ARTH 107
Arts of Ancestral Native and Indigenous North America Fall 2023
Division I
This is not the current course catalog

This course introduces students to the art and architecture of ancestral Indigenous and Native North America. It will consider the artistic productions of several pre-contact and early colonial cultures that emerged in the regions now referred to as Mesoamerica, the “United States,” and “Canada.” Cultures to be addressed include Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Mexica (Aztec), Chaco, Mississippian, Inuit, and Native Hawaiian, among others. Students will learn not only about these cultures but also the sources and methods by which present-day scholars have come to know of their complexity. Artforms to be addressed will include ceramics, murals, sculpture, inscriptions, feather work, shell work, sacred architecture, residential architecture, and urbanism. This is one half of a two-course sequence that also includes, “Arts of Ancestral Native and Indigenous South America and the Caribbean,” (Spring 2024) and may be taken in any order or independently.