The Ancient Maya, 6th Edition

The Ancient Maya, 6th Edition
Author: Robert J. Sharer
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 986
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780804748179

The rich findings of recent exploration and research are incorporated in this completely revised and greatly expanded sixth edition of this standard work on the Maya people. New field discoveries, new technical advances, new successes in the decipherment of Maya writing, and new theoretical perspectives on the Maya past have made this new edition necessary.

The Ch'ol Maya of Chiapas

The Ch'ol Maya of Chiapas
Author: Robert M. Laughlin
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2015-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806149264

The Ch’ol Maya who live in the western Mexican state of Chiapas are direct descendants of the Maya of the Classic period. Exploring their history and culture, volume editor Karen Bassie-Sweet and the other authors assembled here uncover clear continuity between contemporary Maya rituals and beliefs and their ancient counterparts. With evocative and thoughtful essays by leading scholars of Maya culture, The Ch’ol Maya of Chiapas, the first collection to focus fully on the Ch’ol Maya, takes readers deep into ancient caves and reveals new dimensions of Ch’ol cosmology. In contemporary Ch’ol culture the contributors find a wealth of historical material that they then interweave with archaeological data to yield surprising and illuminating insights. The colonial and twentieth-century descendants of the Postclassic period Ch’ol and Lacandon Ch’ol, for instance, provide a window on the history and conquest of the early Maya. Several authors examine Early Classic paintings in the Ch’ol ritual cave known as Jolja that document ancient cave ceremonies not unlike Ch’ol rituals performed today, such as petitioning a cave-dwelling mountain spirit for health, rain, and abundant harvests. Other essays investigate deities identified with caves, mountains, lightning, and meteors to trace the continuity of ancient Maya beliefs through the centuries, in particular the ancient origin of contemporary rituals centering on the Ch’ol mountain deity Don Juan. An appendix containing three Ch’ol folktales and their English translations rounds out the volume. Charting paths literal and figurative to earlier trade routes, pre-Columbian sites, and ancient rituals and beliefs, The Ch’ol Maya of Chiapas opens a fresh, richly informed perspective on Maya culture as it has evolved and endured over the ages.

The Ancient Maya

The Ancient Maya
Author: Sylvanus Griswold Morley
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 940
Release: 1994
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780804721301

"Comprehensive synthesis of ancient Maya scholarship. Extensive summary of the archaeology of the Maya world provides the historical context for a detailed topical synthesis of chronological and geographic variability within the Maya cultural tradition"--

The Adorned Body

The Adorned Body
Author: Nicholas Carter
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1477320725

How we dress our bodies—through clothing, footwear, headgear, jewelry, haircuts, and more—is key to the expression of status and identity. This idea was as true for ancient Maya civilization as it is today, yet few studies have centered on what ancient Maya peoples wore and why. In The Adorned Body, Nicholas Carter, Stephen Houston, and Franco Rossi bring together contributions from a wide range of scholars, leading to the first in-depth study of Maya dress in pre-Columbian times. Incorporating artistic, hieroglyphic, and archaeological sources, this book explores the clothing and ornaments of ancient Maya peoples, systematically examining who wore what, deducing the varied purposes and meanings of dress items and larger ensembles, and determining the methods and materials with which such items were created. Each essay investigates a category of dress—including headgear, pendants and necklaces, body painting, footwear, and facial ornaments—and considers the variations within each of these categories, as well as popular styles and trends through time. The final chapters reveal broader views and comparisons about costume ensembles and their social roles. Shedding new light on the art and archaeology of the ancient Americas, The Adorned Body offers a thorough map of Maya dress that will be of interest to scholars and fashion enthusiasts alike.

