The Real Mound Builders of North America

A Critical Realist Prehistory of the Eastern Woodlands, 200 BC–1450 AD

The Real Mound Builders of North America cover

The Real Mound Builders of North America

A Critical Realist Prehistory of the Eastern Woodlands, 200 BC–1450 AD

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Description

The Real Mound Builders of North America takes the standard position that the cultural communities of the Late Woodland period hiatus—when little or no transregional monumental mound building and ceremonialism existed—were the linear cultural and social ancestors of the communities responsible for the monumental earthworks of the unique Mississippian ceremonial assemblage, and further, these Late Woodland communities were the direct linear cultural and social descendants of those communities responsible for the great Hopewellian earthwork mounds and embankments and its associated unique ceremonial assemblage. Byers argues that these communities persisted largely unchanged in terms of their essential social structures and cultural traditions while varying only in terms of their ceremonial practices and their associated sodality organizations that manifested these deep structures. This continuist historical trajectory view stands in contrast to the current dominant evolutionary view that emphasizes abrupt social and cultural discontinuities with the Hopewellian ceremonial assemblage and earthworks, mounds and embankments.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Continuist and Discontinuist Histories
Chapter 1: The Incomplete Debunking of the Mound Builder Mythology
Chapter 2: Unitary Polities and Dual Heterarchies: Apprehending Social Systems from Alternative Perspectives
Chapter 3: The Dual Complementary Heterarchical Community/Cult Sodality Heterarchy Model
Chapter 4: The Symbolic Pragmatic Model of Style and the Custodial Franchising of Sacred Bundles
Chapter 5: The World Renewal Mortuary Model: The Postmortem Human Sacrificial Chaîne
Opératoire Mortuary Trajectory
Chapter 6: Settlement, Subsistence, and Ceremonialism: The Deontic Ecology of the Prehistoric Eastern Woodlands
Chapter 7: The Dissolution of a Transregional Second-Order Hopewellian Ceremonial Sphere
Chapter 8: Community Polities or Dual Heterarchies: Extreme Displaced Mortuary Depositions
and Demonstrating the “Best Fit” Truth
Chapter 9: The Emergence of the Complementary Heterarchical Chiefdom Community: Singular-Selective Candidature Practice
Chapter 10: The Emergence of Vacant Quarters and the Late Prehistoric Period→Post-Late Prehistoric Period Transition
Chapter 11: The Lower Chattahoochee River Valley: A Primary Southeastern Mississippian
Ceremonial Sphere

Chapter 12: The Late Prehistoric Period Savannah River Valley: A First-Order Southern
Appalachian Complicated-Stamped Ceremonial Sphere

Chapter 13: The Etowah Site of the Etowah River Valley Late Prehistoric Period:
Paramount Chiefdom Polity or Dispersed Third-Order Cult Sodality Heterarchy?

Chapter 14: The Formation and Transformation of Mound C of the Etowah Site

Conclusion: The Real Mound Builder Social World

Product details

Published Feb 02 2018
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Extent 456
ISBN 9781498570633
Imprint Lexington Books
Illustrations 18 b/w illustrations;
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

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Bloomsbury Collections

This book is available on Bloomsbury Collections where your library has access.

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