The Nahua Newsletter
Author:
Publisher:
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 236
ISBN-13:
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Aztecs
Author: Inga Clendinnen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2014-05-15
Total Pages: 575
ISBN-13: 110769356X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRecreates the culture of the city of Tenochtitlan in its last unthreatened years before it fell to the Spaniards.
Paracas Art & Architecture
Author: Anne Paul
Publisher:
Published: 1991
Total Pages: 464
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNine contributions from archaeologists, art historians, a fiber artist, and a fiber chemist discuss diverse aspects of textiles and pottery as they represent a 900-year-long cultural tradition that flourished many centuries ago on Peru's south coast. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The Learned Ones
Author: Kelly S. McDonough
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2014-09-18
Total Pages: 276
ISBN-13: 0816598665
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThey were the healers, teachers, and writers, the “wise ones” of Nahuatl-speaking cultures in Mexico, remembered in painted codices and early colonial manuscripts of Mesoamerica as the guardians of knowledge. Yet they very often seem bound to an unrecoverable past, as stereotypes prevent some from linking the words “indigenous” and “intellectual” together. Not so, according to author Kelly S. McDonough, at least not for native speakers of Nahuatl, one of the most widely spoken and best-documented indigenous languages of the Americas. This book focuses on how Nahuas have been deeply engaged with the written word ever since the introduction of the Roman alphabet in the early sixteenth century. Dipping into distinct time periods of the past five hundred years, this broad perspective allows McDonough to show the heterogeneity of Nahua knowledge and writing as Nahuas took up the pen as agents of their own discourses and agendas. McDonough worked collaboratively with contemporary Nahua researchers and students, reconnecting the theorization of a population with the population itself. The Learned Ones describes the experience of reading historic text with native speakers today, some encountering Nahua intellectuals and their writing for the very first time. It intertwines the written word with oral traditions and embodied knowledge, aiming to retie the strand of alphabetic writing to the dynamic trajectory of Nahua intellectual work.
Bernardino de Sahagun
Author: Miguel Leon-Portilla
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2012-09-13
Total Pages: 340
ISBN-13: 0806181346
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHe was sent from Spain on a religious crusade to Mexico to “detect the sickness of idolatry,” but Bernardino de Sahagún (c. 1499-1590) instead became the first anthropologist of the New World. The Franciscan monk developed a deep appreciation for Aztec culture and the Nahuatl language. In this biography, Miguel León-Portilla presents the life story of a fascinating man who came to Mexico intent on changing the traditions and cultures he encountered but instead ended up working to preserve them, even at the cost of persecution. Sahagún was responsible for documenting numerous ancient texts and other native testimonies. He persevered in his efforts to study the native Aztecs until he had developed his own research methodology, becoming a pioneer of anthropology. Sahagún formed a school of Nahua scribes and labored with them for more than sixty years to transcribe the pre-conquest language and culture of the Nahuas. His rich legacy, our most comprehensive account of the Aztecs, is contained in his Primeros Memoriales (1561) and Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España (1577). Near the end of his life at age 91, Sahagún became so protective of the Aztecs that when he died, his former Indian students and many others felt deeply affected. Translated into English by Mauricio J. Mixco, León-Portilla’s absorbing account presents Sahagún as a complex individual–a man of his times yet a pioneer in many ways.
Aztec Philosophy
Author: James Maffie
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Published: 2014-03-15
Total Pages: 609
ISBN-13: 1607322234
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought. Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology. Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.
Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl
Author: Henry B. Nicholson
Publisher:
Published: 2001
Total Pages: 442
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, H.B. Nicholson presents the most comprehensive survey and discussion of the primary sources and relevant archaeological evidence concerning this man/god, the most enigmatic figure of ancient Mesoamerica. Long available only on university microfilm, this classic text has been updated and now includes new illustrations and an index. Nicholson sorts through the wealth of material, classifying, summarizing, and analyzing all known primary accounts in the Spanish, Nahuatl, and Mayan languages of the career of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl. In a new Introduction, he updates the original source material presently available to scholars concerned with this figure.
Child of the Flower-Song People
Author: Gloria Amescua
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2021-08-17
Total Pages: 48
ISBN-13: 1683357388
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAward-winning illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh brings to life debut author Gloria Amescua's lyrical biography of an indigenous Nahua woman from Mexico who taught and preserved her people's culture through modeling for famous artists She was Luz Jiménez, child of the flower-song people, the powerful Aztec, who called themselves Nahua— who lost their land but who did not disappear. As a young Nahua girl in Mexico during the early 1900s, Luz learned how to grind corn in a metate, to twist yarn with her toes, and to weave on a loom. By the fire at night, she listened to stories of her community’s joys, suffering, and survival, and wove them into her heart. But when the Mexican Revolution came to her village, Luz and her family were forced to flee and start a new life. In Mexico City, Luz became a model for painters, sculptors, and photographers such as Diego Rivera, Jean Charlot, and Tina Modotti. These artists were interested in showing the true face of Mexico and not a European version. Through her work, Luz found a way to preserve her people's culture by sharing her native language, stories, and traditions. Soon, scholars came to learn from her. This moving, beautifully illustrated biography tells the remarkable story of how model and teacher Luz Jiménez became “the soul of Mexico”—a living link between the indigenous Nahua and the rest of the world. Through her deep pride in her roots and her unshakeable spirit, the world came to recognize the beauty and strength of her people. The book includes an author’s note, timeline, glossary, and bibliography.
The Nahuas After the Conquest
Author: James Lockhart
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1994-09-01
Total Pages: 676
ISBN-13: 080476557X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA monumental achievement of scholarship, this volume on the Nahua Indians of Central Mexico (often called Aztecs) constitutes our best understanding of any New World indigenous society in the period following European contact. Simply put, the purpose of this book is to throw light on the history of Nahua society and culture through the use of records in Nahuatl, concentrating on the time when the bulk of the extant documents were written, between about 1540-50 and the late eighteenth century. At the same time, the earliest records are full of implications for the very first years after contact, and ultimately for the preconquest epoch as well, both of which are touched on here in ways that are more than introductory or ancillary.
From Tribute to Communal Sovereignty
Author: Andrew Roth-Seneff
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2015-06-11
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 0816531587
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFrom Tribute to Communal Sovereignty examines both continuity and change over the last five centuries for the indigenous peoples of central western Mexico, providing the first sweeping and comprehensive history of this important region in Mesoamerica. The continuities elucidated concern ancestral territorial claims that date back centuries and reflect the stable geographic locations occupied by core populations of indigenous language–speakers in or near their pre-Columbian territories since the Postclassical period, from the thirteenth to late fifteenth centuries. A common theme of this volume is the strong cohesive forces present, not only in the colonial construction of Christian village communities in Purhépecha and Nahuatl groups in Michoacán but also in the demographically less inclusive Huichol (Wixarika), Cora, and Tepehuan groups, whose territories were more extensive. The authors review a cluster of related themes: settlement patterns of the last five centuries in central western Mexico, language distribution, ritual representation of territoriality, processes of collective identity, and the forms of participation and resistance during different phases of Mexican state formation. From such research, the question arises: does the village community constitute a unique level of organization of the experience of the original peoples of central western Mexico? The chapters address this question in rich and complex ways by first focusing on the past configurations and changes in lifeways during the transition from pre-Columbian to Spanish rule in tributary empires, then examining the long-term postcolonial process of Mexican independence that introduced the emerging theme of the communal sovereignty.
