page_title: Timber circle
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Timber circle / United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Dancing Secotan Indians in North Carolina. Watercolour painted by John White in 1585. Deutsch: Tanz der Secotan-Indianer in North Carolina. Aquarell von John White aus dem Jahr 1585.
context_page_description: In archaeology, timber circles are circular arrangements of wooden posts interpreted as being either complexes of freestanding poles or as the supports for large circular buildings.
context_section_description: Timber circles have a long history among Native American societies; their use stretches back for thousands of years and continues into the present day. From the 3400 year old Archaic period Poverty Point site in Louisiana to 2000 year old Hopewell tradition circles found in Ohio to the Sun Dance performed in wooden pole "corrals" by the Dhegihan-Siouan and Caddoan speaking peoples of the Great Plains.
  An early example of a timber circle witnessed by Europeans was recorded by watercolor artist John White in July 1585 when he visited the Algonquian village of Secotan in North Carolina. White was the artist-illustrator and mapmaker for the Roanoke Colony expedition sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to begin the first attempts at British colonization of the Americas. White's works represent the sole-surviving visual record of the native inhabitants of the Americas as encountered by England's first colonizers on the Atlantic seaboard. Whites watercolor and the writings of the chronicler who accompanied him, Thomas Harriot, describes a great religious festival, possibly the Green Corn ceremony, with participants holding a ceremonial dance at a timber circle. The posts of the circle were carved with faces. Harriot noted that many of the participants had come from surrounding villages and that "every man attyred in the most strange fashion they can devise havinge certayne marks on the backs to declare of what place they bee." and that "Three of the fayrest Virgins" danced around a central post at the center of the timber circle.
caption: Secotans dancing in a timber circle in North Carolina, watercolor painted by John White in 1585
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