This book, in two volumes, breathes fresh air empirically, methodologically, and theoretically into understanding the rich ceremonial lives, the philosophical-religious knowledge, and the impressive material feats and labor organization that distinguish Hopewell Indians of central Ohio and neighboring regions during the first centuries CE.The first volume defines cross-culturally, for the first time, the “ritual drama” as a genre of social performance and reconstructs parts of 14 such dramas that Hopewellian and other Woodland-period peoples performed to help the soul-like essences of their deceased make the journey to an afterlife.  Two large surveys of historic Woodland and Plains Indians’ narratives about the journey and the creatures in their cosmos, along with rich contextual archaeological and taphonomic-bioarchaeological analyses, inform the reconstructions and encourage their authenticity to native logics and motivations.The second volume builds and critiques ten formal cross-cultural models of “personhood” and the “self” and infers the nature of Scioto Hopewell people’s ontology.  Two facets of their ontology are found to have been instrumental in their creating the intercommunity alliances and cooperation required to construct their huge, multicommunity ceremonial centers:  a relational, collective concept of the self defined by the ethical quality of the relationships one has with other beings, and a concept of multiple soul-like essences that compose a human being and can be harnessed strategically to create familial-like ethical bonds of cooperation among individuals and communities. These conclusions are drawn archaeologically, bioarchaeologically, and through insights based in a large survey of historic Woodland and Plains Indians’ ideas and rites about soul-like essences.In all, the research in this book vitalizes a vision of an anthropology committed to native logics and motivations and skeptical of the imposition of Western world views and categories onto native peoples. weiterlesen