Beliefs And Rituals In Archaic Eastern North America

Author : Cheryl Claassen
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
ISBN 13 : 0817318542
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beliefs and Rituals in Archaic Eastern North America written by Cheryl Claassen and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Claassen’s work focuses on the American Archaic period (marked by the end of the Ice Age approximately 11,000 years ago) and a geographic area bounded by the edge of the Great Plains, Newfoundland, and southern Florida. This period and region share specific beliefs and practices such as human sacrifice, dirt mound burial, and oyster shell middens. This interpretive guide serves as a platform for new interpretations and theories on this period. For example, Claassen connects rituals to topographic features and posits the Pleistocene-Holocene transition as a major stimulus to Archaic beliefs. She also expands the interpretation of existing data previously understood in economic or environmental terms to include how this same data may also reveal spiritual and symbolic practices. Similarly, Claassen interprets Archaic culture in terms of human agency and social constraint, bringing ritual acts into focus as drivers of social transformation and ethnogenesis.

Author : Cheryl Claassen
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1789259304
Total Pages : 474 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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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 2023-02-23 with total page 474 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.

Author : Stephen B. Carmody
Publisher : University Alabama Press
ISBN 13 : 0817320423
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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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 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

Author : Cheryl Claassen
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1789259312
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Norman Bancroft-Hunt
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Shamanism in North America written by Norman Bancroft-Hunt and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Native Americans believed that it was their responsibility to maintain harmony in the natural world on which they depended by performing a variety of rituals. Shamans were credited with exceptional powers to act on behalf of the community. They claimed to be capable of separating their spirits from their bodies and interceding with those spirits that controlled the many forces of nature. Having studied the subject at first hand during his many visits to American tribes, Dr. Norman Bancroft Hunt sets out the richly rewarding results of his research in this survey of shamanic traditions and practices in various Native American groups. Shamanism in North America is profusely illustrated with the most remarkable masks, effigies, and implements used by shamans and includes evocative images of the often harsh wilderness inhabited by the tribes under discussion, as well as some revealing historical photographs of shamans.

Author : Timothy R. Pauketat
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521762499
Total Pages : 735 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Archaeology of Ancient North America written by Timothy R. Pauketat and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 735 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike extant texts, this textbook treats pre-Columbian Native Americans as history makers who yet matter in our contemporary world.

Author : W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469670194
Total Pages : 613 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A New History of the American South written by W. Fitzhugh Brundage and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2023-03-15 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For at least two centuries, the South's economy, politics, religion, race relations, fiction, music, foodways and more have figured prominently in nearly all facets of American life. In A New History of the American South, W. Fitzhugh Brundage joins a stellar group of accomplished historians in gracefully weaving a new narrative of southern history from its ancient past to the present. This groundbreaking work draws on both well-established and new currents in scholarship, among them global and Atlantic world history, histories of African diaspora, and environmental history. The volume also considers the experiences of all people of the South: Black, white, Indigenous, female, male, poor, and elite. Together, the essays compose a seamless, cogent, and engaging work that can be read cover to cover or sampled at leisure. Contributors are Peter A. Coclanis, Gregory P. Downs, Laura F. Edwards, Robbie Ethridge, Kari Frederickson, Paul Harvey, Kenneth R. Janken, Martha S. Jones, Blair L. M. Kelley, Kate Masur, Michael A. McDonnell, Scott Reynolds Nelson, James D. Rice, Natalie J. Ring, and Jon F. Sensbach.

Author : Murphy, Joanne M
Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813055881
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ritual and Archaic States written by Murphy, Joanne M and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2016-08-24 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While ritual and archaic states have both been prominent topics in recent archaeological studies, this is the first volume to combine both subjects by exploring the varying nature, expression, and significance of ritual in archaic states. It compares archaic rituals across many different cultures--Vijayanagara, Swahili Lamu, Venice, Asante, Aztec, Ming China, Oaxaca, Greece, Inca, Wari, and Chaco. The contributors posit that the nature of rituals, the level of investment in rituals, and their sociopolitical significance can vary greatly from state to state, even among societies with similar levels of social complexity, population, and spatial distribution. Highlighting the importance of ritual as an inherent part of a cultural narrative, and demonstrating how the study of ritual enables a better understanding of diverse social groups, this volume shows how the location, frequency, and role of ritual differed significantly across archaic states.

Author : Michael A. Susko
Publisher : AllrOneofUs Publishing
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book MYSTERY STONE FROM THE SHENANDOAH written by Michael A. Susko and published by AllrOneofUs Publishing. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Near Berryville, Virginia, a beautiful tablet-like stone has been found by the Shenandoah River. Under its brown-orange patina, peck-marked shapes reveal a crystalline heartstone and intriguing designs. While a variety of opinions have been offered by experts on the origin of the designs, the author takes you on a tour so you can make your own judgement. Findings reveal aesthetic proportions and intriguing gestalts which resonate with Eastern Woodland cosmology of early America. These include archetypes of the avian-man, skeletal and twinned shaman, earth mother, and a cosmology which shows a three-layered and four-cornered world. With an abundance of imagery supported by commentary, this "mystery stone" illustrates the Indigenous way of viewing the universe, and one that can enrich our lives.

Author : J. Grant Stauffer
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1789258464
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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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.