In this provocative work, Cheryl Claassen challenges
long-standing notions n this provocative work, Cheryl Claassen
challenges long-standing notions Iabout hunter-gatherer life in the
southern Ohio Valley as it unfolded some Iabout hunter-gatherer
life in the southern Ohio Valley as it unfolded some I8,000 to
3,500 years ago. Focusing on freshwater shell mounds scattered
8,000 to 3,500 years ago. Focusing on freshwater shell mounds
scattered along the Tennessee, Ohio, Green, and Harpeth rivers,
Claassen draws on the latest archaeological research to offer
penetrating new insights into the sacred world of Archaic peoples.
Some of the most striking ideas are that there were no villages in
the southern Ohio Valley during the Archaic period, that all of the
trading and killing were for ritual purposes, and that body
positioning in graves reflects cause of death primarily.
Mid-twentieth-century assessments of the shell mounds saw them as
the products of culturally simple societies that cared little about
their dead and were concerned only with food. More recent
interpretations, while attributing greater complexity to these
peoples, have viewed the sites as mere villages and stressed such
factors as population growth and climate change in analyzing the
way these societies and their practices evolved. Claassen, however,
makes a persuasive case that the sites were actually the settings
for sacred rituals of burial and
renewal and that their large shell accumulations are evidence of
feasts associated with those ceremonies. She argues that the
physical evidence--including the location of the sites, the largely
undisturbed nature of the deposits, the high incidence of dog
burials, the number of tools per body found at the sites, and the
indications of human sacrifice and violent death--not only supports
this view but reveals how ritual practices developed over time. The
seemingly sudden demise of shellfish consumption, Claassen
contends, was not due to overharvesting and environmental change;
it ended, rather, because the sacred rituals changed.
"Feasting with Shellfish in the Southern Ohio Valley" is a work
bound to stir controversy and debate among scholars of the Archaic
period. Just as surely, it will encourage a new appreciation for
the spiritual life of ancient peoples--how they thought about the
cosmos and the mysterious forces that surrounded them.
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