The Maya World
The Maya World

Author: Scott R. Hutson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-17

Total Pages: 983

ISBN-13: 1351029568

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The Maya World brings together over 60 authors, representing the fields of archaeology, art history, epigraphy, geography, and ethnography, who explore cutting-edge research on every major facet of the ancient Maya and all sub-regions within the Maya world. The Maya world, which covers Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador, contains over a hundred ancient sites that are open to tourism, eight of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and many thousands more that have been dug or await investigation. In addition to captivating the lay public, the ancient Maya have attracted scores of major interdisciplinary research expeditions and hundreds of smaller projects going back to the 19th century, making them one of the best-known ancient cultures. The Maya World explores their renowned writing system, towering stone pyramids, exquisitely painted murals, and elaborate funerary tombs as well as their creative agricultural strategies, complex social, economic, and political relationships, widespread interactions with other societies, and remarkable cultural resilience in the face of historical ruptures. This is an invaluable reference volume for scholars of the ancient Maya, including archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists.

At the Edge of the World
At the Edge of the World

Author: Karen Bassie-Sweet

Publisher:

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 9780806128290

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The corners of this world were marked by the rise and set points of the solstice sun.

The Maya World
The Maya World

Author: Matthew Restall

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1999-02-01

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 0804765006

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This pathbreaking work is a social and cultural history of the Maya peoples of the province of Yucatan in colonial Mexico, spanning the period from shortly after the Spanish conquest of the region to its incorporation as part of an independent Mexico. Instead of depending on the Spanish sources and perspectives that have formed the basis of previous scholarship on colonial Yucatan, the author aims to give a voice to the Maya themselves, basing his analysis entirely on his translations of hundreds of Yucatec Maya notarial documents—from libraries and archives in Mexico, Spain, and the United States—most of which have never before received scholarly attention. These documents allow the author to reconstruct the social and cultural world of the Maya municipality, or cah, the self-governing community where most Mayas lived and which was the focus of Maya social and political identity. The first two parts of the book examine the ways in which Mayas were organized and differentiated from each other within the community, and the discussion covers such topics as individual and group identities, sociopolitical organization, political factionalism, career patterns, class structures, household and family patterns, inheritance, gender roles, sexuality, and religion. The third part explores the material environment of the cah, emphasizing the role played by the use and exchange of land, while the fourth part describes in detail the nature and significance of the source documentation, its genres and its language. Throughout the book, the author pays attention to the comparative contexts of changes over time and the similarities or differences between Maya patterns and those of other colonial-era Mesoamericans, notably the Nahuas of central Mexico.

At the Edge of the Maya World
At the Edge of the Maya World

Author: Caitlin Cargile Earley

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 1054

ISBN-13:

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In the Comitán Valley of Chiapas, Mexico, several large Maya centers flourished in the Late Classic (600-900 CE) and Early Postclassic (900-1250 CE) periods. These centers left behind monumental architecture, elaborate burials, and over fifty inscribed stone monuments. This project represents the first comprehensive study of those monuments, combining art historical analysis with archaeological data to reconstruct the history of sites in this area. This analysis reveals that ancient Maya centers in the Comitán Valley participated in widespread Maya customs of artistic representation, but they did so using local styles and iconographic motifs. The resulting artistic programs are innovative and profoundly local, and they provide a point of access into concepts of identity in different Maya centers. The monuments of Tenam Puente, for example, revolve around militarism, while the sculptures of Chinkultic emphasize ritual and history, pointing to the role of the site as the dynastic center of the eastern Comitán Valley. The sculptures of the Comitán Valley offer unique insight into the history of the region, but they also provide a new perspective on the creation of regional iconography, the role of frontier sites in Maya politics, and the diversity of ancient Maya art. The eclectic artistic programs of sites in the Comitán Valley are the result of the active appropriation and reformulation of broad artistic concepts. Analysis of this corpus reveals political affiliations and evidence of warfare, suggesting that frontier centers like those in the Comitán Valley were involved in the complex sociopolitical dynamics of the western Maya area. When many other centers were abandoned at the end of the Classic period, moreover, sites of the Comitán Valley continued to thrive; the breakage and re-use of monuments in this era sheds light on the changing role of Maya sculpture in the Postclassic period. Finally, the sculptures of the Comitán Valley point to the diversity of ancient Maya art. From the appropriation of Central Mexican motifs to the curation of ancestor figures associated with caves, sites in this area exhibit a variety of approaches to the creation and display of sculpture.

