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The Legacy of Mesoamerica

Author: Robert M. Carmack
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317346793
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
The Legacy of Mesoamerica: History and Culture of a Native American Civilization summarizes and integrates information on the origins, historical development, and current situations of the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. It describes their contributions from the development of Mesoamerican Civilization through 20th century and their influence in the world community. For courses on Mesoamerica (Middle America) taught in departments of anthropology, history, and Latin American Studies.

Heart of Creation

Author: Andrea Joyce Stone
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817311386
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
This accessible, state-of-the-art review of Mayan hieroglyphics and cosmology also serves as a tribute to one of the field's most noted pioneers. The core of this book focuses on the current study of Mayan hieroglyphics as inspired by the recently deceased Mayanist Linda Schele. As author or coauthor of more than 200 books or articles on the Maya, Schele served as the chief disseminator of knowledge to the general public about this ancient Mesoamerican culture, similar to the way in which Margaret Mead introduced anthropology and the people of Borneo to the English-speaking world. Twenty-five contributors offer scholarly writings on subjects ranging from the ritual function of public space at the Olmec site and the gardens of the Great Goddess at Teotihuacan to the understanding of Jupiter in Maya astronomy and the meaning of the water throne of Quirigua Zoomorph P. The workshops on Maya history and writing that Schele conducted in Guatemala and Mexico for the highland people, modern descendants of the Mayan civilization, are thoroughly addressed as is the phenomenon termed "Maya mania"—the explosive growth of interest in Maya epigraphy, iconography, astronomy, and cosmology that Schele stimulated. An appendix provides a bibliography of Schele's publications and a collection of Scheleana, written memories of "the Rabbit Woman" by some of her colleagues and students. Of interest to professionals as well as generalists, this collection will stand as a marker of the state of Mayan studies at the turn of the 21st century and as a tribute to the remarkable personality who guided a large part of that archaeological research for more than two decades.

Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica

Author: Paloma Martinez-Cruz
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816538506
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Paloma Martinez-Cruz argues that the medicine traditions of Mesoamerican women constitute a hemispheric intellectual lineage that continues to thrive despite the legacy of colonization. Martinez-Cruz asserts that indigenous and mestiza women healers are custodians of a knowledge base that remains virtually uncharted. The few works looking at the knowledge of women in Mesoamerica generally examine only the written—even academic—world, accessible only to the most elite segments of (customarily male) society. These works have consistently excluded the essential repertoire and performed knowledge of women who think and work in ways other than the textual. And while two of the book’s chapters critique contemporary novels, Martinez-Cruz also calls for the exploration of non-textual knowledge transmission. In this regard, the book's goals and methods are close to those of performance scholarship and anthropology, and these methods reveal Mesoamerican women to be public intellectuals. In Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica, fieldwork and ethnography combine to reveal women healers as models of agency. Her multidisciplinary approach allows Martinez-Cruz to disrupt Euro-based intellectual hegemony and to make a case for the epistemic authority of Native women. Written from a Chicana perspective, this study is learned, personal, and engaging for anyone who is interested in the wisdom that prevailing analytical cultures have deemed “unintelligible.” As it turns out, those who are unacquainted with the sometimes surprising extent and depth of wisdom of indigenous women healers simply haven’t been looking in the right places—outside the texts from which they have been consistently excluded.

Archaeometallurgy in Mesoamerica

Author: Aaron N. Shugar
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607322102
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Presenting the latest in archaeometallurgical research in a Mesoamerican context, Archaeometallurgy in Mesoamerica brings together up-to-date research from the most notable scholars in the field. These contributors analyze data from a variety of sites, examining current approaches to the study of archaeometallurgy in the region as well as new perspectives on the significance metallurgy and metal objects had in the lives of its ancient peoples. The chapters are organized following the cyclical nature of metals--beginning with extracting and mining ore, moving to smelting and casting of finished objects, and ending with recycling and deterioration back to the original state once the object is no longer in use. Data obtained from archaeological investigations, ethnohistoric sources, ethnographic studies, along with materials science analyses, are brought to bear on questions related to the integration of metallurgy into local and regional economies, the sacred connotations of copper objects, metallurgy as specialized crafting, and the nature of mining, alloy technology, and metal fabrication.

The Legacy of Mesoamerica

Author: Robert M. Carmack
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781138403772
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Golden Kingdoms

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.

