Migrations in Late Mesoamerica

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica PDF Author: Christopher S. Beekman
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 081305723X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Bringing the often-neglected topic of migration to the forefront of ancient Mesoamerican studies, this volume uses an illuminating multidisciplinary approach to address the role of population movements in Mexico and Central America from AD 500 to 1500, the tumultuous centuries before European contact. Clarifying what has to date been chiefly speculation, researchers from the fields of archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, ethnohistory, and art history delve deeply into the causes and impacts of prehistoric migration in the region. They draw on evidence including records of the Nahuatl language, murals painted at the Cacaxtla polity, ceramics in the style known as Coyotlatelco, skeletal samples from multiple sites, and conquest-era accounts of the origins of the Chichén Itzá Maya from both Native and Spanish scribes. The diverse datasets in this volume help reveal the choices and priorities of migrants during times of political, economic, and social changes that unmoored populations from ancestral lands. Migrations in Late Mesoamerica shows how migration patterns are vitally important to study due to their connection to environmental and political disruption in both ancient societies and today’s world. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica PDF Author: Christopher S. Beekman
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 081305723X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bringing the often-neglected topic of migration to the forefront of ancient Mesoamerican studies, this volume uses an illuminating multidisciplinary approach to address the role of population movements in Mexico and Central America from AD 500 to 1500, the tumultuous centuries before European contact. Clarifying what has to date been chiefly speculation, researchers from the fields of archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, ethnohistory, and art history delve deeply into the causes and impacts of prehistoric migration in the region. They draw on evidence including records of the Nahuatl language, murals painted at the Cacaxtla polity, ceramics in the style known as Coyotlatelco, skeletal samples from multiple sites, and conquest-era accounts of the origins of the Chichén Itzá Maya from both Native and Spanish scribes. The diverse datasets in this volume help reveal the choices and priorities of migrants during times of political, economic, and social changes that unmoored populations from ancestral lands. Migrations in Late Mesoamerica shows how migration patterns are vitally important to study due to their connection to environmental and political disruption in both ancient societies and today’s world. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities

Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities PDF Author: M. Charlotte Arnauld
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 164642073X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities is the first focused book-length discussion of migration in central Mexico, west Mexico and the Maya region, presenting case studies on population movement in and among Classic, Epiclassic, and Postclassic Mesoamerican societies and polities within the framework of urbanization and de-urbanization. Looking beyond the conceptual dichotomy of sedentism versus mobility, the contributors show that mobility and migration reveal a great deal about the formation, development, and decline of town- and city-based societies in the ancient world. In a series of data-rich chapters that address specific evidence for movement in their respective study areas, an international group of scholars assesses mobility through the isotopic and demographic analysis of human remains, stratigraphic identification of gaps in occupation, and local intensification of water capture in the Maya lowlands. Others examine migration through the integration of historic and archaeological evidence in Michoacán and Yucatán and by registering how daily life changed in response to the influx of new people in the Basin of Mexico. Offering a range of critical insights into the vital and under-studied role that mobility and migration played in complex agrarian societies, Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities will be of value to Mesoamericanist archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and bioarchaeologists and to any scholars working on complex societies. Contributors: Jaime J. Awe, Meggan Bullock, Sarah C. Clayton, Andrea Cucina, Véronique Darras, Nicholas P. Dunning, Mélanie Forné, Marion Forest, Carolyn Freiwald, Elizabeth Graham, Nancy Gonlin, Julie A. Hoggarth, Linda Howie, Elsa Jadot, Kristin V. Landau, Eva Lemonnier, Dominique Michelet, David Ortegón Zapata, Prudence M. Rice, Thelma N. Sierra Sosa, Michael P. Smyth, Vera Tiesler, Eric Weaver

Maya Postclassic State Formation

Maya Postclassic State Formation PDF Author: John W. Fox
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521321105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
John Fox here offers a fresh and persuasive view of the crucial Classic-Postclassic transition that determined the shape of the later Maya state. Drawing this data from ethnographic analogy and native chronicles as well as archaeology, he identifies segmentary lineage organisation as the key to understanding both the political organisation and the long-distance migrations observed among the Quiche Maya of Guatemala and Mexico. The first part of the book traces the origins of the Quiche, Itza and Xiu to the homeland on the Mexican Gulf coast where they acquired their potent Toltec mythology and identifies early segmentary lineages that developed as a result of social forces in the frontier zone. Dr Fox then matches the known anthropological characteristics of segmentary lineages against the Mayan kinship relationships described in documents and deduced from the spatial patterning within Quiche towns and cities. His conclusion, that the inherently fissile nature of segmentary lineages caused the leapfrogging migrations of up to 500km observed amongst the Maya, offers a convincing solution to a problem that has long puzzled scholars.

