Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces

Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces PDF Author: R. Barry Lewis
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817309470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
In this volume, prominent archaeologists examine the architectural design spaces of Mississippian towns and mound centers of the eastern United States.

Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces

Mississippian Towns and Sacred Spaces PDF Author: R. Barry Lewis
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817309470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
In this volume, prominent archaeologists examine the architectural design spaces of Mississippian towns and mound centers of the eastern United States.

Towns and Temples Along the Mississippi

Towns and Temples Along the Mississippi PDF Author: David H. Dye
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 081730455X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication Specialists from archaeology, ethnohistory, physical anthropology, and cultural anthropology bring their varied points of view to this subject in an attempt to answer basic questions about the nature and extent of social change within the time period. The scholars' overriding concerns include presentation of a scientifically accurate depiction of the native cultures in the Central Mississippi Valley prior and immediately subsequent to European contact and the need to document the ensuing social and biological changes that eventually led to the widespread depopulation and cultural reorientation. Their findings lead to three basic hypotheses that will focus the scholarly research for decades to come. Contributors include: George J. Armelagos, Ian W. Brown, Chester B. DePratter, George F. Fielder, Jr., James B. Griffin, M. Cassandra Hill, Michael P. Hoffman, Charles Hudson, R. Barry Lewis, Dan F. Morse, Phyllis A. Morse, Mary Lucas Powell, Cynthia R. Price, James F. Price, Gerald P. Smith, Marvin T. Smith, and Stephen Williams

Authority, Autonomy, and the Archaeology of a Mississippian Community

Authority, Autonomy, and the Archaeology of a Mississippian Community PDF Author: Erin S. Nelson
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 1683401239
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
This book is the first detailed investigation of the important archaeological site of Parchman Place in the Yazoo Basin, a defining area for understanding the Mississippian culture that spanned much of what is now the United States Southeast and Midwest before the mid-sixteenth century. Refining the widely accepted theory that this society was strongly hierarchical, Erin Nelson provides data that suggest communities navigated tensions between authority and autonomy in their placemaking and in their daily lives. Drawing on archaeological evidence from foodways, monumental and domestic architecture, and the organization of communal space at the site, Nelson argues that Mississippian people negotiated contradictory ideas about what it meant to belong to a community. For example, although they clearly had powerful leaders, communities built mounds and other structures in ways that re-created their views of the cosmos, expressing values of wholeness and balance. Nelson’s findings shed light on the inner workings of Mississippian communities and other hierarchical societies of the period. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

The Mississippian Culture: The Mound Builders

The Mississippian Culture: The Mound Builders PDF Author: Louise Spilsbury
Publisher: Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP
ISBN: 1538225689
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
The Mound Builders were some of the most advanced Native peoples to be encountered by European explorers. They made their homes in the part of North America along what is now known as the Mississippi River. Their complex, ancient culture is very impressive: the Mound Builders are credited with being the first group of people to rely on farming as a major source of food. This book features photographs of cool artifacts and critical thinking questions to engage readers as they draw their own conclusions while learning about the Mound Builders.

Mound Sites of the Ancient South

Mound Sites of the Ancient South PDF Author: Eric E. Bowne
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820344982
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
From approximately AD 900 to 1600, ancient Mississippian culture dominated today’s southeastern United States. These Native American societies, known more popularly as moundbuilders, had populations that numbered in the thousands, produced vast surpluses of food, engaged in longdistance trading, and were ruled by powerful leaders who raised large armies. Mississippian chiefdoms built fortified towns with massive earthen structures used as astrological monuments and burial grounds. The remnants of these cities—scattered throughout the Southeast from Florida north to Wisconsin and as far west as Texas—are still visible and awe-inspiring today. This heavily illustrated guide brings these settlements to life with maps, artists’ reconstructions, photos of artifacts, and historic and modern photos of sites, connecting our archaeological knowledge with what is visible when visiting the sites today. Anthropologist Eric E. Bowne discusses specific structures at each location and highlights noteworthy museums, artifacts, and cultural features. He also provides an introduction to Mississippian culture, offering background on subsistence and settlement practices, political and social organization, warfare, and belief systems that will help readers better understand these complex and remarkable places. Sites include Cahokia, Moundville, Etowah, and many more.

Mississippian Communities and Households

Mississippian Communities and Households PDF Author: J. Daniel Rogers
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817307680
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
During the Mississippian period (approximately A.D. 1000-1600) in the midwestern and southeastern United States a variety of greater and lesser chiefdoms took shape. Archaeologists have for many years explored the nature of these chiefdoms from the perspective common in archaeological investigations—from the top down, investigating ceremonial elite mound structures and predicting the basic domestic unit from that data. Because of the increased number of field investigations at the community level in recent years, this volume is able to move the scale of investigation down to the level of community and household, and it contributes to major revisions of settlement hierarchy concepts.

