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Sacred Games, Death, and Renewal in the Ancient Eastern Woodlands
The Ohio Hopewell System of Cult Sodality Heterarchies
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Publisher:
2011
Summary
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.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2011
ISBN-Print
978-0-7591-2032-7
ISBN-Online
978-0-7591-2034-1
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
548
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Figures and Tables No access
Chapter 01. Introduction No access
Chapter 02. The Domestic/Ceremonial Dichotomy No access
Chapter 03. The Tripartite Ceremonial Alliance Model No access
Chapter 04. The Nature of Ohio Hopewell Mortuary Ceremonialism No access
Chapter 05. The Symbolic Meaning of Material Culture No access
Chapter 06. The Ecclesiastic-Communal Cult Sodality Model No access
Chapter 07. The Hidatsa Age-Set System and the Ritual Usufruct Conveyancing and Franchising Model No access
Chapter 08. The Ohio Hopewell Cult Sodality Heterarchy System: From the Bottom Up No access
Chapter 09. The Murphy Tract: The Empirical Grounding of the Cult Sodality Cluster Model No access
Chapter 10. The Sacred Games Tournée of the Ohio Hopewell Cult Sodality Heterarchy System No access
Chapter 11. The North Fork–Paint Creek Interface Zone and the Terminal Conveyancing of Custodial Regalia No access
Chapter 12. The Ohio Hopewell as Dispersed Third-Order Cult Sodality Heterarchies No access
Chapter 13. The Development of the Ohio Hopewell Cult Sodality Heterarchy System No access
Chapter 14. Embankment Earthwork and Way Station Facilities No access
Chapter 15. The Structuring of Ohio Hopewell Sites and Pathways No access
Chapter 16. Embankment Earthwork Site Alignments and Relations No access
Chapter 17. The Ohio Hopewell and Adena as Neighbors and Strangers No access
