Grave undertakings : an archaeology of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians / Patricia E. Rubertone.

Format:

Book

Government document

Author/Creator:

Rubertone, Patricia E.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Narragansett Indians.

Williams, Roger, 1604?-1683. Key into the language of America.

Williams, Roger.

Physical Description:

xvii, 248 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, [2001]

Summary:

Grave Undertakings focuses on seventeenth-century Narragansett Indians, whose languages and lifeways were described by Roger Williams in A Key Into the Language of America (1643), long considered an objective, thorough, and authoritative account. By weaving textual and archaeological evidence with community memory, Patricia Rubertone challenges the canonical status of A Key, imagining a more complicated and dynamic history of Native cultural survival and persistence in New England.

Rubertone provides a much-needed context and critical reading of Williams's life and myths, and explores the limits of A Key. Using archaeological evidence from a seventeenth-century Narragansett burial ground, Rubertone shows how material objects, including many European goods, were imprinted with Native meanings of communal and generational relationships, learned social knowledge, and sacred traditions. Her analysis illuminates individual lives within the society and makes clear that burial places and practices continued to be central to the Narragansetts long after the seventeenth century.

Grave Undertakings provides a compelling portrayal of the colonial experiences of a Native people, demonstrating that anthropologically informed cultural translations of the historical past are possible and necessary in the twenty-first century.

Contents:

A Brief Chronology of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians xix

Part 1 From Key to Canon

1. Making a Life 3

2. Eulogizing a Hero 18

3. Acclaiming a Canon 39

Part 2 Rethinking a Key

4. Casting a Key 69

5. Unlocking a Key's Silences 96

Part 3 Beyond a Key

6. Undertaking Narragansett Graves 117

7. Retelling Narragansett Lives 132

8. Remembering the Dead 165

Inventory of Objects From RI-1000 191

Adolescents' and Adult Women's Objects 195

Adult Women's and Men's Objects 197

Plan of RI-1000 198.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-243) and index.

ISBN:

1560989750

OCLC:

44885158