Ancient Maya Relief Sculpture

Ancient Maya Relief Sculpture PDF Author: Merle Greene
Publisher: Museum of Primitive Art & Culture
ISBN: 9780300085556
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
A selection of rubbings taken by Merle Greene from outstanding Maya monuments, primarily of the classic period.

Ancient Maya Relief Sculpture

Ancient Maya Relief Sculpture PDF Author: Merle Greene
Publisher: Museum of Primitive Art & Culture
ISBN: 9780300085556
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
A selection of rubbings taken by Merle Greene from outstanding Maya monuments, primarily of the classic period.

Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture at Piedras Negras, Guatemala

Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture at Piedras Negras, Guatemala PDF Author: Megan E. O'Neil
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806188367
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Now shrouded in Guatemalan jungle, the ancient Maya city of Piedras Negras flourished between the sixth and ninth centuries, when its rulers erected monumental limestone sculptures carved with hieroglyphic texts and images of themselves and family members, advisers, and captives. In Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, Megan E. O’Neil offers new ways to understand these stelae, altars, and panels by exploring how ancient Maya people interacted with them. These monuments, considered sacred, were one of the community’s important forms of cultural and religious expression. Stelae may have held the essence of rulers they commemorated, and the objects remained loci for reverence of those rulers after they died. Using a variety of evidence,O’Neil examines how the forms, compositions, and contexts of the sculptures invited people to engage with them and the figures they embodied looks at these monuments not as inert bearers of images but as palpable presences that existed in real space at specific historical moments. Her analysis brings to the fore the material and affective force of these powerful objects that were seen, touched, and manipulated in the past. O’Neil investigates the monuments not only at the moment of their creation but also in later years and shows how they changed over time. She argues that the relationships among sculptures of different generations were performed in processions, through which ancient Maya people integrated historical dialogues and ancestral commemoration into the landscape. With the help of more than 160 illustrations, O’Neil reveals these sculptures’ continuing life histories, which in the past century have included their fragmentation and transformation into commodities sold on the international art market. Shedding light on modern-day transposition and display of these ancient monuments, O’Neil’s study contributes to ongoing discussions of cultural patrimony.

Ancient Maya Relief Sculpture: Rubbings

Ancient Maya Relief Sculpture: Rubbings PDF Author: Merle Greene Robertson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Indian sculpture
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Maya Sculpture of Copán

Maya Sculpture of Copán PDF Author: Claude F. Baudez
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 080615361X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Copán, one of the most important Classic Maya sites, is renowned for the artistry of its high-relief stelae and altars and for the wealth of detail on its freestanding and architectural sculpture. In Maya Sculpture of Copán: The Iconography, internationally known Mayanist Claude-François Baudez provides a masterful survey of these elaborate and intriguing carved images. In Part I, Baudez identifies and deciphers the specific motifs on each monument and shows how the elements were combined to produce meaningful iconographic messages. The architectural sculpture expresses the meaning and function of the buildings and complexes, many designed to represent the sky, earth, and underworld and to serve as stages for rituals. Photographs and drawings clarify the intricate forms. Part II relates the iconography to the religion and politics of the city-state. Baudez traces the evolution of the motifs in relation to the history of Copán and the multiple functions of the king—his cosmic role, the continuous reference to his ancestors, and the dynastic cycles. Sacrifice—bloodletting by the king and the sacrifice of captives—is of paramount importance. Growth and rebirth required constant offerings of blood to the earth and to the sun, to ensure its rebirth at dawn after its nocturnal journey through the underworld. The monuments give a coherent picture of Maya cosmology.

To Be Like Gods

To Be Like Gods PDF Author: Matthew G. Looper
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029277818X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Winner, Association for Latin American Art Book Award, 2010 The Maya of Mexico and Central America have performed ritual dances for more than two millennia. Dance is still an essential component of religious experience today, serving as a medium for communication with the supernatural. During the Late Classic period (AD 600-900), dance assumed additional importance in Maya royal courts through an association with feasting and gift exchange. These performances allowed rulers to forge political alliances and demonstrate their control of trade in luxury goods. The aesthetic values embodied in these performances were closely tied to Maya social structure, expressing notions of gender, rank, and status. Dance was thus not simply entertainment, but was fundamental to ancient Maya notions of social, religious, and political identity. Using an innovative interdisciplinary approach, Matthew Looper examines several types of data relevant to ancient Maya dance, including hieroglyphic texts, pictorial images in diverse media, and architecture. A series of case studies illustrates the application of various analytical methodologies and offers interpretations of the form, meaning, and social significance of dance performance. Although the nuances of movement in Maya dances are impossible to recover, Looper demonstrates that a wealth of other data survives which allows a detailed consideration of many aspects of performance. To Be Like Gods thus provides the first comprehensive interpretation of the role of dance in ancient Maya society and also serves as a model for comparative research in the archaeology of performance.

