BiblioVault - Books about Ancestors

Access to Origins

Affines, Ancestors, and Aristocrats

By Mary W. Helms

University of Texas Press, 1998

In many non-industrial, non-Western societies, power and prestige are closely linked to the extent of an individual's or group's perceived connection to the supernatural realm, which also explains and validates tangible activities such as economic success, victories in war, or control over lucrative trade. Affines (in-laws), ancestors, and aristocrats, in particular, are connected to the realm of creative cosmological origins (i.e., to Genesis), which accords them distinctive, supernatural powers and gives them a natural and legitimate right to worldly authority.

This is the hypothesis that Mary W. Helms pursues in this broadly cross-cultural study of aristocracy in chiefly societies. She begins with basic ideas about the dead, ancestors, affines, and concepts of cosmological origins. This leads her to a discussion of cosmologically defined hierarchies, the qualities that characterize aristocracy, and the political and ideological roles of aristocrats as wife-givers and wife-takers (that is, as in-laws). She concludes by considering various models that explain how societies may develop or define aristocracies.

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Ancestors and Antiretrovirals

The Biopolitics of HIV/AIDS in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Claire Laurier Decoteau

University of Chicago Press, 2013

In the years since the end of apartheid, South Africans have enjoyed a progressive constitution, considerable access to social services for the poor and sick, and a booming economy that has made their nation into one of the wealthiest on the continent. At the same time, South Africa experiences extremely unequal income distribution, and its citizens suffer the highest prevalence of HIV in the world. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu has noted, “AIDS is South Africa’s new apartheid.”

In Ancestors and Antiretrovirals, Claire Laurier Decoteau backs up Tutu’s assertion with powerful arguments about how this came to pass. Decoteau traces the historical shifts in health policy after apartheid and describes their effects, detailing, in particular, the changing relationship between biomedical and indigenous health care, both at the national and the local level. Decoteau tells this story from the perspective of those living with and dying from AIDS in Johannesburg’s squatter camps. At the same time, she exposes the complex and often contradictory ways that the South African government has failed to balance the demands of neoliberal capital with the considerable health needs of its population.

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Ancestors in Borneo Societies

Death, Transformation, and Social Immortality

Edited by Pascal Coudrec and Kenneth Sillander

National University of Singapore Press, 2012

Death, eschatology and exotic indigenous deathways have long held a privileged position in the ethnographic and popular literature on Borneo. Until the publication of this study, however, ancestors have remained a strangely neglected topic. Differing from classic ethnographic representations of ancestor worship based on Sino-African material, this volume will be not just of interest to regional specialists; it will also enrich the general anthropological theory of ancestors, kinship and religion.

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Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands

Gods, Ancestors, and Human Beings

Brigitte Faugère

University Press of Colorado, 2019

In Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands, Latin American, North American, and European researchers explore the meanings and functions of two- and three-dimensional human representations in the Precolumbian communities of the Mexican highlands. Reading these anthropomorphic representations from an ontological perspective, the contributors demonstrate the rich potential of anthropomorphic imagery to elucidate personhood, conceptions of the body, and the relationship of human beings to other entities, nature, and the cosmos.

Using case studies covering a broad span of highlands prehistory—Classic Teotihuacan divine iconography, ceramic figures in Late Formative West Mexico, Epiclassic Puebla-Tlaxcala costumed figurines, earth sculptures in Prehispanic Oaxaca, Early Postclassic Tula symbolic burials, Late Postclassic representations of Aztec Kings, and more—contributors examine both Mesoamerican representations of the body in changing social, political, and economic conditions and the multivalent emic meanings of these representations. They explore the technology of artifact production, the body’s place in social structures and rituals, the language of the body as expressed in postures and gestures, hybrid and transformative combinations of human and animal bodies, bodily representations of social categories, body modification, and the significance of portable and fixed representations.

Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands provides a wide range of insights into Mesoamerican concepts of personhood and identity, the constitution of the human body, and human relationships with gods and ancestors. It will be of great value to students and scholars of the archaeology and art history of Mexico.

