Download or read book The Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors written by Daniel Troy Case and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-07-09 with total page 777 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bioarchaeological Documentation and Cultural Understanding

Download or read book Being Scioto Hopewell Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross Cultural Perspective written by Christopher Carr and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-05 with total page 1564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, in two volumes, breathes fresh air empirically, methodologically, and theoretically into understanding the rich ceremonial lives, the philosophical-religious knowledge, and the impressive material feats and labor organization that distinguish Hopewell Indians of central Ohio and neighboring regions during the first centuries CE. The first volume defines cross-culturally, for the first time, the “ritual drama” as a genre of social performance. It reconstructs and compares parts of 14 such dramas that Hopewellian and other Woodland-period peoples performed in their ceremonial centers to help the soul-like essences of their deceased make the journey to an afterlife. The second volume builds and critiques ten formal cross-cultural models of “personhood” and the “self” and infers the nature of Scioto Hopewell people’s ontology. Two facets of their ontology are found to have been instrumental in their creating the intercommunity alliances and cooperation and gathering the labor required to construct their huge, multicommunity ceremonial centers: a relational, collective concept of the self defined by the ethical quality of the relationships one has with other beings, and a concept of multiple soul-like essences that compose a human being and can be harnessed strategically to create familial-like ethical bonds of cooperation among individuals and communities. The archaeological reconstructions of Hopewellian ritual dramas and concepts of personhood and the self, and of Hopewell people’s strategic uses of these, are informed by three large surveys of historic Woodland and Plains Indians’ narratives, ideas, and rites about journeys to afterlives, the creatures who inhabit the cosmos, and the nature and functions of soul-like essences, coupled with rich contextual archaeological and bioarchaeological-taphonomic analyses. The bioarchaeological-taphonomic method of l’anthropologie de terrain, new to North American archaeology, is introduced and applied. In all, the research in this book vitalizes a vision of an anthropology committed to native logic and motivation and skeptical of the imposition of Western world views and categories onto native peoples.

Download or read book The Archaeology of Events written by Zackary I. Gilmore and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These perspectives are applied to a broad range of archeological contexts stretching across the Southeast and spanning more than 7,000 years of the region's pre-Columbian history. New data suggest that several of this region's most pivotal historical developments, such as the founding of Cahokia, the transformation of Moundville from urban center to vacated necropolis, and the construction of Poverty Point's Mound A, were not protracted incremental processes, but rather watershed moments that significantly altered the long-term trajectories of indigenous Southeastern societies. In addition to exceptional occurrences that impacted entire communities or peoples, Southeastern archaeologists are increasingly recognizing the historical importance of localized, everyday events, such as building a house, crafting a pot, or depositing shell.

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 Ceramic Petrography and Hopewell Interaction written by James B. Stoltman and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly innovative study in which James B. Stoltman uses petrography to reveal previously undetectable evidence of cultural interaction among Hopewell societies of the Ohio Valley region and the contemporary peoples of the Southeast Petrography is the microscopic examination of thin sections of pottery to determine their precise mineralogical composition. In this groundbreaking work, James B. Stoltman applies quantitative as well as qualitative methods to the petrography of Native American ceramics. As explained in Ceramic Petrography and Hopewell Interaction, by adapting refinements to the technique of petrography, Stoltman offers a powerful new set of tools that enables fact-based and rigorous identification of the composition and sources of pottery. Stoltman’s subject is the cultural interaction among the Hopewell Interaction Sphere societies of the Ohio Valley region and contemporary peoples of the Southeast. Inferring social and commercial relationships between disparate communities by determining whether objects found in one settlement originated there or elsewhere is a foundational technique of archaeology. The technique, however, rests on the informed but necessarily imperfect visual inspection of objects by archaeologists. Petrography greatly amplifies archaeologists’ ability to determine objects’ provenance with greater precision and less guesswork. Using petrography to study a vast quantity of pottery samples sourced from Hopewell communities, Stoltman is able for the first time to establish which items are local, which are local but atypical, and which originated elsewhere. Another exciting possibility with petrography is to further determine the home source of objects that came from afar. Thus, combining traditional qualitative techniques with a wealth of new quantitative data, Ceramic Petrography and Hopewell Interaction offers a map of social and trade relationships among communities within and beyond the Hopewell Interaction Sphere with much greater precision and confidence than in the past. Ceramic Petrography and Hopewell Interaction provides a clear and concise explanation of petrographic methods, Stoltman’s findings about Hopewell and southeastern ceramics in various sites, and the fascinating discovery that visits to Hopewell centers by southeastern Native Americans were not only for trade purposes but more for such purposes as pilgrimages, vision- and power-questing, healing, and the acquisition of knowledge.

Download or read book The Newark Earthworks written by Lindsay Jones and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered a wonder of the ancient world, the Newark Earthworks—the gigantic geometrical mounds of earth built nearly two thousand years ago in the Ohio valley--have been a focal point for archaeologists and surveyors, researchers and scholars for almost two centuries. In their prime one of the premier pilgrimage destinations in North America, these monuments are believed to have been ceremonial centers used by ancestors of Native Americans, called the "Hopewell culture," as social gathering places, religious shrines, pilgrimage sites, and astronomical observatories. Yet much of this territory has been destroyed by the city of Newark, and the site currently "hosts" a private golf course, making it largely inaccessible to the public. The first book-length volume devoted to the site, The Newark Earthworks reveals the magnitude and the geometric precision of what remains of the earthworks and the site’s undeniable importance to our history. Including contributions from archaeologists, historians, cultural geographers, and cartographers, as well as scholars in religious studies, legal studies, indigenous studies, and preservation studies, the book follows an interdisciplinary approach to shine light on the Newark Earthworks and argues compellingly for its designation as a World Heritage Site.

