Description
Book SynopsisTwo common questions asked in archaeological investigations are: where did a particular culture come from, and which living cultures is it related to? In this book, Robert A. Cook brings a theoretically and methodologically holistic perspective to his study on the origins and continuity of Native American villages in the North American Midcontinent. He shows that to affiliate archaeological remains with descendant communities fully we need to unaffiliate some of our well-established archaeological constructs. Cook demonstrates how and why Native American villages formed and responded to events such as migration, environment and agricultural developments. He focuses on the big picture of cultural relatedness over broad regions and the amount of social detail that can be gleaned from archaeological and biological data, as well as oral histories.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments; Prologue: unaffiliating the past to affiliate with the present; 1. The Fort Ancient 'savage slot' and its descendants; 2. Deconstructing Fort Ancient culture; 3. Theories of culture process and history; 4. The study region: 'a most delightful country'; 5. Worlds colliding: Mississippian punctuations and woodland continuities; 6. Hybrid villagers: becoming people of the Earth and sky; 7. Coalescence and descendance: the persistence of the village form; 8. Multicultural processes and histories; Epilogue: changing our cultural landscape.
