Exploring Native North America

Exploring Native North America
Author: David Hurst Thomas
Publisher: Oxford : Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2000
Genre: Indians of North America
ISBN: 9780195118575

The curator of anthropology at The American Museum of Natural History profiles 18 archaeological sites in the US and Canada that contain evidence of mostly early Americans. He does an excellent job of summarizing the data and explaining the techniques clearly to keep the focus on the conclusions scientists have reached about the people and their ways of life. The sites span from 9300 BC to the Little Big Horn. For each he includes a list of further reading and directions for visitors. Photographs, drawings, and maps accompany the text. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Exploring Mesoamerica

Exploring Mesoamerica
Author: John M. D. Pohl
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN:

In this second volume in the "Places in Time" series, Pohl provides a guided tour of the most amazing archaeological sites of Mesoamerica, bringing to life the civilizations that once flourished there. 20 halftones. 80 linecuts. 20 maps.

Sorcery in Mesoamerica

Sorcery in Mesoamerica
Author: Jeremy D. Coltman
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2020-12-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 160732945X

Approaching sorcery as highly rational and rooted in significant social and cultural values, Sorcery in Mesoamerica examines and reconstructs the original indigenous logic behind it, analyzing manifestations from the Classic Maya to the ethnographic present. While the topic of sorcery and witchcraft in anthropology is well developed in other areas of the world, it has received little academic attention in Mexico and Central America until now. In each chapter, preeminent scholars of ritual and belief ask very different questions about what exactly sorcery is in Mesoamerica. Contributors consider linguistic and visual aspects of sorcery and witchcraft, such as the terminology in Aztec semantics and dictionaries of the Kaqchiquel and K’iche’ Maya. Others explore the practice of sorcery and witchcraft, including the incorporation by indigenous sorcerers in the Mexican highlands of European perspectives and practices into their belief system. Contributors also examine specific deities, entities, and phenomena, such as the pantheistic Nahua spirit entities called forth to assist healers and rain makers, the categorization of Classic Maya Wahy (“co-essence”) beings, the cult of the Aztec goddess Cihuacoatl, and the recurring relationship between female genitalia and the magical conjuring of a centipede throughout Mesoamerica. Placing the Mesoamerican people in a human context—as engaged in a rational and logical system of behavior—Sorcery inMesoamerica is the first comprehensive study of the subject and an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Mesoamerican culture and religion. Contributors: Lilián González Chévez, John F. Chuchiak IV, Jeremy D. Coltman, Roberto Martínez González, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Cecelia F. Klein, Timothy J. Knab, John Monaghan, Jesper Nielsen, John M. D. Pohl, Alan R. Sandstrom, Pamela Effrein Sandstrom, David Stuart

Exploring Maya Ritual Caves

Exploring Maya Ritual Caves
Author: Stanislav Chládek
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 0759119872

Exploring Maya Ritual Caves offers a rare survey and explication of most of the known ancient Maya ritual caves in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. The caves were the Maya underworld, where rituals, including animal and human sacrifice, were carried out. The Maya cave cult and mythology, construction and modification of the caves, and cult art and artifacts are discussed. Chládek, an intrepid explorer, then describes important caves that he has recently visited and provides photos of their wonders.

Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica

Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica
Author: Joshua Englehardt
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2019-05-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1607328356

Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica explores the role of interregional interaction in the dynamic sociocultural processes that shaped the pre-Columbian societies of Mesoamerica. Interdisciplinary contributions from leading scholars investigate linguistic exchange and borrowing, scribal practices, settlement patterns, ceramics, iconography, and trade systems, presenting a variety of case studies drawn from multiple spatial, temporal, and cultural contexts within Mesoamerica. Archaeologists have long recognized the crucial role of interregional interaction in the development and cultural dynamics of ancient societies, particularly in terms of the evolution of sociocultural complexity and economic systems. Recent research has further expanded the archaeological, art historical, ethnographic, and epigraphic records in Mesoamerica, permitting a critical reassessment of the complex relationship between interaction and cultural dynamics. This volume builds on and amplifies earlier research to examine sociocultural phenomena—including movement, migration, symbolic exchange, and material interaction—in their role as catalysts for variability in cultural systems. Interregional cultural exchange in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica played a key role in the creation of systems of shared ideologies, the production of regional or “international” artistic and architectural styles, shifting sociopolitical patterns, and changes in cultural practices and meanings. Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica highlights, engages with, and provokes questions pertinent to understanding the complex relationship between interaction, sociocultural processes, and cultural innovation and change in the ancient societies and cultural histories of Mesoamerica and will be of interest to archaeologists, linguists, and art historians. Contributors: Philip J. Arnold III, Lourdes Budar, José Luis Punzo Diaz, Gary Feinman, David Freidel, Elizabeth Jiménez Garcia, Guy David Hepp, Kerry M. Hull, Timothy J. Knab, Charles L. F. Knight, Blanca E. Maldonado, Joyce Marcus, Jesper Nielsen, John M. D. Pohl, Iván Rivera, D. Bryan Schaeffer, Niklas Schulze

The Market for Mesoamerica

The Market for Mesoamerica
Author: Cara G. Tremain
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Indian art
ISBN: 9780813056449

This book will explore past, current, and future policies and trends concerning the sale of antiquities from Mesoamerica. Having outlined gaps in our knowledge, this book seeks to identify the substantive steps that the academic community can take toward affecting transparency, accountability, and ethical practice within the Pre-Columbian antiquities market.

Houses in a Landscape

Houses in a Landscape
Author: Julia A. Hendon
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2010-04-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822391724

In Houses in a Landscape, Julia A. Hendon examines the connections between social identity and social memory using archaeological research on indigenous societies that existed more than one thousand years ago in what is now Honduras. While these societies left behind monumental buildings, the remains of their dead, remnants of their daily life, intricate works of art, and fine examples of craftsmanship such as pottery and stone tools, they left only a small body of written records. Despite this paucity of written information, Hendon contends that an archaeological study of memory in such societies is possible and worthwhile. It is possible because memory is not just a faculty of the individual mind operating in isolation, but a social process embedded in the materiality of human existence. Intimately bound up in the relations people develop with one another and with the world around them through what they do, where and how they do it, and with whom or what, memory leaves material traces. Hendon conducted research on three contemporaneous Native American civilizations that flourished from the seventh century through the eleventh CE: the Maya kingdom of Copan, the hilltop center of Cerro Palenque, and the dispersed settlement of the Cuyumapa valley. She analyzes domestic life in these societies, from cooking to crafting, as well as public and private ritual events including the ballgame. Combining her findings with a rich body of theory from anthropology, history, and geography, she explores how objects—the things people build, make, use, exchange, and discard—help people remember. In so doing, she demonstrates how everyday life becomes part of the social processes of remembering and forgetting, and how “memory communities” assert connections between the past and the present.

Mesoamerican Plazas

Mesoamerican Plazas
Author: Kenichiro Tsukamoto
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2014-04-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816530580

"This is the first book to examine the roles of plazas in ancient Mesoamerica. It argues persuasively that physical interactions among people in communal events were not the outcomes of political machinations held behind the scenes, but were the actual political processes through which people created, negotiated, and subverted social realities"--

Prehistoric Mesoamerica

Prehistoric Mesoamerica
Author: Richard E. W. Adams
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806137025

An up-to-date overview of Mesoamerican cultures from early prehistoric times through the fall of the Aztec Empire, Prehistoric Mesoamerica, Third Edition will be useful and appealing to readers interested in Mesoamerican art, society, politics, and intellectual achievement.