Aztecs

Aztecs
Author: Inga Clendinnen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 575
Release: 2014-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139953036

In 1521, the city of Tenochtitlan, magnificent centre of the Aztec empire, fell to the Spaniards and their Indian allies. Inga Clendinnen's account of the Aztecs recreates the culture of that city in its last unthreatened years. It provides a vividly dramatic analysis of Aztec ceremony as performance art, binding the key experiences and concerns of social existence in the late imperial city to the mannered violence of their ritual killings.

Nahuatl as Written

Nahuatl as Written
Author: James Lockhart
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2001
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0804744580

This book, based on many years of teaching the natural language, is a set of lessons that can be understood by students working alone or used in organized classes and contains an abundance of examples that serve as exercises.

Codex Chimalpopoca

Codex Chimalpopoca
Author: John Bierhorst
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2011-10-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0816502455

In this companion volume to History and Mythology of the Aztecs, John Bierhorst provides specialists with a transcription of the Nahuatl text, keyed to the translation, and a linguistic apparatus to help elucidate it. The glossary offers definitions for all unusual usages in the codex, as well as careful treatment of many of the commonest (and most semantically flexible) verbs, adverbs, and particles. Detailed discussions of selected features appear in the Grammatical Notes, which complete the work.

Learn Nahuatl, Language of the Aztecs and Modern Nahuas

Learn Nahuatl, Language of the Aztecs and Modern Nahuas
Author: Yan Garcia
Publisher:
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2021-02-02
Genre:
ISBN:

Learn Nahuatl, the language used by the Mexica (Aztec) civilization and still preserved by over a million people in Mexico. This guide is not written for the expert linguist, but rather for the beginner. Included are hundreds of examples and dozens of practice sets. An emphasis is placed on the Huasteca variety of Chicontepec, Veracruz. This second edition presents with improved updates, more vocabulary sections, larger reference dictionary, and new included grammar sections.

Aztec Religion and Art of Writing

Aztec Religion and Art of Writing
Author: Isabel Laack
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 455
Release: 2019-03-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004392017

Winner of the 2020 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Historical Studies In her groundbreaking investigation from the perspective of the aesthetics of religion, Isabel Laack explores the religion and art of writing of the pre-Hispanic Aztecs of Mexico. Inspired by postcolonial approaches, she reveals Eurocentric biases in academic representations of Aztec cosmovision, ontology, epistemology, ritual, aesthetics, and the writing system to provide a powerful interpretation of the Nahua sense of reality. Laack transcends the concept of “sacred scripture” traditionally employed in religions studies in order to reconstruct the Indigenous semiotic theory and to reveal how Aztec pictography can express complex aspects of embodied meaning. Her study offers an innovative approach to nonphonographic semiotic systems, as created in many world cultures, and expands our understanding of human recorded visual communication. This book will be essential reading for scholars and readers interested in the history of religions, Mesoamerican studies, and the ancient civilizations of the Americas. "This excellent book, written with intellectual courage and critical self-awareness, is a brilliant, multilayered thought experiment into the images and stories that made up the Nahua sense of reality as woven into their sensational ritual performances and colorful symbolic writing system." - Davíd Carrasco, Harvard University

Dialogue with Europe, Dialogue with the Past

Dialogue with Europe, Dialogue with the Past
Author: Justyna Olko
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2018-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1607328348

Dialogue with Europe, Dialogue with the Past is a critical, annotated anthology of indigenous-authored texts, including the Nahua, Quechua, and Spanish originals, through which native peoples and Spaniards were able to convey their own perspectives on Spanish colonial order. It is the first volume to bring together native testimonies from two different areas of Spanish expansion in the Americas to examine comparatively these geographically and culturally distant realities of indigenous elites in the colonial period. In each chapter a particular document is transcribed exactly as it appears in the original manuscript or colonial printed document, with the editor placing it in historical context and considering the degree of European influence. These texts show the nobility through documents they themselves produced or caused to be produced—such as wills, land deeds, and petitions—and prioritize indigenous ways of expression, perspectives, and concepts. Together, the chapters demonstrate that native elites were independent actors as well as agents of social change and indigenous sustainability in colonial society. Additionally, the volume diversifies the commonly homogenous term “cacique” and recognizes the differences in elites throughout Mesoamerica and the Andes. Showcasing important and varied colonial genres of indigenous writing, Dialogue with Europe, Dialogue with the Past reveals some of the realities, needs, strategies, behaviors, and attitudes associated with the lives of the elites. Each document and its accompanying commentary provide additional insight into how the nobility negotiated everyday life. The book will be of great interest to students and researchers of Mesoamerican and Andean history, as well as those interested in indigenous colonial societies in the Spanish Empire. Contributors: Agnieszka Brylak, Maria Castañeda de la Paz, Katarzyna Granicka, Gregory Haimovich, Anastasia Kalyuta, Julia Madajczak, Patrycja Prządka-Giersz

Nahuas and Spaniards

Nahuas and Spaniards
Author: James Lockhart
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1991
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804719544

The Nahua Indians of central Mexico (often misleadingly called Aztecs after the quite ephemeral confederation that existed among them in late pre-Hispanic times) were the most populus of Mesoamerica's cultural-linguistic groups at the time of the Spanish conquest. They remained at the center of developments for centuries thereafter, since the bulk of the Hispanic population settled among them and they bore the brunt of cultural contact. This collection of thirteen essays (five of them previously unpublished) by the leading authority on the postconquest Nahuas and Nahua-Spanish interaction brings together pieces that reflect various facets of the author's research interests. Underlying most of the pieces is the author's pioneering large-scale use of Nahua manuscripts to illuminate the society and culture of native Mexicans in the Spanish colonial period. The picture of the Nahuas that emerges shows them far less at odds with the colonial world form it what is useful to them, and far more capable to maintaining their own pre-conquest identity, than has previously been suggested.

Royal Courts Of The Ancient Maya

Royal Courts Of The Ancient Maya
Author: Takeshi Inomata
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429977174

This book provides theory, comparison, and synthesis to establish a carefully considered framework for approaching the study of courts and their functions throughout the world of the ancient Maya. It is based on the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.

The Legacy of Mesoamerica

The Legacy of Mesoamerica
Author: Robert M. Carmack
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 733
Release: 2016-01-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317346785

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.