Landscapes of ritual performance in eastern North America / edited by Cheryl Claassen.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Claassen, Cheryl, editor.

Series:

American Landscapes Series.

American Landscapes Series ; v.8

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Landscapes.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 249 pages) : illustrations (some color)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, England : Oxbow Books, [2023]

Summary:

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-de Soto 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.

Contents:

Cultic ritual complexes / Cheryl Claassen

Part 1 : Cults and rituals

The old Fire-deer spirits cult in the Archaic period of eastern North America / Cheryl Claassen

Priestesses and priests, temples, and goddesses : structuring and recentering ritual in early Cahokian religious landscapes / Thomas E. Emerson

Continuity, resilience, and transformation in Choctaw ritual practice / David H. Dye

Places of stone and skill : an exploration of Paleoindian and Early Archaic rituals and ritual practitioners in Northeastern North America / Francis "Jess" Robinson

Watchfires above the wetwoods : late Middle Archaic mortuary ritual and landscape in the Falls of the Ohio region / Anne Tobbe Bader

Persons of the Directions : ontology and ethics meet cosmology in understanding the world views and rituals of Adena, Hopewell, and post-contact Eastern Woodland Indian societies / Christopher Carr

Set, setting, and sacra : Eastern North America's tobacco shamans and the New World narcotic complex / Bobi Deere

Figured practices : the material heritage of ritual in the Great Lakes region / William Fox and Neal Ferris / Part 2 : Landscape, shrines, and pilgrimage

Portals through the spirit world : pre-contact ceremonial cave use in the American Southeast / Jan F. Simek, Beau Duke Carroll, and Alan Cressler

Rituals of stone : Native American use of stone in the Southeastern US / James R. Wettstaed and Johannes H.N. Loubser

Revisiting Aztalan : looking at ritual from several perspectives / Lynne Goldstein, Sissel Schroeder, Donald Gaff, and Jake Pfaffenroth

Sacred journeys in the greater Cahokia region / B. Jacob Skousen

Paths of the lightning arrow : the Apalachee ballgame and the persistence of landscapes / Jesse C. Nowak and Charles T. Rainville.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781789259315

1789259312

9781789259308

1789259304

OCLC:

1399169638