Multidirectional language contact involving more than two languages is little described. However, it probably represents the most common type of contact in the world, where colonization, rapid socioeconomic and demographic change, and society-wide multilingualism have led to dramatic linguistic change. This book presents fascinating cases of multidirectional contact and convergence between highly diverse languages in an emerging linguistic area in Suriname and the Guianas and proposes a framework for comparable studies.

An ethnography of magic-religious, medicinal and recreational tobacco use among nearly 300 native South American societies. Wilbert found that South American Indians use tobacco in many ways and that a close functional relation exists between tobacco and shamanism.

This study of the religions of American Indians covers tribal religions and religions of the American high culture.

The foundational work on shamanism now available as a Princeton Classics paperback Shamanism is an essential work on the study of this mysterious and fascinating phenomenon. The founder of the modern study of the history of religion, Mircea Eliade surveys the tradition through two and a half millennia of human history, moving from the shamanic traditions of Siberia and Central Asia—where shamanism was first observed—to North and South America, Indonesia, Tibet, China, and beyond. In this authoritative survey, Eliade illuminates the magico-religious life of societies that give primacy of place to the figure of the shaman—at once magician and medicine man, healer and miracle-doer, priest, mystic, and poet. Synthesizing the approaches of psychology, sociology, and ethnology, Shamanism remains the reference book of choice for those interested in this practice.

Presenting 10 essays by experts in the fields of anthropology, ethnography, and ornithology on the native peoples of South America and their use of birds, this volume offers a fascinating view into the lives and customs of some of the indigenous peoples living in the rainforest and coastal areas of Brazil and Peru. This book includes color photographs of South American natives in festival and ritual celebrations and everyday activities, along with spectacular objects of featherwork, textiles, and pottery. Contributors: Ruben E. Reina, Kenneth M. Kensinger, Kay L. Candler, Virginia Greene, Elizabeth Netto Calil Zarur, Catherine V. Howard, Patricia J. Lyon, Jon F. Pressman, Peter T. Turst, and Mark Robbins. University Museum Monograph, 75

Sinceits founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

DIVThe first book written in the Americas in a European language, giving Pane’s fifteenth-century account of the native inhabitants he encountered during the Spanish conquest of the Antilles./div

Thirteen anthropologists, including Claude Levi-Strauss, Dell Hymes, and Edmund R. Leach, examine myths, rituals, fold dramas, folk tales, riddles, and folk songs, all in the context of the cultures in which they occur.