Maya Pilgrimage To Ritual Landscape
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| Author | : Joel W. Palka |
| Publisher | : UNM Press |
| Total Pages | : 376 |
| Release | : 2014-06-15 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0826354750 |
Pilgrimage to ritually significant places is a part of daily life in the Maya world. These journeys involve important social and practical concerns, such as the maintenance of food sources and world order. Frequent pilgrimages to ceremonial hills to pay offerings to spiritual forces for good harvests, for instance, are just as necessary for farming as planting fields. Why has Maya pilgrimage to ritual landscapes prevailed from the distant past and why are journeys to ritual landscapes important in Maya religion? How can archaeologists recognize Maya pilgrimage, and how does it compare to similar behavior at ritual landscapes around the world? The author addresses these questions and others through cross-cultural comparisons, archaeological data, and ethnographic insights.
| Author | : Andrew K. Scherer |
| Publisher | : University of Texas Press |
| Total Pages | : 324 |
| Release | : 2015-11-15 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1477300511 |
From the tombs of the elite to the graves of commoners, mortuary remains offer rich insights into Classic Maya society. In Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya: Rituals of Body and Soul, the anthropological archaeologist and bioarchaeologist Andrew K. Scherer explores the broad range of burial practices among the Maya of the Classic period (AD 250–900), integrating information gleaned from his own fieldwork with insights from the fields of iconography, epigraphy, and ethnography to illuminate this society’s rich funerary traditions. Scherer’s study of burials along the Usumacinta River at the Mexican-Guatemalan border and in the Central Petén region of Guatemala—areas that include Piedras Negras, El Kinel, Tecolote, El Zotz, and Yaxha—reveals commonalities and differences among royal, elite, and commoner mortuary practices. By analyzing skeletons containing dental and cranial modifications, as well as the adornments of interred bodies, Scherer probes Classic Maya conceptions of body, wellness, and the afterlife. Scherer also moves beyond the body to look at the spatial orientation of the burials and their integration into the architecture of Maya communities. Taking a unique interdisciplinary approach, the author examines how Classic Maya deathways can expand our understanding of this society’s beliefs and traditions, making Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya an important step forward in Mesoamerican archeology.
| Author | : Brett A. Houk |
| Publisher | : University Press of Florida |
| Total Pages | : 497 |
| Release | : 2019-12-11 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 0813057345 |
This volume brings together a wide spectrum of new approaches to ancient Maya studies in an innovative exploration of how the Preclassic and Classic Maya shaped their world. Moving beyond the towering temples and palaces typically associated with the Maya civilization, contributors present unconventional examples of monumental Maya landscapes. Featuring studies from across the central Maya lowlands, Belize, and the northern and central Maya highlands and spanning over 10,000 years of human occupation in the region, these chapters show how the word “monumental” can be used to describe natural and constructed landscapes, political and economic landscapes, and ritual and sacred landscapes. Examples include a massive system of aqueducts and canals at the Kaminaljuyu site, a vast arena designed for public spectacle at Chan Chich, and even the complex realms of Maya cosmology as represented by the ritual cave at Las Cuevas. By including physical, conceptual, and symbolic ways monumentality pervaded ancient Maya culture, this volume broadens traditional understandings of how the Maya interacted with their environment and provides exciting analytical perspectives to guide future study. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase
| Author | : Lucrezia Lopez |
| Publisher | : Springer Nature |
| Total Pages | : 363 |
| Release | : 2023-07-01 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 3031322096 |
This book points out how pilgrimage studies rely on interdisciplinary academic interests, being always more determined by anthropological, social, cultural and economic factors. The volume gathers interdisciplinary contributions revealing different approaches and academic interests when researching pilgrimage. Finally, the proposal introduces a comparative international breath to reflect upon such complex phenomenon that since Antiquity still impregnates the history of human being across the world. As pilgrimage studies are closely related to mobility issues, how the contemporary mobile world is altering and re-signifying pilgrimage dynamics and meanings will also be discussed in detail. The term “pilgrimage” evokes key concepts deriving from different fields, all of them collected in the final glossary. The primary audience of this work are academics and researchers from different fields involved in pilgrimage studies. The work may also be useful in teaching (advanced) university courses.
