Download or read book Archaeologies of Cosmoscapes in the Americas written by J. Grant Stauffer and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2022-09-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Extracting Stone written by Anne S. Dowd and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2024-04-04 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive view of quarrying activities from three key regions in North America. This exciting new addition to the the American Landscapes series provides an in-depth account of how flintknappers obtained and used stone based on archaeological, geological, landscape, and anthropological data. Featuring case studies from three key regions in North America, this book gives readers a comprehensive view of quarrying activities ranging from extracting the raw material to creating finished stone tools. Quarry landscapes were some of the first large-scale land modification efforts among early peoples in the New World. The chronological time periods covered by quarrying activities, show that most intensive use took place during parts of the Archaic and Woodland periods or between roughly 4000–1000 years ago when denser populations existed, but use began as early as the Paleoindian Period, about 13,000–9000 years ago, and ended in the Historic or Protohistoric periods, when colonists and Native Americans mined chert for gunflints and sharpening stones or abrasives. From the procurement systems approach common in the 1980s and 1990s, archaeologists can now employ a landscape approach to quarry studies in tandem with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) computer mapping and digital analysis, Light and RADAR (LiDAR) airborne laser scanning for recording topography, or high resolution satellite imagery. Authors Dowd and Trubitt show how sites functioned in a broad landscape context, which site locations or raw material types were preferred and why, what cultures were responsible for innovative or intensive quarry resource extraction, as well as how land use changed over time. Besides discussions of the way that industrialists used natural resources to change their technology by means of manufacture, trade, and exchange, examples are given of heritage sites that people can visit in the United States and Canada.
Download or read book Explanations in Iconography written by Carol Diaz-Granados and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2023-10-15 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book An Archaeology of the Cosmos written by Timothy R. Pauketat and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Archaeology of the Cosmos seeks answers to two fundamental questions of humanity and human history. The first question concerns that which some use as a defining element of humanity: religious beliefs. Why do so many people believe in supreme beings and holy spirits? The second question concerns changes in those beliefs. What causes beliefs to change? Using archaeological evidence gathered from ancient America, especially case material from the Great Plains and the pre-Columbian American Indian city of Cahokia, Timothy Pauketat explores the logical consequences of these two fundamental questions. Religious beliefs are not more resilient than other aspects of culture and society, and people are not the only causes of historical change. An Archaeology of the Cosmos examines the intimate association of agency and religion by studying how relationships between people, places, and things were bundled together and positioned in ways that constituted the fields of human experience. This rethinking theories of agency and religion provides readers with challenging and thought provoking conclusions that will lead them to reassess the way they approach the past.
Download or read book Archaeoastronomy in the Americas written by Ray A. Williamson and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cosmography and the Idea of Hyperborea in Ancient Greece written by Renaud Gagné and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cosmography is defined here as the rhetoric of cosmology: the art of composing worlds. The mirage of Hyperborea, which played a substantial role in Greek religion and culture throughout Antiquity, offers a remarkable window into the practice of composing and reading worlds. This book follows Hyperborea across genres and centuries, both as an exploration of the extraordinary record of Greek thought on that further North and as a case study of ancient cosmography and the anthropological philology that tracks ancient cosmography. Trajectories through the many forms of Greek thought on Hyperborea shed light on key aspects of the cosmography of cult and the cosmography of literature. The philology of worlds pursued in this book ranges from Archaic hymns to Hellenistic and Imperial reconfigurations of Hyperborea. A thousand years of cosmography is thus surveyed through the rewritings of one idea. This is a book on the art of reading worlds slowly.
