Ceremonial Life Research Articles

Maize cobs and cultures: history of Zea mays L

John Staller's book might be more accurately titled ‘The history of maize research’, as it provides a thorough description of more than a century of concerted efforts by researchers in multiple disciplines to uncover the origins of domesticated maize and to determine its place in the development of agriculture and in the emergence of complex societies throughout the Americas. The book has just three major chapters. It begins with an extended examination of the ways in which maize has been represented in the ethnohistorical and ethnographic literature of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Staller then provides a detailed description of the complex search to understand the process of maize domestication, which has spanned more than a century of intense work by botanists, geneticists, archeologists and anthropologists. The final chapter focuses on the effects of interdisciplinary approaches and new research methodologies, and the consequent dismantling of many long-held beliefs about maize domestication and development. Although Staller succeeds on many levels in explaining, summarizing and interpreting the history of maize research, the book disappoints primarily because of its presentation. Grammatical and typographical errors appear on almost every page. Sentences lack full stops or capitalized first words; blocks of text are repeated in nearby paragraphs or footnotes. Some sentences are unintelligible because of their construction or incorrect punctuation. Carelessness with references is perhaps the most distressing. References cited in the text are missing from the list of references. On one page alone E. L. Sturtevant's name is spelled three different ways and is incorrectly spelled in the reference list. It looks as though no-one read the manuscript before it was published. For a topic of such importance and a scholar of Staller's stature, this is profoundly disappointing. But for readers who can put these shortcomings aside, the book has much to offer. In the chapter on the ethnohistorical and ethnographic record of maize, Staller develops more fully an argument that has received some attention in the last decade: researchers have over-emphasized the importance of maize as a food staple in pre-Columbian America while failing to recognize its complex and multifaceted roles in cosmology, religion and ceremonial life. Staller writes that Europeans who first encountered maize characterized it as a cereal grain, similar to wheat and barley with which they were familiar. But, as Staller relates, its use in alcoholic beverages, consumed in religious ceremonies, may have been more important than its role as a cereal grain. With a predetermined focus on maize as a cereal grain, maize researchers, across multiple disciplines and time periods, have misunderstood the crop's early use and significance, which may account, in part, for the twisted research path on maize domestication and its role in the development of complex societies in the Americas. Staller writes in the chapter on the history of maize research that scientists initially assumed that the domestication of crop plants and the development of agriculture in the Americas followed a similar trajectory to that in Asia and Europe, where the domestication of wheat and barley are seen as critical steps in the emergence of complex societies. But research on the origins of maize has revealed a much more complicated paradigm. Plant researchers first claimed that maize was domesticated just once, similar to wheat and barley in Asia. By the 1960s several researchers found evidence for maize domestication at multiple sites and times. Complicating the question of where and when maize domestication occurred, scientists put forward conflicting hypotheses regarding its wild progenitor. According to Staller, most researchers today accept a single domestication event, with teosinte as maize's wild relative. He provides a coherent explanation of both the intricacies of maize domestication and the research process itself, which spans more than 100 years, filled with competing hypotheses and significant personal conflict among the scientists involved. Although maize specialists are likely to find many areas of disagreement with Staller's characterizations and conclusions, for non-specialists his explanation is welcome. In the final chapter Staller describes how multidisciplinary research in maize has influenced broader theoretical questions concerning the origins of agriculture and its role in socio-cultural development. He highlights the ways that scholars from multiple disciplines, using a suite of new methodologies, have challenged, expanded and reframed our understanding of the origins of agriculture and the development of complex societies. He describes the scanning electron microscope, AMS radiocarbon dating, infrared spectroscopy, and the use of phytolith and pollen analyses to demonstrate how their use has altered our understanding of maize domestication and larger questions around the development of agriculture. Maize has intrigued and fascinated scholars from a multitude of disciplines for many generations. Staller's book provides some explanation for our persistent intellectual focus on this globally important plant.

