Ancient Mexican Art at Dumbarton Oaks

Ancient Mexican Art at Dumbarton Oaks PDF Author: Dumbarton Oaks
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection
ISBN: 9780884023456
Category : Art, Mexican
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume presents the collection of Aztec, Mixtec, Zapotec, Teotihuacan, and Classic Veracruz sculpture, jewelry, and painting. Four leading scholars present essays on the ancient art and archaeology of Mexico's Central Highlands, Southwestern Highlands, and Gulf Lowlands as well as extensive catalogue entries of over one hundred objects.

Ancient Mexican Art at Dumbarton Oaks

Ancient Mexican Art at Dumbarton Oaks PDF Author: Dumbarton Oaks
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection
ISBN: 9780884023456
Category : Art, Mexican
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume presents the collection of Aztec, Mixtec, Zapotec, Teotihuacan, and Classic Veracruz sculpture, jewelry, and painting. Four leading scholars present essays on the ancient art and archaeology of Mexico's Central Highlands, Southwestern Highlands, and Gulf Lowlands as well as extensive catalogue entries of over one hundred objects.

Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks

Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks PDF Author: Karl A. Taube
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks
ISBN: 9780884022756
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks presents the Olmec portion of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art. It illustrates all thirty-nine Olmec art objects in color plates and includes many complementary and comparative black-and-white illustrations and drawings. The body of Pre-Columbian art that Robert Bliss carefully assembled over a half-century between 1912 and 1963, amplified only slightly since his death, is a remarkably significant collection. In addition to their aesthetic quality and artistic significance, the objects hold much information regarding the social worlds and religious and symbolic views of the people who made and used them before the arrival of Europeans in the New World. This volume is the second in a series of catalogues that will treat objects in the Bliss Pre-Columbian Collection. The majority of the Olmec objects in the collection are made of jade, the most precious material for the peoples of ancient Mesoamerica from early times through the sixteenth century. Various items such as masks, statuettes, jewelry, and replicas of weapons and tools were used for ceremonial purposes and served as offerings. Karl Taube brings his expertise on the lifeways and beliefs of ancient Mesoamerican peoples to his study of the Olmec objects in teh Bliss collection. His understanding of jade covers a broad range of knowledge from chemical compositions to geological sources to craft technology to the symbolic power of the green stone. Throughout the book the author emphasizes the role of jade as a powerful symbol of water, fertility, and particularly, of the maize plant which was the fundamental source of life and sustenance for the Olmec. The shiny green of the stone was analogous to the green growth of maize. This fundamental concept was elaborated in specific religious beliefs, many of which were continued and elaborated by later Mesoamerican peoples, such as the Maya. Karl Taube employs his substantial knowledge of Pre-Columbian cultures to explore and explicate Olmec symbolism in this catalogue.

Classic Period Cultural Currents in Southern and Central Veracruz

Classic Period Cultural Currents in Southern and Central Veracruz PDF Author: Philip J. Arnold
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
This book explores the diverse traditions and dynamic interactions along the Mexican Gulf lowlands at the height of their cultural florescence. These cultures served as a critical nexus between the civilizations of highland Mexico and the lowland Maya, influencing developments in both regions.

Merchants, Markets, and Exchange in the Pre-Columbian World

Merchants, Markets, and Exchange in the Pre-Columbian World PDF Author: Kenn Hirth
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection
ISBN: 9780884023869
Category : Indians of Central America
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This title examines the structure, scale and complexity of economic systems in the pre-Hispanic Americas, with a focus on the central highlands of Mexico, the Maya Lowlands and the central Andes.

