Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America

Download Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1789259304
Total Pages : 474 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (892 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America by : Cheryl Claassen

Download or read book Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America written by Cheryl Claassen and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2023-02-23 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the long history of documenting the material culture of the archaeological record, meaning and actions of makers and users of these items is often overlooked. The authors in this book focus on rituals exploring the natural and made landscape stages, the ritual directors, including their progression from shaman to priesthood, and meaning of the rites. They also provide comments on the end or failure of rites and cults from Paleoindian into post-DeSoto years. Chapters examine the archaeological records of Cahokia, the lower Ohio Valley, Aztalan Wisconsin, Vermont, Florida, and Georgia, and others scan the Eastern US, investigating tobacco/datura, color symbolism, deer symbolism, mound stratigraphy, flintknapping, stone caching, cults and their organization, and red ochre. These authors collectively query the beliefs that can be gleaned from mortuary practices and their variation, from mound construction, from imagery, from the choice of landscape setting. While some rituals were short-lived, others can be shown to span millennia as the ritual specialists modified their interpretations and introduced innovations.

Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America

Download Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1789259312
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (892 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America by : Cheryl Claassen

Download or read book Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America written by Cheryl Claassen and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the long history of documenting the material culture of the archaeological record, meaning and actions of makers and users of these items is often overlooked. The authors in this book focus on rituals exploring the natural and made landscape stages, the ritual directors, including their progression from shaman to priesthood, and meaning of the rites. They also provide comments on the end or failure of rites and cults from Paleoindian into post-DeSoto years. Chapters examine the archaeological records of Cahokia, the lower Ohio Valley, Aztalan Wisconsin, Vermont, Florida, and Georgia, and others scan the Eastern US, investigating tobacco/datura, color symbolism, deer symbolism, mound stratigraphy, flintknapping, stone caching, cults and their organization, and red ochre. These authors collectively query the beliefs that can be gleaned from mortuary practices and their variation, from mound construction, from imagery, from the choice of landscape setting. While some rituals were short-lived, others can be shown to span millennia as the ritual specialists modified their interpretations and introduced innovations.

Our Hidden Landscapes

Download Our Hidden Landscapes PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
ISBN 13 : 0816550875
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (165 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Our Hidden Landscapes by : Lucianne Lavin

Download or read book Our Hidden Landscapes written by Lucianne Lavin and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The aim of this book is to introduces readers to the historic Indigenous ceremonial stone landscapes that dot the woodlands of Eastern North America, that they may be able to identify these ritual landscapes and thus help protect and preserve them for future generations"--

Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200-1600

Download Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200-1600 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806188057
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200-1600 by : Meghan C L Howey

Download or read book Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200-1600 written by Meghan C L Howey and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rising above the northern Michigan landscape, prehistoric burial mounds and impressive circular earthen enclosures bear witness to the deep history of the region’s ancient indigenous peoples. These mounds and earthworks have long been treated as isolated finds and have never been connected to the social dynamics of the time in which they were constructed, a period called Late Prehistory. In Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200–1600, Meghan C. L. Howey uses archaeology to make this connection. She shows how indigenous communities of the northern Great Lakes used earthen structures as gathering places for ritual and social interaction, which maintained connected egalitarian societies in the process. Examining “every available ceramic sherd from every northern earthwork,” Howey combines regional archaeological investigations with ethnohistory, analysis of spatial relationships, and collaboration with tribal communities to explore changes in the area’s social setting from 1200 to 1600. During this time, cultural shifts, such as the adoption of maize horticulture, led to the creation of the earthen constructions. Burial mounds were erected, marking claims to resources and defining areas for local ritual gatherings, while massive circular enclosures were constructed as intersocietal ceremonial centers. Together, Howey shows, these structures made up part of an interconnected, purposefully designed cultural landscape. When societies incorporated the earthworks into their egalitarian social and ritual behaviors, the structures became something more: ceremonial monuments. The first systematic examination of earthen constructions in what is today Michigan, Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200–1600 reveals complicated indigenous histories that played out in the area before European contact. Howey’s richly illustrated investigation increases our understanding of the diverse cultures and dynamic histories of the pre-Columbian ancestors of today’s Great Lake tribes.

Early and Middle Woodland Landscapes of the Southeast

Download Early and Middle Woodland Landscapes of the Southeast PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813065283
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (13 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Early and Middle Woodland Landscapes of the Southeast by : Alice P. Wright

Download or read book Early and Middle Woodland Landscapes of the Southeast written by Alice P. Wright and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fourteen in-depth case studies incorporate empirical data with theoretical concepts such as ritual, aggregation, and place-making, highlighting the variability and common themes in the relationships between people, landscapes, and the built environment that characterize this period of North American native life in the Southeast.

Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief

Download Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780817392727
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (927 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief by : Stephen B. Carmody

Download or read book Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief written by Stephen B. Carmody and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the first edited archaeology volume to broadly consider Native American religion and ritual in the eastern North America. Twenty-three archaeologists provide thematic chapters on the materials of ritual and religion in the ancient Eastern Woodlands of North America. Unbound to a single theoretical perspective of religion, contributors approach ritual and religion in diverse ways. Importantly, they focus on how people in the past practiced religion by altering and using a vast array of material items, from smoking pipes, ceremonial vessels, carved figurines, and iconographic images, to sacred bundles, hallucinogenic plants, revered animals, and ritual architecture. Contributors also show how physical spaces were shaped by religious practice, and how rock art, monuments, soils and special substances, and even land- and cityscapes were part of the active material worlds of religious agents. Case studies chronologically cover all time periods, from the Paleoindian period (13,000-7900 BC) to the late Mississippian and into the proto-historic/contact periods. The geographical scope is much of the greater southeastern and southern Midwestern culture areas of the Eastern Woodlands, from the Central and Lower Mississippi River Valleys to the Ohio Hopewell region, and from the greater Ohio River Valley down through the Deep South and across to the Carolinas"--

Sacred Landscapes in Antiquity

Download Sacred Landscapes in Antiquity PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1789253349
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (892 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Sacred Landscapes in Antiquity by : Ralph Haussler

Download or read book Sacred Landscapes in Antiquity written by Ralph Haussler and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From generation to generation, people experience their landscapes differently. Humans depend on their natural environment: it shapes their behavior while it is often felt that deities responsible for both natural benefits and natural calamities (such as droughts, famines, floods and landslides) need to be appeased. We presume that, in many societies, lakes, rivers, rocks, mountains, caves and groves were considered sacred. Individual sites and entire landscapes are often associated with divine actions, mythical heroes and etiological myths. Throughout human history, people have also felt the need to monumentalize their sacred landscape. But this is where the similarities end as different societies had very different understandings, believes and practices. The aim of this new thematic appraisal is to scrutinize carefully our evidence and rethink our methodologies in a multi-disciplinary approach. More than 30 papers investigate diverse sacred landscapes from the Iberian peninsula and Britain in the west to China in the east. They discuss how to interpret the intricate web of ciphers and symbols in the landscape and how people might have experienced it. We see the role of performance, ritual, orality, textuality and memory in people’s sacred landscapes. A diachronic view allows us to study how landscapes were ‘rewritten’, adapted and redefined in the course of time to suit new cultural, political and religious understandings, not to mention the impact of urbanism on people’s understandings. A key question is how was the landscape manipulated, transformed and monumentalized – especially the colossal investments in monumental architecture we see in certain socio-historic contexts or the creation of an alternative humanmade, seemingly ‘non-natural’ landscape, with perfectly astronomically aligned buildings that define a cosmological order? Sacred Landscapes therefore aims to analyze the complex links between landscape, ‘religiosity’ and society, developing a dialectic framework that explores sacred landscapes across the ancient world in a dynamic, holistic, contextual and historical perspective.

Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief

Download Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University Alabama Press
ISBN 13 : 0817320423
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (173 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief by : Stephen B. Carmody

Download or read book Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief written by Stephen B. Carmody and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2019-12-31 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeological case studies consider material evidence of religion and ritual in the pre-Columbian Eastern Woodlands Archaeologists today are interpretin g Native American religion and ritual in the distant past in more sophisticated ways, considering new understandings of the ways that Native Americans themselves experienced them. Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief: Materials of Ritual and Religion in Eastern North America broadly considers Native American religion and ritual in eastern North America and focuses on practices that altered and used a vast array of material items as well as how physical spaces were shaped by religious practices. Unbound to a single theoretical perspective of religion, contributors approach ritual and religion in diverse ways. Importantly, they focus on how people in the past practiced religion by altering and using a vast array of material items, from smoking pipes, ceremonial vessels, carved figurines, and iconographic images, to sacred bundles, hallucinogenic plants, revered animals, and ritual architecture. Contributors also show how physical spaces were shaped by religious practice, and how rock art, monuments, soils and special substances, and even land- and cityscapes were part of the active material worlds of religious agents. Case studies, arranged chronologically, cover time periods ranging from the Paleoindian period (13,000–7900 BC) to the late Mississippian and into the protohistoric/contact periods. The geographical scope is much of the greater southeastern and southern Midwestern culture areas of the Eastern Woodlands, from the Central and Lower Mississippi River Valleys to the Ohio Hopewell region, and from the greater Ohio River Valley down through the Deep South and across to the Carolinas. Contributors Sarah E. Baires / Melissa R. Baltus / Casey R. Barrier / James F. Bates / Sierra M. Bow / James A. Brown / Stephen B. Carmody / Meagan E. Dennison / Aaron Deter-Wolf / David H. Dye / Bretton T. Giles / Cameron Gokee / Kandace D. Hollenbach / Thomas A. Jennings / Megan C. Kassabaum / John E. Kelly / Ashley A. Peles / Tanya M. Peres / Charlotte D. Pevny / Connie M. Randall / Jan F. Simek / Ashley M. Smallwood / Renee B. Walker / Alice P. Wright

Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Download Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030449173
Total Pages : 1564 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (34 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective by : Christopher Carr

Download or read book Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective written by Christopher Carr and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-05 with total page 1564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, in two volumes, breathes fresh air empirically, methodologically, and theoretically into understanding the rich ceremonial lives, the philosophical-religious knowledge, and the impressive material feats and labor organization that distinguish Hopewell Indians of central Ohio and neighboring regions during the first centuries CE. The first volume defines cross-culturally, for the first time, the “ritual drama” as a genre of social performance. It reconstructs and compares parts of 14 such dramas that Hopewellian and other Woodland-period peoples performed in their ceremonial centers to help the soul-like essences of their deceased make the journey to an afterlife. The second volume builds and critiques ten formal cross-cultural models of “personhood” and the “self” and infers the nature of Scioto Hopewell people’s ontology. Two facets of their ontology are found to have been instrumental in their creating the intercommunity alliances and cooperation and gathering the labor required to construct their huge, multicommunity ceremonial centers: a relational, collective concept of the self defined by the ethical quality of the relationships one has with other beings, and a concept of multiple soul-like essences that compose a human being and can be harnessed strategically to create familial-like ethical bonds of cooperation among individuals and communities. The archaeological reconstructions of Hopewellian ritual dramas and concepts of personhood and the self, and of Hopewell people’s strategic uses of these, are informed by three large surveys of historic Woodland and Plains Indians’ narratives, ideas, and rites about journeys to afterlives, the creatures who inhabit the cosmos, and the nature and functions of soul-like essences, coupled with rich contextual archaeological and bioarchaeological-taphonomic analyses. The bioarchaeological-taphonomic method of l’anthropologie de terrain, new to North American archaeology, is introduced and applied. In all, the research in this book vitalizes a vision of an anthropology committed to native logic and motivation and skeptical of the imposition of Western world views and categories onto native peoples.

Culture and the Question of Rights

Download Culture and the Question of Rights PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822328131
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (281 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Culture and the Question of Rights by : Charles Zerner

Download or read book Culture and the Question of Rights written by Charles Zerner and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-04-16 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVA collection of ethnographic studies into the nature of power, language, and cultural politics within the context of Southeast Asian environments./div

Archaeology at El Perú-Waka'

Download Archaeology at El Perú-Waka' PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
ISBN 13 : 0816532419
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (165 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Archaeology at El Perú-Waka' by : Olivia C. Navarro-Farr

Download or read book Archaeology at El Perú-Waka' written by Olivia C. Navarro-Farr and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology at El Perú-Waka’ is the first book to summarize long-term research at this major Maya site. The results of fieldwork and subsequent analyses conducted by members of the El Perú-Waka’ Regional Archaeological Project are coupled with theoretical approaches treating the topics of ritual, memory, and power as deciphered through material remains discovered at Waka’. The book is site-centered, yet the fifteen wide-ranging contributions offer readers greater insight to the richness and complexity of Classic-period Maya culture, as well as to the ways in which archaeologists believe ancient peoples negotiated their ritual lives and comprehended their own pasts. El Perú-Waka’ is an ancient Maya city located in present-day northwestern Petén, Guatemala. Rediscovered by petroleum exploration workers in the mid-1960s, it is the largest known archaeological site in the Laguna del Tigre National Park in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. The El Perú-Waka’ Regional Archaeological Project initiated scientific investigations in 2003, and through excavation and survey, researchers established that Waka’ was a key political and economic center well integrated into Classic-period lowland Maya civilization, and reconstructed many aspects of Maya life and ritual activity in this ancient community. The research detailed in this volume provides a wealth of new, substantive, and scientifically excavated data, which contributors approach with fresh theoretical insights. In the process, they lay out sound strategies for understanding the ritual manipulation of monuments, landscapes, buildings, objects, and memories, as well as related topics encompassing the performance and negotiation of power throughout the city’s extensive sociopolitical history.

