Mississippian Mortuary Practices

Mississippian Mortuary Practices PDF Author: Lynne P. Sullivan
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813042984
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
The residents of Mississippian towns principally located in the southeastern and midwestern United States from 900 to1500 A.D. made many beautiful objects, which included elaborate and well-crafted copper and shell ornaments, pottery vessels, and stonework. Some of these objects were socially valued goods and often were placed in ritual context, such as graves. The funerary context of these artifacts has sparked considerable study and debate among archaeologists, raising questions about the place in society of the individuals interred with such items, as well as the nature of the societies in which these people lived. By focusing on how mortuary practices serve as symbols of beliefs and values for the living, the contributors to Mississippian Mortuary Practices explore how burial of the dead reflects and reinforces the cosmology of specific cultures, the status of living participants in the burial ceremony, ongoing kin relationships, and other aspects of social organization.

Mississippian Mortuary Practices

Mississippian Mortuary Practices PDF Author: Lynne P. Sullivan
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813042984
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book Here

Book Description
The residents of Mississippian towns principally located in the southeastern and midwestern United States from 900 to1500 A.D. made many beautiful objects, which included elaborate and well-crafted copper and shell ornaments, pottery vessels, and stonework. Some of these objects were socially valued goods and often were placed in ritual context, such as graves. The funerary context of these artifacts has sparked considerable study and debate among archaeologists, raising questions about the place in society of the individuals interred with such items, as well as the nature of the societies in which these people lived. By focusing on how mortuary practices serve as symbols of beliefs and values for the living, the contributors to Mississippian Mortuary Practices explore how burial of the dead reflects and reinforces the cosmology of specific cultures, the status of living participants in the burial ceremony, ongoing kin relationships, and other aspects of social organization.

Mississippian Mortuary Practices

Mississippian Mortuary Practices PDF Author: Lynne P. Sullivan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813039619
Category : Indians of North America
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
The residents of Mississippian towns principally located in the southeastern and midwestern United States from 900 to1500 A.D. made many beautiful objects, which included elaborate and well-crafted copper and shell ornaments, pottery vessels, and stonework. Some of these objects were socially valued goods and often were placed in ritual context, such as graves. The funerary context of these artifacts has sparked considerable study and debate among archaeologists, raising questions about the place in society of the individuals interred with such items, as well as the nature of the societies i.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial PDF Author: Sarah Tarlow
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191650390
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 921

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial reviews the current state of mortuary archaeology and its practice, highlighting its often contentious place in the modern socio-politics of archaeology. It contains forty-four chapters which focus on the history of the discipline and its current scientific techniques and methods. Written by leading, international scholars in the field, it derives its examples and case studies from a wide range of time periods, such as the middle palaeolithic to the twentieth century, and geographical areas which include Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. Combining up-to-date knowledge of relevant archaeological research with critical assessments of the theme and an evaluation of future research trajectories, it draws attention to the social, symbolic, and theoretical aspects of interpreting mortuary archaeology. The volume is well-illustrated with maps, plans, photographs, and illustrations and is ideally suited for students and researchers.

The Archaeology of Death and Burial

The Archaeology of Death and Burial PDF Author: Mike Parker Pearson
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750999039
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
The archaeology of death and burial is central to our attempts to understand vanished societies. Through the remains of funerary rituals we can learn not only about the attitudes of prehistoric people to death and the afterlife, but also about their way of life, their social organisation and their view of the world. This ambitious book reviews the latest research in this huge and important field, and describes the sometimes controversial interpretations that have led to rapid advances in our understanding of life and death in the distant past. A unique overview and synthesis of one of the most revealing fields of research into the past, it covers archaeology's most breathtaking discoveries, from Tutankhamen to the Ice Man, and will find a keen market among archaeologists, historians and others who have a professional interest in, or general curiosity about, death and burial.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial PDF Author: Sarah Tarlow
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0199569061
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 870

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Book Description
This Handbook reviews the state of mortuary archaeology and its practice with forty-four chapters focusing on the history of the discipline and its current scientific techniques and methods. Written by leading scholars in the field, it derives its examples and case studies from a wide range of time periods and geographical areas.

Pinson Mounds

Pinson Mounds PDF Author: Robert C. Mainfort Jr.
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 1557286396
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Pinson Mounds: Middle Woodland Ceremonialism in the Midsouth is a comprehensive overview and reinterpretation of the largest Middle Woodland mound complex in the Southeast. Located in west Tennessee about ten miles south of Jackson, the Pinson Mounds complex includes at least thirteen mounds, a geometric earthen embankment, and contemporary short-term occupation areas within an area of about four hundred acres. A unique feature of Pinson Mounds is the presence of five large, rectangular platform mounds from eight to seventy-two feet in height. Around A.D. 100, Pinson Mounds was a pilgrimage center that drew visitors from well beyond the local population and accommodated many distinct cultural groups and people of varied social stations. Stylistically nonlocal ceramics have been found in virtually every excavated locality, all together representing a large portion of the Southeast. Along with an overview of this important and unique mound complex, Pinson Mounds also provides a reassessment of roughly contemporary centers in the greater Midsouth and Lower Mississippi Valley and challenges past interpretations of the Hopewell phenomenon in the region.

