Ritualized Deposition and Feasting Pits: Bundling of Animal Remains in Mississippi Period Florida

Wallis, Neill J.; Blessing, Meggan E.

doi:10.1017/s0959774314000699

Cited by 24 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The material demands attending sociocosmic obligations can be substantial and impact activities over months or years. For instance, it is not unusual for ritual events involving ancestors or otherworldly forces to require provisions of extraordinary scale and substance (e.g., Claassen 2010; DeBoer 2001; Gamble 2017; Kassabaum 2014; Luby and Gruber 1999; Wallis and Blessing 2015). Likewise, feasts in which “guests from the spirit world also had a seat at the feasting table” involved the production of material surpluses to meet cosmic debt (Cobb and Stephenson 2017:147).…”

Section: Ritual Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Maritime Ritual Economies of Cosmic Synchronicity: Summer Solstice Events at a Civic-Ceremonial Center on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

Sassaman

Blessing

Goodwin³

et al. 2019

Am. Antiq.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Places such as Poverty Point, Mound City, and Chaco Canyon remind us that the siting of ritual infrastructure in ancient North America was a matter of cosmological precedent. The cosmic gravity of these places gathered persons periodically in numbers that challenged routine production. Ritual economies intensified, but beyond the material demands of hosting people, the siting of these places and the timing of gatherings were cosmic work that preconfigured these outcomes. A first millennium AD civic-ceremonial center on the northern Gulf Coast of Florida illustrates the rationale for holding feasts on the end of a parabolic dune that it shared with an existing mortuary facility. Archaeofauna from large pits at Shell Mound support the inference that feasts were timed to summer solstices. Gatherings were large, judging from the infrastructure in support of feasts and efforts to intensify production through oyster mariculture and the construction of a large tidal fish trap. The 250-year history of summer solstice feasts at Shell Mound reinforces the premise that ritual economies were not simply the amplification of routine production. It also suggests that the ecological potential for intensification was secondary to the cosmic significance of solstice-oriented dunes and their connection to mortuary and world-renewal ceremonialism.

show abstract

Section: Ritual Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Maritime Ritual Economies of Cosmic Synchronicity: Summer Solstice Events at a Civic-Ceremonial Center on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

Sassaman

Blessing

Goodwin³

et al. 2019

Am. Antiq.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Recent zooarchaeological research demonstrates the value of faunal data for answering questions about people's worldviews and perspectives on human-animal relations in the past. For example, in the Americas, scholars have argued that the deposition of symbolic or bundled taxa in pits associated with feasting events (Kelly 2000;Kelly and Kelly 2007;Pauketat et al 2002) and ceremonial offerings (Alaica 2018;Wallis and Blessing 2015) provides unique insights into people's social and spiritual relationships with different animal communities. Zooarchaeologists working in Eurasia have also cited evidence of intentional non-human burials and cremations to argue that people afforded personhood and/or symbolic meaning to certain animals in the past (Crabtree 1995;Losey et al 2011;Reshef et al 2019).…”

Section: Theoretical and Interpretive Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hunting and the Social Lives of Southern Africa’s First Farmers

Jones,

Kapumha,

Chirikure

et al. 2023

J Archaeol Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Perspectives on human–animal relationships are changing in archaeology and related disciplines. Analytical models that distinguish foraging from food production remain popular, but scholars are beginning to recognize greater variability in the ways people understood and engaged with animals in the past. In southern Africa, researchers have observed that wild animals were economically and socially important to recent agropastoral societies. However, archaeological models emphasize cattle keeping and downplay the role of hunting among past farming groups. To address this discrepancy and investigate human–wild animal interactions over the last ~ 2000 years, we examined zooarchaeological data from 54 southern African Iron Age (first and second millennium AD) farming sites. Diversity and taxonomic information highlights how often and what types of animals people hunted. Comparisons with earlier and contemporaneous forager and herder sites in southern and eastern Africa show that hunting for social and economic purposes characterized the spread of farming and rise of complex societies in southern Africa. The long-term cultural integration of wild animals into food-producing societies is unusual from a Global South perspective and warrants reappraisal of forager/farmer dichotomies in non-Western contexts.

show abstract

Mississippian Plazas, Performances, and Portable Histories

Cobb

Butler

2016

J Archaeol Method Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ritualized Deposition and Feasting Pits: Bundling of Animal Remains in Mississippi Period Florida

Cited by 24 publications

References 32 publications

Maritime Ritual Economies of Cosmic Synchronicity: Summer Solstice Events at a Civic-Ceremonial Center on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

Maritime Ritual Economies of Cosmic Synchronicity: Summer Solstice Events at a Civic-Ceremonial Center on the Northern Gulf Coast of Florida

Hunting and the Social Lives of Southern Africa’s First Farmers

Mississippian Plazas, Performances, and Portable Histories

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About