Aztec Civilization

Author: Hourly History
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
Discover the remarkable history of the Aztec Civilization...The Aztec Empire dominated Mesoamerica for a relatively short time-less than one hundred years-but it is remembered today more than other ancient cultures in the region which sustained for much longer. Partly that is because this was a relatively recent culture which was widely reported by the first Europeans to make contact with it. Another one of the reasons is because the Aztecs have become indelibly associated with human sacrifice. The sheer scale of these rituals caused horror and fascination in the first Europeans to encounter it. Anything up to eighty thousand victims may have been brutally killed during a single religious festival, and up to a quarter of a million people may have been sacrificed each year of Aztec rule. The seemingly insatiable need for victims to placate the Aztec gods even led to wars whose purpose was not conquest or plunder but obtaining sacrificial victims. Yet there was a great deal more to the Aztecs than human sacrifice. These people created a complex society and one of the largest cities in the world. They developed a sophisticated set of laws and made notable advances in astronomy and agriculture. In the course of less than one hundred years, the Aztecs came to dominate Mesoamerica and created an empire which looked set to continue for a very long time indeed. Then the first Spanish conquistadors arrived, and within less than two years, the Aztec Empire had been completely destroyed. This is the story of the rise and fall of the Aztec Empire. Discover a plethora of topics such as Origins The Creation of Tenochtitlan Aztec Weapons and Warfare The Triple Alliance The City of Tenochtitlan The Spanish Conquest And much more! So if you want a concise and informative book on the Aztec Civilization, simply scroll up and click the "Buy now" button for instant access!

The Huasteca

Author: Katherine A. Faust
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806149574
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
In The Huasteca: Culture, History, and Interregional Exchange, a range of authorities on art, history, archaeology, and cultural anthropology bring long-overdue attention to the region’s rich contributions to the pre-Columbian world. They also assess how the Huasteca fared from colonial times to the present. The authors call critical, even urgent attention to a region highly significant to Mesoamerican history but long neglected by scholars.

Quetzalcoatl

Author: Ernesto Novato
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781077874022
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading Gilgamesh, Hercules, Aeneas, and Lancelot are instantly recognized as mythological heroes in the West, evoking visions of Persian monsters, ghastly labors, and the founding and glorification of cities, but the name Quetzalcoatl is as mysterious as its spelling. Even those who have come across his name when learning about the history of Mesoamerica - particularly the Aztec and the god's role in the Spanish conquest of their empire - are often unaware that the Mesoamerican deity has tales that equal any of those in the repertoire of the mythological figures mentioned above, and the tale of his transmission into modern times is no less fascinating. As archaeologists quickly learned, there are numerous temples dedicated to Quetzalcoatl all across Mesoamerica. From the Aztec to the Maya, Quetzalcoatl - the Feathered Serpent - rears his beautiful head from magnificent relief carvings in temples no less grandiose than the largest pyramid in the region, that of Cholula in Mexico. Furthermore, thousands of people still gather in the great Mayan city of Chichén Itzá during the spring and autumn equinoxes to watch the shadow of the Feathered Serpent slither its way down the temple known as El Castillo. Worship of the Feathered Serpent can be traced back 2,000 years, and the Serpent's cults appear all across Mesoamerica. The Olmec, the Aztec, and both the Yucatec and K'iche Mayans all had different names for this deity, including Kukulkan, Q'uq'umatz, and Tohil, but his iconography is curiously consistent over several centuries across the region. Depending on who was worshipping him, the Feathered Serpent was a creator-god, the god of the winds, the god of the rains, or merely a near-divine ancestor whose militaristic ways won his followers land and riches before he was eventually marred by lavishness and iniquity, resulting in his demise. To some of the invading Spanish conquistadores, Quetzalcoatl was little more than another demon the "natives" had been worshipping before they were kind enough to bring God to the New World. To others, however, Quetzalcoatl was precisely evidence of the spread of Christianity reaching Mesoamerica long before the conquistadores ever arrived. Much of what modern scholars depend on to understand Quetzalcoatl, however, comes from the period of the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica, and therefore stories of his blowing the sun across the sky have become mixed with those linking him with Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, this makes for a fascinating picture of a deity whose image has been shaped by some of the most famous civilizations in history and continues to be adopted by people today, often for more than spiritual purposes (as is evident in the adoption of Quetzalcoatl imagery in Mexico's struggle for independence). As a result, Quetzalcoatl was and remains one of the most interesting and enlightening stories ever to have come out of any civilization, and his stories offer a better understanding of the Mesoamerican world. Quetzalcoatl: The History and Legacy of the Feathered Serpent God in Mesoamerican Mythology examines the origins of the deity and his place in the pantheon of gods. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Quetzalcoatl like never before.

Tenochtitlan

Author: José Luis de Rojas
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813059461
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire before the Spanish conquest, rivaled any other great city of its time. In Europe, only Paris, Venice, and Constantinople were larger. Cradled in the Valley of Mexico, the city is unique among New World capitals in that it was well-described and chronicled by the conquistadors who subsequently demolished it. This means that, though centuries of redevelopment have frustrated efforts to access the ancient city’s remains, much can be told about its urban landscape, politics, economy, and religion. While Tenochtitlan commands a great deal of attention from archaeologists and Mesoamerican scholars, very little has been written about the city for a non-technical audience in English. In this fascinating book, eminent expert José Luis de Rojas presents an accessible yet authoritative exploration of this famous city--interweaving glimpses into its inhabitants’ daily lives with the broader stories of urbanization, culture, and the rise and fall of the Aztec empire.