The Eastern Archaic, Historicized - 9780759106796

"A stimulating and provocative synthesis of the Eastern Archaic, filled with ideas that challenge traditional perspectives while simultaneously offering new ways of thinking about and reporting on the regional archaeological record. Refreshingly original, the perspectives advanced will shape much research in the decades to come. Whether you agree with Sassaman's arguments or not, this book will change the way you think about eastern North American prehistory."ùDavid G. Anderson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

"Sassaman's book is a provocative and refreshing synthesis of the Archaic of eastern North America. It is sweeping in its coverage and well written throughout. Taking new data and reanalyzing old information, Sassaman rescues the Archaic from the constraints of cultural history and cultural ecology. In their place he constructs a dynamic universe where history matters and where populations interact with one another over large areas and across vast sweeps of time. The book brings alive the Archaic in a way never done before."ùT.R. Kidder, Washington University in St. Louis

The Eastern Archaic, Historicized offers an alternative perspective of the genesis, transformation, and cultural diversity of hunter-gatherers dwelling in eastern North America over eight millennia. For many decades, archaeological understanding of Archaic diversity has been dominated by an emphasis on localized relationships between humans and the environment. Evidence shows, however, that Archaic people routinely associated with other groups throughout eastern North America and expressed themselves materially in ways that reveal historical links to other places and times. Starting with the colonization of eastern North America by two distinct ancestral lines, the Eastern Archaic was an era of migrations, ethnogenesis, and coalescenceùan 8,200-year era of making histories through interactions and expressing them culturally in ritual and performance.