Archaeology of the Mississippian Culture

Archaeology of the Mississippian Culture PDF Author: Peter N. Peregrine
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136508627
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
First published in 1996. In recent years there has been a general increase of scholarly and popular interest in the study of ancient civilizations. Yet, because archaeologists and other scholars tend to approach their study of ancient peoples and places almost exclusively from their own disciplinary perspectives, there has long been a lack of general bibliographic and other research resources available for the non-specialist. This series is intended to fill that need.

The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange

The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange PDF Author: Tracy K. Betsinger
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 1683401409
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
Abnormal burial practices have long been a source of fascination and debate within the fields of mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology. The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange investigates an unparalleled geographic and temporal range of burials that differ from the usual customs of their broader societies, emphasizing the importance of a holistic, context-driven approach to these intriguing cases. From an Andean burial dating to 3500 BC to mummified bodies interred in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily, during the twentieth century, the studies in this volume cross the globe and span millennia. The unusual cases explored here include Native American cemeteries in Illinois, “vampire” burials in medieval Poland, and a mass grave of decapitated soldiers in ancient China. Moving away from the simplistic assumption that these burials represent people who were considered deviant in society, contributors demonstrate the importance of an integrated biocultural approach in determining why an individual was buried in an unusual way. Drawing on historical, sociocultural, archaeological, and biological data, this volume critically evaluates the binary of “typical” versus “atypical” burials. It expands our understanding of the continuum of variation within mortuary practices, helping researchers better interpret burial evidence to learn about the people and cultures of the past. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen

Regional Approaches to Mortuary Analysis

Regional Approaches to Mortuary Analysis PDF Author: Lane Anderson Beck
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1489913106
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
In this volume, archaeologists offer a new direction for burial research by expanding the models for mortuary analysis from a site-specific to a regional level. Contributors explore how regional mortuary approaches allow the introduction of new questions about peer polity interactions and regional alliances-extending traditional settlement system and exchange analyses. This volume features case studies examining mortuary sites as components of the archaeological landscape.

Life in a Mississippian Warscape

Life in a Mississippian Warscape PDF Author: Meghan E. Buchanan
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817321381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
"Meghan Buchanan, following anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom, posits that, to understand the big histories of warfare, political fragmentation, and resilience in the past, archaeologists must also analyze and interpret the microscale actions of the past: the daily activities of people before, during, and after historical events. Within warscapes, battles take place in peoples' front yards, family members die, and the impacts of violence in near and distant places are experienced on a daily basis. "Life in a Mississippian Warscape" explores the microscale of daily lives of people living at the Common Field site during the period of Cahokia's abandonment and the spread of violence and warfare throughout the Southeast. Common Field was a large, palisaded Mississippian mound center founded circa 1250 and burned in a catastrophic event shortly before Cahokia's abandonment. Linking together ethnographic, historic, and archaeological sources, Buchanan proposes a multiscalar approach to an archaeology of daily life in wartime. She draws on analysis of museum collections as well as the results from her field excavations. She discusses the evidence that the people of Common Field engaged in novel and hybrid practices during this period of escalating warfare. At the microscale, they erected a substantial palisade with specially prepared deposits, adopted new ceramic tempering techniques, produced large numbers of serving vessels decorated with warfare-related imagery, and adapted their food practices. The overall picture that emerges from the daily practices at Common Field is of a people who engaged in risk-averse practices that minimized their exposure to outside of the palisade and attempted to seek intercession from the supernatural realm through public ceremonies involving warfare-related iconography. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of warscapes, highlighting ethnographic and historic accounts of cultural creativity and social experiences during wartime around the world, especially in Native American societies. Buchanan links the materiality of daily life, technological production, creativity, and hybridity during periods of war and shows where the impacts of warfare on daily practices may be visible archaeologically. Chapter 2 explores the theoretical orientations and archaeological approaches to warfare in the southeastern United States and the evidence for violence and warfare in the precontact past. Chapter 3 introduces the Common Field site and outlines some of the research that has been conducted at the site and other Mississippian Period sites in the region. Buchanan proposes a culture history for region, highlighting important sites, material practices, and historical trends. Chapter 4 presents the results of analyses conducted on ceramics and fauna related to daily practices and explores how lives inside the palisade walls were impacted by external threats of violence. The analyses show that the people living at Common Field were engaged in risk-averse practices that mitigated exposure outside of palisade walls. In chapter 5, the results of the research conducted at Common Field are interpreted within the warscape lens. Particular focus considers the effects of regional warfare on the ceramic practices, foodways, and spatial organization of the people. Chapter 6 tacks between the small-scale effects of warfare, as seen at Common Field, and the larger-scale, historical impacts of Mississippian Period violence. Drawing on the idea of "big histories," Buchanan argues that the small details of peoples' lives have ramifications for larger regional and historical phenomena such as the abandonment and migration out of the Cahokia area and the cascade effects of violence elsewhere in the Southeast"--