Bioarchaeology of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

Bioarchaeology of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica PDF Author: Cathy Willermet
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813052378
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
This volume offers a novel interdisciplinary view of the migration, mobility, ethnicity, and social identities of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples. In studies that combine bioarchaeology, ethnohistory, isotope data, and dental morphology, contributors demonstrate the challenges and rewards of such integrative work when applied to large regional questions of population history. The essays in this volume are the results of fieldwork in Honduras, Belize, and a variety of sites in Mexico. One chapter uses dental health data and burial rituals to investigate the social status of sacrificial victims during the Late Classic period. Another analyzes skeletal remains from multiple research perspectives to explore the immigrant makeup of the multiethnic city of Copan. Contributors also use strontium and oxygen isotope data from tooth enamel and dental morphological traits to test hypotheses about migration, and they incorporate ethnohistorical sources in an examination of ancient Maya understandings of belonging and otherness. Revealing how complementary fields of study can together create a better understanding of the complex forces that impact population movements, this volume provides an inspiring picture of the exciting collaborative work currently under way among researchers in the region. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen

Migration and Disruptions

Migration and Disruptions PDF Author: Brenda J. Baker
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813063515
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
“Artfully integrates scholarship on both past and present migration. With its thematic focus on disruption, this volume develops unprecedented nuance in the treatment of migration.”—Graciela S. Cabana, coeditor of Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration “A significant contribution to the social sciences in general and a future staple for archaeologists and anthropologists. Migration and Disruptions demonstrates the importance of collaboration and constructive dialogues between the traditional subfields composing the umbrella title of anthropology.”—Stephen A. Brighton, author of Historical Archaeology of the Irish Diaspora: A Transnational Approach Migration has always been a fundamental human activity, yet little collaboration exists between scientists and social scientists examining how it has shaped past and contemporary societies. This innovative volume brings together sociocultural anthropologists, archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, ethnographers, paleopathologists, and others to develop a unifying theory of migration. The contributors relate past movements, including the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain and the Islamic conquest of Andalucía, to present-day events, such as those in northern Ethiopia or at the U.S.-Mexico border. They examine the extent to which environmental and social disruptions have been a cause of migration over time and how these migratory flows have in turn led to disruptive consequences for the receiving societies. The observed cycles of social disruption, resettlement, and its consequences offer a new perspective on how human migration has shaped the social, economic, political, and environmental landscapes of societies from prehistory to today. Contributors:Brenda J. Baker | Christopher S. Beekman | George L. Cowgill | Jason De Leon | James F. Eder | Anna Forringer-Beal | Cameron Gokee | Catherine Hills | Kelly J. Knudson | Patrick Manning | Jonathan Maupin | Lisa Meierotto | James Morrissey | Rachel E. Scott | Christina Torres-Rouff | Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda | Sonia Zakrzewski

Foreigners Among Us

Foreigners Among Us PDF Author: Christina Halperin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000904466
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Assessing key questions such as who the foreigners and outsiders in ancient Maya societies were and how was the foreign a generative component of identity, Foreigners Among Us reassess the arrival of foreigners as part of archaeological understandings of Pre-Columbian Maya and questions not only who these foreigners might have been but who were making such designations of difference in the first place. Drawing from identity studies, standpoint theory, and ideas on alterity, Foreigners Among Us highlights the diverse ways being foreign was constituted, imitated, and marked – from quotidian practices of making corn tortillas to ceremonial acts between king and captive and their memorialization in scenes on sculpted stone monuments. Rather than treat the foreign as axiomatically determined by geographical distance or fixed at birth, the book considers the foreign as much performed as inherited. It examines practices of captivity, cuisine, body ornamentation and dress, diasporic objects, relationships with deities, migration, and pilgrimage. The book focuses, in particular, on diverse peoples in the Maya area during the Classic and Postclassic periods, but also necessarily peers into contacts, engagements and relations throughout Mesoamerica, the Americas more broadly, and with Europeans during the Colonial period – all the while insisting that outsider status must be approached as multi-scalar, relational, and intersectional rather than as neutral, intrinsic, and static. Contributing broadly to intellectual investigations on foreign identities from an anthropological perspective, this book enriches the understanding of Maya society for students and researchers of Mesoamerican archaeology and art history.

Migration and Creation in Aztec and Maya Literature

Migration and Creation in Aztec and Maya Literature PDF Author: Victoria R. Bricker
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN: 9781433198670
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Migration and Creation in Aztec and Maya Literature provides a new perspective on migration and creation episodes in the Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya Indians of highland Guatemala, demonstrating that they are largely borrowed from Aztec sources. These findings upend previous interpretations resulting from the widely held belief that the Popol Vuh is the most "authentic" Maya book. Victoria Bricker's careful historical analysis explains the origin of these borrowings, which stemmed from the expansion of the Aztec empire southward from the Central Valley of Mexico into the highlands of what is today the Mexican state of Chiapas and continuing into highland Guatemala as far south as the town of Utatlan, whose rulers then intermarried with members of the Aztec royal family. This innovative volume explores new ground, comparing Aztec pictorial representations of migration with Maya written descriptions of the same events and showing that they have much in common. Bricker's exploration of creation narratives demonstrates that the Aztec treatment of multiple creations is more coherent than the Popol Vuh version because it describes the end of each creation before embarking on a new creation, whereas the Popol Vuh version refers to the end of all creations only once. Bricker also provides a new interpretation of creation texts from the archaeological sites of Quirigua and Palenque that challenges models suggesting that the Precolumbian Maya, like the Aztec, believed in multiple creations. Students of Latin American history will find fresh insights regarding interactions and cultural contact in Late Prehispanic Mesoamerica in Bricker's study.

