Cahokia and the archaeology of power /
Author / Creator: | Emerson, Thomas E., 1945- |
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Imprint: | Tuscaloosa, Ala. : University of Alabama Press, ©1997. |
Description: | 1 online resource (xv, 317 pages) : illustrations, maps |
Language: | English |
Subject: | |
Format: | E-Resource Book |
URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11106525 |
Summary: | This dramatic and controversial new interpretation of Cahokian leadership strategies examines the authority a ruling elite exercised over the surrounding countryside through a complex of social, political, and religious symbolism. This study uses the theoretical concepts of agency, power, and ideology to explore the development of cultural complexity within the hierarchically organized Cahokia Middle Mississippian society of the American Bottom from the 11th to the 13th centuries. By scrutinizing the available archaeological settlement and symbolic evidence, Emerson demonstrates that many sites previously identified as farmsteads were actually nodal centers with specialized political, religious, and economic functions integrated into a centralized administrative organization. These centers consolidated the symbolism of such 'artifacts of power' as figurines, ritual vessels, and sacred plants into a rural cult that marked the expropriation of the cosmos as part of the increasing power of the Cahokian rulers. During the height of Cahokian centralized power, it is argued, the elites had convinced their subjects that they ruled both the physical and the |
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Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xv, 317 pages) : illustrations, maps |
Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-306) and index. |
ISBN: | 0585184127 9780585184128 9780817308889 0817308881 9780817383657 0817383654 |