Sacred Games, Death, and Renewal in the Ancient Eastern Woodlands (eBook)

The Ohio Hopewell System of Cult Sodality Heterarchies

A. Martin Byers (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2011
558 Seiten
Altamira Press (Verlag)
978-0-7591-2034-1 (ISBN)

Infos

A. Martin Byers challenges the traditional views of the Ohio Hopewell embankment earthworks, providing an interpretation of them as sites of sacred games and world renewal rituals built and used by complex alliances of cult sodalities.

---

The book presents an account of the Ohio Middle Woodland period embankment earthworks, ca 100 B.C. to A.D. 400, that is radically different from the prevailing theory. Byers critically addresses all the arguments and characterizations that make up the current treatment of the embankment earthworks and then presents an alternative interpretation. This unconventional view hinges on two basic social characterizations: the complementary heterarchical community model and the cult sodality heterarchy model. Byers posits that these two models interact to characterize the Ohio Middle Woodland period settlement pattern; the community was constituted by autonomous social formations: clans based on kinship and sodalities based on companionship. The individual communities of the region each have their clan components dispersed within a fairly well-defined zone while the sodality components of the same set of region-wide communities ally with each other and build and operate the embankment earthworks. This dichotomy is possible only because the clans and sodalities respect each other as relatively autonomous; the affairs of the clans, focusing on domestic and family matters, remain outside the concerns of the sodalities and the affairs of the sodalities, focusing on world renewal and sacred games, remain outside the concerns of the clans. Therefore, two models are required to understand the embankment earthworks and no individual earthwork can be identified with any particular community. This radical interpretation grounded in empirical archaeological data, as well as the in-depth overview of the current theory of the Ohio Middle Woodland period, make this book a critically important addition to the perspective of scholars of North American archaeology and scholars grappling with prehistoric social systems.

Autor

A. Martin Byers taught anthropology and humanities at Vanier College in Montreal for thirty years and was recently research associate in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. He is author of Cahokia: A World Renewal Cult Heterarchy (University Press of Florida 2006) and The Ohio Hopewell Episode: Paradigm Lost and Paradigm Gained (University of Akron Press 2004).

Inhalt

Part I. The Ohio Hopewell as a System of Cult Sodality HeterarchiesChapter 1. IntroductionChapter 2. The Domestic/Ceremonial DichotomyChapter 3. The Tripartite Alliance Model: A CritiqueChapter 4. The Nature of Ohio Hopewell Mortuary CeremonialismChapter 5. The Symbolic Meaning of Material CultureChapter 6. The Ecclesiastic-Communal Cult Sodality ModelChapter 7. The Hidatsa Age-Set System and the Ritual Usufruct Conveyancing and Franchising ModelChapter 8. The Ohio Hopewell Cult Sodality Heterarchy System: From the Bottom-UpChapter 9. The Murphy Tract: The Empirical Grounding of the Cult Sodality Cluster ModelPart II. Sacred Games, Death, and Renewal in Ohio HopewellChapter 10. The Sacred Games Tournée of the Ohio Hopewell System of Cult Sodality HeterarchiesChapter 11. The North Fork-Paint Creek Interface Zone and the Terminal Conveyancing of Custodial RegaliaChapter 12. The Ohio Hopewell as Dispersed Third-Order Cult Sodality HeterarchiesChapter 13. The Development of the Ohio Hopewell Cult Sodality Heterarchy SystemChapter 14. Embankment Earthwork and Way Station FacilitiesChapter 15. The Structuring of Ohio Hopewell Sites and PathwaysChapter 16. Embankment Earthwork Site Alignments and Relations Chapter 17. The Ohio Hopewell and Adena as Neighbors and Strangers

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.1.2011
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• ISBN-10: 0-7591-2034-X / 075912034X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7591-2034-1 / 9780759120341