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"In eastern Oklahoma, on the banks of the Arkansas River, lies one of the most important ancient sites ever identified - the Spiro Mounds. Although they created one of the most highly-developed civilizations, the Spiroan people and their Mississippian peers are nearly forgotten in the pages of history. Explore the art, history, and singular nature of this ancient site as it rose from humble beginnings to become the most unique cultural and ceremonial center in pre-European contact North America. The quality, quantity, and variety of items discovered at Spiro is staggering. Thousands of objects, created in many different mediums, bear images of people deities, deity impersonators, animals, and mysterious composite creatures. Together, these objects form pictorial narratives that provide critical insight into the lives of the Mississippian people. Today's Native American communities in the American Southeast and the Plains, and possibly in Mesoamerica, are linked to Spiro through their use of similar imagery in historical works - hide paintings, ledger drawings, and tipi and shield covers - as well as in their twentieth-century paintings, sculpture, ceramics, basketry, and weavings. The story of Spiro is not limited to the past or focused solely on art. It is reflected in the everyday lives of people today. It is a story of how religion and the environments shape us, as illustrated through community developments, religious and ceremonial activities, farming and hunting practices, and daily life. Learn how a "Little Ice Age" beginning in AD 1350 and lasting until AD 1650 may have led to the site's decline and ultimate abandonment - an environmental threat similar to one we face today"--Book jacket.
Case studies combine archaeological data and oral tradition to illustrate how the archaeological expression of beliefs and meanings passed down in the oral tradition may be interpreted. Explanations in Iconography: Ancient American Indian Art, Symbol, and Meaning is a significant contribution to the field of archaeology – a contribution in iconography studies that has gradually been coming into its own. Iconography is a rich and fascinating field, as applied to the complex, and heretofore enigmatic, imagery on many ancient Pre-Columbian artifacts. When viewed through the lens of early ethnographic records and American Indian oral traditions, as well as information from knowledgeable American Indian elders, it opens a world of understanding and clarity until recently unknown in the field of anthropological archaeology. It brings us closer to the people who created the artifacts and offers a glimpse into the symbols and beliefs that were important to them. Chapters cover a wide variety of artifacts and imagery from several ancient American Indian cultures. These artifacts include petroglyphs and pictographs (rock art), mounds, engraved shell cups and gorgets, burial architecture and grave furniture, pottery, copper repoussé, and other media. Ancient graphics, engravings, mounds, and all were created to deliver a message to the viewer – and many of those messages are finally coming to light. The artifacts included are from a variety of regions, mainly in the Midwest and Eastern United States. We hope that this volume will encourage others to look more deeply into the meaning behind the ancient imagery and arts and give the past a chance to be known.
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.
A comprehensive view of quarrying activities from three key regions in North America. This exciting new addition to the the American Landscapes series provides an in-depth account of how flintknappers obtained and used stone based on archaeological, geological, landscape, and anthropological data. Featuring case studies from three key regions in North America, this book gives readers a comprehensive view of quarrying activities ranging from extracting the raw material to creating finished stone tools. Quarry landscapes were some of the first large-scale land modification efforts among early peoples in the New World. The chronological time periods covered by quarrying activities, show that most intensive use took place during parts of the Archaic and Woodland periods or between roughly 4000–1000 years ago when denser populations existed, but use began as early as the Paleoindian Period, about 13,000–9000 years ago, and ended in the Historic or Protohistoric periods, when colonists and Native Americans mined chert for gunflints and sharpening stones or abrasives. From the procurement systems approach common in the 1980s and 1990s, archaeologists can now employ a landscape approach to quarry studies in tandem with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) computer mapping and digital analysis, Light and RADAR (LiDAR) airborne laser scanning for recording topography, or high resolution satellite imagery. Authors Dowd and Trubitt show how sites functioned in a broad landscape context, which site locations or raw material types were preferred and why, what cultures were responsible for innovative or intensive quarry resource extraction, as well as how land use changed over time. Besides discussions of the way that industrialists used natural resources to change their technology by means of manufacture, trade, and exchange, examples are given of heritage sites that people can visit in the United States and Canada.
