Lexington Books
Pages: 472
Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜
978-1-4985-7062-6 • Hardback • February 2018 • $130.00 • (£100.00)
978-1-4985-7063-3 • eBook • February 2018 • $123.50 • (£95.00)
A. Martin Byers was CEGEP professor at Vanier College and research associate at McGill University.
Introduction: Continuist and Discontinuist Histories
Chapter 1: The Incomplete Debunking of the Mound Builder Mythology
Chapter 2: Unitary Polities and Dual Heterarchies: Apprehending Social Systems from Alternative Perspectives
Chapter 3: The Dual Complementary Heterarchical Community/Cult Sodality Heterarchy Model
Chapter 4: The Symbolic Pragmatic Model of Style and the Custodial Franchising of Sacred Bundles
Chapter 5: The World Renewal Mortuary Model: The Postmortem Human Sacrificial Chaîne
Opératoire Mortuary Trajectory
Chapter 6: Settlement, Subsistence, and Ceremonialism: The Deontic Ecology of the Prehistoric Eastern Woodlands
Chapter 7: The Dissolution of a Transregional Second-Order Hopewellian Ceremonial Sphere
Chapter 8: Community Polities or Dual Heterarchies: Extreme Displaced Mortuary Depositions
and Demonstrating the “Best Fit” Truth
Chapter 9: The Emergence of the Complementary Heterarchical Chiefdom Community: Singular-Selective Candidature Practice
Chapter 10: The Emergence of Vacant Quarters and the Late Prehistoric Period→Post-Late Prehistoric Period Transition
Chapter 11: The Lower Chattahoochee River Valley: A Primary Southeastern Mississippian
Ceremonial Sphere
Chapter 12: The Late Prehistoric Period Savannah River Valley: A First-Order Southern
Appalachian Complicated-Stamped Ceremonial Sphere
Chapter 13: The Etowah Site of the Etowah River Valley Late Prehistoric Period:
Paramount Chiefdom Polity or Dispersed Third-Order Cult Sodality Heterarchy?
Chapter 14: The Formation and Transformation of Mound C of the Etowah Site
Conclusion: The Real Mound Builder Social World
Byers is the most innovative and audacious scholar of eastern North American prehistory, and in this volume, he proposes the archaeological equivalent of a Grand Unified Theory of the Hopewellian and Mississippian ceremonial spheres. It’s a radical idea that may open the door to a new understanding of these ancient cultures.
— Bradley T. Lepper, Ohio History Connection
Martin Byers’s new book is an excellent compilation of his previous work with new, refined interpretations that will be of great interest to a diverse audience for many years to come. His explanations for the development of Hopewell and Mississippian societies are changing the way archaeologist investigate these ancient North American cultures.
— Brian G. Redmond, Cleveland Museum of Natural History