Download or read book Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms written by F. Kent Reilly and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between AD 900-1600, the native peoples of the Mississippi River Valley and other areas of the Eastern Woodlands of the United States conceived and executed one of the greatest artistic traditions of the Precolumbian Americas. Created in the media of copper, shell, stone, clay, and wood, and incised or carved with a complex set of symbols and motifs, this seven-hundred-year-old artistic tradition functioned within a multiethnic landscape centered on communities dominated by earthen mounds and plazas. Previous researchers have referred to this material as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC). This groundbreaking volume brings together ten essays by leading anthropologists, archaeologists, and art historians, who analyze the iconography of Mississippian art in order to reconstruct the ritual activities, cosmological vision, and ideology of these ancient precursors to several groups of contemporary Native Americans. Significantly, the authors correlate archaeological, ethnographic, and art historical data that illustrate the stylistic differences within Mississippian art as well as the numerous changes that occur through time. The research also demonstrates the inadequacy of the SECC label, since Mississippian art is not limited to the Southeast and reflects stylistic changes over time among several linked but distinct religious traditions. The term Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere (MIIS) more adequately describes the corpus of this Mississippian art. Most important, the authors illustrate the overarching nature of the ancient Native American religious system, as a creation unique to the native American cultures of the eastern United States.
Download or read book The Teotihuacan Trinity written by Annabeth Headrick and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Northeast of modern-day Mexico City stand the remnants of one of the world's largest preindustrial cities, Teotihuacan. Monumental in scale, Teotihuacan is organized along a three-mile-long thoroughfare, the Avenue of the Dead, that leads up to the massive Pyramid of the Moon. Lining the avenue are numerous plazas and temples, which indicate that the city once housed a large population that engaged in complex rituals and ceremonies. Although scholars have studied Teotihuacan for over a century, the precise nature of its religious and political life has remained unclear, in part because no one has yet deciphered the glyphs that may explain much about the city's organization and belief systems. In this groundbreaking book, Annabeth Headrick analyzes Teotihuacan's art and architecture, in the light of archaeological data and Mesoamerican ethnography, to propose a new model for the city's social and political organization. Challenging the view that Teotihuacan was a peaceful city in which disparate groups united in an ideology of solidarity, Headrick instead identifies three social groups that competed for political power—rulers, kin-based groups led by influential lineage heads, and military orders that each had their own animal insignia. Her findings provide the most complete evidence to date that Teotihuacan had powerful rulers who allied with the military to maintain their authority in the face of challenges by the lineage heads. Headrick's analysis also underscores the importance of warfare in Teotihuacan society and clarifies significant aspects of its ritual life, including shamanism and an annual tree-raising ceremony that commemorated the Mesoamerican creation story.
Download or read book Late Prehistoric Florida written by Keith Ashley and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2012-07-15 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Ancient Mesoamerican Warfare written by Kathryn M. Brown and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2003-10-07 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The understanding of warfare in ancient Mesoamerica has blossomed in recent years. In this volume, the authors use recent empirical studies to help us understand the patterns and nature of Mesoamerican warfare. Using evidence from ceramics, settlement pattern, epigraphy, ethnohistory, and ethnography, these projects define the martial nature of Mesoamerican societies and link it to ritual, political economy, and other cultural systems. The studies range from preclassic to post-contact and from Belize to Central Mexico. A comparison between this corpus and warfare studies in the American Southwest is also included. This volume will be of interest to Mesoamericanists and other archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians of ancient warfare.
Download or read book Hoko River written by Dale R. Croes and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Landscapes of the Itza written by Linnea Wren and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An insightful collection, rich in new data and insights; at once the harvest of a generation of fieldwork and the foundation for work to come."--Mary E. Miller, coauthor of The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak "Reminds us that there are always new things to learn about iconic places like Chichen Itza and that we can fall in love with them all over again."--Jennifer P. Mathews, coeditor of Lifeways in the Northern Maya Lowlands: New Approaches to Archaeology in the Yucatan Peninsula "Long overdue. Brings together new data and interpretations about Chichen Itza through a refreshing mix of art history and archaeology, particularistic interpretation, and cross-cultural modeling."--Scott R. Hutson, author of The Ancient Urban Maya: Neighborhoods, Inequality, and Built Form Chichen Itza, the legendary capital and trading hub of the late Maya civilization, continues to fascinate visitors and researchers with unanswered questions about its people, rulers, rituals, economics, religion, politics, and even chronology. Addressing many of these current debates, contributors to Landscapes of the Itza question when the city's construction was completed, what the purposes of its famous pyramid and other buildings were, whether the city maintained strict territorial borders, and how the city's influence was felt in smaller neighboring settlements such as Popola, Ichmul de Morley, and Ek Balam. Special attention is given to the site's visual culture, including its architecture, epigraphy, ceramics, sculptures, and murals. This volume is a much-needed update on recent archaeological and art historical work being done at Chichen Itza, offering new ways of understanding the site and its role in the Yucatan landscape.
