Hiiteeni, Simbolo della Vita: Riflessioni sulla complessità delle forme simboliche tra gli Arapaho.

Abstract - Hiiteeni, life-symbol: Reflections on the complexity of symbolic forms among the Arapaho The Northern Arapaho, a Native American group living in Wyoming, have developed a variety of decorative expressions with which they embellished various objects once employed in their everyday life. Among the most frequently utilized forms one finds a number of them which are defined as “life symbols”. Anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber, in the early XXth century, argued that there was no specific relationship between the different meanings attributed by the artists and the traditional symbolic forms they utilized. A closer scrutiny permits to shed light on a complex network of relationships, revealing how art can be viewed as a way of communicating important conceptions related to cosmology, social organization, rituals and the world interpretation peculiar to this native culture.