|
156 books about Mayas and 10
start with H
|
READERS PUBLISHERS STUDENT SERVICES More to explore... |
156 books about Mayas and 10
156 books about Mayas
10 start with H start with H
10 start with H start with H
Heart of Creation
The Mesoamerican World and the Legacy of Linda Schele
Edited by Andrea Stone
University of Alabama Press, 2002
This accessible, state-of-the-art review of Mayan hieroglyphics and cosmology also serves as a tribute to one of the field's most noted pioneers.
The core of this book focuses on the current study of Mayan hieroglyphics as inspired by the recently deceased Mayanist Linda Schele. As author or coauthor of more than 200 books or articles on the Maya, Schele served as the chief disseminator of knowledge to the general public about this ancient Mesoamerican culture, similar to the way in which Margaret Mead introduced anthropology and the people of Borneo to the English-speaking world.
Twenty-five contributors offer scholarly writings on subjects ranging from the ritual function of public space at the Olmec site and the gardens of the Great Goddess at Teotihuacan to the understanding of Jupiter in Maya astronomy and the meaning of the water throne of Quirigua Zoomorph P. The workshops on Maya history and writing that Schele conducted in Guatemala and Mexico for the highland people, modern descendants of the Mayan civilization, are thoroughly addressed as is the phenomenon termed "Maya mania"—the explosive growth of interest in Maya epigraphy, iconography, astronomy, and cosmology that Schele stimulated. An appendix provides a bibliography of Schele's publications and a collection of Scheleana, written memories of "the Rabbit Woman" by some of her colleagues and students.
Of interest to professionals as well as generalists, this collection will stand as a marker of the state of Mayan studies at the turn of the 21st century and as a tribute to the remarkable personality who guided a large part of that archaeological research for more than two decades.
[more]
Her Cup for Sweet Cacao
Food in Ancient Maya Society
Edited by Traci Ardren
University of Texas Press, 2020
For the ancient Maya, food was both sustenance and a tool for building a complex society. This collection, the first to focus exclusively on the social uses of food in Classic Maya culture, deploys a variety of theoretical approaches to examine the meaning of food beyond diet—ritual offerings and restrictions, medicinal preparations, and the role of nostalgia around food, among other topics. For instance, how did Maya feasts build community while also reinforcing social hierarchy? What psychoactive substances were the elite Maya drinking in their caves, and why? Which dogs were good for eating, and which breeds became companions? Why did even some non-elite Maya enjoy cacao, but rarely meat? Why was meat more available for urban Maya than for those closer to hunting grounds on the fringes of cities? How did the molcajete become a vital tool and symbol in Maya gastronomy?
These chapters, written by some of the leading scholars in the field, showcase a variety of approaches and present new evidence from faunal remains, hieroglyphic texts, chemical analyses, and art. Thoughtful and revealing, Her Cup for Sweet Cacao unlocks a more comprehensive understanding of how food was instrumental to the development of ancient Maya culture.
[more]
Heritage or Heresy
Archaeology and Culture on the Maya Riviera
Cameron Jean Walker
University of Alabama Press, 2008
How can we effectively interpret and present one culture to another without stereotypes or over-simplifications? What is the best way to present an authoritative version of a national heritage without also endangering ancient sites or being insensitive to the local customs, beliefs, and religious practices of the indigenous peoples?
This volume addresses the ongoing thrust in archaeology to take the next step after preserving the past: interpreting that past for the future. That future audience includes both local citizens and tourists who may have little background in archaeology, anthropology, or the history of the culture featured. Walker presents the key components of the anthropological study of tourism as a global phenomenon, with particular emphasis on the more prominent arguments for how and why tourism is a universal and meaningful human activity. The highly controversial topic of authenticity is examined, with special attention given to how "authentic" has been defined and how it relates to the ways in which archaeological sites, artifacts, and cultural traditions are presented--or not presented--to the visiting public. The ephemeral promise of “authenticity” drives the heritage tourism industry, which is a key consideration for the long term economy of the Maya Riviera and elsewhere. Through analysis of seven archaeological sites on the Yucatan peninsula that are open to heritage touring, Walker reveals the planned growth of the Maya Riviera since the early 1970s and examines the impact of international tourism on both ancient structures and the contemporary Maya people and culture.
[more]
Heterarchy, Political Economy, and the Ancient Maya
The Three Rivers Region of the East-Central Yucatán Peninsula
Edited by Vernon L. Scarborough, Fred Valdez Jr., and Nicholas Dunning
University of Arizona Press, 2003
The ancient Maya of the southern Yucatán peninsula remain a mystery to many scholars attempting to explain early complex societies. Their dispersed settlement patterns and land-use techniques suggest a decentralized and less coordinated use of resources than is seen in other regions. Yet the Maya managed a complex political economy based on structured landscaping, and over several generations they significantly altered their environment. In recent years the Three Rivers region of Belize and Guatemala has been the site of some of the most intensive archaeological research in the Maya lowlands, providing a wealth of regional data. This volume brings together articles reporting on findings and interpretations of the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project that range over a 10- to 12-year period and that shed new light on how ecology, economy, and political order developed in the ancient past. The contributors explore the applicability of heterarchical models to the Three Rivers region, emphasizing the role of economic interdependency and political cooperation in the development of ancient Maya statecraft. As their findings reflect, this region appears to support a model of resource-specialized communities that affected the region's political and economic development and complexity from the Preclassic through the Late Classic periods. The articles explore the levels of interdependency among the large sites in the region and present a variety of data that emphasize both the engineered landscape and the complex agricultural signatures and ecological indicators left by the Maya. This geographic region captures in microcosm both ecological and cultural differences found in the greater Maya Lowlands. The heterarchical model presented here regarding resource-specialized communities and the interpretations of regional diversity in this area represent a breakthrough in research for the region and will prompt new debate in Maya studies.
