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Change In Native American Culture

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After the drastic change in climate around 10,000 years ago, bands of hunter gatherers began to change their subsistence strategies and, as a direct result, their political structures. The nomadic culture of the early Native Americans transitioned into a more sedentary way of life as they adopted horticulture as their main method of subsistence. Following this change was the rise of chiefdoms out of former-egalitarian societies. The once equal distributions of power became centralized and lead to the development of hereditary inequality. This progression was the result of a number of social and cultural changes including food storage, the knowledge of growing food, the accumulation of resources that allowed for the trade of material luxuries, …show more content…
They no longer had to worry about transporting goods while they were constantly roaming the environment. They developed caches and storage units to collect resources and found they could use these resources for trade. Some people were able to take control of food storages and gain social status by distributing the food amongst their village. Others had the power of knowledge: they knew how to successfully grow food and were able to trade their product for prestige or wealth. The sedentary lifestyle of horticulture also allowed for an increase in population density. Although the food they grew may not have been as diverse as the hunter-gatherer diet, it was more plentiful and involved less risk in a changing environment. Mothers were also able to have more children simply because they were no longer required to carry their infants while searching for food. More permanent structures were erected to shelter families from their environment and villagers put more time into strengthening and decorating their homes. This allowed for some houses to become more distinguished than others depending on the family’s rank in …show more content…
Stratification within societies can be seen in certain structures. In an egalitarian society, most structures look relatively the same and remain on the same level. This suggests there is no single person or family that has more power than any other person or family. However, in a stratified society, one house or series of houses may be raised up and expanded to symbolically display power. A raised house literally means that inhabitant is “higher” in status than others. If a house has clearly been raised and expanded over a period of perhaps a few centuries, it suggests the family that inhabited the house passed it onto future generations. At the site Paso de la Amada, the appearance of a ball court is closely followed by the construction of a particular structure known as “Mound 6”. Mound 6 is a house that shows evidence of elevation and expansion over three centuries. Due to the proximity and age of the ball court, it is likely mound 6 is the result of a family gaining prestige through competitive sports and continuing to pass that prestige onto the descendants. It is possible the inhabitants were the sponsors of a particular sports team and gained prestige through hosting competitions (Hill and Clark;

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