma, some of which can be seen re-drawn in my Gallery of Pre-Columbian Artifacts. My favorite is the head of a warrior with the so called “forked-eye” tattoo and a remarkable hairdo and headdress.

Warrior Head with forked eye tattoo

In my Aztec obsession I’ve run across any number of facial tattoos. Frequently faces were sectioned in different solid colors, and they used eye embellishments. It would seem that such designs were the identifying “signatures” or “trademarks” of specific individuals. Talk about having an unmistakable identity. Here are four I’ve drawn on authority of the marvelous Codex Nuttall which is admittedly of Mixtec origin, but what the hay! Don’t miss the other details including the (real) beards.

Aztec/Mixtec facial tattoos

Native American tattooing traditions continued long after European contact and the colonies. In the late 18^th century a young Creek gentleman named merely John combined ink and jewelry in an elegant fashion statement. Here’s my rendition of a 1790 drawing of John by the early American artist John Trumbull.

John the Creek

By the way, I have a superb suggestion for truly personalizing tattoos. Considering the Aztec picture-writing of dates in their ceremonial calendar, folks could very easily sport their personal Aztec birthday-names as identity-tattoos. All you’d need to do is consult the tonalpohualli to find out your number-day name, grab one of my day-signs, slap the appropriate number of dots in whatever arrangement around it, and there you go. Here’s one for someone born on the day Five Flower (which is also the day-name of their god of games and parties).

Five Flower

Not to belabor the subject, though I will, I rather think that some of my Aztec deities would love to ride on somebody’s bare back. Take for instance, Itzpapalotl, The Obsidian Butterfly (or Clawed Butterfly), the goddess of the night and stars.

Itzpapalotl, The Obsidian Butterfly

Go for it—the colors are entirely up to you.