An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs

An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs PDF Author: Sylvanus Griswold Morley
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465582436
Category : Maya calendar
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description


Golden Kingdoms

Golden Kingdoms PDF Author: Joanne Pillsbury
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606065483
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This volume accompanies a major international loan exhibition featuring more than three hundred works of art, many rarely or never before seen in the United States. It traces the development of gold working and other luxury arts in the Americas from antiquity until the arrival of Europeans in the early sixteenth century. Presenting spectacular works from recent excavations in Peru, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico, this exhibition focuses on specific places and times—crucibles of innovation—where artistic exchange, rivalry, and creativity led to the production of some of the greatest works of art known from the ancient Americas. The book and exhibition explore not only artistic practices but also the historical, cultural, social, and political conditions in which luxury arts were produced and circulated, alongside their religious meanings and ritual functions. Golden Kingdoms creates new understandings of ancient American art through a thematic exploration of indigenous ideas of value and luxury. Central to the book is the idea of the exchange of materials and ideas across regions and across time: works of great value would often be transported over long distances, or passed down over generations, in both cases attracting new audiences and inspiring new artists. The idea of exchange is at the intellectual heart of this volume, researched and written by twenty scholars based in the United States and Latin America.

Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks

Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks PDF Author: Dumbarton Oaks
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection
ISBN: 9780884023753
Category : Maya art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This introduction to Maya art is based on study of one of the most important collections in the United States, assembled by Robert Woods Bliss between 1935 and 1962. The catalogue, written by leading Maya scholars, contains detailed analyses of specific works of art along with thematic essays situating them within the context of Maya culture.

The Art of Urbanism

The Art of Urbanism PDF Author: William Leonard Fash
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780884023449
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
The Art of Urbanism explores how the royal courts of powerful Mesoamerican centers represented their kingdoms in architectural, iconographic, and cosmological terms. Through an investigation of the ecological contexts and environmental opportunities of urban centers, the contributors consider how ancient Mesoamerican cities defined themselves and reflected upon their physicalâe"and metaphysicalâe"place via their built environment. Themes in the volume include the ways in which a kingdomâe(tm)s public monuments were fashioned to reflect geographic space, patron gods, and mythology, and how the Olmec, Maya, Mexica, Zapotecs, and others sought to center their world through architectural monuments and public art. This collection of papers addresses how communities leveraged their environment and built upon their cultural and historical roots as well as the ways that the performance of calendrical rituals and other public events tied individuals and communities to both urban centers and hinterlands. Twenty-three scholars from archaeology, anthropology, art history, and religious studies contribute new data and new perspectives to the understanding of ancient Mesoamericansâe(tm) own view of their spectacular urban and ritual centers.

Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests

Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests PDF Author: Gabrielle Vail
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780884023463
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
This book examines evidence for cultural interchange among the intellectual powerbrokers in Postclassic Mesoamerica, specifically those centered in the northern Maya lowlands and the central Mexican highlands. It includes a wealth of new data and interpretive frameworks in a comprehensive discussion of a critical time period in Mesoamerica.

A Sourcebook of Nasca Ceramic Iconography

A Sourcebook of Nasca Ceramic Iconography PDF Author: Donald A. Proulx
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 9781587298295
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
For almost eight hundred years (100 BC–AD 650) Nasca artists modeled and painted the plants, animals, birds, and fish of their homeland on Peru’s south coast as well as numerous abstract anthropomorphic creatures whose form and meaning are sometimes incomprehensible today. In this first book-length treatment of Nasca ceramic iconography to appear in English, drawing upon an archive of more than eight thousand Nasca vessels from over 150 public and private collections, Donald Proulx systematically describes the major artistic motifs of this stunning polychrome pottery, interprets the major themes displayed on this pottery, and then uses these descriptions and his stimulating interpretations to analyze Nasca society. After beginning with an overview of Nasca culture and an explanation of the style and chronology of Nasca pottery, Proulx moves to the heart of his book: a detailed classification and description of the entire range of supernatural and secular themes in Nasca iconography along with a fresh and distinctive interpretation of these themes. Linking the pots and their iconography to the archaeologically known Nasca society, he ends with a thorough and accessible examination of this ancient culture viewed through the lens of ceramic iconography. Although these static images can never be fully understood, by animating their themes and meanings Proulx reconstructs the lifeways of this complex society.