The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico

The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico PDF Author: Carlos E. Cordova
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1646424077
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
This volume celebrates the continuing impact of the most notable contributions from The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization by William T. Sanders, Jeffrey R. Parsons, and Robert S. Santley. In 1979, this influential work synthesized the results of the Basin of Mexico survey projects and follow-up excavations at several sites, while providing theoretical and methodological lines of research in central Mexico and generally in Mesoamerica. More than four decades after that book’s publication, the fourteen contributions in this volume review and analyze its theoretical and methodological influence in light of recent research across disciplines. Among a spectrum of authors representing several generations are those who participated directly in the Basin of Mexico surveys—including the late Jeffrey R. Parsons—as well as those who have been actively working on recent projects in the basin and neighboring regions. Providing a broad and multidisciplinary perspective of the present and future state of research in the area, The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico will be of interest to Mesoamerican and Latin American archaeologists as well as geographers, geologists, historians, and specialists in the study of past environments. Contributors: Guillermo Acosta Ochoa, Aleksander Borejsza, Destiny Crider, Charles Frederick, Raúl García-Chávez, Larry Gorenflo, Angela Huster, Georgina Ibarra Arzave, Charles Kolb, Frank Lehmkuhl, Abigail Meza Peñaloza, Emily McClung de Tapia, John K. Millhauser, Deborah Nichols, Jeffrey R. Parsons, Serafin Sánchez Pérez, Philipp Schulte, Sergey Sedov, Elizabeth Solleiro Rebolledo, Daisy Valera Fenández, Federico Zertuche

The Evolution of Social Institutions

The Evolution of Social Institutions PDF Author: Dmitri M. Bondarenko
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030514374
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 662

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Book Description
This book presents a novel and innovative approach to the study of social evolution using case studies from the Old and the New World, from prehistory to the present. This approach is based on examining social evolution through the evolution of social institutions. Evolution is defined as the process of structural change. Within this framework the society, or culture, is seen as a system composed of a vast number of social institutions that are constantly interacting and changing. As a result, the structure of society as a whole is also evolving and changing. The authors posit that the combination of evolving social institutions explains the non-linear character of social evolution and that every society develops along its own pathway and pace. Within this framework, society should be seen as the result of the compound effect of the interactions of social institutions specific to it. Further, the transformation of social institutions and relations between them is taking place not only within individual societies but also globally, as institutions may be trans-societal, and even institutions that operate in one society can arise as a reaction to trans-societal trends and demands. The book argues that it may be more productive to look at institutions even within a given society as being parts of trans-societal systems of institutions since, despite their interconnectedness, societies still have boundaries, which their members usually know and respect. Accordingly, the book is a must-read for researchers and scholars in various disciplines who are interested in a better understanding of the origins, history, successes and failures of social institutions.

The Oxford Handbook of Central American History

The Oxford Handbook of Central American History PDF Author: Robert Holden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190928360
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 705

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Book Description
Interpreting the History of a Region in Crisis / Robert H. Holden -- Land and Climate: Natural Constraints and Socio-Environmental Transformations / Anthony Goebel McDermott -- Regaining Ground: Indigenous Populations and Territories / Peter H. Herlihy, Matthew L. Fahrenbruch, Taylor A. Tappan -- The Ancient Civilizations / William R. Fowler -- Marginalization, Assimilation, and Resurgence: The Indigenous Peoples since Independence / Wolfgang Gabbert -- The Spanish Conquest? / Laura E. Matthew -- Spanish Colonial Rule / Stephen Webre -- The Kingdom of Guatemala as a Cultural Crossroads / Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara -- From Kingdom to Republics, 1808-1840 / Aaron Pollack -- The Political Economy / Robert G. Williams -- State Making and Nation Building / David Díaz Arias -- Central America and the United States / Michel Gobat -- The Cold War: Authoritarianism, Empire, and Social Revolution / Joaquín M. Chávez -- Central America since the 1990s: Crime, Violence, and the Pursuit of Democracy / Christine J. Wade -- The Rise and Retreat of the Armed Forces / Orlando J. Pérez and Randy Pestana -- Religion, Politics, and the State / Bonar L. Hernández Sandoval -- Women and Citizenship: Feminist and Suffragist Movements, 1880-1957 / Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz -- Literature, Society, and Politics / Werner Mackenbach -- Guatemala / David Carey Jr. -- Honduras / Dario A. Euraque -- El Salvador / Erik Ching -- Nicaragua / Julie A. Charlip -- Costa Rica / Iván Molina -- Panama / Michael E. Donoghue -- Belize / Mark Moberg.