The Real Mound Builders of North America

A Critical Realist Prehistory of the Eastern Woodlands, 200 BC–1450 AD

A. Martin Byers

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9798881884611
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: Social Sciences

The Real Mound Builders of North America takes the standard position that the cultural communities of the Late Woodland period hiatus—when little or no transregional monumental mound building and ceremonialism existed—were the linear cultural and social ancestors of the communities responsible for the monumental earthworks of the unique Mississippian ceremonial assemblage, and further, these Late Woodland communities were the direct linear cultural and social descendants of those communities responsible for the great Hopewellian earthwork mounds and embankments and its associated unique ceremonial assemblage. Byers argues that these communities persisted largely unchanged in terms of their essential social structures and cultural traditions while varying only in terms of their ceremonial practices and their associated sodality organizations that manifested these deep structures. This continuist historical trajectory view stands in contrast to the current dominant evolutionary view that emphasizes abrupt social and cultural discontinuities with the Hopewellian ceremonial assemblage and earthworks, mounds and embankments.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Continuist and Discontinuist Histories
• Chapter One. The Incomplete Debunking of the Mound Builder Mythology
• Chapter Two. Unitary Polities or Dual Heterarchies: The Archaeological Record from Alternative Social Systems Perspectives
• Chapter Three. The Dual Complementary Heterarchical Community/Cult Sodality Heterarchy Model
• Chapter Four. The Symbolic Pragmatic Model of Material Cultural Style and the Custodial Franchising of Sacred Bundles
• Chapter Five. The Mourning/World Renewal Mortuary Model: The Postmortem Human Sacrificial Chaîne Opératoire Mortuary Trajectory
• Chapter Six. Settlement, Subsistence, and Ceremonialism: The Deontic Ecology of the Prehistoric Eastern Woodlands
• Chapter Seven. The Dissolution of a Transregional Hopewellian Second-Order Ceremonial Sphere
• Chapter Eight. Community Polities or Dual Heterarchies: Extreme Displaced Mortuary Deposition and Demonstrating the “Best Fit” Truth
• Chapter Nine. The Emergence of the Complementary Heterarchical Chiefdom Community: Singular-Selective Candidature Practice
• Chapter Ten. The Emergence of Vacant Quarters and the Late Prehistoric Period→Post-Late Prehistoric Period Transition
• Chapter Eleven. The Lower Chattahoochee River Valley: A Primary Southeastern Mississippian Ceremonial Sphere
• Chapter Twelve. The Late Prehistoric Period Savannah River Valley: A First-Order Southern Appalachian Complicated Stamped Ceremonial Sphere
• Chapter Thirteen. The Etowah Site of the Etowah River Valley Late Prehistoric Period: Paramount Chiefdom Polity or Dispersed Third-Order Cult Sodality Heterarchy?
• Chapter Fourteen. The Formation and Transformation of Mound C of the Etowah Site
• Conclusion. The Real Mound Builder Social Systems
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author