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Author : Charles H. McNutt,Ryan M. Parish Publisher : University of Florida Press Page : 0 pages File Size : 43,7 Mb Release : 2020 Category : SOCIAL SCIENCE ISBN : 1683400828
Cahokia in Context by Charles H. McNutt,Ryan M. Parish Pdf
This volume highlights the nucleation of St. Louis's ancient indigenous population into a place we refer to as Cahokia Mounds. This allows us to address not only the broader context of Cahokia's creation as an urban center but also the rapid nature of change throughout its history.
Following the Mississippian Spread by Robert A. Cook,Aaron R. Comstock Pdf
This book is the first to specifically trace the movement of Mississippian maize farmers throughout the US Midwest and Southeast. By providing a backdrop of shifting climatic conditions during the period, this volume also investigates the relationship between farmers and their environments. Detailed regional overviews of key locations in the Mississippi Valley, the Ohio Valley, and the peripheries of the Mississippian culture area reveal patterns and variation in the expression of Mississippian culture and interactions between migrants and local communities. Methodologically, the case studies highlight the strengths of integrating a variety of data sets to identify migration. The volume provides a broader case study of the links between climate change, migration, and the spread of agriculture that is relevant to archaeologists and anthropologists studying early agricultural societies throughout the world. Key patterns of adaptation to and mitigation of the effects of droughts, for example, provide a framework for understanding the options available to societies in the face of climate change afforded by the time-depth of an archaeological perspective.
Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America by Cheryl Claassen Pdf
In the long history of documenting the material culture of the archaeological record, meaning and actions of makers and users of these items is often overlooked. The authors in this book focus on rituals exploring the natural and made landscape stages, the ritual directors, including their progression from shaman to priesthood, and meaning of the rites. They also provide comments on the end or failure of rites and cults from Paleoindian into post-DeSoto years. Chapters examine the archaeological records of Cahokia, the lower Ohio Valley, Aztalan Wisconsin, Vermont, Florida, and Georgia, and others scan the Eastern US, investigating tobacco/datura, color symbolism, deer symbolism, mound stratigraphy, flintknapping, stone caching, cults and their organization, and red ochre. These authors collectively query the beliefs that can be gleaned from mortuary practices and their variation, from mound construction, from imagery, from the choice of landscape setting. While some rituals were short-lived, others can be shown to span millennia as the ritual specialists modified their interpretations and introduced innovations.
Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief by Stephen B. Carmody,Casey R. Barrier Pdf
Archaeological case studies consider material evidence of religion and ritual in the pre-Columbian Eastern Woodlands Archaeologists today are interpretin g Native American religion and ritual in the distant past in more sophisticated ways, considering new understandings of the ways that Native Americans themselves experienced them. Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief: Materials of Ritual and Religion in Eastern North America broadly considers Native American religion and ritual in eastern North America and focuses on practices that altered and used a vast array of material items as well as how physical spaces were shaped by religious practices. Unbound to a single theoretical perspective of religion, contributors approach ritual and religion in diverse ways. Importantly, they focus on how people in the past practiced religion by altering and using a vast array of material items, from smoking pipes, ceremonial vessels, carved figurines, and iconographic images, to sacred bundles, hallucinogenic plants, revered animals, and ritual architecture. Contributors also show how physical spaces were shaped by religious practice, and how rock art, monuments, soils and special substances, and even land- and cityscapes were part of the active material worlds of religious agents. Case studies, arranged chronologically, cover time periods ranging from the Paleoindian period (13,000–7900 BC) to the late Mississippian and into the protohistoric/contact periods. The geographical scope is much of the greater southeastern and southern Midwestern culture areas of the Eastern Woodlands, from the Central and Lower Mississippi River Valleys to the Ohio Hopewell region, and from the greater Ohio River Valley down through the Deep South and across to the Carolinas. Contributors Sarah E. Baires / Melissa R. Baltus / Casey R. Barrier / James F. Bates / Sierra M. Bow / James A. Brown / Stephen B. Carmody / Meagan E. Dennison / Aaron Deter-Wolf / David H. Dye / Bretton T. Giles / Cameron Gokee / Kandace D. Hollenbach / Thomas A. Jennings / Megan C. Kassabaum / John E. Kelly / Ashley A. Peles / Tanya M. Peres / Charlotte D. Pevny / Connie M. Randall / Jan F. Simek / Ashley M. Smallwood / Renee B. Walker / Alice P. Wright
The fascinating story of a lost city and an unprecedented American civilization located in modern day Illinois near St. Louis While Mayan and Aztec civilizations are widely known and documented, relatively few people are familiar with the largest prehistoric Native American city north of Mexico-a site that expert Timothy Pauketat brings vividly to life in this groundbreaking book. Almost a thousand years ago, a city flourished along the Mississippi River near what is now St. Louis. Built around a sprawling central plaza and known as Cahokia, the site has drawn the attention of generations of archaeologists, whose work produced evidence of complex celestial timepieces, feasts big enough to feed thousands, and disturbing signs of human sacrifice. Drawing on these fascinating finds, Cahokia presents a lively and astonishing narrative of prehistoric America.
