The Real Mound Builders of North America: A Critical Realist Prehistory of the Eastern Woodlands, 200 BC-1450 AD

by A. Martin Byers

Overview

The Real Mound Builders of North America contrasts the evolutionary view that emphasizes abrupt discontinuities with the Hopewellian ceremonial assemblage and mounds. Byers argues that these communities persisted unchanged in terms of their essential structures and traditions, varying only in ceremonial practices that manifested these structures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781666901276
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/08/2024
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

A. Martin Byers (1937-2021) was professor emeritus at Vanier College and research associate at McGill University in the Department of Anthropology.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Alternate Views of the Prehistoric Mound Builders of the Eastern Woodlands of North America Chapter 2. The Warranting Imperative and Sacred Bundles Chapter 3. The First Order Ohio Hopewellian Ceremonial Sphere and the Ross County, Ohio, Interface Chapter 4. The Second Order Hopewellian Ceremonial Sphere: Illinois-Havana and Indiana-Crab Orchard Chapter 5. The Late Prehistoric Period and the Dual Communal Heterarchy/Cult Sodality Heterarchy Model Chapter 6. The Vacant Quarters and the Transition to the Post-Mississippian Era Late Prehistoric Period: An Empirical Demonstration Chapter 7. The Late Prehistoric and Post-Mississippian Era Late Prehistoric Period: Communal Heterarchies of the Eastern Woodlands

Editorial Reviews

In what may be the most accessible introduction to his thinking, this posthumous volume from Martin Byers summarizes his views on the nature of the social systems behind the earthwork and mound centers of eastern North America. Addressing the same archaeologically-revealed Middle Woodland and Mississippian landscapes as those who view them as the product of competitive and territorial hierarchically-organized societies, he tells us in a brilliant exposition why he believes those same groups were communal and custodial heterarchies.

Robert Riordan

This final edition of The Real Mound Builders of North America presents the clearest and most comprehensive overview of Martin Byers’ unique understanding of the last two millennia of Native American history in the Eastern Woodlands of North America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Rather than a linear, evolutionary trajectory, Byers sees a spiraling, repeating pattern of interactions within heterarchical societies based on clans and sodalities inhabiting a world shared with immanent deities. The book is a fundamental challenge to the core assumptions of most North American archaeologists.

Douglas K. Charles

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

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