Mississippian Culture Heroes, Ritual Regalia, and Sacred Bundles

Mississippian Culture Heroes, Ritual Regalia, and Sacred Bundles PDF Author: David H. Dye
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793650608
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
In Mississippian Culture Heroes, Ritual Regalia, and Sacred Bundles, archaeologists analyze evidence of the religious beliefs and ritual practices of Mississippian people through the lens of indigenous ontologies and material culture. Employing archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric evidence, the contributors explore the recent emphasis on iconography as an important component for interpreting eastern North America’s ancient past. The research in this volume emphasizes the animistic nature of animals and objects, erasing the false divide between people and other-than-human beings. Drawing on an array of empirical approaches, the contributors demonstrate the importance of understanding beliefs and ritual and the significance of investigating how people in the past practiced religion and ritual by crafting, circulating, using, and ultimately decommissioning material items and spaces, including ceramic effigies, rock art, sacred bundles, shell gorgets, stone figurines, and symbolic weaponry.

Reconsidering Mississippian Communities and Households

Reconsidering Mississippian Communities and Households PDF Author: Elizabeth Watts Malouchos
Publisher: University Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817320881
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Explores the archaeology of Mississippian communities and households using new data and advances in method and theory Published in 1995, Mississippian Communities and Households, edited by J. Daniel Rogers and Bruce D. Smith, was a foundational text that advanced southeastern archaeology in significant ways and brought household-level archaeology to the forefront of the field. Reconsidering Mississippian Communitiesand Households revisits and builds on what has been learned in the years since the Rogers and Smith volume, advancing the field further with the diverse perspectives of current social theory and methods and big data as applied to communities in Native America from the AD 900s to 1700s and from northeast Florida to southwest Arkansas. Watts Malouchos and Betzenhauser bring together scholars researching diverse Mississippian Southeast and Midwest sites to investigate aspects of community and household construction, maintenance, and dissolution. Thirteen original case studies prove that community can be enacted and expressed in various ways, including in feasting, pottery styles, war and conflict, and mortuary treatments.

The Making of Mississippian Tradition

The Making of Mississippian Tradition PDF Author: Christina M. Friberg
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 1683401891
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
In this volume, Christina Friberg investigates the influence of Cahokia, the largest city of North America’s Mississippian culture between AD 1050 and 1350, on smaller communities throughout the midcontinent. Using evidence from recent excavations at the Audrey-North site in the Lower Illinois River Valley, Friberg examines the cultural give-and-take Audrey inhabitants experienced between new Cahokian customs and old Woodland ways of life. Comparing the architecture, pottery, and lithics uncovered here with data from thirty-five other sites across five different regions, Friberg reveals how the social, economic, and political influence of Cahokia shaped the ways Audrey inhabitants negotiated identities and made new traditions. Friberg’s broad interregional analysis also provides evidence that these diverse groups of people were engaged in a network of interaction and exchange outside Cahokia’s control. The Making of Mississippian Tradition offers a fascinating glimpse into the dynamics of cultural exchange in precolonial settlements, and its detailed reconstruction of Audrey society offers a new, more nuanced interpretation of how and why Mississippian lifeways developed. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

The Archaeology of Town Creek

The Archaeology of Town Creek PDF Author: Edmond A. Boudreaux
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817354557
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Provides new insights into the community pattern and leadership roles at a major Mississippian archaeological site The sequence of change for public architecture during the Mississippian period may reflect a centralization of political power through time. In the research presented here, some of the community-level assumptions attributed to the appearance of Mississippian mounds are tested against the archaeological record of the Town Creek site—the remains of a town located on the northeastern edge of the Mississippian culture area. In particular, the archaeological record of Town Creek is used to test the idea that the appearance of Mississippian platform mounds was accompanied by the centralization of political authority in the hands of a powerful chief. A compelling argument has been made that mounds were the seats and symbols of political power within Mississippian societies. While platform mounds have been a part of Southeastern Native American communities since at least 100 B.C., around A.D. 400 leaders in some communities began to place their houses on top of earthen mounds—an act that has been interpreted as an attempt to legitimize personal authority by a community leader through the appropriation of a powerful, traditional, community-oriented symbol. Platform mounds at a number of sites were preceded by a distinctive type of building called an earthlodge—a structure with earth-embanked walls and an entrance indicated by short, parallel wall trenches. Earthlodges in the Southeast have been interpreted as places where a council of community leaders came together to make decisions based on consensus. In contrast to the more inclusive function proposed for premound earthlodges, it has been argued that access to the buildings on top of Mississippian platform mounds was limited to a much smaller subset of the community. If this was the case and if ground-level earthlodges were more accessible than mound-summit structures, then access to leaders and leadership may have decreased through time. Excavations at the Town Creek archaeological site have shown that the public architecture there follows the earthlodge-to-platform mound sequence that is well known across the South Appalachian subarea of the Mississippian world. The clear changes in public architecture coupled with the extensive exposure of the site's domestic sphere make Town Creek an excellent case study for examining the relationship among changes in public architecture and leadership within a Mississippian society.