Archaeologies of Cosmoscapes in the Americas by J. Grant Stauffer,Bretton T. Giles,Shawn P. Lambert Pdf
This volume examines how pre-Columbian societies in the Americas envisioned their cosmos and iteratively modeled it through the creation of particular objects and places. It emphasizes that American societies did this to materialize overarching models and templates for the shape and scope of the cosmos, the working definition of cosmoscape. Noting a tendency to gloss over the ways in which ancestral Americans envisioned the cosmos as intertwined and animated, the authors examine how cosmoscapes are manifested archaeologically, in the forms of objects and physically altered landscapes. This book’s chapters, therefore, offer case studies of cosmoscapes that present themselves as forms of architecture, portable artifacts, and transformed aspects of the natural world. In doing so, it emphasizes that the creation of cosmoscapes offered a means of reconciling peoples experiences of the world with their understandings of them.
Cahokian Dispersions by Melissa R. Baltus,Sarah E. Baires,Elizabeth Watts Malouchos,Jayur Madhusudan Mehta Pdf
This book examines the possibility and role of a Cahokian diaspora to understand cultural influence, complexity, historicity, and movements in the Mississippian Southeast. Collectively the chapters trace how the movements of Cahokian and American Bottom materials, substances, persons, and non-human bodies converged in the creation of Cahokian identities both within and outside of the Cahokia homeland through archaeological case studies that demonstrate the ways in which population movements foment social change. Drawing initial inspiration from theories of diaspora, the book explores the dynamic movements of human populations by critically engaging with the ways people materially construct or deconstruct their social identities in relation to others within the context of physical movement. This book is of interest to students and researchers of archaeology, anthropology, sociology of migration and diaspora studies. Previously published in Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory Volume 27, issue 1, March 2020
Explanations in Iconography by Carol Diaz-Granados Pdf
Case studies combine archaeological data and oral tradition to illustrate how the archaeological expression of beliefs and meanings passed down in the oral tradition may be interpreted. Explanations in Iconography: Ancient American Indian Art, Symbol, and Meaning is a significant contribution to the field of archaeology – a contribution in iconography studies that has gradually been coming into its own. Iconography is a rich and fascinating field, as applied to the complex, and heretofore enigmatic, imagery on many ancient Pre-Columbian artifacts. When viewed through the lens of early ethnographic records and American Indian oral traditions, as well as information from knowledgeable American Indian elders, it opens a world of understanding and clarity until recently unknown in the field of anthropological archaeology. It brings us closer to the people who created the artifacts and offers a glimpse into the symbols and beliefs that were important to them. Chapters cover a wide variety of artifacts and imagery from several ancient American Indian cultures. These artifacts include petroglyphs and pictographs (rock art), mounds, engraved shell cups and gorgets, burial architecture and grave furniture, pottery, copper repoussé, and other media. Ancient graphics, engravings, mounds, and all were created to deliver a message to the viewer – and many of those messages are finally coming to light. The artifacts included are from a variety of regions, mainly in the Midwest and Eastern United States. We hope that this volume will encourage others to look more deeply into the meaning behind the ancient imagery and arts and give the past a chance to be known.
