North American Art

We don't really have any art from North America in the Paleo-Indian period, before about 8000 BC. Even from the Archaic period (down to about 1000 BC), there isn't anything specifically created as art.

Beginning near the end of the Archaic period, though, and then into the Woodland period, people began to carve stone pipes to smoke tobacco for religious reasons, and they decorated these pipes with all sorts of carvings. The Adena people of the Ohio river valley made big earth mounds in geometric shapes or in the shape of animals, like the Serpent Mound.

By the Mississippian period, starting about 800 AD, suddenly lots of people were making art all over North America. In the south-west, Pueblo people decorated pottery. Further east, Mississippian people carved stone pipes and flat palettes. Cherokee people in the south-east carved stone pipes into the shape of people.

To the Cherokees' north, Iroquois women made pottery with human faces on it. Still further north, around the same time (900-1400 AD),Algonquin artists carved people and animals and other signs into rocks.