Sacred Bundles

For thousands of years, Native Americans throughout the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains used the physical act and visual language of tattooing to construct and reinforce the identity of individuals and their place within society and the cosmos. The act of tattooing served as a rite of passage and supplication, while the composition and use of ancestral tattoo bundles was intimately related to group identity. The resulting symbols and imagery held important social, civil, military, and ritual connotations within Native American society. Yet despite the cultural importance that tattooing held for prehistoric and early historic Native Americans, modern scholars have only recently begun to consider the implications of ancient Native American tattooing and assign tattooed symbols the same significance as imagery inscribed on pottery, shell, copper, and stone.

"Drawing with Great Needles" is the first book-length scholarly examination into the antiquity, meaning, and significance of Native American tattooing in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains. The contributors use a variety of approaches, including ethnohistorical and ethnographic accounts, ancient art, evidence of tattooing in the archaeological record, historic portraiture, tattoo tools and toolkits, gender roles, and the meanings that specific tattoos held for the Dhegihan Sioux and other Native American groups, to examine Native American tattoo traditions. Their findings add an important new dimension to our understanding of ancient and early historic Native American society in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains.

Introduction / Carol Diaz-Granados and Aaron Deter-Wolf
1. Native American Tattooing in the Protohistoric Southeast / Antoinette B. Wallace
2. Needle in a Haystack: Examining the Archaeological Evidence for Prehistoric Tattooing  / Aaron Deter-Wolf
3. Swift Creek Paddle Designs as Tattoos: Ethnographic Insights on Prehistoric Body Decoration and Material Culture / Benjamin A. Steere
4. Tattoos, Totem Marks, and War Clubs: Projecting Power Through Visual symbolism in Northern Eoodlands Culture / Lars Krutak
5. The Art of Enchantment: Corporeal Marking and Tattooing Bundles of the Great Plains / Lars Krutak
6. Identifying the Face of the Sacred: Tattooing the Images of Gods and Heroes in the Art of the Mississippian Period / F. Kent Reilly III
7. Dhegihan Tattoos: Markings That Consecrate, Empower, and Designate Lineage / James R. Duncan
8. Snaring Life from the Stars and the Sun: Mississippian Tattooing and the Enduring Cycle of Life and Death / David H. Dye

(Abridged) Tattooing across the Great Plains provided a ritual means by which to enhance one’s status and access to supernatural power. This spiritual energy was embodied in specific forms of corporeal iconography, the human bodies
that absorbed it, and especially the tattooing bundles from which such designs were created. Because these ancestral toolkits served as the primary repository for the transfer of sacred power, this chapter will examine the properties, significance, and use of tattooing bundles with specific reference to traditional Eastern Plains religion and society through an exploratory narrative based on studies of associative material culture and ethnographic sources. My focus on this geographical region of the plains is guided by
necessity, since it is here that we find the most detailed records of tattooing preserved in long-neglected published and unpublished sources. Through describing this largely understudied world of material and visual culture, I seek to expand not only our knowledge of traditional tattooing instruments from the plains but also indigenous body art and the belief systems that inspired it.

El culto al bulto sagrado es una de las actividades rituales que mayor presencia tiene en diversas partes de Mesoamérica. Existen numerosas descripciones y representaciones de bultos sagrados en fuentes coloniales y en documentos pictográficos prehispánicos, siendo la región de la Mixteca la que mayor cantidad de ejemplos presenta. Este aspecto de la religiosidad mixteca manifestada a través de los bultos se puede encontrar en rituales de fundación, en ceremonias de entronización de los gobernantes, en las fiestas periódicas que involucraban a toda la comunidad, pero también en cultos particulares o privados que realizaba el dueño de algún bulto. Al parecer, el culto a los fardos sagrados estaba tan extendido en la Mixteca que quizá constituyó la principal manifestación religiosa de esta región en la época prehispánica.

En documentos pictográficos que muestran la religiosidad e historia de los pueblos mesoamericanos, encontramos que uno de los elementos no sólo constantes sino fundamentales para comprender la religión mesoamericana, son los envoltorios sagrados, o tlaquimilolli, bultos de mantas que atesoraban en su interior efigies, reliquias y objetos vinculados con los dioses. Estos dioses envueltos o contenedores de poder sagrado, tuvieron diversas funciones, entre ellas entronizar a los gobernantes. Aunque las referencias son mínimas, se tiene evidencia de su presencia prácticamente en todas las culturas mesoamericanas, y su aparición más antigua se remonta a la iconografía olmeca de los periodos Formativo Medio y Tardío (1200 a.C.-250 d.C.), donde encontramos rastros de un acto ritual de envolvimiento o empaquetamiento, que justificaría su importancia como un patrón religioso en las diversas culturas de Mesoamérica. En la presente investigación nos centraremos en los pueblos de los valles centrales, fundamentalmente en el pueblo mexica.

