Religion mattered to the prehistoric Southwestern people, just as it matters to their descendents today. Examining the role of religion can help to explain architecture, pottery, agriculture, even commerce. But archaeologists have only recently developed the theoretical and methodological tools with which to study this topic. Religion in the Prehispanic Southwest marks the first book-length study of prehistoric religion in the region. Drawing on a rich array of empirical approaches, the contributors show the importance of understanding beliefs and ritual for a range of time periods and southwestern societies. For professional and avocational archaeologists, for religion scholars and students, Religion in the Prehispanic Southwest represents an important contribution.

The mid-thirteenth century AD marks the beginning of tremendous social change among Ancestral Pueblo peoples of the northern US Southwest that foreshadow the emergence of the modern Pueblo world. Regional depopulations, long-distance migrations, and widespread resettlement into large plaza-oriented villages forever altered community life. Archaeologists have tended to view these historical events as adaptive responses to climatic, environmental, and economic conditions. Recently, however, more attention is being given to the central role of religion during these transformative periods, and to how archaeological remains embody the complex social practices through which Ancestral Pueblo understandings of sacred concepts were expressed and transformed. The contributors to this volume employ a wide range of archaeological evidence to examine the origin and development of religious ideologies and the ways they shaped Pueblo societies across the Southwest in the centuries prior to European contact. With its fresh theoretical approach, it contributes to a better understanding of both the Pueblo past and the anthropological study of religion in ancient contexts This volume will be of interest to both regional specialists and to scholars who work with the broader dimensions of religion and ritual in the human experience.

The recognition of Flower Worlds is one of the most significant breakthroughs in the study of Indigenous spirituality in the Americas.Flower Worldsis the first volume to bring together a diverse range of scholars to create an interdisciplinary understanding of floral realms that extend at least 2,500 years in the past.

Human actions are often deeply intertwined with religion and can be understood in a strictly religious context. Yet, many volumes and articles pertaining to discussions of religion in the archaeological past have focused primarily on the sociopolitical implications of such remains. The authors in this volume argue that while these interpretations certainly have a meaningful place in understanding the human past, they provide only part of the picture. Because strictly religious contexts have often been ignored, this has resulted in an incomplete assessment of religious behavior in the past. This volume considers exciting new directions for considering an archaeology of religion, offering examples from theory, tangible archaeological remains, and ethnography.

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.

This approachable book in the SAA Press Current Perspectives Series is a comprehensive synthesis of Northwest Mexico from the US border to the Mesoamerican frontier. Filling a vital gap in the regional literature, it serves as an essential reference not only for those interested in the specific history of this area of Mexico but western North America writ large. A period-by-period review of approximately 14,000 years reveals the dynamic connections that knitted together societies inhabiting the Sea of Cortez coast, the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts, and the Sierra Madre Occidental. Networks of interaction spanned these diverse ecological, topographical, and cultural terrains in the millennia following the demise of the megafauna. The authors provide a fresh perspective that refutes depictions of the Northwest as a simple filter or conduit of happenings to the north or south, and they highlight the role local motivations and dynamics played in facilitating continental-scale processes.

This book discusses the cultural importance of spirits, what spirits want, and how humans interact with them, using examples from around the world and through time. Examples range from the vengeful spirits of the Zulu that cast lightning bolts from clear skies to punish wrongdoers, to the benevolent Puebloan Kachina that encourage prosperity, safety, and rain in the arid American Southwest. The case studies illustrate how humans seek to cooperate (or counteract) spirits to heal the physical and spiritual ailments of their people, to divine the truth, or to gain resources. Building from their cross-cultural analyses, the authors further discuss how our physiology and psychology impact our interaction with the spirits. Readers will come away with an appreciation of the beauty and power of the spirits that continue to shape the lives of people around the world.

This volume challenges previous views of social organization focused on elites by offering innovative perspectives on 'power from below.' Using a variety of archaeological, anthropological, and historical data to question traditional narratives of complexity as inextricably linked to top-down power structures, it exemplifies how commoners have developed strategies to sustain non-hierarchical networks and contest the rise of inequalities. Through case studies from around the world – ranging from Europe to New Guinea, and from Mesoamerica to China – an international team of contributors explores the diverse and dynamic nature of power relations in premodern societies. The theoretical models discussed throughout the volume include a reassessment of key concepts such as heterarchy, collective action, and resistance. Thus, the book adds considerable nuance to our understanding of power in the past, and also opens new avenues of reflection that can help inform discussions about our collective present and future.

With Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) the soci0logist ?mile Durkheim formulated the most influential social-science theory of religion to date. Pivotal are the paired concepts ?sacred / profane?, the notion of ?collective representations?, and the hypothesis that through such religious symbols, society compels its members to venerate herself i.e. to submit to the social as an irreducible instance in its own right. Having grappled with this Durkheimian inheritance for half a century, the anthropologist of religion and intercultural philosopher Wim van Binsbergen in this book traces his own steps in confront_ing Durkheim's sacred, through theoretical criticism, through ethnographic application (to popular Islam in the segmentary social organisation of the highlands of Northwestern Tunisia), and by state-of-the-art long-range methods of linguistic and comparative mythological analysis. Thus, much to his surprise, he demonstrates the continued validity of Durkheim's insights in religion.

A Prehistory of North America covers the ever-evolving understanding of the prehistory of North America, from its initial colonization, through the development of complex societies, and up to contact with Europeans. This book is the most up-to-date treatment of the prehistory of North America. In addition, it is organized by culture area in order to serve as a companion volume to “An Introduction to Native North America.” It also includes an extensive bibliography to facilitate research by both students and professionals.