The Archaeology of Everyday Life at Early Moundville PDF Download

Author: Gregory D. Wilson
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817354441
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Defines household composition and social relationships at Moundville

Author: John H. Blitz
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817354786
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Book Description
"In the thirteenth century, Moundville was one of the largest Native American settlements north of Mexico. Spread over 325 acres were 29 earthen mounds arranged around a great plaza, a mile-long stockade, and dozens of dwellings for thousands of people. Moundville, in size and complexity second only to the Cahokia site in Illinois, was a heavily populated town, as well as a political and religious center." "Moundville was sustained by tribute of food and labor provided by the people who lived in the nearby floodplain as well as other smaller mound centers. The immediate area appears to have been thickly populated, but by about 1350 a.d., Moundville retained only ceremonial and political functions. A decline ensued, and by the 1500s the area was abandoned. By the time the first Europeans reached the Southeast in the 1540s, the precise links between Moundville's inhabitants and what became the historic Native American tribes were a mystery." "Illustrated with 50 color photos, maps, and figures, Moundville tells the story of the ancient people who lived there, the modern struggle to save the site from destruction, and the scientific saga of the archaeologists who brought the story to life."--BOOK JACKET.

Author: Vernon James Knight
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817354212
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Brings together nine Moundville specialists who trace the site’s evolution and eventual decline Built on a flat terrace overlooking the Black Warrior River in Alabama, the Moundville ceremonial center was at its height a densely occupied town of approximately 1,000 residents, with at least 29 earthen mounds surrounding a central plaza. Today Moundville is not only one of the largest and best-preserved Mississippian sites in the United States but also one of the most intensively studied. This volume brings together nine Moundville specialists who trace the site’s evolution and eventual decline.

Author: Kathleen DuVal
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0525511040
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 753

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A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today “A feat of both scholarship and storytelling.”—Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed. A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand—those having developed differently from their own—and whose power they often underestimated. For centuries afterward, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native Nations, we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch—and influenced global markets—and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to command much of the continent’s land and resources. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory. In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant—and will continue far into the future.

Author: Cynthia Robin
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813048567
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
While the study of ancient civilizations has often focused on holy temples and royal tombs, a substantial part of the archaeological record remains hidden in the understudied day-to-day lives of artisans, farmers, hunters, and other ordinary people of the ancient world. The various chores of a person's daily life can be quite extraordinary and, even though they may seem trivial, such activities can have a powerful effect on society as a whole. Everyday Life Matters develops general methods and theories for studying everyday life applicable in archaeology, anthropology, and a wide range of disciplines. In this groundbreaking work, Cynthia Robin examines the 2,000-year history (800 B.C.-A.D. 1200) of the ancient farming community of Chan in Belize, explaining why the average person should matter to archaeologists studying larger societal patterns. Robin argues that the impact of what is commonly perceived as habitual or quotidian can be substantial, and a study of a polity without regard to the citizenry is woefully incomplete. She also develops general methods and theories for studying everyday life applicable across a wide range of disciplines. Refocusing attention from the Maya elite and offering critical analysis of daily life interwoven with larger anthropological theories, Robin engages us to consider the larger implications of the seemingly mundane and to rethink the constitution of human societies, everyday life, and ordinary people.

Author: Gregory D. Wilson
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 1683401468
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Using fresh evidence and nontraditional ideas, the contributing authors of Mississippian Beginnings reconsider the origins of the Mississippian culture of the North American Midwest and Southeast (A.D. 1000–1600). Challenging the decades-old opinion that this culture evolved similarly across isolated Woodland popu¬lations, they discuss signs of migrations, missionization, pilgrimages, violent conflicts, long-distance exchange, and other far-flung entanglements that now appear to have shaped the early Mississippian past. Presenting recent fieldwork from a wide array of sites including Cahokia and the American Bottom, archival studies, and new investigations of legacy collections, the contributors interpret results through contemporary perspectives that emphasize agency and historical contingency. They track the various ways disparate cultures across a sizeable swath of the continent experienced Mississippianization and came to share simi¬lar architecture, pottery, subsistence strategies, sociopolitical organization, iconography, and religion. Together, these essays provide the most comprehensive examination of early Mississippian culture in over thirty years. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

Author: Vernon James Knight
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817316876
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
This work is a state-of-the-art, data-rich study of excavations undertaken at the Moundville site in west central Alabama, one of the largest and most complex of the mound sites of pre-contact North America.

