The fascinating story of a lost city and an unprecedented American civilization located in modern day Illinois near St. Louis While Mayan and Aztec civilizations are widely known and documented, relatively few people are familiar with the largest prehistoric Native American city north of Mexico-a site that expert Timothy Pauketat brings vividly to life in this groundbreaking book. Almost a thousand years ago, a city flourished along the Mississippi River near what is now St. Louis. Built around a sprawling central plaza and known as Cahokia, the site has drawn the attention of generations of archaeologists, whose work produced evidence of complex celestial timepieces, feasts big enough to feed thousands, and disturbing signs of human sacrifice. Drawing on these fascinating finds, Cahokia presents a lively and astonishing narrative of prehistoric America.
Provides a theoretical explanation of how prehistoric Cahokia became a stratified society Considering Cahokia in terms of class struggle, Pauketat claims that the political consolidation in this region of the Mississippi Valley happened quite suddenly, around A.D. 1000, after which the lords of Cahokia innovated strategies to preserve their power and ultimately emerged as divine chiefs. The new ideas and new data in this volume will invigorate the debate surrounding one of the most important developments in North American prehistory.
A sweeping account of Medieval North America when Indigenous peoples confronted climate change. Few Americans today are aware of one of the most consequential periods in ancient North American history-the Medieval Warm Period of seven to twelve centuries ago (AD 800-1300 CE). On every page of this book, readers will be led down the same paths walked by Indigenous people a millennium ago, some trod by Spanish conquistadors just a few centuries later. The book will follow the footsteps of priests, pilgrims, traders, and farmers who took great journeys, made remarkable pilgrimages, and migrated long distances to new lands. Along the way, readers will discover a new history of a continent that, like today, was being shaped by climate change-or controlled by ancient gods of wind and water. Through such elemental powers, the history of Medieval America was a physical narrative, a long-term natural and cultural experience in which Native people were entwined long before Christopher Columbus arrived or Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztecs. The book's dozen chapters cover a lot of ground, focusing on some remarkable parallels between pre-contact American civilizations separated by a thousand miles or more. Key archaeological sites are featured in every chapter, all of which link in an evidentiary trail a great religious movement that swept Mesoamerica, the Southwest, and the Mississippi valley, sometimes because of worsening living conditions and sometimes by improved agricultural yields thanks to global warming a thousand years ago.
An Archaeology of the Cosmos seeks answers to two fundamental questions of humanity and human history. The first question concerns that which some use as a defining element of humanity: religious beliefs. Why do so many people believe in supreme beings and holy spirits? The second question concerns changes in those beliefs. What causes beliefs to change? Using archaeological evidence gathered from ancient America, especially case material from the Great Plains and the pre-Columbian American Indian city of Cahokia, Timothy Pauketat explores the logical consequences of these two fundamental questions. Religious beliefs are not more resilient than other aspects of culture and society, and people are not the only causes of historical change. An Archaeology of the Cosmos examines the intimate association of agency and religion by studying how relationships between people, places, and things were bundled together and positioned in ways that constituted the fields of human experience. This rethinking theories of agency and religion provides readers with challenging and thought provoking conclusions that will lead them to reassess the way they approach the past.
Paul's final epistle is written to his beloved son in the faith Timothy. His instruction is practical. Giving Timothy information on how to confront false teachers, the choosing of leaders and the role of men and women in the church. Following Paul's advice is the beginning of a biblical foundation
The fascinating story of a lost city and an unprecedented American civilization located in modern day Illinois near St. Louis While Mayan and Aztec civilizations are widely known and documented, relatively few people are familiar with the largest prehistoric Native American city north of Mexico-a site that expert Timothy Pauketat brings vividly to life in this groundbreaking book. Almost a thousand years ago, a city flourished along the Mississippi River near what is now St. Louis. Built around a sprawling central plaza and known as Cahokia, the site has drawn the attention of generations of archaeologists, whose work produced evidence of complex celestial timepieces, feasts big enough to feed thousands, and disturbing signs of human sacrifice. Drawing on these fascinating finds, Cahokia presents a lively and astonishing narrative of prehistoric America.