"The Fernvale site (40WM51) was excavated in 1985 prior to a bridge replacement spanning the South Harpeth River in northwestern Williamson County, Tennessee. Excavations resulted in the discovery of prehistoric features including 33 human burials, two dog burials, and three structure footprints. Temporally sensitive artifacts recovered from the site spanned the Paleoindian through Mississippian periods, with major deposits originating in the Late to Terminal Archaic.

Beginning in September of 2007, a collaborative project between the Tennessee Division of Archaeology and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University sought to reexamine the Fernvale site with the goal of completing any outstanding analysis and producing a site report. The resulting monograph is an edited work that presents specialized analysis by multiple contributors, including: Andrea Shea Bishop, C. Brady Davis, Aaron Deter-Wolf, Lacey S. Flemming, Andrew Gillreath-Brown, Shannon C. Hodge, Teresa Ingalls, Tanya M. Peres, Benjamin A. Steere, and Jesse W. Tune."  - Written by Aaron Deter-Wolf

En diversos documentos que muestran la religiosidad e historia de los pueblos mesoamericanos, encontramos que uno de los elementos constantes para comprender la religión mesoamericana, son los envoltorios sagrados, o tlaquimilolli, bultos de mantas que atesoraban en su interior efigies, reliquias y objetos vinculados con los dioses. Estos dioses envueltos o contenedores de poder sagrado, tuvieron diversas funciones, entre ellas entronizar a los gobernantes. Aunque las referencias son mínimas, se tiene evidencia de su presencia prácticamente en todas las culturas mesoamericanas. En esta ponencia analizamos el caso particular del envoltorio de Huitzilopochtli, dios tutelar del pueblo mexica.

Collections of objects wrapped in containers, called bundles, are known throughout the Americas. Drawing upon ethnographic literature, especially descriptions of bundle use in the Andes, this article unravels the social context and practices involved in the creation and deposition of an archaeological bundle. The author presents an analysis of a bundle offering excavated from within the prehispanic fortification of Acaray, located on the Central Coast of Perú in the Huaura Valley. Careful attention to the configuration of the bundle offering, the contents, and their qualities permits a sophisticated interpretation of the offering's broader meaning. The assemblage and deposition of the bundles solidified social bonds among people and powerful spirits. Through the bundling of people and place (Acaray), the building of physical defenses, and the calling of animated selves for spiritual defense through bundle ceremonies, new identities were made, and the dangers of war could be unmade, in the Huaura Valley.

Although tattooing played a vital role in the social organization and ritual life of prehistoric and early historic Native Americans, archaeological identifications of tattoo tools remain rare. Analysis of ethnographic data from the Great Plains and indigenous toolkits from throughout the world suggests that ancient Native American tattoo tools were stored within a particular class of sacred bundles alongside other specific artifact categories. Applying this framework to collections from the Southeastern United States and associated culture areas allows for the archaeological identification of tattoo bundles and provides a template for future examinations of prehistoric tattoo tools and associated artifacts.

The Fernvale site (40WM51) was excavated in 1985 prior to a bridge replacement spanning the South Harpeth River in northwestern Williamson County, Tennessee. Excavations resulted in the discovery of prehistoric features including 33 human burials, two dog burials, and three structure footprints. Temporally sensitive artifacts recovered from the site spanned the Paleoindian through Mississippian periods, with major deposits originating in the Late to Terminal Archaic.

Beginning in September of 2007, a collaborative project between the Tennessee Division of Archaeology and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University sought to reexamine the Fernvale site with the goal of completing any outstanding analysis and producing a site report. The resulting monograph is an edited work that presents specialized analysis by multiple contributors, including: Andrea Shea Bishop, C. Brady Davis, Aaron Deter-Wolf, Lacey S. Flemming, Andrew Gillreath-Brown, Shannon C. Hodge, Teresa Ingalls, Tanya M. Peres, Benjamin A. Steere, and Jesse W. Tune.