Sacred Darkness

Download Sacred Darkness PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1457117509
Total Pages : 806 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (571 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Sacred Darkness by : Holley Moyes

Download or read book Sacred Darkness written by Holley Moyes and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 806 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caves have been used in various ways across human society but despite the persistence within popular culture of the iconic caveman, deep caves were never used primarily as habitation sites for early humans. Rather, in both ancient and contemporary contexts, caves have served primarily as ritual spaces. In Sacred Darkness, contributors use archaeological evidence as well as ethnographic studies of modern ritual practices to envision the cave as place of spiritual and ideological power and a potent venue for ritual practice. Covering the ritual use of caves in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, Mesoamerica, and the US Southwest and Eastern woodlands, this book brings together case studies by prominent scholars whose research spans from the Paleolithic period to the present day. These contributions demonstrate that cave sites are as fruitful as surface contexts in promoting the understanding of both ancient and modern religious beliefs and practices. This state-of-the-art survey of ritual cave use will be one of the most valuable resources for understanding the role of caves in studies of religion, sacred landscape, or cosmology and a must-read for any archaeologist interested in caves.

Ritual Landscapes and Borders within Rock Art Research

Download Ritual Landscapes and Borders within Rock Art Research PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1784911593
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (849 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Ritual Landscapes and Borders within Rock Art Research by : Heidrun Stebergløkken

Download or read book Ritual Landscapes and Borders within Rock Art Research written by Heidrun Stebergløkken and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2015-10-31 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ritual landscapes and borders are recurring themes running through Professor Kalle Sognnes' long research career. This anthology contains 13 articles written by colleagues from his broad network in appreciation of his many contributions to the field of rock art research.

Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East

Download Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107311187
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (73 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East by : Ömür Harmanşah

Download or read book Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East written by Ömür Harmanşah and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the founding and building of cities in the ancient Near East. The creation of new cities was imagined as an ideological project or a divine intervention in the political narratives and mythologies of Near Eastern cultures, often masking the complex processes behind the social production of urban space. During the Early Iron Age (c.1200–850 BCE), Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers developed a highly performative official discourse that revolved around constructing cities, cultivating landscapes, building watercourses, erecting monuments and initiating public festivals. This volume combs through archaeological, epigraphic, visual, architectural and environmental evidence to tell the story of a region from the perspective of its spatial practices, landscape history and architectural technologies. It argues that the cultural processes of the making of urban spaces shape collective memory and identity as well as sites of political performance and state spectacle.

FIELD MANUAL FOR THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF RITUAL, RELIGION, AND MAGIC.

Download FIELD MANUAL FOR THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF RITUAL, RELIGION, AND MAGIC. PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781805397236
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (972 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis FIELD MANUAL FOR THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF RITUAL, RELIGION, AND MAGIC. by : C. RILEY. AUGE

Download or read book FIELD MANUAL FOR THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF RITUAL, RELIGION, AND MAGIC. written by C. RILEY. AUGE and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Music and Identity Politics

Download Music and Identity Politics PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351557734
Total Pages : 516 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (515 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Music and Identity Politics by : Ian Biddle

Download or read book Music and Identity Politics written by Ian Biddle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together for the first time book chapters, articles and position pieces from the debates on music and identity, which seek to answer classic questions such as: how has music shaped the ways in which we understand our identities and those of others? In what ways has scholarly writing about music dealt with identity politics since the Second World War? Both classic and more recent contributions are included, as well as material on related issues such as music's role as a resource in making and performing identities and music scholarship's ambivalent relationship with scholarly activism and identity politics. The essays approach the music-identity relationship from a wide range of methodological perspectives, ranging from critical historiography and archival studies, psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality studies, to ethnography and anthropology, and social and cultural theories drawn from sociology; and from continental philosophy and Marxist theories of class to a range of globalization theories. The collection draws on the work of Anglophone scholars from all over the globe, and deals with a wide range of musics and cultures, from the Americas, Australasia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This unique collection of key texts, which deal not just with questions of gender, sexuality and race, but also with other socially-mediated identities such as social class, disability, national identity and accounts and analyses of inter-group encounters, is an invaluable resource for music scholars and researchers and those working in any discipline that deals with identity or identity politics.

Archaeologies of Cosmoscapes in the Americas

Download Archaeologies of Cosmoscapes in the Americas PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1789258464
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (892 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Archaeologies of Cosmoscapes in the Americas by : J. Grant Stauffer

Download or read book Archaeologies of Cosmoscapes in the Americas written by J. Grant Stauffer and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2022-09-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines how pre-Columbian societies in the Americas envisioned their cosmos and iteratively modeled it through the creation of particular objects and places. It emphasizes that American societies did this to materialize overarching models and templates for the shape and scope of the cosmos, the working definition of cosmoscape. Noting a tendency to gloss over the ways in which ancestral Americans envisioned the cosmos as intertwined and animated, the authors examine how cosmoscapes are manifested archaeologically, in the forms of objects and physically altered landscapes. This book’s chapters, therefore, offer case studies of cosmoscapes that present themselves as forms of architecture, portable artifacts, and transformed aspects of the natural world. In doing so, it emphasizes that the creation of cosmoscapes offered a means of reconciling peoples experiences of the world with their understandings of them.