front cover of Cahokia's Complexities
Cahokia's Complexities
Ceremonies and Politics of the First Mississippian Farmers
Susan M. Alt
University of Alabama Press, 2018
Critical new discoveries and archaeological patterns increase understanding of early Mississippian culture and society

The reasons for the rise and fall of early cities and ceremonial centers around the world have been sought for centuries. In the United States, Cahokia has been the focus of intense archaeological work to explain its mysteries. Cahokia was the first and exponentially the largest of the Mississippian centers that appeared across the Midwest and Southeast after AD 1000. Located near present-day East St. Louis, Illinois, the central complex of Cahokia spanned more than 12 square kilometers and encompassed more than 120 earthen mounds.

As one of the foremost experts on Cahokia, Susan M. Alt addresses long-standing considerations of eastern Woodlands archaeology—the beginnings, character, and ending of Mississippian culture (AD 1050–1600)—from a novel theoretical and empirical vantage point. Through this case study on farmers’ immigration and resettling, Alt’s narrative reanalyzes the relationship between administration and diversity, incorporating critical new discoveries and archaeological patterns from outside of Cahokia.

Alt examines the cultural landscape of the Cahokia flood plain and the layout of one extraordinary upland site, Grossman, as an administrative settlement where local farmers might have seen or participated in Cahokian rituals and ceremonies involving a web of ancestors, powers, and places. Alt argues that a farming district outside the center provides definitive evidences of the attempted centralized administration of a rural hinterland.
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front cover of The Ceremonies Of Longing
The Ceremonies Of Longing
Sandra Kohler
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003
Winner of the 2002 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry

In a poetic voice that is at once reflective and lively, Sandra Kohler explores the patterns of everyday life and the inner drama of imagination. Though these poems are mostly set amidst the familiarity of a suburban household and the family garden, this environment appears far from mundane as Kohler peels away the veneer of domestic tranquility to reveal a world busy with human passion and the rhythms of the earth. Nature is present at every turn, an ethereal twin, as the narrator’s emotions take the form of cardinals in flight, a rushing river, or a potato sprouting from the dark.
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front cover of Ceremonies Of The Damned
Ceremonies Of The Damned
Poems
Adrian C. Louis
University of Nevada Press, 1997
The world of acclaimed Native American poet Adrian Louis is harsh and full of pain—the blizzard-blasted plains and dusty towns of the northern Midwest, the hopeless barrenness of the Reservation, and a bleak interior world of loss, illness, and despair. Louis’s poems bring us to a place where ghosts hitchhike and the traditional pow-wow becomes an affirmation of bitter survival, where the lives of the young end too often in acts of meaningless self-destruction, and where his own existence becomes a daily battle with his cherished wife’s decline into the dementia of Alzheimer’s disease. Louis is a writer of extraordinary courage and skill, and these powerful, moving poems, wrested from the harsh experience of the Rez and his own lonely struggle with a merciless illness, will awe their readers with their brilliance and desperate humanity.
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Florentine Codex
Book 2: Book 2: The Ceremonies
Bernardino de Sahagun
University of Utah Press, 1981

Two of the world’s leading scholars of the Aztec language and culture have translated Sahagún’s monumental and encyclopedic study of native life in Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest. This immense undertaking is the first complete translation into any language of Sahagún’s Nahuatl text, and represents one of the most distinguished contributions in the fields of anthropology, ethnography, and linguistics.

Written between 1540 and 1585, the Florentine Codex (so named because the manuscript has been part of the Laurentian Library’s collections since at least 1791) is the most authoritative statement we have of the Aztecs’ lifeways and traditions—a rich and intimate yet panoramic view of a doomed people.

The Florentine Codex is divided by subject area into twelve books and includes over 2,000 illustrations drawn by Nahua artists in the sixteenth century.

Book Two gives comprehensive accounts of the religious ceremonies and days of feasting during the time of the Aztecs, including prayers, songs, and the duties and roles of Aztecs inside the temples during the ceremonies. This book also details the various tributes and sacrifices given to specific gods.

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front cover of Rituals and Ceremonies in Popular Culture
Rituals and Ceremonies in Popular Culture
Edited by Ray B. Browne
University of Wisconsin Press, 1980
This collection of essays examines various rituals and ceremonies in American popular culture, including architecture, religion, television viewing, humor, eating, and dancing.
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Traditional Navajo Teachings
Sacred Narratives and Ceremonies
Robert S. McPherson
University Press of Colorado, 2020
"The books should be required reading for anyone who comes to teach, practice medicine or work on the Navajo Nation in any capacity- as well as young Navajos who seek a deeper understanding of their culture."
—Cindy Yurth, The Navajo Times

"In Sacred Narratives and Ceremonies, the authors lay the foundation of traditional Navajo beliefs and practices. They provide an inside perspective rarely discussed by non-medicine people and share the beauty and power of a system that unites humans to the holy beings—through teachings, rituals, materials, and daily behavior. This book is pure gold. It is full of traditional wisdom available to those wanting to understand Navajo culture as seen through the eyes of its elders. I highly recommend this book as a treasure trove for the Diné people."
—Clayton Long, participant/creator of the Navajo Rosetta Stone; Bilingual Education Director (retired), San Juan School District, Utah; and curriculum developer for the Navajo Nation
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With Good Heart
Yaqui Beliefs and Ceremonies in Pascua Village
Muriel Thayer Painter
University of Arizona Press, 1986
Muriel Painter's account of Yaqui beliefs and ceremonies is based on her firsthand observations over the course of four decades. By the time Painter died in 1974, she was as familiar with Yaqui culture as on outsider could be and left behind the manuscript from which this volume arose. It was reviewed before the original publication in 1986 by a Yaqui committee and edited for publication by Edward Spicer.
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