Mississippian Culture Heroes, Ritual Regalia, and Sacred Bundles by David H. Dye Pdf
In Mississippian Culture Heroes, Ritual Regalia, and Sacred Bundles, archaeologists analyze evidence of the religious beliefs and ritual practices of Mississippian people through the lens of indigenous ontologies and material culture. Employing archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric evidence, the contributors explore the recent emphasis on iconography as an important component for interpreting eastern North America’s ancient past. The research in this volume emphasizes the animistic nature of animals and objects, erasing the false divide between people and other-than-human beings. Drawing on an array of empirical approaches, the contributors demonstrate the importance of understanding beliefs and ritual and the significance of investigating how people in the past practiced religion and ritual by crafting, circulating, using, and ultimately decommissioning material items and spaces, including ceramic effigies, rock art, sacred bundles, shell gorgets, stone figurines, and symbolic weaponry.
Archaeology of Households, Kinship, and Social Change by Lacey B. Carpenter,Anna Marie Prentiss Pdf
Archaeology of Households, Kinship, and Social Change offers new perspectives on the processes of social change from the standpoint of household archaeology. This volume develops new theoretical and methodological approaches to the archaeology of households pursuing three critical themes: household diversity in human residential communities with and without archaeologically identifiable houses, interactions within and between households that explicitly considers impacts of kin and non-kin relationships, and lastly change as a process that involves the choices made by members of households in the context of larger societal constraints. Encompassing these themes, authors explore the role of social ties and their material manifestations (within the house, dwelling, or other constructed space), how the household relates to other social units, how households consolidate power and control over resources, and how these changes manifest at multiple scales. The case studies presented in this volume have broader implications for understanding the drivers of change, the ways households create the contexts for change, and how households serve as spaces for invention, reaction, and/or resistance. Understanding the nature of relationships within households is necessary for a more complete understanding of communities and regions as these ties are vital to explaining how and why societies change. Taking a comparative outlook, with case studies from around the world, this volume will inform students and professionals researching household archaeology and be of interest to other disciplines concerned with the relationship between social networks and societal change.
An authoritative and thoroughly accessible overview offarming and food practices at Cahokia Agriculture is rightly emphasized as the center of the economy in most studies of Cahokian society, but the focus is often predominantly on corn. This farming economy is typically framed in terms of ruling elites living in mound centers who demanded tribute and a mass surplus to be hoarded or distributed as they saw fit. Farmers are cast as commoners who grew enough surplus corn to provide for the elites. Feeding Cahokia: Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland presents evidence to demonstrate that the emphasis on corn has created a distorted picture of Cahokia’s agricultural practices. Farming at Cahokia was biologically diverse and, as such, less prone to risk than was maize-dominated agriculture. Gayle J. Fritz shows that the division between the so-called elites and commoners simplifies and misrepresents the statuses of farmers—a workforce consisting of adult women and their daughters who belonged to kin groups crosscutting all levels of the Cahokian social order. Many farmers had considerable influence and decision-making authority, and they were valued for their economic contributions, their skills, and their expertise in all matters relating to soils and crops. Fritz examines the possible roles played by farmers in the processes of producing and preparing food and in maintaining cosmological balance. This highly accessible narrative by an internationally known paleoethnobotanist highlights the biologically diverse agricultural system by focusing on plants, such as erect knotweed, chenopod, and maygrass, which were domesticated in the midcontinent and grown by generations of farmers before Cahokia Mounds grew to be the largest Native American population center north of Mexico. Fritz also looks at traditional farming systems to apply strategies that would be helpful to modern agriculture, including reviving wild and weedy descendants of these lost crops for redomestication. With a wealth of detail on specific sites, traditional foods, artifacts such as famous figurines, and color photos of significant plants, Feeding Cahokia will satisfy both scholars and interested readers.
