Beliefs and Rituals in Archaic Eastern North America: An Interpretive Guide
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.41 (695 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0817318542 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 408 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-06-01 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
A reference for Archaic-period ideology and ritual of this scope will be used for decades by both newcomers and experts.”Jon Bernard Marcoux, author of Pox, Empire, Shackles, and Hides: The Townsend Site, 1670-1715. Claassen’s work synthesizes an enormous amount of archaeological data from sites across the Eastern Woodlands
Claassen’s overview of the archaeological record should encourage the development of original archaeological and historical connections and patterns. Claassen’s work focuses on the American Archaic period (marked by the end of the Ice Age approximately 11,000 years ago) and a geographic area bounded by the edge of the Great Plains, Newfoundland, and southern Florida. Beliefs and Rituals in Archaic Eastern North America describes, illustrates, and offers nondogmatic interpretations of rituals and beliefs in Archaic America. This period and region share specific beliefs and practices such as human sacrifice, dirt mound burial, and oyster shell middens. This interpretive guide serves as a platform for new interpretations and theories on this period. Such an approach, Claassen suggests, may reveal patterns of influence extending from early eastern Americans to the Aztec and Maya.. For example, Claassen connects rituals to topographic features and posits the Pleistocene-Holocene transition as a major stimulus to Archaic beliefs. Similarly, Claassen inter
A Major Contribution to the Literature An outstanding and much needed interpretation of beliefs and rituals during the Archaic period of Eastern North America. The book has three main sections. Part I provides a general overview of beliefs and rituals that were part of social life during the period. Part II is a very useful gazetteer of selected Archaic sites. In this section a total of 91 sites acros