Ancient America

1. Ancient America • People have been in the Americas for at least 11,500 years, and maybe much earlier, as scholars have known through radiocarbon dating since the late 1950s. • The "land bridge" (a vast area now usually called Beringia) became available several times in the last 70,000 years due to huge drops in sea level during the Ice Age.

2. “Indians” • Paleoindians • Stone tools • Both genders contributing to food supply • Greater reliance on gathering than hunting for all • Later North American Indians • More flexible gender roles

3. Mythology/Origins • Old Spider Woman • Serpent Woman • Corn Woman • Earth Woman • She is creator, informs balance, oversees all, creates, destroys, awards, and punishes • Defined traditionally as ‘fertility goddess’

4. History • Early 1600s a squaw-sachem known as the ‘Massachusetts Queen’ ruled the Massachusetts Confederacy, until the people were devastated by famine, disease, and colonial manipulations • Queen Weetamoo commanded 300 warriors in King Philip’s War and harbored and released Mary Rowlandson

5. Mayans • Ceren, El Salvador: Volcano Site, the American Pompeii • Given the similarity of other Maya peoples and the engendered nature of their daily life, scholars are reasonably certain that Ceren did have a sexual division of labor, where women prepared the corn, cooked the meals, and wove the fabric.  • However, one building, larger and with different relics, probably religious, was inhabited solely by a single woman

6. Mayans • Altar De Sacrificios, Guatemala • Burial 128 and 96: Royal identified as a man, but there are clues that it might be a woman. • A vase with hieroglyphics might tell the tale, but in the thirty-some years since this archeological find, scholars have learned how to translate Maya hieroglyphics; however, the vase included with Burial 96 has not yet been studied, in spite of its many hieroglyphics.