Sophisticated artifacts of a long-gone Middle American civilization, at the Dallas Museum of Art

A major exhibition assembles works from a Native American mound in Spiro, Okla., plus modern adaptations of past images and techniques.

This raptor-with-human-head effigy pipe, which dates to between 1200 and 1400, and other American Indian artifacts are on view in "Spirit Lodge: Mississippian Art From Spiro" at the Dallas Museum of Art.Most of us are at least vaguely aware of elaborate Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilizations predating — and tragically doomed by — European explorers. Far less known are bygone civilizations in the eastern half of what became the United States.

This human-face-with-deer-antlers effigy, made of wood and found in Oklahoma, dates to the period from 1200 to 1450. In the absence of a written language, artifacts in the Spirit Lodge were arranged to communicate shared religious beliefs and prayers. As in many religions, the Mississippians imagined a three-level universe, with worlds both above and below the earth; theirs was held together by a Tree of Life and balanced by creatures including a turtle and winged serpents. Images of a hand with a central eye symbolized interpenetrations of human and divine.

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