Mound builders and monument makers of the northern Great Lakes, 1200-1600
Publication Information
Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, c2012.
Physical Description
xii, 220 p. : ill., maps ; 27 cm.
Summary
Rising above the northern Michigan landscape, prehistoric burial mounds and impressive circular earthen enclosures bear witness to the deep history of the region's ancient indigenous peoples. These mounds and earthworks have long been treated as isolated finds and have never been connected to the social dynamics of the time in which they were constructed, a period called Late Prehistory. In Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200-1600, Meghan C. L. Howey uses archaeology to make this connection. She shows how indigenous communities of the northern Great Lakes used earthen structures as gathering places for ritual and social interaction, which maintained connected egalitarian societies in the process.
Contents
- Creating ritual and constructing monuments : perspectives on egalitarian societies
- Modeling late prehistory in the northern Great Lakes : current approaches and limitations
- Monuments and tribal ritual organization : northern Michigan, A.D. 1200-1600
- Staking local claims : mounds as intratribal ceremonial monuments
- Coming together : the Missaukee earthworks and Bear's journey
- Pairs and precincts : contextualizing the regional ritual landscape of late prehistory
- Breaking out of the "savage slot" : monuments, ritual, and the archaeology of pre-Columbian Native North America.