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The Institutional Organization of Mississippian Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Vernon James Knight Jr.
Vernon James Knight Jr.*
Affiliation:
Office of Archaeological Research, University of Alabama, University, AL 35486
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Abstract

Symbolic objects for ceremonial display, or sacra, tend to be systematically related in their representational content to the cult institutions that produce and manipulate them. Cult organization is normally pluralistic among preliterate complex societies. Mississippian sacra suggest a triad of coexisting types of cult institution: (1) a communal cult type emphasizing earth/fertility and purification ritual, (2) a chiefly cult type serving to sanctify chiefly authority, and (3) a priestly cult type mediating between the other two, supervising mortuary ritual and ancestor veneration.

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Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , October 1986 , pp. 675 - 687
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1986

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References

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