Mound builders and monument makers of the northern Great Lakes, 1200-1600

"Rising above the northern Michigan landscape, prehistoric burial mounds and impressive circular earthen enclosures bear witness to the deep history of the region's ancient indigenous peoples. These mounds and earthworks have long been treated as isolated finds and have never been connected to the social dynamics of the time in which they were constructed, a period called Late Prehistory. In Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200-1600, Meghan C. L. Howey uses archaeology to make this connection. She shows how indigenous communities of the northern Great Lakes used earthen structures as gathering places for ritual and social interaction, which maintained connected egalitarian societies in the process. The first systematic examination of earthen constructions in what is today Michigan, Mound Builders and Monument Makers of the Northern Great Lakes, 1200-1600 reveals complicated indigenous histories that played out in the area before European contact. Howey's richly illustrated investigation increases our understanding of the diverse cultures and dynamic histories of the pre-Columbian ancestors of today's Great Lake tribes."--pub. desc. "Mound builder people : The varying cultures collectively called Mound Builders were prehistoric inhabitants of North America who, during a 5,000-year period, constructed various styles of earthen mounds for religious and ceremonial, burial, and elite residential purposes. These included the Pre-Columbian cultures of the Archaic period; Woodland period (Adena and Hopewell cultures); and Mississippian period; dating from roughly 3400 BCE to the 16th century CE, and living in regions of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River valley, and the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries."--Wikipedia, Feb. 2013.