Article1986

The Institutional Organization of Mississippian Religion

143 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Antiquity

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Archaeological and Geological Studies Indigenous Cultures and History Historical and Architectural Studies

Abstract

Symbolic objects for ceremonial display, or sacra, tend to be systematically related in their representational content to the cult institutions that produce and manipulate them. Cult organization is normally pluralistic among preliterate complex societies. Mississippian sacra suggest a triad of coexisting types of cult institution: (1) a communal cult type emphasizing earth/fertility and purification ritual, (2) a chiefly cult type serving to sanctify chiefly authority, and (3) a priestly cult type mediating between the other two, supervising mortuary ritual and ancestor veneration.

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References

1976The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure 1978The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure 1967Religion: An Anthropological View 1976The Southeastern Indians 2013Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa 1971Approaches to the social dimensions of mortuary practices 1978Mississippian Settlement Patterns 2007Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of the Gulf of Mexico

Cited by

1991The Ideology of Authority and the Power of the Pot 2008Ancient objects and sacred realms: interpretations of Mississippian iconography 2003Mississippian Chiefdoms: How Complex?2009The signs of the sacred: Identifying shamans using archaeological evidence 2003Mounds, Memory, and Contested Mississippian History 2003Consolidation and Hierarchy: Chiefdom Variability in the Mississippian Southeast 1997Higher ground: The archaeology of North American platform mounds

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