When the Earth Was New: Memory, Materiality, and Numic Ritual - Hardcover

Alex K. Ruuska

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1647692342 ISBN 13: 9781647692346

Publisher: University of Utah Press,U.S., 2026

Synopsis

Explores the value of oral traditions and challenges entrenched beliefs about ethnogenesis in the Great Basin In When the Earth Was New, Alex K. Ruuska explores riveting multigenerational memories of Numic-speaking communities that extend back, potentially, to the late Pleistocene. These diverse oral traditions describe geological, climatic, and ecological events that occurred over thousands of years and were passed down across many generations. Through the examination of place-based memories and the architecture of Numic knowledge, Ruuska demonstrates convergences of oral traditions, ethnography, ethnohistory, archaeology, and geology.When the Earth Was New critically compares and considers multiple forms of knowledge that contribute to overlapping as well as disparate understandings of both recent and distant pasts in the regions of California, the Great Basin, and the Colorado Plateau. It works at balancing key themes in these regions’ histories within a more holistic framework, exploring ancient and modern strands of knowledge with the assistance of twenty-four Tribes and Consolidated Organizations.

About this title

About the Author

Alex K. Ruuska specializes in ethnoarchaeology, oral traditions, sociocultural anthropology, collective healing, and tribal engagement and consultation with Indigenous populations throughout North America. She is the Founder and Director of R. Haus Institute, LLC, an educational and healing institute committed to simple living and sustainable futures.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Utah Press,U.S.
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1647692342
• ISBN 13: 9781647692346
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240