A Comparison of Formative Cultures in the Americas: Diffusion or the Psychic Unity of Man

Description

Author: Ford, James A.  (1911-1968)

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press

Pub Date: 1969

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fair.  Ex-library.  Binding tight, but wearing.  No tears.  Some pencil marks throughout.  Without dust jacket, as issued.  Library check-out card in pocket on ffep.  Library stamps on front and rear pastedowns, on lower edge of title page.  Library tag on spine has been removed, leaving tape marks on spine and front and rear boards.  Scuffing, scratching to rear board.  Wear to head and foot of spine.   All corners bumped.  Edge wear.  Includes 14 fold-outs.

Notes: Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology Volume II.  Conference papers.  “Formative” is the key concept here.  Defined as “…the earliest appearance of sedentary village life based on agriculture, and early cultural phases of North, Middle, and South America as described in terms of how well they conform to the definition….For present purposes there are two major defects in this definition.  Both in the Mexican highlands and on the Peruvian coast, agriculture was practiced many centuries before such commonly accepted Formative traits as ceramics and polished stone tools came on the scene…The second defect is that seemingly the earliest ceramics were not made by agricultural people at all.  Initially they were manufactured by and spread by coastal groups who subsisted principally on shellfish.  The marriage of agriculture and ceramics seems to have taken place halfway through the 3000-year long Formative in Andean South America, about 2000 B.C. in Mesoamerica, and probably not until 1000 to 500 B.C. in the southeastern United States…For theses reasons it is preferable to define the Formative more loosely as the 3000 years (or less in some regions) during which the elements of ceramics, ground stone tools, handmade figurines, and manioc and maize agriculture were being diffused and welded in the socioeconomic life of the people living in the region extending from Peru to the eastern United States.”  (From the Introduction)  Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Georgia, Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru.  Psychic unity, my foot.