[more]
Hinterland Households
John G. Douglass
University Press of Colorado, 2002
The rural sector of agrarian societies has historically been viewed as composed of undifferentiated households primarily interested in self-sufficiency. In more recent times, households have been seen as more diverse than previously thought, both internal
[more]
The House of the Bacabs, Copan, Honduras
David Webster
Harvard University Press, 1989
Claude Baudez, William L. Fash, Jr., Berthold Riese, William T. Sanders, and David Webster contribute to this monograph, and using an integrated art historical and anthropological approach, consider the House of the Bacabs’ context as an elite Maya structure, its excavation and restoration, and its iconographic and epigraphic reconstruction and interpretation, to establish models for understanding Classic Maya social and political life.
[more]
Houses in a Landscape
Memory and Everyday Life in Mesoamerica
Julia A. Hendon
Duke University Press, 2010
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.
[more]
How the Maya Built Their World
Energetics and Ancient Architecture
By Elliot M. Abrams
University of Texas Press, 1994
Maya architecture is often described as "massive" and "monumental," but experiments at Copan, Honduras, convinced Elliot Abrams that 300 people could have built one of the large palaces there in only 100 days.
In this groundbreaking work, Abrams explicates his theory of architectural energetics, which involves translating structures into volumes of raw and manufactured materials that are then multiplied by the time required for their production and assembly to determine the labor costs of past construction efforts. Applying this method to residential structures of the Late Classic period (A.D. 700-900) at Copan leads Abrams to posit a six-tiered hierarchic social structure of political decision making, ranging from a stratified elite to low-ranking commoners. By comparing the labor costs of construction and other economic activities, he also prompts a reconsideration of the effects of royal construction demands on commoners.
How the Maya Built Their World will interest a wide audience in New and Old World anthropology, archaeology, architecture, and engineering.
[more]
Human Adaptation in Ancient Mesoamerica
Empirical Approaches to Mesoamerican Archaeology
Nancy Gonlin
University Press of Colorado, 2016
This volume explores the dynamics of human adaptation to social, political, ideological, economic, and environmental factors in Mesoamerica and includes a wide array of topics, such as the hydrological engineering behind Teotihuacan’s layout, the complexities of agriculture and sustainability in the Maya lowlands, and the nuanced history of abandonment among different lineages and households in Maya centers.
The authors aptly demonstrate how culture is the mechanism that allows people to adapt to a changing world, and they address how ecological factors, particularly land and water, intersect with nonmaterial and material manifestations of cultural complexity. Contributors further illustrate the continuing utility of the cultural ecological perspective in framing research on adaptations of ancient civilizations.
This book celebrates the work of Dr. David Webster, an influential Penn State archaeologist and anthropologist of the Maya region, and highlights human adaptation in Mesoamerica through the scientific lenses of anthropological archaeology and cultural ecology.
Contributors include Elliot M. Abrams, Christopher J. Duffy, Susan Toby Evans, Kirk D. French, AnnCorinne Freter, Nancy Gonlin, George R. Milner, Zachary Nelson, Deborah L. Nichols, David M. Reed, Don S. Rice, Prudence M. Rice, Rebecca Storey, Kirk Damon Straight, David Webster, Stephen L. Whittington, Randolph J. Widmer, John D. Wingard, and W. Scott Zeleznik.
[more]
Human Rights in the Maya Region
Global Politics, Cultural Contentions, and Moral Engagements
Pedro Pitarch, Shannon Speed, and Xochitl Leyva Solano, eds.
Duke University Press, 2008
In recent years Latin American indigenous groups have regularly deployed the discourse of human rights to legitimate their positions and pursue their goals. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the Maya region of Chiapas and Guatemala, where in the last two decades indigenous social movements have been engaged in ongoing negotiations with the state, and the presence of multinational actors has brought human rights to increased prominence. In this volume, scholars and activists examine the role of human rights in the ways that states relate to their populations, analyze conceptualizations and appropriations of human rights by Mayans in specific localities, and explore the relationship between the individualist and “universal” tenets of Western-derived concepts of human rights and various Mayan cultural understandings and political subjectivities.
The collection includes a reflection on the effects of truth-finding and documenting particular human rights abuses, a look at how Catholic social teaching validates the human rights claims advanced by indigenous members of a diocese in Chiapas, and several analyses of the limitations of human rights frameworks. A Mayan intellectual seeks to bring Mayan culture into dialogue with western feminist notions of women’s rights, while another contributor critiques the translation of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights into Tzeltal, an indigenous language in Chiapas. Taken together, the essays reveal a broad array of rights-related practices and interpretations among the Mayan population, demonstrating that global-local-state interactions are complex and diverse even within a geographically limited area. So too are the goals of indigenous groups, which vary from social reconstruction and healing following years of violence to the creation of an indigenous autonomy that challenges the tenets of neoliberalism.
Contributors: Robert M. Carmack, Stener Ekern, Christine Kovic, Xochitl Leyva Solano, Julián López García, Irma Otzoy, Pedro Pitarch, Álvaro Reyes, Victoria Sanford, Rachel Sieder, Shannon Speed, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, David Stoll, Richard Ashby Wilson
[more]
home | accessibility | search | about | contact us
BiblioVault ® 2001 - 2023
The University of Chicago Press