Contributors: Claire Billard, Danièle Dehouve, Cynthia Kristan-Graham, Melissa Logan, Sylvie Peperstraete, Patricia Plunket, Mari Carmen Serra Puche, Juliette Testard, Andrew Turner, Gabriela Uruñuela, Marcus Winter

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Archetypes and Ancestors

Palaeontology in Victorian London, 1850-1875

Adrian Desmond

University of Chicago Press, 1982

"The social construction of scientific knowledge, clearly one of the most exciting trends in the history of science in the 1890's, has made a solid stride forward with the publication of Archetypes and Ancestors. . . . Adrian Desmond set out to determine how much light might be shed on the mid-Victorian controversies over fossil reconstruction by an investigation of the ideological commitments and political programs of London paleontologists. The answer is: a great deal of light. The resulting book is thoroughly fascinating."—Philip Rehbock, American Historical Review

"A sophisticated study of the colonization of scientific territory—specifically of rival attempts to design the dinosaur—and of the constructive (not just obstructive) role of social pressures in the making of 'lasting contributions' to science. Not least it is a joy to read, perkily irreverent at times and full of nice vignettes and memorable turns of phrase."—Roy Porter, Times Higher Education Supplement

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Greater Chaco Landscape

Ancestors, Scholarship, and Advocacy

Ruth M. Van Dyke

University Press of Colorado, 2020

Since the mid-1970s, government agencies, scholars, tribes, and private industries have attempted to navigate potential conflicts involving energy development, Chacoan archaeological study, and preservation across the San Juan Basin. The Greater Chaco Landscape examines both the imminent threat posed by energy extraction and new ways of understanding Chaco Canyon⁠ and Chaco-era great houses and associated communities from southeast Utah to west-central New Mexico in the context of landscape archaeology.

Contributors analyze many different dimensions of the Chacoan landscape and present the most effective, innovative, and respectful means of studying them, focusing on the significance of thousand-year-old farming practices; connections between early great houses outside the canyon and the rise of power inside it; changes to Chaco’s roads over time as observed in aerial imagery; rock art throughout the greater Chaco area; respectful methods of examining shrines, crescents, herraduras, stone circles, cairns, and other landscape features in collaboration with Indigenous colleagues; sensory experiences of ancient Chacoans via study of the sightlines and soundscapes of several outlier communities; and current legal, technical, and administrative challenges and options concerning preservation of the landscape.

An unusually innovative and timely volume that will be available both in print and online, with the online edition incorporating video chapters presented by Acoma, Diné, Zuni, and Hopi cultural experts filmed on location in Chaco Canyon, The Greater Chaco Landscape is a creative collaboration with Native voices that will be a case study for archaeologists and others working on heritage management issues across the globe. It will be of interest to archaeologists specializing in Chaco and the Southwest, interested in remote sensing and geophysical landscape-level investigations, and working on landscape preservation and phenomenological investigations such as viewscapes and soundscapes.

Contributors: R. Kyle Bocinsky, G. B. Cornucopia, Timothy de Smet, Sean Field, Richard A. Friedman, Dennis Gilpin, Presley Haskie, Tristan Joe, Stephen H. Lekson, Thomas Lincoln, Michael P. Marshall, Terrance Outah, Georgiana Pongyesva, Curtis Quam, Paul F. Reed, Octavius Seowtewa, Anna Sofaer, Julian Thomas, William B. Tsosie Jr., Phillip Tuwaletstiwa, Ernest M. Vallo Jr., Carla R. Van West, Ronald Wadsworth, Robert S. Weiner, Thomas C. Windes, Denise Yazzie, Eurick Yazzie

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Heirs and Ancestors

John K. Ryan

Catholic University of America Press, 2018

Among the many thinkers discussed in this volume are Sartre, Frankl, Hartshorne, Ortega, Kant, Leibniz, Descartes, John of St. Thomas, Anselm, Bonavanture, Augustine, Plotinus and Aristotle.

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The Shark God

Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in the South Pacific

Charles Montgomery

University of Chicago Press, 2007

When Charles Montgomery was ten years old, he stumbled upon the memoirs of his great-grandfather, a seafaring missionary in the South Pacific. Twenty years later and a century after that journey, entranced by the world of black magic and savagery the bishop described, Montgomery set out for Melanesia in search of the very spirits and myths his great-grandfather had sought to destroy. In The Shark God, he retraces his ancestor’s path through the far-flung islands, exploring the bond between faith and magic, the eerie persistence of the spirit world, and the heavy footprints of the British Empire.

In the South Pacific, he discovers a world of sorcery and shark worship, where Christian and pagan rituals coexist and an ordinary day is marked by confrontations with America-worshiping cult leaders and militants alike. A defiantly original blend of history and memoir, anthropology and travel writing, The Shark God is ultimately a tale of personal and political transformation.

