Archaeology and Ancient Religion in the American Midcontinent

Description: Analyses of big datasets signal important directions for the archaeology of religion in the Archaic to Mississippian Native North America

Review Quotes: "[Archaeology and Ancient Religion in the American Midcontinent] is an apposite testament to Emerson's outstanding contributions to eastern North American archaeology. The volume successfully advances our understanding of ancient religious practices and is a significant step toward the application of theoretical insights into ancient religion in the American Mid-continent. The contributors universally acknowledge that Emerson has encouraged them to utilize cutting-edge analytical techniques in studying large, diverse datasets, thus guiding their approach to an archaeology that demonstrates how empowered places and things may be investigated through depositional contexts, landscapes, and the physical properties of objects."
--American Antiquity

"Archaeology and Ancient Religion in the American Midcontinent makes original and significant contributions to the fields of both Cahokia studies and religious studies, and is filled with sound research and scholarship."
--Cheryl Claassen, author of Beliefs and Rituals in Archaic Eastern North America: An Interpretive Guide and Feasting with Shellfish in the Southern Ohio Valley: Archaic Sacred Sites and Rituals

"This volume emphasizes the spirituality of artifacts as an integral part of understanding past Native American lifeways. . . This is an important book and one well worth the read."
--Robert L. Hall, Journal of the Iowa Archaeological Society.