Download or read book Prehistoric Games of North American Indians written by Barbara Voorhies and published by . This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Discourse and Ideologies written by Christina Schäffner and published by Multilingual Matters Limited. This book was released on 1996 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the relationship between ideology and language, especially such questions as: What are ideologies? How can they be described? and, How can they be related to the processes involved in the production or interpretation of discourse? In the main contribution, Teun van Dijk develops new theoretical notions and analytical distinctions to link explicitly structures of society, cognition and discourse. Ideologies are defined as socially shared belief systems of groups with social and cognitive functions. Their main social function is to sustain the interests of a group: they monitor group-related social practices. Cognitively, ideologies are assumed to assign an overall orientation, coherence and organisation to a cluster of attitudes. Ideologies and their structures have to be inferred from more directly observable structures of cognition, interaction and society. Therefore, the notion of 'opinion' and its complex relations to the structures of discourse and ideology are examined. Opinions are typically expressed, acquired and changed by discourse in interactional contexts. This implies that specific grammatical or other verbal means are typically associated with the expression of opinions. An analysis of a sample text illustrates how argumentation structures reflect preexisting, underlying structures of social cognition. In this way, discourse analysts can contribute to the development of a critical language awareness. Contributors to the debates include Michael Billig, Paul Chilton, David Graddol, Ulrike Meinhof and Kay Richardson.
Download or read book The Sport of Life and Death written by E. Michael Whittington and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mesoamerican ballgame was no ordinary sport. Played by the Olmecs, Maya and Aztecs, from at least 1200 BC to the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century AD, it was both a contest of breathtaking athletic skill and a ritual spectacle in which the struggle between the opposing forces of day and night, good and evil, life and death was enacted by the teams on the ballcourt. ''The Sport of Life and Death'', the most comprehensive work ever on the Mesoamerican ballgame, brings together a range of these works of art, of striking beauty, vivacity and power, from tiny jade carvings of the Olmecs depicting their player kings to the ring-shaped stone goals that once stood in Aztec ballcourts. Essays by leading authorities on Mesoamerican art and culture discuss all aspects of the ballgame, such as the natural history of rubber, the magnificent architecture of the ballcourts, the extraordinary equipment worn by the players, the complex religious symbolism and ritual elements of the games and descriptions of versions that are still played today in Mexico.
Download or read book War Paths Peace Paths written by David Dye and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2009-01-16 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeologists, ethnohistorians, osteologists, and cultural anthropologists have only recently begun to address seriously the issue of Native American war and peace in the eastern United States. New methods for identifying prehistoric cooperation and conflict in the archaeological record are now helping to advance our knowledge of their existence and importance. Focusing on four major issues in prehistoric warfare studies—settlement patterns, skeletal trauma, weaponry, and iconography—David H. Dye presents a new interpretation of ancient war and peace east of the Mississippi. He considers evidence for raiding and more organized forms of warfare, accounts of native warfare witnessed by sixteenth-century Europeans, and the various causes of warfare, such as revenge, competition for resources, and ideology. War Paths, Peace Paths offers an innovative analysis of cooperation and conflict in the prehistoric eastern United States.
Download or read book The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians written by Richard J. Chacon and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-08-21 with total page 694 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume mainly focuses on the practice of taking and displaying various body parts as trophies in both North and South America. The editors and contributors (which include Native Peoples from both continents) examine the evidence and causes of Amerindian trophy taking. Additionally, they present objectively and discuss dispassionately the topic of human proclivity toward ritual violence. This book fills the gap in literature on this subject.
