American Landscapes

Publisher: Oxbow Books
Series editors: Peter Topping, T. R. Kidder & Julie Gardiner

American Landscapes is a peer reviewed series providing an informed overview – from a holistic landscape perspective – of the history and changing land use of particular areas/regions or archaeological/historical themes in North America. Titles include single-authored or edited papers on a particular theme of landscape history or archaeology, a region, or related landscape settings across broader areas and timeframes. Wider themes include the influence of and human relationships with particular landscape features such as woodlands, vegetation zones, or river catchments. It also presents discussions of topics including rock art, migration, indigenous religious practices, or aspects of state and national parks. Each volume provides a comprehensive and accessible narrative aimed at the informed reader, presenting an up-to-date review of the latest research from archaeology, anthropology, historical studies and the environmental sciences. Appendices of key sites or landscapes to visit and their accessibility are included where applicable.

(Print binding: Paperback | Format: 246 x 187 mm)

Format: Paperback

Pages: 256

ISBN: 9781785708855

Pub Date: 31 Dec 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American Landscapes

Illustrations: b/w and colour

Description:

The large American Indian city of Cahokia sits amidst a diverse natural landscape within the larger central Mississippi river valley. Well positioned on the rich agricultural soils of the Mississippi river bottomlands of the Amercan Bottom it is at the core of a cultural landscape that its residents helped shape. In this volume the editors and authors attempt to not just focus on Cahokia and its configuration but also the other towns and settlements dispersed throughout the region extant for nearly four centuries.

RRP: £38.00

Ancient Effigy Mound Landscapes of Upper Midwestern North America Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 240

ISBN: 9781785700873

Pub Date: 15 Nov 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American Landscapes

Illustrations: black/white and colour illustrations

Description:

Between c. AD 700 and 1100, Late Woodland people of the Upper Midwest used the topography and other features of the natural landscape to create vast ceremonial landscapes consisting of thousands of earthen mounds sculpted into animals and animal spirits that mirrored their belief and clan-based social structure and that served an important role in mortuary ritual. In so doing, the Late Woodland people created quite visible three-dimensional maps of ancient cosmology and social structures that are similar to the beliefs and social systems of more recent Indian people.

RRP: £38.00

Format: Paperback

Pages: 168

ISBN: 9781785706240

Pub Date: 05 Mar 2024

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American Landscapes

Illustrations: b/w and colour

Description:

Extracting Stone considers where chert or obsidian were mined and how North American stone quarry landscapes have been identified and studied from the time of pioneer William Henry Holmes (1846–1933) onward. Three especially significant extraction areas are examined in detail: Flint Mine Hill, New York, along the Hudson River; “Spanish Diggings”, Arkansas, in the Ouachita Mountains; and Obsidian Cliff, Wyoming, in the headwaters of the Yellowstone River. The authors compare and contrast extraction scales with artifact distribution or use areas established through precise material characterization techniques to discuss trade and exchange, the emergence of inequalities, resource restriction orcontrol, and the technological systems of which these land- or quarry-scapes formed a part.

Format: Paperback

Pages: 240

ISBN: 9798888570425

Pub Date: 05 Aug 2023

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American Landscapes

Illustrations: 90 illustrations in B/W

Description:

Explanations in Iconography: Ancient American Indian Art, Symbol, and Meaning is a significant contribution to archaeology and to- iconography studies – a discipline that has gradually been coming into its own. Iconography is a rich and fascinating field when applied to the complex and enigmatic imagery on many ancient Pre-Columbian artifacts. When viewed through the lens of early ethnographic records and American Indian oral traditions – as well as information from knowledgeable American Indian elders – it opens a world of understanding and clarity until recently unknown in the field of anthropological archaeology.

Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 256

ISBN: 9781789259292

Pub Date: 15 Jan 2023

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American Landscapes

Illustrations: 55 B/W images

Description:

In the long history of documenting the material culture of the archaeological record, meaning and actions of makers and users of these items is often overlooked. The authors in this book focus on rituals exploring the natural and made landscape stages, the ritual directors, including their progression from shaman to priesthood, and meaning of the rites. They also provide comments on the end or failure of rites and cults from Paleoindian into post-DeSoto years.

Archaeologies of Cosmoscapes in the Americas Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 288

ISBN: 9781789258448

Pub Date: 15 Jul 2022

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American Landscapes

Illustrations: B/w and colour

Description:

This volume examines how pre-Columbian societies in the Americas envisioned their cosmos and iteratively modelled it through the creation of particular objects and places. It emphasises that American societies did this to materialize overarching models and templates for the shape and scope of the cosmos, the working definition of cosmoscape. Noting a tendency to gloss over the ways in which ancestral Americans envisioned the cosmos as intertwined and animated, the authors examine how cosmoscapes are manifested archaeologically, in the forms of objects and physically altered landscapes.

Format: Paperback

Pages: 288

ISBN: 9781785706288

Pub Date: 18 Apr 2018

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American Landscapes

Illustrations: b/w and colour

Description:

This beautifully illustrated volume examines American Indian rock art across an expansive region of eastern North America during the Mississippian Period (post AD 900). Unlike portable cultural material, rock art provides in situ evidence of ritual activity that links ideology and place. The focus is on the widespread use of cosmograms depicted in Mississippian rock art imagery.

Caddo Landscapes in the East Texas Forests Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 264

ISBN: 9781785705762

Pub Date: 31 May 2017

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American Landscapes

Illustrations: b/w and colour

Description:

In this major, highly illustrated, new study Tim Perttula explores the cultural and social landscape of the Caddo Indian peoples (hayaanuh) for about 1000 years between ca. A.D.

Format: Paperback

Pages: 144

ISBN: 9781785703393

Pub Date: 21 Dec 2016

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American Landscapes

Illustrations: b/w and colour

Description:

For a period of about week in February 1865, as the Civil War was winding down and Plains Indian communities were reeling in the wake of the Sand Creek massacre, combat swept across the Nebraska panhandle, especially along the Platte River. The fighting that marked this event barely compares to the massive campaigns and terrible carnage that marked the conflict that was taking place in the eastern states but it was a significant event at the opening on the ensuing Indian Wars. Operating on terrain they knew well, Cheyenne warriors and other Native forces encountered the US Cavalry who operated within a modern network of long distance migration and pony express trails and military stations.

Hopewell Ceremonial Landscapes of Ohio Cover

Format: Paperback

Pages: 288

ISBN: 9781782977544

Pub Date: 05 Feb 2015

Imprint: Oxbow Books

Series: American Landscapes

Illustrations: b/w and colour illustrations

Description:

Nearly 2000 years ago, people living in the river valleys of southern Ohio built earthen monuments on a scale that is unmatched in the archaeological record for small-scale societies. The period from c. 200 BC to c.