New Perspectives on Human Sacrifice and Ritual Body Treatments in Ancient Maya Society

New Perspectives on Human Sacrifice and Ritual Body Treatments in Ancient Maya Society
Author: Vera Tiesler
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2007-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0387488715

This book examines Maya sacrifice and related posthumous body manipulation. The editors bring together an international group of contributors from the area studied: archaeologists as well as anthropologists, forensic anthropologists, art historians and bioarchaeologists. This interdisciplinary approach provides a comprehensive perspective on these sites as well as the material culture and biological evidence found there

The Aztecs

The Aztecs
Author: David Carrasco
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2012-01-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195379381

Illuminates the complexities of Aztec life. Readers meet a people highly skilled in sculpture, astronomy, city planning, poetry, and philosophy, who were also profoundly committed to cosmic regeneration through the thrust of the ceremonial knife and through warfare.

City of Sacrifice

City of Sacrifice
Author: David Carrasco
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2000-12-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780807046432

At an excavation of the Great Aztec Temple in Mexico City, amid carvings of skulls and a dismembered warrior goddess, David Carrasco stood before a container filled with the decorated bones of infants and children. It was the site of a massive human sacrifice, and for Carrasco the center of fiercely provocative questions: If ritual violence against humans was a profound necessity for the Aztecs in their capital city, is it central to the construction of social order and the authority of city states? Is civilization built on violence? In City of Sacrifice,Carrasco chronicles the fascinating story of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, investigating Aztec religious practices and demonstrating that religious violence was integral to urbanization; the city itself was a temple to the gods. That Mexico City, the largest city on earth, was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, is a point Carrasco poignantly considers in his comparison of urban life from antiquity to modernity. Majestic in scope, City of Sacrifice illuminates not only the rich history of a major Meso american city but also the inseparability of two passionate human impulses: urbanization and religious engagement. It has much to tell us about many familiar events in our own time, from suicide bombings in Tel Aviv to rape and murder in the Balkans.

Human Sacrifice

Human Sacrifice
Author: Laerke Recht
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2018-12-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1108687776

Sacrifice is not simply an expression of religious beliefs. Its highly symbolic nature lends itself to various kinds of manipulation by those carrying it out, who may use the ritual in maintaining and negotiating power and identity in carefully staged 'performances'. This Element will examine some of the many different types of sacrifice and ritual killing of human beings through history, from Bronze Age China and the Near East to Mesoamerica to Northern Europe. The focus is on the archaeology of human sacrifice, but where available, textual and iconographic sources provide valuable complements to the interpretation of the material.

Blood and Beauty

Blood and Beauty
Author: Rex Koontz
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2009-12-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1938770439

Warfare, ritual human sacrifice, and the rubber ballgame have been the traditional categories through which scholars have examined organized violence in the artistic and material records of ancient Mesoamerica and Central America. This volume expands those traditional categories to include such concerns as gladiatorial-like boxing combats, investiture rites, trophy-head taking and display, dark shamanism, and the subjective pain inherent in acts of violence. Each author examines organized violence as a set of practices grounded in cultural understandings, even when the violence threatens the limits of those understandings. The authors scrutinize the representation of, and relationships between, different types of organized violence, as well as the implications of those activities, which can include the unexpected, such as violence as a means of determining and curing illness, and the use of violence in negotiation strategies.

Human Sacrifice, Militarism, and Rulership

Human Sacrifice, Militarism, and Rulership
Author: Saburo Sugiyama
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2005-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521780568

An archaeological examination of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid as a symbol of power in Teotihuacan.

Bonds of Blood

Bonds of Blood
Author: Caroline Dodds Pennock
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2008-11-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230582338

The history of the Aztecs has been haunted by the spectre of human sacrifice. Reinvesting the Aztecs with a humanity frequently denied to them, and exploring their spectacular religious violence as a comprehensible element of life, this book integrates a fresh interpretation of gender with an innovative study of the everyday life of the Aztecs.

Carnage and Culture

Carnage and Culture
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307425185

Examining nine landmark battles from ancient to modern times--from Salamis, where outnumbered Greeks devastated the slave army of Xerxes, to Cortes’s conquest of Mexico to the Tet offensive--Victor Davis Hanson explains why the armies of the West have been the most lethal and effective of any fighting forces in the world. Looking beyond popular explanations such as geography or superior technology, Hanson argues that it is in fact Western culture and values–the tradition of dissent, the value placed on inventiveness and adaptation, the concept of citizenship–which have consistently produced superior arms and soldiers. Offering riveting battle narratives and a balanced perspective that avoids simple triumphalism, Carnage and Culture demonstrates how armies cannot be separated from the cultures that produce them and explains why an army produced by a free culture will always have the advantage.

Mexico

Mexico
Author: Michael D. Coe
Publisher:
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN:

Masterly....The complexities of Mexico's ancient cultures are perceptively presented and interpreted.--Library Journal