Ceremonies of the Pawnee, Part II: The South Bands

In 1910 James R. Murie, an educated Pawnee who had previously worked with various anthropologists (most notably Alice C. Fletcher and George A. Dorsey), was given a grant by the Bureau of American Ethnology to prepare a full account of surviving Pawnee religious ceremonies. Shortly afterward he began work under the direction of Clark Wissler, with whom he planned a comprehensive description of the ritualism of the Skiri band. This monograph, written by Murie in collaboration with Clark Wissler, is the combined result of the two projects, which extended over a decade. It is a detailed presentation of the essential features of Pawnee ceremonialism. The first part presents the annual cycle of Skiri ceremonial life, minutely describing most of the rituals as well as the role and functions of sacred bundles in the culture. The second part includes accounts of three surviving South Band ceremonies that Murie witnessed: the White Beaver Ceremony (or Doctor Dance) of the Chawi band, and the Bear and Buffalo dances of the Pitahawirata band. In each of the accounts the songs of the ceremony are given in both Pawnee and English. Together they constitute one of the most extensive song collections for any North American tribe. For the three South Band ceremonies, the vision stories underlying the songs are also presented. The manuscript, scheduled for publication on several occasions in the 1920s and 1930s, has been in the archives of the Bureau of American Ethnology since 1921. It is here presented in edited form, together with revised linguistic transcriptions and translations, notes, an expanded bibliography, a biography of Murie, and two indexes.

Dance and Drill

ABSTRACTScholars have long noted the analogies between social dancing and infantry drill. This article argues that, in eighteenth-century Britain, the connections between dance and drill went further than mere analogy. As well as playing important roles in the culture of polite masculinity and the ceremonial life of the military, dance was held in high esteem by military thinkers, trainers and soldiers alike as a means to foster the bodily health, graceful deportment and synchronicity of movement that were prided on the battlefield.

Social Zooarchaeology of a Northwest Coast House

ABSTRACT Data from the Dionisio Point site on Galiano Island in the southern Strait of Georgia, Canada is used not only to document aspects of life at the site but also to consider how people made use of the coastal landscape. Central to this endeavor is the goal of tackling social questions, particularly those with implications for group interaction within the region. I examine the history of Dionisio Point using the results of recent zooarchaeological work and integrating our knowledge of social life at the site with seasonal land use patterns. I suggest that we can best explain the zooarchaeological results from House 2 by interpreting Dionisio Point as an aggregate village not dissimilar to known ethnographic aggregate villages in the Strait of Georgia. The implications of this analysis are that we can begin to see the constitution of social relationships and group identities in zooarchaeological and material culture evidence. The richness of the fauna identified from Dionisio Point together with a broad range of habitats that people residing at the site utilized during subsistence activities permits a reconstruction of the kinds of social engagement associated with these quotidian practices and their articulation with ceremonial life.

The Phoenix: St Paul’s Cathedral and the Men who Made Modern London by Leo Hollis