| Author | : Paul John Wigowsky |
| Publisher | : AuthorHouse |
| Total Pages | : 168 |
| Release | : 2010-03 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 1449089321 |
It is said that travel broadens one's horizons. A pilgrimage, on the other hand, expands one's consciousness. The end result of a pilgrimage is the capacity to see the sacredness in the places that are visited. One such sacred place is the vast territory of the Maya world, where thousands of pyramid-temples form a network or web of interconnected sites. These sites - like Tikal in Guatemala and Copan in Honduras - are remnants of a complex and highly-advanced civilization that existed on the continent of the Americas, forming what was known as the Land of the Plumed Serpent. This mysterious and awe-inspiring Land of the Plumed Serpent is the subject of this book. Travel with the author on a pilgrimage of this land and explore the heart and soul of the Americas in Guatemala, where the Maya people to this day have preserved the ancient customs, traditions, and religion of their ancestors. Learn about Xibalba (the Maya underworld), the Popol Vuh (Maya Bible), 2012 (calendar cycle), Maximon (the ancient Mam of Maya mythology), the Milky Way (the double-headed serpent Kukulcan), and much more. Wander the streets of colonial Antigua, the ancient capital of the Spanish Empire. Sail the waters of Lake Atitlan, the heart center of the planet, and see the numerous indigenous Maya groups in their colorful traje (clothing). Walk on the black volcanic sand beaches of Monterrico, where the turtles reenact their eternal drama of survival. Climb the active volcano Pacaya and stand next to a flowing river of lava. Shop at the incomparable market of Chichicastenango in the Guatemala highlands. After reading this book, you will marvel at the beauty of the Maya world, and you will realize that the Maya consciousness is still alive and thrives in the Land of the Plumed Serpent.
| Author | : Rex Koontz |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 400 |
| Release | : 2018-02-23 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 0429979045 |
From the early cities in the second millennium BC to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan on the eve of the Spanish conquest, Ancient Mesoamericans created landscapes full of meaning and power in the center of their urban spaces. The sixteenth century description of Tenochtitlan by Bernal Diaz del Castillo and the archaeological remnants of Teotihuacan attest to the power and centrality of these urban configurations in Ancient Mesoamerican history. In Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, Rex Koontz, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, and Annabeth Headrick explore the cultural logic that structured and generated these centers.Through case studies of specific urban spaces and their meanings, the authors examine the general principles by which the Ancient Mesoamericans created meaningful urban space. In a profoundly interdisciplinary exchange involving both archaeologists and art historians, this volume connects the symbolism of those landscapes, the performances that activated this symbolism, and the cultural poetics of these ensembles.
