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by Heather A. Lapham (Editor), Gregory A. Waselkov (Editor)
Highlighting the role of bears in Indigenous societies of North America
These essays draw on zooarchaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic evidence from nearly 300 archaeological sites from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico. Contributors explore the ways bears have been treated as something akin to another kind of human--in the words of anthropologist Irving Hallowell, "other than human persons"--in Algonquian, Cherokee, Iroquois, Meskwaki, Creek, and many other Native cultures. Case studies focus on bear imagery in Native art and artifacts; the religious and economic significance of bears and bear products such as meat, fat, oil, and pelts; bears in Native worldviews, kinship systems, and cosmologies; and the use of bears as commodities in transatlantic trade.
The case studies in Bears demonstrate that bears were not only a source of food, but were also religious, economic, and political icons within Indigenous cultures. This volume convincingly portrays the black bear as one of the most socially significant species in Native eastern North America.
Contributors: Ralph
Koziarski Megan C. Kassabaum Louis-Vincent Laperrière-Désorcy J. Lynn
Funkhouser Heather A. Lapham Hannah O'Regan Christian St-Pierre David
Mather DR Tanya M. Peres Claire St-Germain Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman Heather
Altman Terrance Joseph Martin Thomas Berres J. Matthew Compton Ashley
Peles Gregory A. Waselkov
A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Author Biography
Heather
A. Lapham is
associate director of the Research Laboratories of Archaeology and adjunct
associate professor of archaeology and anthropology at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Hunting for Hides: Deerskins,
Status, and Cultural Change in the Protohistoric Appalachians. Gregory A. Waselkov is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of South Alabama. His many books include A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813-1814.
