New Methods And Theories For Analyzing Mississippian Imagery

Author : Bretton T. Giles,Shawn P. Lambert
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 283 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2021-10-19
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781683402466

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New Methods and Theories for Analyzing Mississippian Imagery by Bretton T. Giles,Shawn P. Lambert Pdf

In this volume, contributors show how stylistic and iconographic analyses of Mississippian imagery provide new perspectives on the beliefs, narratives, public ceremonies, ritual regimes, and expressions of power in the communities that created the artwork. Exploring various methodological and theoretical approaches to pre-Columbian visual culture, these essays reconstruct dynamic accounts of Native American history across the U.S. Southeast.  These case studies offer innovative examples of how to use style to identify and compare artifacts, how symbols can be interpreted in the absence of writing, and how to situate and historicize Mississippian imagery. They examine designs carved into shell, copper, stone, and wood or incised into ceramic vessels, from spider iconography to owl effigies and depictions of the cosmos. They discuss how these symbols intersect with memory, myths, social hierarchies, religious traditions, and other spheres of Native American life in the past and present. The tools modeled in this volume will open new horizons for learning about the culture and worldviews of past peoples. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series  Contributors: David Dye | Shawn P. Lambert | Bretton T. Giles | Vernon J. Knight, Jr. | Anna Semon | J. Grant Stauffer | Jesse Nowak | George E Lankford

Author : Carol Diaz-Granados
Publisher : Oxbow Books
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2023-10-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9798888570432

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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.

Author : David H. Dye
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 387 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2021-07-13
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781793650603

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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.

Author : J. Grant Stauffer,Bretton T. Giles,Shawn P. Lambert
Publisher : Oxbow Books
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2022-09-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781789258462

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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.

Author : Kathleen Deagan
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2023-05-09
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781683403593

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En Bas Saline by Kathleen Deagan Pdf

Life in an Indigenous town during an understudied era of Haitian history This book details the Indigenous Taíno occupation at En Bas Saline in Hispaniola between AD 1250 and 1520, showing how the community coped with the dramatic changes imposed by Spanish contact. En Bas Saline is the largest late precontact Taíno town recorded in what is now Haiti; the only one that has been extensively excavated and analyzed; and one of few with archaeologically documented occupation both before and after the arrival of Columbus in 1492. It is thought to be the site of La Navidad, Columbus’s first settlement, where the cacique Guacanagarí offered refuge and shelter after the sinking of the Santa María. Kathleen Deagan provides an intrasite and spatial analysis of En Bas Saline by focusing on households, foodways, ceramics, and crafts and offers insights into social organization and chiefly power in this political center through domestic and ornamental material culture. Postcontact changes are seen in patterns of gendered behavior, as well as in the power base of the caciques, challenging the traditional assumption that Taíno society was devastatingly disrupted almost immediately after contact. En Bas Saline is the only archaeological account of the consequences of contact from the perspective of the Taíno peoples’ lived experience. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

Author : Ben H. Gagnon
Publisher : John Hunt Publishing
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2023-03-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781803411231

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Church of Birds by Ben H. Gagnon Pdf

As humanity steadily decimates the global bird population, scientists and scholars are discovering that birds may have played a greater role in shaping human evolution than primates. Our distant ancestors imitated birdsong to develop language and followed bird migration flyways around the world, consistently settling in prime bird habitat. Church of Birds is an eco-history of human evolution that’s supported by recent scientific discoveries, ancient myth, and sacred texts. Across dozens of cultures, migratory birds were seen as divine agents of a benevolent sun, delivering seeds to the landscape in spring and guiding souls to a heavenly paradise in the fall. These mythic roles were ultimately incorporated into Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Author : Richard J. Chacon
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2023-12-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783031375033

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The History and Environmental Impacts of Hunting Deities by Richard J. Chacon Pdf

This edited volume analyzes the belief in supernatural gamekeepers and/or animal masters of wildlife from a cross-cultural perspective. It documents the antiquity and widespread occurrence of the belief in supernatural gamekeepers at the global level. This interdisciplinary volume documents both the antiquity and the widespread geographical distribution of this belief along with surveying the various manifestations of this cosmology by way of studies from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America. Some chapters explore the manifestations of this belief as they appear in petroglyphs/pictographs and other forms of material culture. Others focus on the environmental impacts of these beliefs/rituals and prescribed foraging restrictions by analyzing how they affect game harvests. The internationally recognized scholars in this volume assess the efficacy of this particular form of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and investigate if adherence to the belief in animal masters actually causes hunters to refrain from overharvesting wild game and thereby contributes to sustainable hunting practices. This volume is of interest to anthropologists, archaeologists and other social scientists researching traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), indigenous conservation, biodiversity, and sustainability practices, and animal deities.