253 Plot forced the court into even greater strictness about access and security. The king showed his colors during this period through ceremony, for example by the warm or cold reception of addresses. This period also saw a planned withdrawal from unruly central London: the Oxford Parliament, renovations at Windsor, and the erection of the English Versailles at Winchester. The book relies on a wide range of primary sources, including guidebooks, household ordinances, establishments and accounts, diaries and letters, and palace art and architecture. The result provides a useful counterpoint to Brian Weiser’s account of access at the court of Charles II. Still, one might ask for more. Although Ms. Keay asserts in the Introduction that gesture symbolized human relationships, there is relatively little semiotic interpretation of the various ceremonies she describes. Nor does she address court entertainments, the royal patronage of the theater, or the king’s frequent alfresco appearances in St. James’s Park. Given the success of the Restoration and Coronation entries, one wonders why a monarch so concerned with image and fine-tuning his relations with his subjects did not go on more progresses or processions through London. While Ms. Keay quotes eyewitness accounts, there is too little on the audience’s pushback: how did Charles II’s subjects attempt to manipulate him through ceremony or their responses to it? Finally, there is only a brief discussion of the king’s loose morality and its effect on his image. The Charles II that emerges from this book is always certain, always in control, and always concerned with what his subjects would think. But that does not quite square with the monarch who chose indiscreet drinking companions or inflicted his mistress on his consort as a lady in waiting. Still, Ms. Keay has given us a magnificent book on Charles II’s ceremonial life. Robert Bucholz Loyola University, Chicago LEO HOLLIS. The Phoenix: St Paul’s Cathedral and the Men who Made Modern London. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008. Pp. x ⫹ 390. £20. These days you have to look hard to find the tallest freestanding stone column in the world. The Monument, which once soared high above London’s skyline, is now rather hidden from view among the much taller skyscrapers of the modern city. Christopher Wren, who designed it, first planned for the column to be surmounted by a phoenix, an apt symbol with which to commemorate the devastating fire that destroyed much of the City in September 1666. However, concerned that the wings of the bird might act dangerously as a sail, such was the column’s exposure, he opted finally for a flaming urn, a solution that may have been suggested to him by Robert Hooke, with whom Wren worked closely on the project. In the last few years, the Monument has itself been revitalized, undergoing significant restoration , and it has a new ‘virtual’ prominence . From its top a camera takes panoramic images of the city, which are available, constantly updated, in real time on the Internet [http://www. themonument.info/views/]. It is the work of the video artist Chris MeighAndrews . We can imagine that Wren and Hooke, great technological innovators both, would have approved, for the Monument was designed by them to have a double purpose: to be a place 254 of experiment (its primary scientific purpose was to act as a zenith telescope ) as well as a memorial. Wren and Hooke were both significant figures in London’s rebuilding. Hooke, with apparently unflagging energy , worked as one of the City’s Surveyors , designing a number of buildings in addition, and Wren led a large number of projects, not least the rebuilding of the City’s churches. His most important building was of course St Paul’s, which became perhaps the more prominent symbol of the City’s renaissance after the Fire. Like the Monument, the Cathedral no longer dominates the cityscape as it did, although for the past 80 years a handful of long views of it have been protected in recognition of the building’s historical importance in the urban landscape and its wider national significance. In 1709, the poet James Wright recorded in Phoenix Paulina a rebuilt cathedral and...

Those Pig-Men Things

Those Pig-Men Things

<i>Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations</i> (review)

book is part of an emerging field known as Resurgence (see, for example: Taiaiake Alfred. Wasase: Indigenous Pathways oj Action and Freedom. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2005; Ty P. Kawika Tengan. Native Men Remade: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Hawai'i. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008) that emphasizes community regeneration by reconnecting Indigenous people with the sources of their spiritual and cultural power (relationships, homelands, ceremonial life, languages, histories, etc.). Inspired by Nishnaabe prophecies that detail the emergence of the Oshkimaadiziig (new people) from the Seventh Fire and their revival of the cultural, political, and economic traditions of the people, Nishnaabekwe scholar Leanne Simpson has put together an impressive collaboration of Indigenous scholars with thirteen chapters that heavily on the growing, yet still marginalized, body of fourth-world theory theories, strategies, and analysis strongly rooted in the values, knowledge, and philosophies of Indigenous Nations (15). One of the unique features of this edited volume is that each of the contributing authors writes from a strong foundation within their own Indigenous nation in connecting sacred living histories with present and future actions. This marks a departure from previous works that all too often rely on artificial pan-Aboriginalism, which emphasize a manufactured hegemonic 'Aboriginal' culture (16). Additionally, each of these chapters is written in a manner that makes them accessible to Indigenous communities while also reporting the latest and most innom vati ve research that Indigenous scholars have to offer. > Whether examining Haudenosaunee land ethics and treaty agreements as the basis for restructuring relationships (Hill, chapter 1), * the cultural and political implications of the Douglas Treaties and ° the WSANEC Reef Net Fisheries (Claxton, chapter 2), or the power 2 and connection to land that can be found in a Mi'kmaq Honour Song 5 135 (Metallic, chapter 3), each of the chapters addresses the power of trao ditional teachings and wisdom, and their importance in regeneraiS ing and maintaining our contemporary roles and responsibilities. For 1 example, in Anishnaabe scholar Renee Bedard's chapter on Keepers of the Water (chapter 5), she describes how Nishnaabe-kwewag are responsible for praying and caring for the water during ceremonies. As