Maya Kingship

Maya Kingship
Author: Tsubasa Okoshi
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0813057698

Examining changes to the institution of divine kingship from 750 to 950 CE in the Maya lowland cities, Maya Kingship presents a new way of studying the collapse of that civilization and the transformation of political systems between the Terminal Classic and Postclassic Periods. Leading experts in Maya studies offer insights into the breakdown of kingship regimes, as well as the gradual urban collapse and settlement relocations that followed. The volume illuminates historical factors and actions that led to the end of the institution across kingdoms and the mechanisms that enabled societies to eventually recover with new political structures. Contributors provide archaeological, iconographic, epigraphic, and ethnohistorical perspectives, exploring datasets in the spheres of warfare, social dynamics, economics, and architecture. Unfolding with precision the chains of processes and events that occurred during the ninth and tenth centuries in the southern lowlands, and slightly later in the north, this volume displays an original and ambitious historical approach central to understanding one of the most radical political shifts to occur in the pre-Columbian Americas. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase Contributors: Chloé Andrieu | Kazuo Aoyama | M. Charlotte Arnauld | Jaime J. Awe | Tomás José Barrientos Quezada |George J. Bey III | Ignacio Cases | Arlen F. Chase | Diane Z. Chase | Rafael Cobos | Arthur Demarest | Octavio Q. Esparza| Tomás Gallareta Negrón | Nikolai Grube | Christophe Helmke | Bernard Hermes | Julien Hiquet | Julie A. Hoggarth | Takeshi Inomata | Ana Luisa Izquierdo | Alfonso Lacadena | Simon Martin | Philippe Nondédéo | Tsubasa Okoshi | William M. Ringle | Julien Sion | Shintaro Suzuki | Paola Torres | Kenichiro Tsukamoto | Bart Victor | Jarosław Źrałka

Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions

Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions
Author: Ian Graham
Publisher: Peabody Museum of Archaeology &
Total Pages: 62
Release: 1975
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780873657792

The goal of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions is to document in photographs and detailed line drawings all known Maya inscriptions and their associated figurative art. When complete, the Corpus will have published the inscriptions from over 200 sites and 2,000 monuments. The series has been instrumental in the remarkable success of the ongoing process of deciphering Maya writing, making available hundreds of texts to epigraphers working around the world. Volume 1 includes a Spanish translation of the Introduction text and six appendices: sources of sculpture and their codes; list of abbreviations and symbols used in the Corpus series; table of tun-endings between 8.1.15.0.0 and 10.9.3.0.0; a complete Calendar Round in tabular form, giving the position of tun-endings between 8.1.15.0.0 and 10.9.3.0.0; a method for the quick computation of Calendar Round position, by John S. Justeson; and Moon Age tables, by Lawrence Roys.

The Memory of Bones

The Memory of Bones
Author: Stephen Houston
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2006-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292712944

All of human experience flows from bodies that feel, express emotion, and think about what such experiences mean. But is it possible for us, embodied as we are in a particular time and place, to know how people of long ago thought about the body and its experiences? In this groundbreaking book, three leading experts on the Classic Maya (ca. AD 250 to 850) marshal a vast array of evidence from Maya iconography and hieroglyphic writing, as well as archaeological findings, to argue that the Classic Maya developed a coherent approach to the human body that we can recover and understand today. The authors open with a cartography of the Maya body, its parts and their meanings, as depicted in imagery and texts. They go on to explore such issues as how the body was replicated in portraiture; how it experienced the world through ingestion, the senses, and the emotions; how the body experienced war and sacrifice and the pain and sexuality that were intimately bound up in these domains; how words, often heaven-sent, could be embodied; and how bodies could be blurred through spirit possession. From these investigations, the authors convincingly demonstrate that the Maya conceptualized the body in varying roles, as a metaphor of time, as a gendered, sexualized being, in distinct stages of life, as an instrument of honor and dishonor, as a vehicle for communication and consumption, as an exemplification of beauty and ugliness, and as a dancer and song-maker. Their findings open a new avenue for empathetically understanding the ancient Maya as living human beings who experienced the world as we do, through the body.

Animals and their Relation to Gods, Humans and Things in the Ancient World

Animals and their Relation to Gods, Humans and Things in the Ancient World
Author: Raija Mattila
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2019-03-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 3658243880

While Human-Animal Studies is a rapidly growing field in modern history, studies on this topic that focus on the Ancient World are few. The present volume aims at closing this gap. It investigates the relation between humans, animals, gods, and things with a special focus on the structure of these categories. An improved understanding of the ancient categories themselves is a precondition for any investigation into the relation between them. The focus of the volume lies on the Ancient Near East, but it also provides studies on Ancient Greece, Asia Minor, Mesoamerica, the Far East, and Arabia.