Нодена

Нодена около 1539 г., художник Херб (Эронимус) Рау (Herb Roe).

Фигурный сосуд в виде головы человека, найден в Нодене, музей Хэмпсона (Hampson Museum)

Сосуд из Нодены

Нодена — археологический памятник в США, расположенный в округе Миссисипи штата Арканзас к востоку от города Уилсон в штате Арканзас и к северо-востоку от города Ревери в штате Теннеси. Около 1400—1650 гг. здесь существовало поселение индейцев, окружённое палисадом, на изгибе реки Миссисипи. In 1964, the Nodena Site was declared a National Historic Landmark and in 1966 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The Nodena site was discovered and first documented by Dr. James K. Hampson, archaeologist and owner of the plantation on which the Nodena site is located. Artifacts from this site are on display in the Hampson Museum State Park in Wilson, Arkansas. The Nodena Site is the type site for the Nodena phase, believed by many archaeologists to be the province of Pacaha visited by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1542.

В 1900 г. к югу от Нодены был обнаружен скелет мастодонта.

Культура жителей Нодены

Нодена — типичный памятник позднего этапа Mississippian cultural component, который назван в честь него «фаза Нодены» (около 1400—1700 uu/). The Nodena Phase was a collection of villages (see Eaker Site) along the Mississippi River between the Arkansas border and Wampanocca Lake. This culture is contemporary with the Menard Complex,Walls Phase and the Parkin Phase. The Parkin Indian Mound, the type site for the Parkin Phase, is the site of another Late Mississippian village located in Parkin, Arkansas, about 30 миль (50 км) southwest of Wilson. In the early 1540s, the Spanish Hernando de Soto Expedition is believed to have visited several sites in the Nodena Phase, which is usually identified as the Province of Pacaha, and the Parkin Site as a candidate for the province of Casqui. Nodena people were part of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, an extensive religious and trade network that brought chert, whelk shells, and other exotic goods to the site.

Керамика

Most pottery found at the Nodena Site is of the kind known as Missisippian Bell Plain. It was buff colored, contains large fragments of ground mussel shell as a tempering agent, and isn’t as smooth and polished as other varieties. Other kinds found there are much finer, with a finer ground shell as a temper, some instances being so finely ground as to look untempered. The Nodena Phase people put a bowl and a bottle into a grave with the bodies, usually of the finer variety of pottery. Shapes and decoration were varied in the mortuary pottery, from brighly colored abstract spiral designs, to elaborate effigy vessels depicting human heads, animals, and hunters and their prey. Pottery made by the Nodena people was built up from strips of clay, and then smoothed out by the potter, much like other pottery in the Eastern America area where the potters wheel was unknown. Slips using galena for white, hematite for red, and sometimes graphite for black were used to paint the pottery, with a red on white swastika design being particularly popular. Sometimes incising was used (an example is the incised raptor image on the effigy head pot pictured), although it is rare in Nodena pottery.

Деформация черепа

Painting by artist Paul Kane showing a Chinookans woman with a deformed skull and an infant in a cradle designed to deform the skull

The people of the Nodena phase practiced artificial cranial deformation or head flattening). Shortly after infants were born, they were strapped to a special carrier which deformed their skulls as they grew. Many of the skeletal remains found at the Nodena Site had deformed skulls, of the type defined as fronto-occipital deformation, flattening of the forehead and the back of the head. Of 123 skulls found by Dr. Hampson, only six could be considered «normal», meaning they did not show the signs of head deformation. The functioning of the brain is not affected by cranial deformation, but the overall shape of the skull bones are. This practice was performed by many Native American tribes into historic times, including the Choctaw, although it later fell out of favor.

Сельское хозяйство и рацион

The people of Nodena were intensely involved in maize agriculture, as well as other food crops originating in the Americas, such as beans, squash, sunflowers and gourds. They also gathered wild foodstuffs such as pecans and persimmons. The de Soto choroniclers described the area as being under heavy cultivation, and the most populous they had seen in La Florida. The Spaniards described groves of wild fruit and nut bearing trees, implying that the Nodena must have left them standing when clearing other trees for the cultivation of maize. The hunting of whitetail deer, squirrel, rabbit, turkey, and mallard was practiced as well as fishing for alligator gar, catfish, drum, and mussels.

Language

The peoples of Nodena were probably Tunican or Siouan speaking. It is known that the Tunica were in the area at the time of the de Soto Entrada, and the related group of phases present in the region may have all been Tunican speakers, with Caddoan speakers to their west and south. But by the time of later European contact in the 1670s and the beginning of the historic period, the area was occupied by the Dhegiha Siouan speaking Quapaw. Attempts have been made to connect pottery styles and words from the de Soto narratives with historic tribes, but have so far been unsuccessful.

Dr. James K. Hampson

The museum for the Nodena Site is named after Dr. James K. Hampson (1877—1956), owner of the Hampson Plantation on which the Nodena site is located, and the first archaeologist to excavate and preserve the artifacts from the Nodena site and to document the discovery. The Hampson Museum State Park in Wilson, Arkansas exhibits an archeological collection of early American aboriginal artifacts from the Nodena Site. Cultivation of crops, hunting, social life, religion and politics of that ancient civilization are topics of the exhibition. Stone and shell artifacts as well as pottery are on display to illustrate the culture of the Nodena people.

Ссылки

• Animation: Towns and Temples of the Mississippian Culture-5 Sites
• Photographs of stone and shell artifacts and of pottery from the Nodena site
• Hampson 3D Virtual Museum — View and Interact with hundreds of 3D Nodena artifacts from the Hampson Museum