Mastodons to Mississippians by Aaron Deter-Wolf,Tanya M. Peres Pdf
Was Nashville once home to a giant race of humans? No, but in 1845, you could have paid a quarter to see the remains of one who allegedly lived here before The Flood. That summer, Middle Tennessee well diggers had unearthed the skeleton of an American mastodon. Before it went on display, it was modified and augmented with wooden “bones” to make it look more like a human being and passed off as an antediluvian giant. Then, like so many Nashvillians, after a little success here, it went on tour and disappeared from history. But this fake history of a race of Pre-Nashville Giants isn’t the only bad history of what, and who, was here before Nashville. Sources written for schoolchildren and the public lead us to believe that the first Euro-Americans arrived in Nashville to find a pristine landscape inhabited only by the buffalo and boundless nature, entirely untouched by human hands. Instead, the roots of our city extend some 14,000 years before Illinois lieutenant-governor-turned-fur-trader Timothy Demonbreun set foot at Sulphur Dell. During the period between about AD 1000 and 1425, a thriving Native American culture known to archaeologists as the Middle Cumberland Mississippian lived along the Cumberland River and its tributaries in today’s Davidson County. Earthen mounds built to hold the houses or burials of the upper class overlooked both banks of the Cumberland near what is now downtown Nashville. Surrounding densely packed village areas including family homes, cemeteries, and public spaces stretched for several miles through Shelby Bottoms, and the McFerrin Park, Bicentennial Mall, and Germantown neighborhoods. Other villages were scattered across the Nashville landscape, including in the modern neighborhoods of Richland, Sylvan Park, Lipscomb, Duncan Wood, Centennial Park, Belle Meade, White Bridge, and Cherokee Park. This book is the first public-facing effort by legitimate archaeologists to articulate the history of what happened here before Nashville happened.
Author : Axel E. Nielsen,William H. Walker Publisher : University of Arizona Press Page : 337 pages File Size : 40,5 Mb Release : 2014-02-05 Category : Social Science ISBN : 9780816531028
Warfare in Cultural Context by Axel E. Nielsen,William H. Walker Pdf
Warfare is a constant in human history. Contributors to this book contend that agency and culture, inherited values and dispositions (such as religion and other cultural practices), beliefs, and institutions are always woven into the conduct of war. Using archaeological and ethnohistorical data from various parts of the world, the contributors explore the multiple avenues for the cultural study of warfare that these ideas make possible. Contributions focus on cultural aspects of warfare in Mesoamerica, South America, North America, and Southeast Asia.
Author : Thomas E. Emerson,R. Barry Lewis Publisher : University of Illinois Press Page : 378 pages File Size : 49,8 Mb Release : 1991 Category : History ISBN : 0252068785
Cahokia and the Hinterlands by Thomas E. Emerson,R. Barry Lewis Pdf
Covering topics as diverse as economic modeling, craft specialization, settlement patterns, agricultural and subsistence systems, and the development of social ranking, Cahokia and the Hinterlands explores cultural interactions among Cahokians and the inhabitants of other population centers, including Orensdorf and the Dickson Mounds in Illinois and Aztalan in Wisconsin, as well as sites in Minnesota, Iowa, and at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Proposing sophisticated and innovative models for the growth, development, and decline of Mississippian culture at Cahokia and elsewhere, this volume also provides insight into the rise of chiefdoms and stratified societies and the development of trade throughout the world.
Cahokia, the Great Native American Metropolis by Biloine W. Young,Melvin Leo Fowler Pdf
Five centuries before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, indigenous North Americans had already built a vast urban center on the banks of the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. This is the story of North America's largest archaeological site, told through the lives, personalities, and conflicts of the men and women who excavated and studied it. At its height the metropolis of Cahokia had twenty thousand inhabitants in the city center with another ten thousand in the outskirts. Cahokia was a precisely planned community with a fortified central city and surrounding suburbs. Its entire plan reflected the Cahokian's concept of the cosmos. Its centerpiece, Monk's Mound, ten stories tall, is the largest pre-Columbian structure in North America, with a base circumference larger than that of either the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt or the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan in Mexico. Nineteenth-century observers maintained that the mounds, too sophisticated for primitive Native American cultures, had to have been created by a superior, non-Indian race, perhaps even by survivors of the lost continent of Atlantis. Melvin Fowler, the "dean" of Cahokia archaeologists, and Biloine Whiting Young tell an engrossing story of the struggle to protect the site from the encroachment of interstate highways and urban sprawl. Now identified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and protected by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, Cahokia serves as a reminder that the indigenous North Americans had a past of complexity and great achievement.