Overview
- Is the first study to reconstruct and compare the ritual dramas of ancient Native North American societies
- Is the first exploration of concepts of personhood held by ancient Hopewell Indians
- Introduces the bioarchaeological-taphonomic, skeletal-analytical method of anthropologie de terrain to North American archaeology
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About this book
This book, in two volumes, breathes fresh air empirically, methodologically, and theoretically into understanding the rich ceremonial lives, the philosophical-religious knowledge, and the impressive material feats and labor organization that distinguish Hopewell Indians of central Ohio and neighboring regions during the first centuries CE. The first volume defines cross-culturally, for the first time, the “ritual drama” as a genre of social performance. It reconstructs and compares parts of 14 such dramas that Hopewellian and other Woodland-period peoples performed in their ceremonial centers to help the soul-like essences of their deceased make the journey to an afterlife. The second volume builds and critiques ten formal cross-cultural models of “personhood” and the “self” and infers the nature of Scioto Hopewell people’s ontology. Two facets of their ontology are found to have been instrumental in their creating the intercommunity alliances and cooperation and gathering the labor required to construct their huge, multicommunity ceremonial centers: a relational, collective concept of the self defined by the ethical quality of the relationships one has with other beings, and a concept of multiple soul-like essences that compose a human being and can be harnessed strategically to create familial-like ethical bonds of cooperation among individuals and communities.
The archaeological reconstructions of Hopewellian ritual dramas and concepts of personhood and the self, and of Hopewell people’s strategic uses of these, are informed by three large surveys of historic Woodland and Plains Indians’ narratives, ideas, and rites about journeys to afterlives, the creatures who inhabit the cosmos, and the nature and functions of soul-like essences, coupled with rich contextual archaeological and bioarchaeological-taphonomic analyses. The bioarchaeological-taphonomic method of l’anthropologie de terrain, new to North American archaeology,is introduced and applied. In all, the research in this book vitalizes a vision of an anthropology committed to native logic and motivation and skeptical of the imposition of Western world views and categories onto native peoples.
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Keywords
- Archaeology of religion
- Eastern Woodlands archaeology
- Eastern Woodlands ethnography
- Hopewell archaeology
- Mortuary practices
- Bioarchaeology
- Ritual drama
- Archaeology of death
- Mortuary archaeology
- Ethnography of death
- Anthropologie de terrain archaeology
- “Ritual Drama” in Cross-Cultural and Historical Perspective
- Method of L’Anthropologie de Terrain
- Ohio Hopewell Mortuary Records
- Geographic Distributions in Oral Narratives
- Cosmologies of Postcontact, Eastern Woodland and Plains Indians
- Underwater-Underground Creatures in oral narratives
- Ferocious Dog, Brain-Taker, the Keen-Eyed Owl in oral narratives
- Ritual Dramas of Death Journeys of Scioto Hopewell Societies
- Ritual Dramas of Death Journeys of Adena Societies
Table of contents (22 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Ritual Dramas: Global Perspectives
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Front Matter
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Bioarchaeological and Ethnohistorical Foundations for Reconstructing Hopewell Ritual Dramas
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Front Matter
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Ritual Dramas of Scioto Hopewell Peoples
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Front Matter
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Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Christopher Carr, Ph.D., is an anthropological archaeologist whose 40 years of research have focused on the social and religious lives of Native American peoples of Eastern North America from 1000 B.C. through Contact, especially Hopewell mound-earthwork building societies of the Midwest U.S. Mortuary practices and artworks of these peoples and strong use of Indian ethno-historic records, anthropological theories, and material science are foundational to his studies.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Authors: Christopher Carr
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44917-9
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-44916-2Published: 06 January 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-44919-3Published: 07 January 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-44917-9Published: 05 January 2022
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXIX, 1560
Number of Illustrations: 18 b/w illustrations, 132 illustrations in colour
Topics: History, general, Archaeology, Ethnology, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion