Ancient Mesoamerican and Native American Art

The Term Mesoamerican Art refers to the land which encompasses modern day Mexico and Central America. The terms Indigenous Art or Native American art most often refer to art made in the land which encompasses the contemporary United States and Canada. Some Native Peoples of the North American continent called this land “Turtle Island”.

The amount of art produced on Turtle Island was prodigious and represented an astonishing diversity of peoples and cultures. Giant cities and huge population centers like Tenochtitlán, Chaco Canyon, and Mesa Verde were places where a variety of different arts thrived.

This assignment asks you to find and describe a work of art from any time period made by either ancient or contemporary artists indigenous to Turtle Island.

DIRECTIONS:

This assignment asks you to select and identify a work of art from ancient or contemporary Mesoamerica or Native America. Please label the work of art in the traditional art historical format and describe it:

1. Artist (if the artist is known, list as anonymous and if possible, list the culture that produced the object))

2. Title

3. Date

4. Material

5. Current Location (either in a museum, or a geographical place)

6. In around 130 words, provide a short description (in your own words) of the visual, cultural and or/architectural elements of the artwork/monument.

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF MINE:

1. Anasazi Pueblo Peoples

2. Spruce Tree House

3. 1211-1278 ACE

4. Sandstone

5. Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

6. The Cliff Dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado are evidence of the complex and vast architecture of ancient indigenous peoples in the Americas. Within the park, multiple cliff dwellings carved withing the rocky walls of the canyons surrounding the mesa. Structures are most commonly made out of sandstone, and some buildings are two and three stories tall. In the pre-Columbian period Mesa Verde was home to over 35,000 people, more than live in the region today. It was a distinct but related population center functioning in spiritual and economic connection with nearby population and trading center in Chaco Canyon. The cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde are some of the most extensive records of indigenous urbanism in the Americas.