Enduring Motives: The Archaeology of Tradition and Religion in Native America - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0817357157 ISBN 13: 9780817357153

Publisher: The University of Alabama Press, 2012

Synopsis

Enduring Motives examines tradition and religious beliefs as they are expressed in landscape, the built environment, visual symbols, stories, and ritual.   Bringing together archaeologists and Native American experts, this volume focuses on long-lived religious traditions of the native peoples of the Americas and how religion codifies, justifies, and reinforces these traditions by placing a high value on continuity of beliefs and practice.   Using clues from the archaeological record to piece together the oldest religions of the Americas, Enduring Motives is organized into four parts. Part 1 creates continuity through structure, iconography, and sacred stories that correspond to culture-specific symbolic representations of the universe. Part 2 explores the encoding of tradition in place and object, or how people use objects to enliven tradition and pass it on to future generations. Part 3 examines stability and change and shows how traditions can evolve over time without losing their core cultural significance. The final part recognizes deep-time traditions through the evidence of ancient cosmology and religious tradition.   Spanning cultures as diverse as the Aztec, Plains Indians, Hopi, Mississippian, and Southwest Pueblo, Enduring Motives brings to light new insights on ancient religious beliefs, practices, methods, and techniques, which allow otherwise intangible facets of culture to be productively explored.     Contributors Wesley Bernardini / James S. Brown Jr. / Cheryl Claassen / John E. Clark / ArleneColman / Warren DeBoer / Robert L. Hall /Kelley Hays-Gilpin / Alice Beck Kehoe /John E. Kelly / Stephen H. Lekson / ColinMcEwan / John Norder / Jeffrey Quilter /Amy Roe / Peter G. Roe / Linea Sundstrom

About this title

About the Author

Linea Sundstrom is an independent researcher with the Archaeological Research Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.   Warren DeBoer is a professor of anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center in New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0817357157
• ISBN 13: 9780817357153
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328
• Editor: Sundstrom Linea, DeBoer Warren