Taking Flight
Taking Flight

Author: Michael Edmonds

Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society

Published: 2018-02-23

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0870208373

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A dynamic account of ornithological history in America’s heartland. Today, more than fifty million Americans traipse through wetlands at dawn, endure clouds of mosquitoes, and brave freezing autumn winds just to catch a glimpse of a bird. The human desire to connect with winged creatures defies age and generation. In the Midwest, humans and birds have lived together for more than twelve thousand years. Taking Flight explores how and why people have worshipped, feared, studied, hunted, eaten, and protected the birds that surrounded them. Author and birder Michael Edmonds has combed archaeological reports, missionaries’ journals, travelers’ letters, early scientific treatises, the memoirs of American Indian elders, and the folklore of hunters, farmers, and formerly enslaved people throughout the Midwest to reveal how our ancestors thought about the very same birds we see today. Whether you’re a casual bird-watcher, a hard-core life-lister, or simply someone who loves the outdoors, you’ll look at birds differently after reading this book.

Gender and the Archaeology of Death
Gender and the Archaeology of Death

Author: Bettina Arnold

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2001-06-26

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0759117039

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Burials are places where archaeologists reasonably expect gendered ideologies and practices to play out in the archaeological record. Yet only modest progress has been made in teasing out gender from these mortuary contexts. In this volume, methods for doing so are presented, cases of successful gender theorizing from mortuary data presented, and comparisons made between European and Americanist traditions in this kind of work. Cases are broad in temporal and geographic scope—from Inuit burials in Alaska and Oneota mortuary rituals to Viking Scandinavia, Neolithic China and Iron Age Britain. Methods for identifying and analyzing gender are suggested for cultures at various levels of social complexity with or without documentary or ethnoarchaeological evidence to assist in the analysis. A volume of great interest for those attempting to develop an archaeology of gender. Visit Bettina Arnold's web page

Indigenous Life around the Great Lakes
Indigenous Life around the Great Lakes

Author: Richard W. Edwards IV

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2020-09-30

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0268108196

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Enormous changes affected the inhabitants of the Eastern Woodlands area during the eleventh through fifteenth centuries AD. At this time many groups across this area (known collectively to archaeologists as Oneota) were aggregating and adopting new forms of material culture and food technology. This same period also witnessed an increase in intergroup violence, as well as a rise in climatic volatility with the onset of the Little Ice Age. In Indigenous Life around the Great Lakes, Richard W. Edwards explores how the inhabitants of the western Great Lakes region responded to the challenges of climate change, social change, and the increasingly violent physical landscape. As a case study, Edwards focuses on a group living in the Koshkonong Locality in what is now southeastern Wisconsin. Edwards contextualizes Koshkonong within the larger Oneota framework and in relation to the other groups living in the western Great Lakes and surrounding regions. Making use of a canine surrogacy approach, which avoids the destruction of human remains, Edwards analyzes the nature of groups’ subsistence systems, the role of agriculture, and the risk-management strategies that were developed to face the challenges of their day. Based on this analysis, Edwards proposes how the inhabitants of this region organized themselves and how they interacted with neighboring groups. Edwards ultimately shows how the Oneota groups were far more agricultural than previously thought and also demonstrates how the maize agriculture of these groups was related to the structure of their societies. In bringing together multiple lines of archaeological evidence into a unique synthesis, Indigenous Life around the Great Lakes is an innovative book that will appeal to archaeologists who study the Midwest and surrounding regions, and it will also appeal to those who research risk management, agriculture, and the development of hierarchical societies more generally.

Tobacco Use by Native North Americans
Tobacco Use by Native North Americans

Author: Joseph C. Winter

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 494

ISBN-13: 9780806132624

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Recently identified as a killer, tobacco has been the focus of health warnings, lawsuits, and political controversy. Yet many Native Americans continue to view tobacco-when used properly-as a life-affirming and sacramental substance that plays a significant role in Native creation myths and religious ceremonies. This definitive work presents the origins, history, and contemporary use (and misuse) of tobacco by Native Americans. It describes wild and domesticated tobacco species and how their cultivation and use may have led to the domestication of corn, potatoes, beans, and other food plants. It also analyzes many North American Indian practices and beliefs, including the concept that Tobacco is so powerful and sacred that the spirits themselves are addicted to it. The book presents medical data revealing the increasing rates of commercial tobacco use by Native youth and the rising rates of death among Native American elders from lung cancer, heart disease, and other tobacco-related illnesses. Finally, this volume argues for the preservation of traditional tobacco use in a limited, sacramental manner while criticizing the use of commercial tobacco. Contributors are: Mary J. Adair, Karen R. Adams, Carol B. Brandt, Linda Scott Cummings, Glenna Dean, Patricia Diaz-Romo, Jannifer W. Gish, Julia E. Hammett, Robert F. Hill, Richard G. Holloway, Christina M. Pego, Samuel Salinas Alvarez, Lawrence A Shorty, Glenn W. Solomon, Mollie Toll, Suzanne E. Victoria, Alexander von Garnet, Jonathan M. Samet, and Gail E. Wagner.