Motets from 1549 (review)

Reviewed by: Motets from 1549 Richard Freedman Gioseffo Zarlino. Motets from 1549. Edited by Cristle Collins Judd. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, 145, 149.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, c2006–7. [Part 1, Motets Based on the Song of Songs: acknowledgments, p. vi; introd., p. vii–xxii; texts and trans., p. xxiii–xxvi; 10 plates; score, 103 p.; crit. report, p. 105–6. ISBN 978–0–89579–598–4; 0–89579–598–1. $83. Part 2, Eleven Motets from Musici quinque vocum moduli (Venice, 1549): acknowledgments, p. vi; introd., p. vii–xv; texts and trans., p. xvi–xix; 2 plates; dedication in Lat., Eng., p. 2; score, p. 3–110; crit. report, p. 111–12. ISBN 978–0–89579–608–0; 0–89579–608–2. $67.] Gioseffo Zarlino (1517–1590) is familiar to many as the author of a series of important writings on modality, counterpoint, and the craft of composition. Excerpts from Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice: Francesco Franceschi, 1558; reprint, New York: Broude Bros., 1965; revised edition, Venice: Franceschi, 1573; reprint, Ridge-wood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1966), Dimostrationi harmoniche (Venice: Franceschi, 1571; reprint, Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1966), and the Sopplimenti musicali (Venice: Franceschi, 1588; reprint, Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1966; New York: Broude Bros., 1980) are more or less required reading for anyone keen to know how sixteenth-century musicians understood their work and the concepts on which it was based. But few of us remember that Zarlino was also a composer of over three dozen motets and about a dozen madrigals; fewer still know much of his intellectual milieu in Renaissance Venice. Now thanks to Cristle Collins Judd’s editorial patience and careful detective work we can all begin to measure Zarlino’s musical works against the twin contexts of his theoretical writings and certain cultural forces at work in northern Italy during the late sixteenth century. The focal point of this edition is Zarlino’s first book of motets, the Musici quinque vocum moduli, prepared for publication by the great Venetian printing house of Antonio Gardano in 1549. The book was dedicated to Alvise Balbi, prior of the monastery of Santo Spirito in Isola near Venice (text and translation given on vol. 2, p. 2 of the set). It is not clear how Zarlino was linked to this institution, or what he hoped to gain through the connection. But the eloquent language of the dedication evokes a unique combination of humanist rhetorical skill and religious sensibility reflecting Zarlino’s assumptions of the close connection between words and music. In any case some of the music assembled here points in still other directions. Some works are clearly connected with the ceremonial life of Venice itself; while one of the secular motets (“Clodia quem genuit,” vol. 2, pp. 70–79) was written to commemorate the death of the Marchesino Vacca of Chiogga, the town across the Venetian lagoon where Zarlino worked as a priest prior to his move to San Marco and Venice in the early 1540s. Heard from the standpoint of mid-century musical practice, the nineteen motets of Zarlino’s Musici quinque vocum moduli of 1549 hardly seem remarkable. Like the motets of his teacher and San Marco predecessor Adrian Willaert (ca. 1490–1562), Zarlino’s motets are densely contrapuntal, continuous, and generally [End Page 159] restrained in their approach to the imagery and syntax of the texts at hand. Some of the works are freely composed, but there are also tenor cantus firmus settings in a conservative style (including a Pater noster/Ave Maria setting in which the tenor part yields two additional canonic voices for a total of seven parts), and several works in which liturgical melodies for the given antiphon or sequence are paraphrased in the various polyphonic voice parts (the edition marks out the connections in the score). But as Judd explains, this music matters less for its stylistic innovations than for what it tells us about the many threads—both theoretical and cultural—that intersected in Zarlino’s work in the decade before the publication of his great treatise. Part of this story is to be read in the organization of the book itself (outlined in table 1...