“The Shark God, a travel story as dark and twisted as one might ever wish to hear . . . reaches a superb climax with some apocalyptically page-turning scenes.”—Guardian

“A fascinating account of the drama of Melanesian life.”—Times Literary Supplement

“With exquisite writing, Montgomery lovingly captures the beauty and the horrors, the mysteries and the shams of the people and places he visits.”—Publishers Weekly

“A very real and memorable talent. . . . The endurance [Montgomery] displayed on his travels was admirable, the adventures he survived were tremendous, and the quality of his prose seems matched only by the wisdom of his observations.”—Simon Winchester, Globe and Mail (Toronto)

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Speaking with the Ancestors

Mississippian Stone Statuary of the Tennessee-Cumberland Region

Kevin E. Smith and James V. Miller

University of Alabama Press, 2008

When European explorers began their initial forays into southeastern North America in the 16th and 17th centuries they encountered what they called temples and shrines of native peoples, often decorated with idols in human form made of wood, pottery, or stone. The idols were fascinating to write about, but having no value to explorers searching for gold or land, there are no records of these idols being transported to the Old World, and mention of them seems to cease about the 1700s. However, with the settling of the fledgling United States in the 1800s, farming colonists began to unearth stone images in human form from land formerly inhabited by the native peoples. With little access to the records of the 16th and 17th centuries, debate and speculation abounded by the public and scholars alike concerning their origin and meaning.

During the last twenty years the authors have researched over 88 possible examples of southeastern Mississippian stone statuary, dating as far back as 1,000 years ago, and discovered along the river valleys of the interior Southeast. Independently and in conjunction, they have measured, analyzed, photographed, and traced the known history of the 42 that appear in this volume. Compiling the data from both early documents and public and private collections, the authors remind us that the statuary should not be viewed in isolation, but rather as regional expressions of a much broader body of art, ritual, and belief.

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Voices from the Ancestors

Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices

Edited by Lara Medina and Martha R. Gonzales

University of Arizona Press, 2019

Voices from the Ancestors brings together the reflective writings and spiritual practices of Xicanx, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx womxn and male allies in the United States who seek to heal from the historical traumas of colonization by returning to ancestral traditions and knowledge.

This wisdom is based on the authors’ oral traditions, research, intuitions, and lived experiences—wisdom inspired by, and created from, personal trajectories on the path to spiritual conocimiento, or inner spiritual inquiry. This conocimiento has reemerged over the last fifty years as efforts to decolonize lives, minds, spirits, and bodies have advanced. Yet this knowledge goes back many generations to the time when the ancestors understood their interconnectedness with each other, with nature, and with the sacred cosmic forces—a time when the human body was a microcosm of the universe.

Reclaiming and reconstructing spirituality based on non-Western epistemologies is central to the process of decolonization, particularly in these fraught times. The wisdom offered here appears in a variety of forms—in reflective essays, poetry, prayers, specific guidelines for healing practices, communal rituals, and visual art, all meant to address life transitions and how to live holistically and with a spiritual consciousness for the challenges of the twenty-first century.

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Women and the Ancestors

BLACK CARIB KINSHIP AND RITUAL

Virginia Kerns

University of Illinois Press, 1997

     This classic study of Black
        Carib culture and its preservation through ancestral rituals organized
        by older women now includes a foreword by Constance R. Sutton and an afterword
        by the author.
      "One of the outstanding
        studies of this genre. . . . Refreshingly, the book has good photographs,
        as well as strong endnotes and bibliography, and very useful tables, figures,
        maps, and index." -- Choice
      "An outstanding contribution
        to the literature on female-centered bilateral kinship and residence."

        -- Grant D. Jones, American Ethnologist
      "A richly detailed account
        of a contemporary culture in which older women are important, valued,
        and self-respecting."
        -- Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly
      "A combination of competent
        research, interwoven themes, and an easily readable, sometimes beautifully
        evocative, prose style." -- Heather Strange, The Gerontologist

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Women's Ritual in Formative Oaxaca

Figurine-making, Divination, Death and the Ancestors

Joyce Marcus

University of Michigan Press, 1998

This book covers divination, figurine-making, and women’s ritual treatment of ancestors in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, from 1600 to 500 BC.

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