In recent decades anthropology, especially ethnography, has supplied the prevailing models of how human beings have constructed, and been constructed by, their social arrangements. In turn, archaeologists have all too often relied on these models to reconstruct the lives of ancient peoples. In lively, engaging, and informed prose, Timothy Pauketat debunks much of this social-evolutionary theorizing about human development, as he ponders the evidence of 'chiefdoms' left behind by the Mississippian culture of the American southern heartland. This book challenges all students of history and prehistory to reexamine the actual evidence that archaeology has made available, and to do so with an open mind.
An Archaeology of the Cosmos seeks answers to two fundamental questions of humanity and human history. The first question concerns that which some use as a defining element of humanity: religious beliefs. Why do so many people believe in supreme beings and holy spirits? The second question concerns changes in those beliefs. What causes beliefs to change? Using archaeological evidence gathered from ancient America, especially case material from the Great Plains and the pre-Columbian American Indian city of Cahokia, Timothy Pauketat explores the logical consequences of these two fundamental questions. Religious beliefs are not more resilient than other aspects of culture and society, and people are not the only causes of historical change. An Archaeology of the Cosmos examines the intimate association of agency and religion by studying how relationships between people, places, and things were bundled together and positioned in ways that constituted the fields of human experience. This rethinking theories of agency and religion provides readers with challenging and thought provoking conclusions that will lead them to reassess the way they approach the past.
Provides a theoretical explanation of how prehistoric Cahokia became a stratified society Considering Cahokia in terms of class struggle, Pauketat claims that the political consolidation in this region of the Mississippi Valley happened quite suddenly, around A.D. 1000, after which the lords of Cahokia innovated strategies to preserve their power and ultimately emerged as divine chiefs. The new ideas and new data in this volume will invigorate the debate surrounding one of the most important developments in North American prehistory.
The information, interpretations, and conclusions presented in this volume represent only one small portion of the outpouring of new ideas that have been produced by Dr. Timothy Pauketat's analysis of the Tract 15A and Dunham Tract archaeological remains. His research, which began in 1988, quickly produced a dissertation entitled The Dynamics of Pre-state Political Centralization in the North American Midcontinent followed by a theoretically oriented monograph, The Ascent of Chiefs: Cahokia and Mississippian Politics in Native North America, and numerous articles on the Cahokian sphere. Up until now, however, the structural and artifactual basis for Pauketat's innovative interpretations and new understanding of Cahokia have not been available to a wide audience. As Pauketat himself notes in his introduction, "significant advances in understanding past large-scale human organizations... require large archaeological samples" and additional advances demand that this information be made available to as wide an audience of fellow scholars as possible. This volume represents such a contribution to the present and future study of the great Cahokian center" -- From the publisher.
A sweeping account of Medieval North America when Indigenous peoples confronted climate change. Few Americans today are aware of one of the most consequential periods in ancient North American history-the Medieval Warm Period of seven to twelve centuries ago (AD 800-1300 CE). On every page of this book, readers will be led down the same paths walked by Indigenous people a millennium ago, some trod by Spanish conquistadors just a few centuries later. The book will follow the footsteps of priests, pilgrims, traders, and farmers who took great journeys, made remarkable pilgrimages, and migrated long distances to new lands. Along the way, readers will discover a new history of a continent that, like today, was being shaped by climate change-or controlled by ancient gods of wind and water. Through such elemental powers, the history of Medieval America was a physical narrative, a long-term natural and cultural experience in which Native people were entwined long before Christopher Columbus arrived or Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztecs. The book's dozen chapters cover a lot of ground, focusing on some remarkable parallels between pre-contact American civilizations separated by a thousand miles or more. Key archaeological sites are featured in every chapter, all of which link in an evidentiary trail a great religious movement that swept Mesoamerica, the Southwest, and the Mississippi valley, sometimes because of worsening living conditions and sometimes by improved agricultural yields thanks to global warming a thousand years ago.
Just a few miles west of Collinsville, Illinois lies the remains of the most sophisticated prehistoric native civilizations north of Mexico. Cahokia Mounds explores the history behind this buried American city inhabited from about AD 700 to 1400, that was almost lost in metropolitan expansions of the 1960s and 1970s, but later became one of the best understood archeological sites in North America.
This absorbing volume examines cultural role of rock art for the Apsáalooke, or Crow, people of the northern Great Plains by examining collective concepts of landscape as well as shared memories of historic Crow culture.
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