Yuchi ceremonial life: performance, meaning, and tradition in a contemporary American Indian community – By Jason Baird Jackson

Yuchi ceremonial life: performance, meaning, and tradition in a contemporary American Indian community – By Jason Baird Jackson

Ritual literacy: the simulation of reading in rural Indian Mexico, 1870–1930

Focusing on reading methods and practices in rural Indian Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century, this article explains why schooling had little impact in terms of literacy in Spanish yet played a successful political and ceremonial role resulting in what I call a ritual literacy. At the time, the emerging educational system did not consider the difficulties of speakers of indigenous languages faced with a Spanish‐only programme. The late nineteenth century saw the introduction of important pedagogical innovations such as the simultaneous teaching of reading and writing but none addressed the needs of those who did not speak Spanish. Even when the direct method was adopted in the 1920s to teach Spanish as a second language, problems persisted. Throughout the period, educationists insisted that reading skills enabled pupils to decipher any text, and not just well‐known schoolbooks, but the context of diglossia, together with local politics and ceremonial life, encouraged a “simulation” of reading, including the recitation of memorised text and the deciphering and pronunciation of words without understanding their meaning. In a socioeconomic context where individual literacy had limited value, the simulation of reading fulfilled an important symbolic role but did not necessarily encourage children’s acquisition of Spanish literacy.

Editor's Commentary

Editor’s Commentary James Riding In (bio) This issue contains a wide array of articles with themes important to American Indian studies and to Indigenous communities in both historical and contemporary contexts. These topics include movies, legal issues, genocide, and a theoretical model of literary analysis. The issue also includes a poem about colonization. Steve Russell and Terri Miles tackle the thorny problem of racism in public discourses as it relates to Indian sovereignty. They assert that the successful legal assault on the special status of Native Hawaiians in Rice v. Cayetano is a precursor for what is to come for Indians, if the antisovereignty forces have their way. They argue that Indians must work collectively to protect their sovereignty, the one commonality that links them. Tink Tinker and Mark Freeland ask the question "is Christopher Columbus guilty of genocide?" They answer the query by examining demographic sources pertaining to the Taino people of Española during Columbus's reign as governor. Disease combined with the demoralizing effects of Spanish violence took millions of Indian lives prematurely in a short period of time. They blame Columbus for instituting genocidal policies aimed at enriching the colonizers while subjecting Indians under a brutal, and deadly, system of forced labor. Responding to the assertion that Columbus was merely a man of his times, they retort that his actions should be judged by such biblical concepts as "Thou shall not kill." [End Page 5] David Milward addresses issues involving indigenous control over criminal justice. He takes the position that Indigenous people should have full control over their criminal justice systems rather than just minor offenses. Acknowledging that Indigenous peoples are overrepresented in Canadian prisons and that dominant society views Indigenous justice as soft, Milward examines ways in which the indigenous concept of healing, combined with traditional methods of corporal punishment, can be incorporated into contemporary Indigenous approaches to justice. Seeing a need for a comprehensive theoretical model that remedies the problem of scholarly neglect and misrepresentation of Native epistemology and culture, Billy J. Stratton and Frances Washburn build upon the "peoplehood matrix" devised by Tom Holm, J. Diane Pearson, and Ben Chavis.1 They stress that the fundamental characteristics of language, sacred history, place, and ceremonial life shared by Indians, and expressed in the peoplehood matrix, are vital for the study of American Indian literature. Indian writers, along with non-Indian writers, rarely incorporate all four elements into their scholarship. Stratton and Washburn conclude by arguing that their approach offers a theory and a methodology for analyzing Indian literature. Cristine Soliz fills a void in the literature about John Ford's 1956 movie The Searchers. Most studies about this movie, filmed in Navajo country with hundreds of Navajo extras, have ignored the Navajo influences on Ford's imagery of Indians in his story about Comanches and white Americans. The author asserts that elements of Navajo culture are present throughout the movie in terms of language; cultural objects, including dress, rugs, and blankets; and landscape. She also sees historical parallels between the U.S. military's treatment of the Comanches and the Navajos playing them. Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval's discussion of Sherman Alexie's Smoke Signals addresses the theme of forgiveness. He notes that in a dominant society, acts of forgiveness are rarely seen as virtuous. Thus, his analysis spans beyond the film's story to include issues of President George W. Bush's militaristic response to the events of September 11, 2001, and the myth of the United States as a colorblind society. Finally, Todd Fuller's poem provides an excellent example of why poetry is such an important literary device for conveying feelings about such things as people, history, culture, colonialism, and the human spirit. James Riding In James Riding In (Pawnee) is the editor of Wicazo Sa Review, associate professor of American Indian studies at Arizona State University, and chair of the Board of Trustess of Pawnee Nation College. His publications appear in various books and journals. Note 1. Tom Holm, J. Diane Pearson, and Ben Chavis, "Peoplehood: A Model for the Extension of Sovereignty in American Indian Studies," Wicazo Sa Review 18 (Spring 2003): 7–24. [End Page 6] Copyright © 2008...

