Chapter 1 Flashcards
Beringia
A pathway across this watery chasm opened during the last global cold spell—which endured from about 25,000 BP to 14,000 BP—when snow piled up in glaciers, causing the sea level to drop, thereby exposing a land bridge hundreds of miles wide called Beringia that connected Asian Siberia to American Alaska.
Paleo-Indians
first immigrants who crossed Beringia and their descendants for the next few millennia
Clovis point
distinctively shaped spearhead used by Paleo-Indians and named for the place in New Mexico where it was first excavated
hunter gatherer
A way of life that involved hunting game and gathering food from naturally occurring sources, as opposed to engaging in agriculture and animal husbandry. Archaic Indians and their descendants survived in North America for centuries as hunter-gatherers.
Archaic Indians
Hunting and gathering peoples who descended from Paleo-Indians and dominated the Americas from 10,000 BP to between 4000 and 3000 BP, approximately.
pueblos
Multiunit dwellings, storage spaces, and ceremonial centers—often termed kivas—built by ancient Americans in the Southwest for centuries around AD 1000.
Pueblo Bonito
The largest residential and ceremonial site, containing more than 600 rooms and thirty-five kivas, in the major Anasazi cultural center of Chaco Canyon in present-day New Mexico.
burial mounds
Earthen mounds constructed by ancient American peoples, especially throughout the gigantic drainage of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, after about 2500 BP and often used to bury important leaders and to enact major ceremonies.
chiefdom
Hierarchical social organization headed by a chief. Archaeologists posit that the Woodland cultures were organized into chiefdoms because the construction of their characteristic burial mounds likely required one person having command over the labor of others.
Cahokia
The largest ceremonial site in ancient North America, located on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River across from present-day St. Louis, where thousands of inhabitants built hundreds of earthen mounds between about AD 700 and AD 1400.
Mexica
An empire that stretched from coast to coast across central Mexico and encompassed as many as six million people. Their culture was characterized by steep hierarchy and devotion to the war god Huitzilopochtli.
tribute
The goods the Mexica collected from conquered peoples, from basic food products to candidates for human sacrifice. Tribute engendered resentment among the Mexica’s subjects, creating a vulnerability the Spaniards would later exploit.
