Archaeology of the Iroquois

Archaeology of the Iroquois
Author: Jordan E. Kerber
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 616
Release: 2007-07-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780815631392

This timely volume offers a compilation of twenty-four articles covering a wide spectrum of topics in Iroquoian archaeology. Culled from leading publications, the pieces collectively represent the current state of knowledge and research in the field. A comprehensive research bibliography with more than 500 entries will be a key resource for specialists and non-specialists alike. Both text and bibliography are structured in five sections: Origins; Precolumbian Dynamics; Postcolumbian Dynamics; Material Culture Studies; and Contemporary Iroquois Perspectives, Repatriation, and Collaborative Archaeology. Along with seminal essays by major figures in regional archaeology, the book includes responses by Haudenosaunee writers to the political context of contemporary archaeological work. This collection will prove indispensable to scholars in all areas of Iroquois studies, students and teachers of Iroquoian archaeology, and professional and avocational archaeologists in the United States and Canada.

The Great Law and the Longhouse

The Great Law and the Longhouse
Author: William Nelson Fenton
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 816
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806130033

The Great Law, a living tradition among the conservative Iroquois, is sustained by celebrating the condolence ceremony when they mourn a dead chief and install his successor for life on good behavior. This ritual act, reaching back to the dawn of history, maintains the League of the Iroquois, the legendary form of government that gave way over time to the Iroquois Confederacy. Fenton verifies historical accounts from his own long experience of Iroquois society, so that his political ethnography extends into the twentieth century as he considers in detail the relationship between customs and events. His main argument is the remarkable continuity of Iroquois political tradition in the face of military defeat, depopulation, territorial loss, and acculturation to European technology.