Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (formerly Southern Cult, Southern Death Cult or Buzzard Cult), abbreviated S.E.C.C., is the designation by modern scholars of the regional stylistic similarities of the artifacts, iconography, ceremonies, and mythology of the Mississippian culture. It coincided (1200 to 1650 CE) with their adoption of maize agriculture and a complex, highly variable set of religious mechanisms that supported the authority of local chiefs. As of 2004, theories suggest that the complex developed from pre-existing beliefs spread over the midwest and southeast by the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, a network of precontact Native American cultures connected by trade routes that flourished in river settlements in the northeastern and midwestern Eastern Woodlands from 100 BCE to 500 CE. The social organization of the Mississippian culture was based on warfare, which was represented by an array of motifs and symbols in articles made from costly raw materials, such as conches from Florida, copper from the Great Lakes area and Appalachian Mountains, lead from northern Illinois and Iowa, pottery from Tennessee, and stone tools sourced from Kansas, Texas, and southern Illinois.[15] Such objects occur in elite burials, together with war axes, maces, and other weapons. These warrior symbols occur alongside other artifacts, which bear cosmic imagery depicting animals, humans, and legendary creatures. This symbolic imagery bound together warfare, cosmology, and nobility into a coherent whole. Some of these categories of artifacts were used as markers of chiefly office, which varied from one location to another. The term Southeast Ceremonial Complex refers to a complex, highly variable set of religious mechanisms that supported the authority of local chiefs. Most imagery focuses on cosmology and the supernatural beings who inhabit and influence the cosmos. The cosmological map encompassed real geographic locations, both in this world and the supernatural realm of the Otherworld. The cosmos is portrayed in three levels. The Above World, or Overworld, was the home of the Thunderers, the Sun, Moon, and Morning Star or Red Horn (He Who Wears Human Heads For Earrings) and represented order and stability. The Middle World was the earth that humans inhabit. The Beneath World, or Under World, was a cold, dark place of Chaos that was home to the Underwater Panther and Corn Mother (Old Woman Who Never Dies). These three worlds were connected by an axis mundi, usually portrayed as a cedar tree or a striped pole reaching from the Under World to the Over World. Each of the three levels was also believed to feature its own sub-levels. Central to the world view of the S.E.C.C. was the concept of duality and opposition. The beings of the upper and lower spheres were in constant opposition to each other. Ritual and ceremony were the means by which these powerful forces could be accessed and harnessed.