Notes from the Edge Times
Notes from the Edge Times

Author: Daniel Pinchbeck

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2010-10-14

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1101464607

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In this unsparing tour of the perils and promises of the current era, visionary author Daniel Pinchbeck helps us understand that we don't need to wait for the dawning of the next age to radically change our perspectives. In the years since his pioneering work 2012, Daniel Pinchbeck has touched a legion of readers hungry for insight and guidance about new ways of living amid the crises of the current moment. Notes from the Edge Times collects Pinchbeck's most penetrating recent columns, articles, and essays that amount to an extraordinary mosaic view of the hopes, nightmares, and signs of breakthrough that mark our present era. Pinchbeck examines the current economic collapse (an event he had foreseen by many months), radical political and ecological alternatives, the uses of psychedelics for spiritual insight, the revival of the sexual revolution, unexplained phenomena such as crop circles and the Norway spiral, the imminent (and often-misunderstood) question of 2012, and what it means to be an artist in a time of radical change. Pinchbeck's virtuosity as a social critic, on full display in these pieces, is his ability to illuminate real and serious questions within unconventional topics that most literary intellects are unwilling to touch, from secret weapons systems to extrasensory abilities to the intelligence of plant life. In Notes from the Edge Times, Pinchbeck does more than critique present-day questions and conflicts; he provides fresh ideas for living more consciously now, and for constructing our own more enlightened futures, even as the world around us faces profound environmental, social, and spiritual challenges

The Maya End Times
The Maya End Times

Author: Patricia Mercier

Publisher: Watkins Media Limited

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1780283350

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According to the Maya Prophecies, the 5,000-year"Fourth Age" will come to it end in 2012. In a remarkable adventure which takes her all over Central South America and involves strange ceremonies at sacred pyramids, scaling an active volcano and chases with drug runners, Patricia Mercier attempts to discover whether 2012 will be the end of the world as know it or the dawning of a new golden age.

Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World
Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World

Author: Traci Ardren

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-06-30

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1107040671

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Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World introduces readers to a range of people who lived during the Classic period (200-800 CE) of Maya civilization. Traci Ardren here reconstructs the individual experiences of Maya people across all social arenas and experiences, including less-studied populations, such as elders, children, and non-gender binary people. Putting people, rather than objects, at the heart of her narrative, she examines the daily activities of a small rural household of farmers and artists, hunting and bee-keeping rituals, and the bustling activities of the urban marketplace. Ardren bases her study on up-to-date and diverse sources and approaches, including archaeology, art history, epigraphy, and ethnography. Her volume reveals the stories of ancient Maya people and also shows the relevance of those stories today. Written in an engaging style, Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World offers readers at all levels a view into the amazing accomplishments of a culture that continues to fascinate.

Art of the Maya Scribe
Art of the Maya Scribe

Author: Michael Coe

Publisher:

Published: 1998-02

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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To the four great calligraphic traditions - ancient Egyptian, East Asian, Islamic, and western European - is now added a fifth: that of the ancient Maya. Long known but little understood, Maya writing has now largely been deciphered, leading to a new understanding of the Maya scribes and the society in which they lived. This volume is the first to make full use of the latest research and the first to consider Maya writing both aesthetically and in terms of its meaning. Michael D. Coe begins by examining the origins and character of the script. He then explores the world of the scribes and "keepers of the holy books, " decoding their depiction in Maya art and describing the mediums in which they worked, their tools, and techniques.

Edge of Empire
Edge of Empire

Author: Maya Jasanoff

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 0307425711

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In this imaginative book, Maya Jasanoff uncovers the extraordinary stories of collectors who lived on the frontiers of the British Empire in India and Egypt, tracing their exploits to tell an intimate history of imperialism. Jasanoff delves beneath the grand narratives of power, exploitation, and resistance to look at the British Empire through the eyes of the people caught up in it. Written and researched on four continents, Edge of Empire enters a world where people lived, loved, mingled, and identified with one another in ways richer and more complex than previous accounts have led us to believe were possible. And as this book demonstrates, traces of that world remain tangible—and topical—today. An innovative, persuasive, and provocative work of history.