Life in a Mississippian Warscape

Life in a Mississippian Warscape
Author :
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
Total Pages : 193
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780817321383
ISBN-13 : 0817321381
Rating : 4/5 (83 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Life in a Mississippian Warscape by : Meghan E. Buchanan

Download or read book Life in a Mississippian Warscape written by Meghan E. Buchanan and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Meghan Buchanan, following anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom, posits that, to understand the big histories of warfare, political fragmentation, and resilience in the past, archaeologists must also analyze and interpret the microscale actions of the past: the daily activities of people before, during, and after historical events. Within warscapes, battles take place in peoples' front yards, family members die, and the impacts of violence in near and distant places are experienced on a daily basis. "Life in a Mississippian Warscape" explores the microscale of daily lives of people living at the Common Field site during the period of Cahokia's abandonment and the spread of violence and warfare throughout the Southeast. Common Field was a large, palisaded Mississippian mound center founded circa 1250 and burned in a catastrophic event shortly before Cahokia's abandonment. Linking together ethnographic, historic, and archaeological sources, Buchanan proposes a multiscalar approach to an archaeology of daily life in wartime. She draws on analysis of museum collections as well as the results from her field excavations. She discusses the evidence that the people of Common Field engaged in novel and hybrid practices during this period of escalating warfare. At the microscale, they erected a substantial palisade with specially prepared deposits, adopted new ceramic tempering techniques, produced large numbers of serving vessels decorated with warfare-related imagery, and adapted their food practices. The overall picture that emerges from the daily practices at Common Field is of a people who engaged in risk-averse practices that minimized their exposure to outside of the palisade and attempted to seek intercession from the supernatural realm through public ceremonies involving warfare-related iconography. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of warscapes, highlighting ethnographic and historic accounts of cultural creativity and social experiences during wartime around the world, especially in Native American societies. Buchanan links the materiality of daily life, technological production, creativity, and hybridity during periods of war and shows where the impacts of warfare on daily practices may be visible archaeologically. Chapter 2 explores the theoretical orientations and archaeological approaches to warfare in the southeastern United States and the evidence for violence and warfare in the precontact past. Chapter 3 introduces the Common Field site and outlines some of the research that has been conducted at the site and other Mississippian Period sites in the region. Buchanan proposes a culture history for region, highlighting important sites, material practices, and historical trends. Chapter 4 presents the results of analyses conducted on ceramics and fauna related to daily practices and explores how lives inside the palisade walls were impacted by external threats of violence. The analyses show that the people living at Common Field were engaged in risk-averse practices that mitigated exposure outside of palisade walls. In chapter 5, the results of the research conducted at Common Field are interpreted within the warscape lens. Particular focus considers the effects of regional warfare on the ceramic practices, foodways, and spatial organization of the people. Chapter 6 tacks between the small-scale effects of warfare, as seen at Common Field, and the larger-scale, historical impacts of Mississippian Period violence. Drawing on the idea of "big histories," Buchanan argues that the small details of peoples' lives have ramifications for larger regional and historical phenomena such as the abandonment and migration out of the Cahokia area and the cascade effects of violence elsewhere in the Southeast"--


Life in a Mississippian Warscape Related Books

Life in a Mississippian Warscape
Language: en
Pages: 193
Authors: Meghan E. Buchanan
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2022-10-04 - Publisher: University of Alabama Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Meghan Buchanan, following anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom, posits that, to understand the big histories of warfare, political fragmentation, and resilience i
Landscapes of Movement and Predation
Language: en
Pages: 343
Authors: Brenda J Bowser
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2024 - Publisher: University of Arizona Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Landscapes of Movement and Predation is a global study of times and places, in the colonial and precolonial eras, where people were subject to brutality, displa
New Directions and Paradigms for the Study of Greek Architecture
Language: en
Pages: 348
Authors:
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-11-26 - Publisher: BRILL

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

New Directions and Paradigms for the Study of Greek Architecture comprises 20 chapters by nearly three dozen scholars who describe recent discoveries, new theor
Bioarchaeology of Women and Children in Times of War
Language: en
Pages: 196
Authors: Debra L. Martin
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-02-06 - Publisher: Springer

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume will examine the varied roles that women and children play in period of warfare, which in most cases deviate from their perceived role as noncombata
Time, Typology, and Point Traditions in North Carolina Archaeology
Language: en
Pages: 229
Authors: I. Randolph Daniel
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-03-02 - Publisher: University Alabama Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A reconsideration of the seminal projectile point typology In the 1964 landmark publication The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont, Joffre Coe establis