Christopher Carr & D. Troy Case (ed.). Gathering Hopewell: Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction, Interdisciplinary Contribution to Archaeology.

Christopher Carr & D. Troy Case (ed.). Gathering Hopewell: Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction, Interdisciplinary Contribution to Archaeology. CHRISTOPHER CARR & D. TROY CASE (ed.). Gathering Hopewell:Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction (Interdisciplinary Contributionto Archaeology). xxi+807 pages, 83 figures, 90 tables, CD-ROM. 2005. NewYork New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : Kluwer Academic/Plenum; 0-306-484781 hardback $125. This book consists of 20 chapters reporting new research on thearchaeology of three regions of the American Midwest (southern Ohio,southern Indiana and Illinois, and western Illinois) during the MiddleWoodland period (100 BC-AD 400). Christopher Carr's imprint ispervasive for he is sole author of six chapters and co-author of nineothers. Troy Case and nine other authors were Carr's students atArizona State University Arizona State University,at Tempe; coeducational; opened 1886 as a normal school, became 1925 Tempe State Teachers College, renamed 1945 Arizona State College at Tempe. Its present name was adopted in 1958. . The remaining contributors are establishedHopewell scholars. The title reflects Carr's goal of collecting and analysing allexisting data pertaining to the northern Hopewell peoples, well-knownfor their lavish mortuary ceremonialism. A good deal of this informationis included on an accompanying compact disk. In the 'General Introduction', the first of three generalsections, Carr and Case devote two chapters to explaining the problemand its historic roots, and introducing a methodological approach theycall 'thick prehistory'. The problem, in a nutshell, is thatHopewell scholars have been conservative in their efforts to understandHopewell. Narrow ecological or evolutionary models are getting nowherewhen the artefacts are telling us that we can know the Hopewell on theirown terms. Thick prehistory prehistory,period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to is designed to do this by personalising,contextualising, and empowering ('generating') the record inorder to write a quasi-ethnographic description of Hopewell life. The second section, on social and political organisation, beginswith a theoretical paper by Carr, followed by five chapters on socialorganisation and three on gender. In chapter 4, Bret Ruby, ChristopherCart and Douglas Charles compare the settlement data from the Havana,Crab Orchard and Ohio traditions and report that a dispersed pattern ofhorticulture along with hunting and gathering characterised all regions,that social relations were multilayered spatially, and that earthworkswere multi-functional. In chapter 5, Cart and Case examine smokingpipes, Adena tablets and figurines, Hopewell figurines, metals, flints,and mica, along with artefact See artifact. associations in graves: they find thatleadership was probably diversified and decentralised. Cart takes up theissue of ranking in Havana Hopewell in chapter 6 and finds no evidencefor it, or for centralised leadership. He looks at the same issue inOhio Hopewell in chapter 7 and again comes up dry; instead, he suggeststhat community affiliation and intercommunity alliances, not ranking,govern social relationships and are mirrored in cemetery layout andartefact patterning. Chapter 8, by Chad Thomas, Christopher Carr andCynthia Keller, starts with animal deposits from graves identified tospecies; the authors propose that the Hopewell recognised nineanimal-totemic clans, the same number as found among historic tribes. The gender papers in Part II look for evidence of correlations withstatus, role, prestige, and ritual interaction. Stephanie Field, AnneGoldberg and Tina Lee (chapter 9) examined sex and age artefactassociations for 199 individuals from ten sites and found a high degreeof regional variation, with high female status and prestige insouth-west Ohio (matrilineal mat��ri��lin��e��aladj.Relating to, based on, or tracing ancestral descent through the maternal line. ?), high male in north-east Ohio(patrilineal patrilineal/pa��tri��lin��e��al/ (pat?ri-lin��e-il) descended through the male line. pat��ri��lin��e��aladj.Relating to, based on, or tracing ancestral descent through the paternal line. ?), and balanced in the Scioto region. The evidence isstrong for females in shamanic roles in the latter. In chapter 10,Teresa Rodrigues reports the results of her comparison of the work andworkload of males and females based on skeletal remains from a MiddleWoodland period burial mound (Turner, Ohio) and a Late Prehistoriccemetery (Madisonville). Sex-related differences were detected, somecounter-intuitive, but no strong correlations, although lower-limbinjuries predominated in the horticultural population and upper-limb inthe agricultural group in ways suggestive of suggestive ofDecision making adjective Referring to a pattern by LM or imaging, that the interpreter associates with a particular–usually malignant lesion. See Aunt Millie approach, Defensive medicine. subsistence-relatedactivities. Cynthia Kellar and Christopher Cart, in chapter 11, presentthe first-ever comprehensive analysis of Hopewell terracotta figurines.The 148 specimens from the ten sites they examined show adultsperforming everyday tasks; Kellar and Carr argue that they were made bywomen for domestic ritual and that there was little inter-regionalexchange. Part III, on Hopewellian pan-regional interaction, focuses onspecific Hopewellian artefact types: copper celts (Wesley Bernardini& Christopher Carr), panpipes (Gina Turff & Christopher Carr),copper and silver earspools (Katharine C. Ruhl, Michael W. Spence &Brian J. Fryer). Except for earspools, there is no evidence of a uniformset of Hopewell mortuary practice. This book is a treasure trove of raw data and inspiredinterpretation. It is overflowing with intensive studies of artefact,settlement, burial, and earthwork earth��work?n.1. An earthen embankment, especially one used as a fortification. See Synonyms at bulwark.2. Engineering Excavation and embankment of earth.3. types, and the rich descriptions ofthese data convey the quality of the artefacts in unique ways. Themeshing of ethnographic and archaeological data is unprecedented.Overall, this book will have a profound effect on the nature anddirection of Hopewellian studies for years to come. WILLIAM S. DANCEY Department of Anthropology, Ohio State University Ohio State University,main campus at Columbus; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1870, opened 1873 as Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College, renamed 1878. There are also campuses at Lima, Mansfield, Marion, and Newark. , Columbus, Ohio,USA