Prophets, Peace-Makers, and the Civilizing Process in Ancient Native North America

Tim Pauketat is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Religion, violence, and political centralization are all entangled in larger fields of human experience, perception, and agency. The latest archaeological evidence from Poverty Point in Louisiana and Hopewell in Ohio to Cahokia in Illinois indicates that complex regional orders in ancient eastern North America arose as political-religious movements, probably based around prophets not unlike those known from historic accounts across North America. Such views hinge on understanding agency as a dispersed phenomenon and history as a physical experience. And they lead us to elevate singular events or encounters as historic phenomena that afford prophetic movements in the first place.

Professor Pauketat’s talk will be followed by a reception in HSSB 2024.