Shaman, Priest, Practice, Belief: Materials of Ritual and Religion in Eastern North America
Authors: Stephen B. Carmody; Casey R. Barrier
Publication Type: Edited volume
Abstract: Examines Native American religion and ritual in eastern North America and focuses on practices that altered and used a vast array of material items as well as how physical spaces were shaped by religious practices. Unbound to a single theoretical perspective of religion, contributors approach ritual and religion in diverse ways. Importantly, they focus on how people in the past practiced religion by altering and using a vast array of material items, from smoking pipes, ceremonial vessels, carved figurines, and iconographic images, to sacred bundles, hallucinogenic plants, revered animals, and ritual architecture. Contributors also show how physical spaces were shaped by religious practice, and how rock art, monuments, soils and special substances, and even landscapes and cityscapes were part of the active material worlds of religious agents.