Author: Vincas P. Steponaitis
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813065348
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Moundville, near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is one of the largest pre-Columbian mound sites in North America. Comprising twenty-nine earthen mounds that were once platforms for chiefly residences and public buildings, Moundville was a major political and religious center for the people living in its region and for the wider Mississippian world. A much-needed synthesis of the rapidly expanding archaeological work that has taken place in the region over the past two decades, this volume presents the results of multifaceted research and new excavations. Using models deeply rooted in local ethnohistory, it ties Moundville and its people more closely than before to the ethnography of native southerners and emphasizes the role of social memory, iconography, and ritual practices both at the mound center and in the rural hinterland, providing an up-to-date and refreshingly nuanced interpretation of Mississippian culture. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

Author: Vincent F. Biondo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313342792
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1197

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Book Description
This intriguing three-volume set explores the ways in which religion is bound to the practice of daily life and how daily life is bound to religion. In Religion and Everyday Life and Culture, 36 international scholars describe the impact of religious practices around the world, using rich examples drawn from personal observation. Instead of repeating generalizations about what religion should mean, these volumes examine how religions actually influence our public and private lives "on the ground," on a day-to-day basis. Volume one introduces regional histories of the world's religions and discusses major ritual practices, such as the Catholic Mass and the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. Volume two examines themes that will help readers understand how religions interact with the practices of public life, describing the ways religions influence government, education, criminal justice, economy, technology, and the environment. Volume three takes up themes that are central to how religions are realized in the practices of individuals. In these essays, readers meet a shaman healer in South Africa, laugh with Buddhist monks, sing with Bob Dylan, cheer for Australian rugby, and explore Chicana and Iranian art.

Author: Joyce E. Salisbury
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313081239
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1211

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Book Description
The period we know as the Middle Ages, roughly the years 400–1400, saw the formation of ideas and institutions that mark modern societies. Developments as disparate as the foundation of Islam and the emergence of the middle class occurred during this pivotal millennium. Although historical study of the Middle Ages has traditionally focused on Western Europe, modern historians recognize the complex global nature of this era. For all major world regions, this three-volume work offers in-depth essays on broad themes, short entries on specific topics, and carefully selected primary documents to help readers more fully understand this critically important period. Edited by Joyce Salisbury, who is general editor of the award-winning Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life, and written by Professor Salisbury and a series of prominent historians with regional expertise, Greenwood Encyclopedia of Global Medieval Life and Culture comprises three volumes covering the following areas of the globe: Volume 1:Europe and the Americas Volume 2: Islam and Africa Volume 3: Asia and Oceania Each regional section comprises seven in-depth essays covering the following broad topics and concluding with bibliographies of important and current information resources: Historical Overview of the Region, Religion, Economy, The Arts, Society, Science and Technology, and Global Ties. The Global Ties essays trace the political, social, economic, religious, technological, or commercial connections that existed between the region under discussion and any other world regions during the Middle Ages. Each regional section also includes a series of brief entries covering people, events, developments, and concepts mentioned in the in-depth essays. Examples of entry topics include the following: Berbers, Emperor Harsha, Ethiopian Christianity, Flowery Warfare, Footbinding, Hildegard of Bingen, Jainism, Jihad, Maya Collapse, Neo-Confucianism, Romanesque, and Sharia. A series of sidebars in each section will provide lists, graphs, charts, and other useful data relating to the region. Each section will also be illustrated and will include a selection of interesting primary documents that further illustrate the main themes addressed in the in-depth essays. Cross-references within the sections and a detailed subject index will also help readers access information in the essays and short entries.