Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions

By (author) Timothy R. Pauketat

Paperback - £38.00

Publication date:

25 May 2007

Length of book:

270 pages

Publisher

AltaMira Press

ISBN-13: 9780759108295

In recent decades anthropology, especially ethnography, has supplied the prevailing models of how human beings have constructed, and been constructed by, their social arrangements. In turn, archaeologists have all too often relied on these models to reconstruct the lives of ancient peoples. In lively, engaging, and informed prose, Timothy Pauketat debunks much of this social-evolutionary theorizing about human development, as he ponders the evidence of 'chiefdoms' left behind by the Mississippian culture of the American southern heartland. This book challenges all students of history and prehistory to reexamine the actual evidence that archaeology has made available, and to do so with an open mind.
Pauketat's bold thinking should move Mississippi Valley prehistory out from the shadows and onto archaeology's center stage, where it belongs–alongside the world's other civilizations, Old and New. Readers accustomed to wigwams,chiefs, and mound-builders are in for a shock. Native history in North America was far grander, far more interesting, than old textbooks allow. This book is really interesting! Pauketat is taking American archaeology in exciting new directions.