ASB 222 Module 1-7 Exam 2025
Questions and Answers
Earthworks/Land Art - ANSWER✔️✔️-Outdoor works that use the earth and natural materials as
their medium
Hopewell: communal ceremonial centers perhaps used to tie disperse community together.
Adena: one of first to build earthworks
Mounds - ANSWER✔️✔️-a constructed hill, normally over a burial site
Hopewell: tripartite structure, expressed closure, charnel houses, caches of ceremonial objects
Poverty Point, LA - ANSWER✔️✔️-Earthwork 2K years prior to Hopewell - type of Adena
Adena Mounds - ANSWER✔️✔️-Adena and Hopewell
500 b.c.-400 a.d. - Ohio River Valleyflat-topped hills formed circles, squares, or other shapes and
were 350 ft across.
Ceremonial enclosures = not defensive works. Surrounded burial mounds or stood alone
Important tombs log- lined, corpse painted, pipes and tablets engraved with symbols
Some buried in death huts that were burned down ceremoniously
FOR STUDY PURPOSES ONLY COPYRIGHT © 2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1
,Most were communal mounds and generations added to it.
Not as complex as Hopewell
Hopewell Subsistence System - ANSWER✔️✔️-evidenced by little midden deveolopment
Small, Dispersed hamlets
Farming local crops
Wild game: deer
Wild plants: nuts
Types and Forms of Hopewell earthworks - ANSWER✔️✔️-elaborate mounds, causeways,
"forts", octagons, circles, squares, often tripartite
Scale was huge
Reasons for building earthworks and mounds - ANSWER✔️✔️-perhaps signified ancestral passage
to underworld
make dispersed community more concrete
some segmentation- perhaps signifying different clan participation
mark ceremonial event
established social and territorial boundaries
Cahokia - ANSWER✔️✔️-Mississippian settlement near present-day East St. Louis, home to as
many as 25,000 Native Americans
native american sacred traditions have roots here.
FOR STUDY PURPOSES ONLY COPYRIGHT © 2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2
,Religious leaders and rulers may have inherited power -richly decorated graves
Collapsed in 1250
Rich artistic tradition, survived in other cultures right up to European explorers arrived in 1550s in
South and Southeast
Weather too harsh to cultivate large civilizations like Maya or Aztec
Long term trend toward greater political elaboration, degree of social ranking and interdepence
Enchanted Objects - ANSWER✔️✔️-ritual object that had own power to communicate with
supernatural
identified by craftmanship:
Polished shinyness
Form
Color
Ornamentation
made of exotic material obtained by 'power questing"
Power questing - ANSWER✔️✔️-Making journeys to powerful places for personal prestige
Beyond 'known world'
Pass through territories of different peoples
Physically challenging
Spiritual journey
FOR STUDY PURPOSES ONLY COPYRIGHT © 2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 3
, Ritual Objects and their purpose - ANSWER✔️✔️--Performance Appropriate ornamentation for
ritual garments that have now decayed
Musical instruments
-Participation attendees may have needed particular item- copper ear spools
Large caches of stone pipes-
Analogy- the smoking may indicate a ceremonial use. Similar usage of ceremonial smoking in
modern tribes
-Symbols of social or ritual affiliation
-Symbols of authority?
Charnel House - ANSWER✔️✔️-Basins lined in clay used for cremation
Ranked society - ANSWER✔️✔️-Ascribed status
Kin-based
Sanctified through mythological descent
Hierarchical order of status positions
Socially defined priviledges, responsibilities and authorities associated with these positions
FOR STUDY PURPOSES ONLY COPYRIGHT © 2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 4
Questions and Answers
Earthworks/Land Art - ANSWER✔️✔️-Outdoor works that use the earth and natural materials as
their medium
Hopewell: communal ceremonial centers perhaps used to tie disperse community together.
Adena: one of first to build earthworks
Mounds - ANSWER✔️✔️-a constructed hill, normally over a burial site
Hopewell: tripartite structure, expressed closure, charnel houses, caches of ceremonial objects
Poverty Point, LA - ANSWER✔️✔️-Earthwork 2K years prior to Hopewell - type of Adena
Adena Mounds - ANSWER✔️✔️-Adena and Hopewell
500 b.c.-400 a.d. - Ohio River Valleyflat-topped hills formed circles, squares, or other shapes and
were 350 ft across.
Ceremonial enclosures = not defensive works. Surrounded burial mounds or stood alone
Important tombs log- lined, corpse painted, pipes and tablets engraved with symbols
Some buried in death huts that were burned down ceremoniously
FOR STUDY PURPOSES ONLY COPYRIGHT © 2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1
,Most were communal mounds and generations added to it.
Not as complex as Hopewell
Hopewell Subsistence System - ANSWER✔️✔️-evidenced by little midden deveolopment
Small, Dispersed hamlets
Farming local crops
Wild game: deer
Wild plants: nuts
Types and Forms of Hopewell earthworks - ANSWER✔️✔️-elaborate mounds, causeways,
"forts", octagons, circles, squares, often tripartite
Scale was huge
Reasons for building earthworks and mounds - ANSWER✔️✔️-perhaps signified ancestral passage
to underworld
make dispersed community more concrete
some segmentation- perhaps signifying different clan participation
mark ceremonial event
established social and territorial boundaries
Cahokia - ANSWER✔️✔️-Mississippian settlement near present-day East St. Louis, home to as
many as 25,000 Native Americans
native american sacred traditions have roots here.
FOR STUDY PURPOSES ONLY COPYRIGHT © 2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2
,Religious leaders and rulers may have inherited power -richly decorated graves
Collapsed in 1250
Rich artistic tradition, survived in other cultures right up to European explorers arrived in 1550s in
South and Southeast
Weather too harsh to cultivate large civilizations like Maya or Aztec
Long term trend toward greater political elaboration, degree of social ranking and interdepence
Enchanted Objects - ANSWER✔️✔️-ritual object that had own power to communicate with
supernatural
identified by craftmanship:
Polished shinyness
Form
Color
Ornamentation
made of exotic material obtained by 'power questing"
Power questing - ANSWER✔️✔️-Making journeys to powerful places for personal prestige
Beyond 'known world'
Pass through territories of different peoples
Physically challenging
Spiritual journey
FOR STUDY PURPOSES ONLY COPYRIGHT © 2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 3
, Ritual Objects and their purpose - ANSWER✔️✔️--Performance Appropriate ornamentation for
ritual garments that have now decayed
Musical instruments
-Participation attendees may have needed particular item- copper ear spools
Large caches of stone pipes-
Analogy- the smoking may indicate a ceremonial use. Similar usage of ceremonial smoking in
modern tribes
-Symbols of social or ritual affiliation
-Symbols of authority?
Charnel House - ANSWER✔️✔️-Basins lined in clay used for cremation
Ranked society - ANSWER✔️✔️-Ascribed status
Kin-based
Sanctified through mythological descent
Hierarchical order of status positions
Socially defined priviledges, responsibilities and authorities associated with these positions
FOR STUDY PURPOSES ONLY COPYRIGHT © 2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 4