Author : James A. Delle,Elizabeth C. Clay
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2022-08-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781683403173

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Archaeology of Domestic Landscapes of the Enslaved in the Caribbean by James A. Delle,Elizabeth C. Clay Pdf

While previous research on household archaeology in the colonial Caribbean has drawn heavily on artifact analysis, this volume provides the first in-depth examination of the architecture of slave housing during this period. It examines the considerations that went into constructing and inhabiting living spaces for the enslaved and reveals the diversity of people and practices in these settings. Contributors present case studies using written descriptions, period illustrations, and standing architecture, in addition to archaeological evidence to illustrate the wide variety of built environments for enslaved populations in places including Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the islands of the Lesser Antilles. They investigate how the enslaved defined their social positions and identities through house, yard, and garden space; they explore what daily life was like for slaves on military compounds; they compare the spatial arrangements of slave villages on plantations based on type of labor; and they show how the style of traditional laborer houses became a form of vernacular architecture still in use today. This volume expands our understanding of the wide range of enslaved experiences across British, French, Dutch, and Danish colonies. Contributors: Elizabeth C. Clay | James A. Delle | Todd M. Ahlman | Marco Meniketti | Kenneth Kelly | Hayden Bassett | James A. Delle | Kristen R. Fellows | Allan D. Meyers | Elizabeth C. Clay | Alicia Odewale | Meredith D. Hardy | Zachary J. M. Beier | Mark W. Hauser A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Author : Vernon J. Knight
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 221 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781107022638

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Iconographic Method in New World Prehistory by Vernon J. Knight Pdf

This book offers an overview of iconographic methods and their application to archaeological analysis. It offers a truly interdisciplinary approach that draws equally from art history and anthropology. Vernon James Knight, Jr., begins with a historigraphical overview, addressing the methodologies and theories that underpin both archaeology and art history. He then demonstrates how iconographic methods can be integrated with the scientific methods that are at the core of much archaeological inquiry. Focusing on artifacts from the pre-Columbian civilizations of North and Meso-American sites, Knight shows how the use of iconographic analysis yields new insights into these objects and civilizations.

Author : Erin S. Nelson
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2019-11-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781683401230

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Authority, Autonomy, and the Archaeology of a Mississippian Community by Erin S. Nelson Pdf

This book is the first detailed investigation of the important archaeological site of Parchman Place in the Yazoo Basin, a defining area for understanding the Mississippian culture that spanned much of what is now the United States Southeast and Midwest before the mid-sixteenth century. Refining the widely accepted theory that this society was strongly hierarchical, Erin Nelson provides data that suggest communities navigated tensions between authority and autonomy in their placemaking and in their daily lives. Drawing on archaeological evidence from foodways, monumental and domestic architecture, and the organization of communal space at the site, Nelson argues that Mississippian people negotiated contradictory ideas about what it meant to belong to a community. For example, although they clearly had powerful leaders, communities built mounds and other structures in ways that re-created their views of the cosmos, expressing values of wholeness and balance. Nelson’s findings shed light on the inner workings of Mississippian communities and other hierarchical societies of the period. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

Author : Keith Ashley,Nancy Marie White
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 413 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2012-07-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780813043586

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Late Prehistoric Florida by Keith Ashley,Nancy Marie White Pdf

Prehistoric Florida societies, particularly those of the peninsula, have been largely ignored or given only minor consideration in overviews of the Mississippian southeast (A.D. 1000-1600). This groundbreaking volume lifts the veil of uniformity frequently draped over these regions in the literature, providing the first comprehensive examination of Mississippi-period archaeology in the state. Featuring contributions from some of the most prominent researchers in the field, this collection describes and synthesizes the latest data from excavations throughout Florida. In doing so, it reveals a diverse and vibrant collection of cleared-field maize farmers, part-time gardeners, hunter-gatherers, and coastal and riverine fisher/shellfish collectors who formed a distinctive part of the Mississipian southeast.

Author : J. Grant Stauffer,Bretton T. Giles,Shawn P. Lambert
Publisher : Oxbow Books
Page : 505 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2022-09-08
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781789258455

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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.

Author : Vincas P. Steponaitis,C. Margaret Scarry
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2019-10-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780813065342

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Rethinking Moundville and Its Hinterland by Vincas P. Steponaitis,C. Margaret Scarry Pdf

Moundville, near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is one of the largest pre-Columbian mound sites in North America. Comprising twenty-nine earthen mounds that were once platforms for chiefly residences and public buildings, Moundville was a major political and religious center for the people living in its region and for the wider Mississippian world. A much-needed synthesis of the rapidly expanding archaeological work that has taken place in the region over the past two decades, this volume presents the results of multifaceted research and new excavations. Using models deeply rooted in local ethnohistory, it ties Moundville and its people more closely than before to the ethnography of native southerners and emphasizes the role of social memory, iconography, and ritual practices both at the mound center and in the rural hinterland, providing an up-to-date and refreshingly nuanced interpretation of Mississippian culture. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

Author : Geological Survey (U.S.)
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 666 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 1984
Category : Geology
ISBN : STANFORD:36105006313758

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Publications of the Geological Survey by Geological Survey (U.S.) Pdf

Author : Ian Farrington
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 455 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2013-06-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780813045092

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Cusco by Ian Farrington Pdf

One person’s lifelong research pursuit is brought to fruition here, in the first major publication on the planning and archaeology of the Inka capital of Cusco. No other book to date has focused so extensively on the oldest existing city in the Americas, the “navel of the world” according to the Inka Empire, a fascinating and complex urban landscape that grew and evolved over 3,000 years of continuous human habitation.