Signs of Power The Rise of Cultural Complexity in the Southeast

By focusing on the first instances of mound building, pottery making, and the widespread exchange of polished or chipped stone and bone tools, this book explores the sources of power and organization among Archaic societies. In Signs of Power, regional specialists seek to identify the conditions, causes, and consequences of Archaic socipolitical organization and complexity. Sometimes referred to as "big mound power," these considerations include the role of demography, kinship, and ecology in sociocultural change; the meaning of geometry and design in sacred constructions; the social implications of particular stone and bone objects; the relationship between reciprocity and mound building; the meaning of shell ring size and shape on social inequality; and the bearing of long-distance exchange on organization. Throughout the book, authors wrestle with the issue of how materiality and organizational complexity are related. Book jacket.Gibson, Jon is the author of 'Signs of Power The Rise of Cultural Complexity in the Southeast', published 2004 under ISBN 9780817350857 and ISBN 0817350853.