Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power

الغلاف الأمامي
University of Alabama Press, 30‏/10‏/1997 - 317 من الصفحات

Examines the authority a ruling elite exercised over the surrounding countryside through a complex of social, political, and religious symbolism

This study uses the theoretical concepts of agency, power, and ideology to explore the development of cultural complexity within the hierarchically organized Cahokia Middle Mississippian society of the American Bottom from the 11th to the 13th centuries. By scrutinizing the available archaeological settlement and symbolic evidence, Emerson demonstrates that many sites previously identified as farmsteads were actually nodal centers with specialized political, religious, and economic functions integrated into a centralized administrative organization. These centers consolidated the symbolism of such 'artifacts of power' as figurines, ritual vessels, and sacred plants into a rural cult that marked the expropriation of the cosmos as part of the increasing power of the Cahokian rulers.

During the height of Cahokian centralized power, it is argued, the elites had convinced their subjects that they ruled both the physical and the spiritual worlds. Emerson concludes that Cahokian complexity differs significantly in degree and form from previously studied Eastern Woodlands chiefdoms and opens new discussion about the role of rural support for the Cahokian ceremonial center.



 

المحتوى

1 Introduction
1
2 The Conceptual Parameters
9
3 The CulturalHistorical Contexts
43
4 Mississippian Rural Settlement
61
The Archaeological Evidence
81
6 Interpreting Cahokian Rural Settlements
151
7 The Cahokian Symbolic World
193
8 Cahokian Rural Cults
225
9 Conclusions
249
References Cited
269
Index
307
حقوق النشر

طبعات أخرى - عرض جميع المقتطفات

عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة

نبذة عن المؤلف (1997)

Thomas E. Emerson is Director of the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

معلومات المراجع