A Maya Universe in Stone

A Maya Universe in Stone PDF Author: Stephen Houston
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606067451
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
The first study devoted to a single sculptor in ancient America, as understood through four unprovenanced masterworks traced to a small sector of Guatemala. In 1950, Dana Lamb, an explorer of some notoriety, stumbled on a Maya ruin in the tropical forests of northern Guatemala. Lamb failed to record the location of the site he called Laxtunich, turning his find into the mystery at the center of this book. The lintels he discovered there, long since looted, are probably of a set with two others that are among the masterworks of Maya sculpture from the Classic period. Using fieldwork, physical evidence, and Lamb’s expedition notes, the authors identify a small area with archaeological sites where the carvings were likely produced. Remarkably, the vividly colored lintels, replete with dynastic and cosmic information, can be assigned to a carver, Mayuy, who sculpted his name on two of them. To an extent nearly unique in ancient America, Mayuy can be studied over time as his style developed and his artistic ambition grew. An in-depth analysis of Laxtunich Lintel 1 examines how Mayuy grafted celestial, seasonal, and divine identities onto a local magnate and his overlord from the kingdom of Yaxchilan, Mexico. This volume contextualizes the lintels and points the way to their reprovenancing and, as an ultimate aim, repatriation to Guatemala.

The Mesoamerican Ballgame

The Mesoamerican Ballgame PDF Author: Vernon L. Scarborough
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816513604
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
The Precolumbian ballgame, played on a masonry court, has long intrigued scholars because of the magnificence of its archaeological remains. From its lowland Maya origins it spread throughout the Aztec empire, where the game was so popular that sixteen thousand rubber balls were imported annually into Tenochtitlan. It endured for two thousand years, spreading as far as to what is now southern Arizona. This new collection of essays brings together research from field archaeology, mythology, and Maya hieroglyphic studies to illuminate this important yet puzzling aspect of Native American culture. The authors demonstrate that the game was more than a spectator sport; serving social, political, mythological, and cosmological functions, it celebrated both fertility and the afterlife, war and peace, and became an evolving institution functioning in part to resolve conflict within and between groups. The contributors provide complete coverage of the archaeological, sociopolitical, iconographic, and ideological aspects of the game, and offer new information on the distribution of ballcourts, new interpretations of mural art, and newly perceived relations of the game with material in the Popol Vuh. With its scholarly attention to a subject that will fascinate even general readers, The Mesoamerican Ballgame is a major contribution to the study of the mental life and outlook of New World peoples.

Sculpture in the Ancient Maya Plaza

Sculpture in the Ancient Maya Plaza PDF Author: Flora S. Clancy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The free-standing monuments which adorned the Early Classic plazas of the ancient Mayan cities were carved with exquisite relief sculpture. It is the latter which forms the main concern of this book. Drawing on detailed examination of the art pieces themselves, Clancy discusses their composition, carving techniques, imagery, text and attempts to reconstruct the decision-making process associated with their design, creation and unveiling. With many illustrations.

Maya Relief Sculpture Regional Styles and Community Identity at Copán, Palenque and Yaxchilan

Maya Relief Sculpture Regional Styles and Community Identity at Copán, Palenque and Yaxchilan PDF Author: Jan McHargue
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Maya sculpture
Languages : en
Pages : 632

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Book Description


Popol Vuh

Popol Vuh PDF Author:
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684818450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
One of the most extraordinary works of the human imagination and the most important text in the native languages of the Americas, Popul Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life was first made accessible to the public 10 years ago. This new edition retains the quality of the original translation, has been enriched, and includes 20 new illustrations, maps, drawings, and photos.