| Author | : |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 628 |
| Release | : 2017 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : |
The 7-10th centuries C.E. collapse of the social, economic, and political systems of the Classic Maya in the Southern Lowlands was prompted by a series of long-lasting droughts, overpopulation, and deforestation. Across the Lowlands, the ways in which the events of the "collapse" were handled varied by region. During this period of chaos and transition, major changes occurred in the way that rituals were conducted in the Southern Lowlands. Caves, believed to be the source of clouds and rain, the entrance to the underworld, and a symbol of creation and life, had been coopted as sacred spaces early in the development of Maya social complexity by the elite classes for ritual performances to legitimize their positions in society. As the prosperity of the Classic period was upended into a period of chaos and volatility, the growing dissatisfaction with the divinely-appointed elite classes caused the populace to begin to question their world order. The inefficacy of the rulers of the Southern Lowlands in maintaining the established order during the events of the collapse was evident. The dramatic increase in water-related rituals taking place in caves during the collapse and their subsequent and widespread termination in the Southern Lowlands after elite abandonment is indicative of the crisis of faith that accompanied the ritual failures of the rulers during the collapse. To date, very few studies of Maya cave archaeology have included the exteriors of caves, and no single systematic evaluation of the patterns of such exterior modifications has ever been conducted. In this dissertation, I turn to these archaeologically neglected spaces and introduce data from eleven cave sites across Belize which demonstrate that it is during the collapse that caves across the Southern Lowlands had their exteriors modified for the first and only time. I propose that it was the crisis of the Late Classic collapse that drove various groups to formalize the areas outside of caves for first time in order to expand public participation in their efforts to maintain order and reinforce a sense of community identity and social solidarity that was in real danger of being lost
| Author | : Charles M. Pigott |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 276 |
| Release | : 2020-03-12 |
| Genre | : Literary Criticism |
| ISBN | : 1000054306 |
The Maya Literary Renaissance is a growing yet little-known literary phenomenon that can redefine our understanding of "literature" universally. By analyzing eight representative texts of this new and vibrant literary movement, the book argues that the texts present literature as a trans-species phenomenon that is not reducible only to human creativity. Based on detailed textual analysis of the literature in both Maya and Spanish as well as first-hand conversations with the writers themselves, the book develops the first conceptual map of how literature constantly emerges from wider creative patterns in nature. This process, defined as literary inhabitation, is explained by synthesizing core Maya cultural concepts with diverse philosophical, literary, anthropological and biological theories. In the context of the Yucatan Peninsula, where the texts come from, literary inhabitation is presented as an integral part of bioregional becoming, the evolution of the Peninsula as a constantly unfolding dialogue.
| Author | : Jean Molesky-Poz |
| Publisher | : University of Texas Press |
| Total Pages | : 225 |
| Release | : 2009-06-23 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 0292778627 |
An authoritative study of the indigenous religion still practiced in Guatemala based on extensive original research and participant observation. Jean Molesky-Poz draws on in-depth dialogues with Maya Ajq’ijab’ (keepers of the ritual calendar), her own participant observation, and inter-disciplinary resources to offer a comprehensive, innovative, and well-grounded understanding of contemporary Maya spirituality and its theological underpinnings. She reveals significant continuities between contemporary and ancient Maya worldviews and spiritual practices. Molesky-Poz opens with a discussion of how the public emergence of Maya spirituality is situated within the religious political history of the Guatemalan highlands, particularly the pan-Maya movement. She investigates Maya cosmovision and its foundational principles, as expressed by Ajq’ijab’. At the heart of this work, Ajq’ijab’ interpret their obligation, lives, and spiritual work. Molesky-Poz then explores aspects of Maya spirituality, including sacred geography, sacred time, and ritual practice. She confirms contemporary Maya spirituality as a faith tradition with elaborate historical roots that has significance for individual, collective, and historical lives, reaffirming its own public space and legal right to be practiced.
| Author | : James E. Brady |
| Publisher | : University of Texas Press |
| Total Pages | : 449 |
| Release | : 2005-02-01 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 0292705867 |
As portals to the supernatural realm that creates and animates the universe, caves have always been held sacred by the peoples of Mesoamerica. From ancient times to the present, Mesoamericans have made pilgrimages to caves for ceremonies ranging from rituals of passage to petitions for rain and a plentiful harvest. So important were caves to the pre-Hispanic peoples that they are mentioned in Maya hieroglyphic writing and portrayed in the Central Mexican and Oaxacan pictorial codices. Many ancient settlements were located in proximity to caves. This volume gathers papers from twenty prominent Mesoamerican archaeologists, linguists, and ethnographers to present a state-of-the-art survey of ritual cave use in Mesoamerica from Pre-Columbian times to the present. Organized geographically, the book examines cave use in Central Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Maya region. Some reports present detailed site studies, while others offer new theoretical understandings of cave rituals. As a whole, the collection validates cave study as the cutting edge of scientific investigation of indigenous ritual and belief. It confirms that the indigenous religious system of Mesoamerica was and still is much more terrestrially focused that has been generally appreciated.