The history of indigenous peoples in North America is long and complex. Many scholarly accounts now rely on statistical data to reconstruct this past, but amid all the facts and figures, it is easy to lose sight of the human side of the story. How did Native people express their thoughts and feelings, and what sources of strength did they rely on to persevere through centuries of change? In this engaging narrative, acclaimed historian R. David Edmunds combines careful research with creative storytelling to give voice to indigenous individuals and families and to illustrate the impact of pivotal events on their lives. A nonfiction account accompanies each narrative to provide necessary historical and cultural context. Voices in the Drum features nine stories, each of which focuses on a fictional character who is a composite, or representation, of historical people. This series of portrayals takes the reader on an epic journey through time, beginning in the early 1400s with the Mound Builder cultures and ending with the modern-day urbanization of Native people. Along the way, we observe fictional characters interacting with real historical figures, such as Anthony Wayne, Tecumseh, and John Sutter, and taking part in actual events, such as the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the Trail of Tears, the California gold rush, and the forced removal of Native children to off-reservation boarding schools. The people portrayed in these pages belong to various tribes, including Potawatomis, Lakotas, Oneidas, and Cherokees. Their individual stories, ranging from humorous to tragic, give readers a palpable sense of how tribal peoples reacted to the disruptive changes forced on them by European colonizers and U.S. government policies. Both entertaining and insightful, the stories in this volume traverse a range of time periods, events, themes, and genres. As such, they reverberate like voices in the drum, inviting readers of all backgrounds to engage anew with the rich history and cultures of indigenous peoples.
The Land Run of 1889 and the oil boom in the early 20th century cemented Oklahoma's reputation as a place where fortunes could be made and lost seemingly overnight. In eastern Oklahoma, a group of men formed the Pocola Mining Company to loot the Spiro Mounds and make a fortune selling their finds. Their remarkable discovery was billed in newspapers as 'King Tut's Tomb in Oklahoma.' With only profit in mind, the looters gave little care to the archaeological value of their finds, allowing many valuable and perishable items to be destroyed. A handful of young archaeologists from the University of Oklahoma and crews of local men were left to salvage what they could at Spiro; their work was funded by relief money provided by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. In three years, the team excavated dozens of sites in eastern Oklahoma. The photographs in this volume tell the story of the looting of Spiro and professional archaeological excavations in eastern Oklahoma.
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.
This expansive survey of the art and culture of the American West presents richly diverse works by more than 35 distinct Native American nations considered alongside non-Native artists from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. Knowing the West encourages deeper consideration of the variety of cultures that together reflect the complex histories and stories of the American West. Astonishing in range, historical significance, medium, and quality, more than 120 artworks by Native American and non-Native artists are presented—including textiles, baskets, paintings, pottery, beadwork, saddles, and prints—including many by women. The artworks are shown in meaningful dialogue, such as baskets by Elizabeth Hickox (Wiyot/Karuk) juxtaposed with a large-scale California landscape by Albert Bierstadt, or New Mexican tinwork in conversation with a beaded valise by Nellie Two Bear Gates (Dakota), emphasizing influence and exchange and pointing out different ways of thinking about land and place. Multiple texts by a diverse range of scholars with broad-reaching perspectives explore topics such as history and making of Lakota winter counts, the development of saddles and bridles from across cultures, and the influence of the railroad and tourism on Southwestern pottery. This unprecedented volume centers Native voices and perspectives, prompting further thinking and research about the art history of the West.
Key writings of Alice Beck Kehoe provide students and scholars of anthropology an overview of methodological and ethical issues in Americanist archaeology over the last thirty years.
This edited volume analyzes the belief in supernatural gamekeepers and/or animal masters of wildlife from a cross-cultural perspective. It documents the antiquity and widespread occurrence of the belief in supernatural gamekeepers at the global level. This interdisciplinary volume documents both the antiquity and the widespread geographical distribution of this belief along with surveying the various manifestations of this cosmology by way of studies from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America. Some chapters explore the manifestations of this belief as they appear in petroglyphs/pictographs and other forms of material culture. Others focus on the environmental impacts of these beliefs/rituals and prescribed foraging restrictions by analyzing how they affect game harvests. The internationally recognized scholars in this volume assess the efficacy of this particular form of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and investigate if adherence to the belief in animal masters actually causes hunters to refrain from overharvesting wild game and thereby contributes to sustainable hunting practices. This volume is of interest to anthropologists, archaeologists and other social scientists researching traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), indigenous conservation, biodiversity, and sustainability practices, and animal deities.