Download or read book Transforming the Dead written by Eve A. Hargrave and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in Transforming the Dead: Culturally Modified Bone in the Prehistoric Midwest explore the numerous ways that Eastern Woodland Native Americans selected, modified, and used human bones as tools, trophies, ornaments, and other objects imbued with cultural significance in daily life and rituals.

Download or read book Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America written by Cheryl Claassen and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Archaeology of Native North America written by Dean Snow and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Archaeology of Native North America presents the ideas, evidence, and debates regarding the initial peopling of the continent by mobile bands of hunters and gatherers and the cultural evolution of their many lines of descent over the ensuing millennia. The emergence of farming, urban centers, and complex political organization paralleled similar developments in other world areas. With the arrival of Europeans to North America and the inevitable clashes of culture, colonizers and colonists were forever changed, which is also represented in the archaeological heritage of the continent. Unlike others, this book includes Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, thus addressing broad regional interactions and the circulation of people, things, and ideas. This edition incorporates results of new archaeological research since the publication of the first edition a decade earlier. Fifty-four new box features highlight selected archaeological sites, which are publicly accessible gateways into the study of North American archaeology. The features were authored by specialists with direct knowledge of the sites and their broad importance. Glossaries are provided at the end of every chapter to clarify specialized terminology. The book is directed to upper-level undergraduate and graduate students taking survey courses in American archaeology, as well as other advanced readers. It is extensively illustrated and includes citations to sources with their own robust bibliographies, leading diligent readers deeper into the professional literature. The Archaeology of Native North America is the ideal text for courses in North American archaeology.

Download or read book Res written by Hung Wu and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-04 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Res 61/62 includes “Chinese coffins from the first millennium b.c. and early images of the afterworld” by Alain Thote; “Art and personhood” by Björn Ewald; “Western Han sarcophagi and the transformation of Chinese funerary art” by Zheng Yan; “Reading identity on Roman strigillated sarcophagi” by Janet Huskinson; and other papers.

Download or read book A Prehistory of Houston and Southeast Texas written by Dan M. Worrall and published by Concertina Press (www.concertinapressbooks.com). This book was released on 2021-01-02 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Houston and Southeast Texas have an ancient, storied prehistory. Using data from hundreds of archeological site reports, a changing coastal landscape modeled through time in 3D, historical information on Native Americans taken from the accounts of the earliest European visitors, and digital GIS mapping to weave it all together, this book recounts the development of the physical landscape of this region and the cultures of its Native American inhabitants from the peak of the last ice age until the Spanish colonial era. Its 504 pages are illustrated with nearly 350 full color maps, charts, drawings and photographs.

Download or read book Bones of Complexity written by Haagen D. Klaus and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Provides data and information that can be used for comparative analysis and as a foundation for further exploration. Inviting research from various geographic, cultural, and temporal locales from around the globe, the editors present a complex snapshot of the past."--Anne L. Grauer, editor of A Companion to Paleopathology "This cohesive collection of empirically based studies integrates biological and archaeological data in order to investigate social behavior and its linkages with human health. Relevant to anyone interested in the intersections of culture, health, and biology."--Jaime M. Ullinger, codirector, Quinnipiac University Bioanthropology Research Institute Drawing upon wide-ranging studies of prehistoric human remains from Europe, northern Africa, Asia, and the Americas, this groundbreaking volume unites physical anthropologists, archaeologists, and economists to explore how social structure can be reflected in the human skeleton. Contributors identify many ways in which social, political, and economic inequality have affected health, disease, metabolic insufficiency, growth, and diet. The volume makes a strong case for a broader integration of bioarchaeology with mortuary archaeology as its distinctive approaches offer new ways to look at power, resources, social organization, and the shape of human lives over time and across cultures. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen

Download or read book The Dawn of Everything written by David Graeber and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. Includes Black-and-White Illustrations

Download or read book Shaman Priest Practice Belief written by Stephen B. Carmody and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2019-12-31 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeological case studies consider material evidence of religion and ritual in the pre-Columbian Eastern Woodlands Archaeologists today are interpreting 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

Download or read book Res written by Francesco Pellizzi and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: RES 65/66 includes Francesco Pellizzi, “Editorial: RES at 35”; Remo Bodei, “A constellation of words”; Mary Weismantel, “Encounters with dragons”; Z. S. Strother, “A terrifying mimesis”; Wyatt MacGaffey, “Franchising minkisi in Loango”; Karen Overbey, “Seeing through stone”; Noam Andrews, “The space of knowledge”; and other papers.

Download or read book Recent Developments in Southeastern Archaeology written by David G. Anderson and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book in the SAA Press Current Perspectives Series represents a period-by-period synthesis of southeastern prehistory designed for high school and college students, avocational archaeologists, and interested members of the general public. It also serves as a basic reference for professional archaeologists worldwide on the record of a remarkable region.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Paleopathology written by Anne L. Grauer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 693 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book 1. explores current methods and techniques employed by paleopathologists as means to highlight the range of data that can be generated. 2. introduces a range of diseases and conditions that have been noted in the fossil, archaeological, and historical record, offering readers a foundational understanding of pathological conditions, along with their potential etiologies. 3. will be indispensable for archaeologists, bioarchaeologists and historians, and those in medical fields, as it reflects current scholarship within paleopathology and the field’s impact on our understanding of health and disease in the past, the present, and implications for our future.