Posts, Places, Ancestors, and Worlds: Dividual Personhood in the American Bottom Region

A Microhistory of Human and Gastropod Bodies and Souls During Cahokia's Emergence

“…This interaction among material objects, human remains and the living is the nexus of microhistorical processes accessible in Pre-Columbian Mississippian burial practices that are generative of cultural change. At Cahokia, these processes played out on multiple scales: across an estimated 17 ridgetop burial mounds (6 presented here) located in the centre and periphery of this city, as well as within small households, special-use buildings, and in individual depositional events like those that occurred prior to the construction of a ridge-top mound (see Hargrave & Bukowski 2010;Pauketat 2010;Pauketat et al 2002;Skousen 2012). In these moments of depositional practice, dead human and shell beings were as agentic as the living, informing social relationships and embodying 'supernatural concepts and real-world features such as water', fertility and the underworld (Whalen 2013, 635; see also Claassen 2011; Emerson et al 2016).…”

Sublime perversions: Capturing the uncanny affects of queer temporalities in Mississippian ruins

“…Movements associated with wider mound construction projects often became constitutive facets of social and individual affective worlds. Monumental architecture, including posts constructed on or near mounds, “instigated emotive and sensory responses in human persons that nothing else could” (Skousen, 2012: 65). Charged with powerful material deposits like quartz crystals and stone implements, mound atmospheres fueled religious fervor in Mississippian spheres.…”

“…I thank my committee members Dr Martin F. Manalansan and Dr Virginia R. Dominguez for their continued support and direction. I would also like to express many thanks to Dr Susan Alt, Jeff Kruchten, B. Jacob Skousen, Amanda Butler, and the entire 2012 Revealing Cahokia’s Religion University of Illinois (UIUC) and Indiana University (IU) field school teams for inviting me to work with them and assisting with data collection. I am also grateful for the funding agency that supported the Emerald project: the Religion and Innovation Human Affairs Program of the Historical Society of Boston, subvented by the John Templeton Foundation.…”