The Aztecs

The Aztecs

Author: Dirk R. Van Tuerenhout

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2005-06-21

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 1576079244

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How did a bedraggled band of nomads manage to evolve into a Mesoamerican superpower in such a brief time? This volume looks at the essential elements in the Aztecs' rise, fall, and enduring influence. A wealth of new archaeological findings and interpretations has sparked a richer understanding of the Aztecs, dispelling many myths. The Aztecs: New Perspectives looks at evidence from ancient, colonial, and modern times to present a contemporary, well-rounded portrait of this Mesoamerican culture. Like no other volume, it examines daily Aztec life both at, and away from, the seats of power, revealing the Aztecs to be accomplished farmers, astronomers, mathematicians, and poets—as well as ruthless warriors and tireless builders of empire. The Aztecs ranges from the mysterious origins of the Aztlan tribe to the glory years of empire and ultimate defeat. But the story doesn't end there. To present the most complete picture possible, the author goes to the most fascinating source available—the living ancestors who keep the Aztec language and many aspects of their ancient worldview alive. There is no better volume for exploring the realities of Aztec life as it was, and as it influences our world today.


Music in Aztec and Inca Territory

Music in Aztec and Inca Territory

Author: Robert M. Stevenson

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-07-28

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13: 0520317238

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This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.


Narrative Threads

Narrative Threads

Author: Jeffrey Quilter

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2010-07-05

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 0292774338

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The Inka Empire stretched over much of the length and breadth of the South American Andes, encompassed elaborately planned cities linked by a complex network of roads and messengers, and created astonishing works of architecture and artistry and a compelling mythology—all without the aid of a graphic writing system. Instead, the Inkas' records consisted of devices made of knotted and dyed strings—called khipu—on which they recorded information pertaining to the organization and history of their empire. Despite more than a century of research on these remarkable devices, the khipu remain largely undeciphered. In this benchmark book, twelve international scholars tackle the most vexed question in khipu studies: how did the Inkas record and transmit narrative records by means of knotted strings? The authors approach the problem from a variety of angles. Several essays mine Spanish colonial sources for details about the kinds of narrative encoded in the khipu. Others look at the uses to which khipu were put before and after the Conquest, as well as their current use in some contemporary Andean communities. Still others analyze the formal characteristics of khipu and seek to explain how they encode various kinds of numerical and narrative data.


Maya Imagery, Architecture, and Activity

Maya Imagery, Architecture, and Activity

Author: Kaylee R. Spencer

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2015-05-01

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0826355803

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Maya Imagery, Architecture, and Activity privileges art historical perspectives in addressing the ways the ancient Maya organized, manipulated, created, interacted with, and conceived of the world around them. The Maya provide a particularly strong example of the ways in which the built and imaged environment are intentionally oriented relative to political, religious, economic, and other spatial constructs. In examining space, the contributors of this volume demonstrate the core interrelationships inherent in a wide variety of places and spaces, both concrete and abstract. They explore the links between spatial order and cosmic order and the possibility that such connections have sociopolitical consequences. This book will prove useful not just to Mayanists but to art historians in other fields and scholars from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, geography, and landscape architecture.


Ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology

Author: E.D Kunst

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 9401020469

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This booklet hardly needs a preface; the contents, I think. speak for themselves.It contains a short and carefully brought up to date resume of all that I. as a private University Lecturer in Amsterdam. have tried to teach my pupils. It is intended as a general introduction to ethnomusicology, before going on to the study of the forms of separate music-cultures. I sincerely hope that those, who wish to teach themselves and to qualify in this branch of knowledge, will find a satisfactory basis for selftuition in the matter here brought together. Regarding the possibility of a new edition, any critical remarks or infor mation as to possible desiderata would be very gratefully received. J.K. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION My request for critical remarks and desiderata has not been ignored. My sincere thanks to all who took the trouble to let me know what they missed in my booklet. Through their collaboration the contents have undergone a considerable improvement and enlargement as compared to the original edition issued in 1950 by the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam. under the title 'Musicologica'. I have taken care to add many particulars from non-European sources. with the result that now the book is no longer so Europe-centric as it was. Furthermore, I have done my best to mention in a special bibliography all the more important ethnomusicological publications, with the exception of those issued in the Russian, Arabic. Chinese, Indonesian, Javanese.


The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers

The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers

Author: Robert L. Kelly

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-04-15

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1107024870

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Challenges the preconceptions that hunter-gatherers were Paleolithic relics living in a raw state of nature, instead crafting a position that emphasizes their diversity.


Geographers

Geographers

Author: Charles W. J. Withers

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-12-14

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 147422704X

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This twenty-sixth volume of Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies brings together essays on leading figures in time geography and regional theory, on GIS, on regional, cultural and political geography, on scriptural geography, historical geography and methodology, and on African exploration. Each essay engages with the individual's contribution to geography, their works and their lives and the intellectual and social contexts in which they worked and which helped shape them. In addition - and to mark the new co-editorial pairing leading the series - the volume has an essay on the history of GBS, on the importance of biographical work in the history of geography and on issues to be addressed by the scholarly communities engaged in promoting this vital area of geographical research.