Nubian Ceremonial Life: Studies in Islamic Syncretism and Cultural Change * EDITED BY JOHN G. KENNEDY.

Nubian Ceremonial Life: Studies in Islamic Syncretism and Cultural Change * EDITED BY JOHN G. KENNEDY.

Yuchi Ceremonial Life: Performance, Meaning, and Tradition in a Contemporary American Indian Community

The Yuchis are one of the least known yet most distinctive of the Native groups in the American southeast. Located in late prehistoric times in eastern Tennessee, they played an important historical role at various times during the last five centuries and in many ways served as a bridge between their southeastern neighbours and Native communities in the northeast. First noted by the Soto expedition in the sixteenth century, the Yuchis moved several times and made many alliances over the next few centuries. The famous naturalist William Bartram visited a Yuchi town in 1775, at a time when they had moved near Creek communities in Georgia and become allied with them. This alliance had long-lasting repercussions: when the United States government forced most southeastern groups to move to Oklahoma in the early nineteenth century, the Yuchis were classified as Creeks and placed under the jurisdiction of the Creek Nation. Today, despite the existence of a separate language and their distinct history, culture, and religious traditions, the Yuchis are not recognized as a sovereign people by the Creek Nation or the United States. Jason Baird Jackson examines the significance of community ceremonies for the Yuchis today. For many Yuchis, traditional rituals remain important to their identity, and they feel an obligation to perform and renew them each year at one of three ceremonial grounds, called Houses. The Big House acts as a periodic gathering place for the Yuchis, their Creator, and their ancestors. Drawing on a decade of collaborative study with tribal elders and using insights gained from ethnopoetics, Jackson captures in vivid detail the performance, impact, and motivations behind such rituals as the Stomp Dance, the Green Corn Ceremony, and the Soup Dance and discusses their continuing importance to the community. Jason Baird Jackson is an assistant curator of ethnology at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma.

Yuchi Ceremonial Life: Performance, Meaning, and Tradition in a Contemporary American Indian Community (review)

Yuchi Ceremonial Life: Performance, Meaning, and Tradition in a Contemporary American Indian Community (review)

