"A Dan Josselyn memorial publication"--Title page verso

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-313) and index.

Introduction: Materials of ritual and religion in eastern North America / Casey R. Barrier and Stephen B. Carmody -- Early ritual in the American Southeast : evidence from the Paleoindian period / Thomas A. Jennings, Ashley M. Smallwood, and Charlotte D. Pevny -- Caches and burials : ritual use of Dust Cave during the Paleoindian and Archaic periods / Renee B. Walker -- Tattoo bundles as archaeological correlates for ancient body ritual in eastern North America / Aaron Deter-Wolf and Tanya M. Peres -- Planting ritual : Woodland Gardens and imbued landscapes / Stephen B. Carmody and Kandace D. Hollenbach -- Emergence and importance of Falconoid imagery during the Middle Woodland period / Bretton T. Giles -- Ritual knowledge and composition : rethinking "Hopewellian" assemblages in the Middle Woodland Southeast / Alice P. Wright and Cameron Gokee -- Bears as both family and food : tracing the changing contexts of bear ceremonialism in the Feltus Mounds / Megan C. Kassabaum and Ashley Peles -- Identifying religious activity in the archaeological record : the case of the Griffin Shelter (40FR151) / Sierra M. Bow, James F. Bates, Meagan E. Dennison, Connie M. Randall, and Jan F. Simek -- Psychotropic plants and sacred animals at the Washausen Mound-Town : religious ritual and the early Mississippian era / Casey R. Barrier -- Religious partners : material and human actors in the creation of early Cahokia / Sarah E. Baires and Melissa R. Baltus -- Allure of Cahokia as a sacred place in the eleventh century / James A. Brown and John E. Kelly -- Head pots and religious sodalities in the Lower Mississippi Valley / David H. Dye.

Print version record.

"This is the first edited archaeology volume to broadly consider Native American religion and ritual in the eastern North America. Twenty-three archaeologists provide thematic chapters on the materials of ritual and religion in the ancient Eastern Woodlands of North America. Unbound to a single theoretical perspective of religion, contributors approach ritual and religion in diverse ways. Importantly, they focus on how people in the past practiced religion by altering and using a vast array of material items, from smoking pipes, ceremonial vessels, carved figurines, and iconographic images, to sacred bundles, hallucinogenic plants, revered animals, and ritual architecture. Contributors also show how physical spaces were shaped by religious practice, and how rock art, monuments, soils and special substances, and even land- and cityscapes were part of the active material worlds of religious agents. Case studies chronologically cover all time periods, from the Paleoindian period (13,000-7900 BC) to the late Mississippian and into the proto-historic/contact periods. The geographical scope is much of the greater southeastern and southern Midwestern culture areas of the Eastern Woodlands, from the Central and Lower Mississippi River Valleys to the Ohio Hopewell region, and from the greater Ohio River Valley down through the Deep South and across to the Carolinas"-- Provided by publisher