Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America [Paperback]

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-DeSoto 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, colour symbolism, deer symbolism, mound stratigraphy, flintknapping, stone caching, cults and their organisation, 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.Offers new insights into the wide-ranging temporal and geographical evidence for rituals in Eastern North America..Case studies explore the diversity and commonality of ritual practices, physical and social constructs and depositional evidence for rites and rituals across an extensive geographical and temporal range.Focuses not only on the archaeological, cosmological and mythological data for ritual practices but also on the social, political and spiritual roles of ritual specialists within different polities.Provides new insights into the relationship between communities and other-than-human entities and supernatural powers, as reflected in the ritual use and modification and creation of landscape features, water and underground/underworld landscapes.List of contributors1 The Ritual ComplexCheryl ClaassenPart 1: Cults and Rituals2 The Old Fire-Deer Spiritsls"