Abstract
The reasons religions change and the processes by which those changes occur may be explored through the study of ritual. Here those issues are examined in the context of late prehistoric Mississippian societies (AD 900–1600) in the southeastern United States, specifically within the realm of Etowah, which was one of the preeminent political and religious centers of the region. A progression of changes in both the physical form of smoking pipes and their contexts of discovery reveals how the rite was differently controlled and performed in accordance with varying social, political, and economic circumstances.
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Acknowledgements
This work is derived from my 2012 Ph.D. dissertation and I must always recognize the support and guidance I received from faculty, staff, and fellow students in the Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia. I am also grateful for the dogged persistence and vision of this volume’s editors, Beth Bollwerk and Shannon Tushingham; without them, the publication would not exist. Finally, I appreciate the work of Kelly Teboe in preparing the pipe illustrations in this chapter.
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Blanton, D.B. (2016). Evolution of a Ritual: Pipes and Smoking in Etowah’s Realm. In: Bollwerk, E.A., Tushingham, S. (eds) Perspectives on the Archaeology of Pipes, Tobacco and other Smoke Plants in the Ancient Americas. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23552-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23552-3_6
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