Representing Aztec Ritual: Performance, Text, and Image in the Work of Sahagún

Arriving in Mexico less than a decade after the Spanish conquest of 1521, the Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagun not only laboured to supplant native religion with Christianity, he also gathered voluminous information on virtually every aspect of Aztec (Nahua) life in contact-period Mexico. His pioneering ethnographic work relied on interviews with Nahua elders and the assistance of a younger generation of bicultural, missionary-trained Nahuas. Sahagun's remarkably detailed descriptions of Aztec ceremonial life offer the most extensive account of a non-Western ritual system recorded before modern times. This book uses Sahagun's corpus as a starting point to focus on ritual performance, a key element in the functioning of the Aztec world. With topics ranging from the ritual use of sand and paper to the sacrifice of women, contributors explore how Aztec rites were represented in the images and texts of documents compiled under colonial rule and the implications of this European filter for our understanding of these ceremonies. Incorporating diverse disciplinary perspectives, contributors include David Carrasco, Philip P. Arnold, Kay Read, H. B. Nicholson, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Guilhem Olivier, Doris Heyden, and Eloise Quinones Keber.

A Frontier Perspective on Paracas Society and Nasca Ethnogenesis

It has long been recognized that the Nasca culture (ca. A.D. 1–750) of the Peruvian south coast finds its roots in the Paracas society (ca. 800 B.C.–A.D. 1). Yet the social mechanisms responsible for the innovations that characterize the transition are poorly known. The southern Nasca region, which became the most dynamic region in terms of ceremonial life and intervalley integration, however, was never an important area of Paracas occupation. In this article I use literature on migration and frontier development to explain the genesis of Nasca society. Four phenomena that are common on historical frontiers seem to have been at play in the southern Nasca region: initial simplification of hierarchy, pioneer effect, “wealth-in-people,” and factionalism. Based on data from excavations at La Puntilla, a settlement that spanned the Late Paracas—Initial Nasca transition, I argue that the needs of interregional integration and cooperation following initial settlement of the frontier by Paracas populations and subsequent demographic growth prompted the genesis of Nasca society. The proposed long-term scenario also provides a context for later innovations in water management and agricultural intensification.

Love or Death? Observations on the Role of the Gala in Ur III Ceremonial Life

on the figure of this elusive cultic functionary.1 I have put Emesal in quotations as it is hardly a dialect, but simply a mode of elocution, and we can now appreciate that its origins, as well as its continuing function, lie not in a regional dialect or a social register of a living language but in a complex nexus of socio-linguistic facts linked to a constellation of cultic practices that involve basic life-changing events, namely, love and death.2 In this article I would like to add to this discussion

The Search for Idols and Saints in Colonial Peru: Linking Extirpation and Beatification

The Search for Idols and Saints in Colonial Peru: Linking Extirpation and Beatification

INNOVATION AND ANCESTRAL REVELATION: THE CASE OF DREAMS

This article explores aspects of the relationship between tradition and innovation in an Australian Aboriginal society by looking at dreams as a ‘traditional’ facet of cultural change. In many Aboriginal societies spirits of the deceased, spirit beings, and ancestral figures are said to communicate with and ‘reveal’ certain things to the dreamer. Some things that are revealed, such as those pertaining to ritual and ceremonial life, are said to have existed ‘from the beginning’ and are not considered to be ‘new’. Here I discuss a case of ancestral revelation relating to a commonplace sphere of Aboriginal life – the card game. Through this I explore something of the complexity of the ways in which ‘traditional’ beliefs and forms of innovation are dialectically interdependent with contemporary cultural experiences as well as with distinctive historical experiences which have preceded them.

Yuchi Ceremonial Life: Performance, Meaning, and Tradition in a Contemporary American Indian Community

Book Review| January 01 2005 Yuchi Ceremonial Life: Performance, Meaning, and Tradition in a Contemporary American Indian Community By Jason Baird Jackson. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. xx,345 pp., illustrations, bibliography, index. $75.00 cloth.) Pamela Innes Pamela Innes Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnohistory (2005) 52 (1): 212–213. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-52-1-212 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Pamela Innes; Yuchi Ceremonial Life: Performance, Meaning, and Tradition in a Contemporary American Indian Community. Ethnohistory 1 January 2005; 52 (1): 212–213. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-52-1-212 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsEthnohistory Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. 2005 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.