The Dead Tell Tales
The Dead Tell Tales

Author: Maria Cecilia Lozada

Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press

Published: 2013-12-31

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1938770498

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Honoring Jane Buikstra's pioneering work in the development of bioarchaeological research, the essays in this volume stem from a symposium held at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Multiple generations of Buikstra's former doctoral students and other colleagues gathered to discuss the impact of her mentorship. The essays are remarkable for their breadth, in terms of both the topics discussed and the geographical range they cover. The contributions highlight the dynamism of bioarchaeology, which owes so much to the strong foundations laid down over the last few decades. The volume documents the degree to which bioarchaeological approaches have become normalized and integrated into anthropological research: bioarchaeology has moved out of the appendix and into the interpretation of archaeological data. New perspectives have emerged, partly in response to theoretical changes within anthropology, but also as a result of the engagement of the broader discipline with bioarchaeology.

Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya
Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya

Author: Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2017-04-25

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0300207174

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Translations and Orthography -- Introduction -- 1 Image and Text -- 2 Pictorial and Textual Sources -- 3 Mesoamerican Cosmogony -- 4 The Maiden -- 5 The Grandmother -- 6 The Sun's Opponents -- 7 The Sun -- 8 The Perfect Youth -- 9 The Father -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Illustration Credits -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z

New Theories on the Ancient Maya
New Theories on the Ancient Maya

Author: Elin C. Danien

Publisher: UPenn Museum of Archaeology

Published: 1992-01-29

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780924171130

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Papers from the 1987 Maya Weekend conference at the University of Pennsylvania Museum present current views of Maya culture and language. Also included is an article by George Stuart summarizing the history of the study of Maya hieroglyphs and the fascinating scholars and laypersons who have helped bring about their decipherment. Symposium Series III University Museum Monograph, 77

Andean Lives
Andean Lives

Author: Ricardo Valderrama Fernández

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2010-07-05

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 0292786832

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Gregorio Condori Mamani and Asunta Quispe Huamán were runakuna, a Quechua word that means "people" and refers to the millions of indigenous inhabitants neglected, reviled, and silenced by the dominant society in Peru and other Andean countries. For Gregorio and Asunta, however, that silence was broken when Peruvian anthropologists Ricardo Valderrama Fernández and Carmen Escalante Gutiérrez recorded their life stories. The resulting Spanish-Quechua narrative, published in the mid-1970s and since translated into many languages, has become a classic introduction to the lives and struggles of the "people" of the Andes. Andean Lives is the first English translation of this important book. Working directly from the Quechua, Paul H. Gelles and Gabriela Martínez Escobar have produced an English version that will be easily accessible to general readers and students, while retaining the poetic intensity of the original Quechua. It brings to vivid life the words of Gregorio and Asunta, giving readers fascinating and sometimes troubling glimpses of life among Cuzco's urban poor, with reflections on rural village life, factory work, haciendas, indigenous religion, and marriage and family relationships.

Star Gods of the Maya
Star Gods of the Maya

Author: Susan Milbrath

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 1999-01-01

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 0292752261

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Observations of the sun, moon, planets, and stars played a central role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the astronomical information encoded in Precolumbian Maya art and confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples. Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to Precolumbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the major astronomical gods and their associated glyphs, astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices [painted books], and changes in the imagery of the heavens over time. This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of information about the specific astronomical events and cycles recorded in Maya art and architecture. Indeed, it constitutes the first major study of the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya culture.

The Humanities Reloaded
The Humanities Reloaded

Author: Keyan G. Tomaselli

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-03-21

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1000847799

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume examines the crisis of humanities narratives in the context of neoliberal capitalism and of the emergence and consolidation of the metrics-driven, corporate, managerial university. Do narratives of the crisis of the humanities mobilize specific notions of value and prestige? How are these notions classed, gendered and racialized? How do narratives of the crisis of the humanities relate to current debates and contestations surrounding decolonization? Does the crisis of a traditional configuration of the humanities open up opportunities to use their institutional space for work that is both socially and politically relevant and academically rigorous? The aim is to provide a counter-narrative of the present and future of the humanities. In addition to the study of a multiplicity of media texts and other multimodal expressive forms, formats and platforms and genres, a communicative turn in the humanities entails deepening the study of the value chains in which they are inserted and their conditions of production, circulation and reception. Communicative and digital capitalism, now labelled the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is on its way to bringing its own waves of struggles and confrontations to our campuses and beyond, to which humanities scholars and activists can make a vital contribution—should some of us decide to do so. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of art, literature, media and cultural studies, education, politics, sociology, and social and cultural anthropology. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies.

The Worlds of the Moche on the North Coast of Peru
The Worlds of the Moche on the North Coast of Peru

Author: Elizabeth P. Benson

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2012-07-15

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0292742630

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Moche, or Mochica, created an extraordinary civilization on the north coast of Peru for most of the first millennium AD. Although they had no written language with which to record their history and beliefs, the Moche built enormous ceremonial edifices and embellished them with mural paintings depicting supernatural figures and rituals. Highly skilled Moche artisans crafted remarkable ceramic vessels, which they painted with figures and scenes or modeled like sculpture, and mastered metallurgy in gold, silver, and copper to make impressive symbolic ornaments. They also wove textiles that were complex in execution and design. A senior scholar renowned for her discoveries about the Moche, Elizabeth P. Benson published the first English-language monograph on the subject in 1972. Now in this volume, she draws on decades of knowledge, as well as the findings of other researchers, to offer a grand overview of all that is currently known about the Moche. Touching on all significant aspects of Moche culture, she covers such topics as their worldview and ritual life, ceremonial architecture and murals, art and craft, supernatural beings, government and warfare, and burial and the afterlife. She demonstrates that the Moche expressed, with symbolic language in metal and clay, what cultures in other parts of the world presented in writing. Indeed, Benson asserts that the accomplishments of the Moche are comparable to those of their Mesoamerica contemporaries, the Maya, which makes them one of the most advanced civilizations of pre-Columbian America.