Ground in Stone: Landscape, Social Identity, and Ritual Space on the High Plains

(Hardback)

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In Ground in Stone: Landscape, Social Identity, and Ritual Space on the High Plains, Elizabeth Lynch examines the insights and challenges of bedrock ground stone research in archaeological inquiry. Ground in Stone includes analyses of case studies to illustrate field data collection techniques as well as the rich social lives of ground in stone on the Chaquaqua Plateau. Lynch argues that the bedrock features in southeastern Colorado offer valuable insight into the archaeology of the High Plains because they are spaces where people gathered to craft important productsfood, tools, and art. In doing so, these places anchored human movement to the landscape and became integral to story-telling and cultural lifeways.

Reviews

In Ground in Stone: Landscape, Social Identity, and Ritual Space on the High Plains, Elizabeth Lynch masterfully explains the process of recording bedrock grinding features and demonstrates how bedrock features are integrated into a socialized landscape. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in bedrock research.

This book is, as Lynch notes, a study in the dynamics of human cultural behavior, environment, and technology. Bedrock ground stone features can no longer be regarded as mere features on rocks but as identifiable spaces that exist in peoples minds as well as on the landscape where cultural processes were reproduced and ritualized.

Author Bio

Elizabeth Lynch is post-doctoral researcher with the Hell Gap National Historic Landmark Digital Archives Project at the University of Wyoming.