Bones of the Maya

Bones of the Maya

Author: Stephen L. Whittington

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2006-08-20

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0817353763

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Includes an indexed bibliography of the first 150 years of Maya osteology. This volume pulls together a spectrum of bioarchaeologists that reveal remarkable data on Maya genetic relationship, demography, and diseases.


BONES OF MAYA

BONES OF MAYA

Author: Stephen L. Whittington

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press

Published: 1997-03-17

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13:

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In the ninth century, southern lowland Maya civilization went into a mysterious decline. Despite the wealth of information that bones could potentially provide towards explaining the collapse, bioarchaeologists have been traditionally unable to study Maya bones because the tropical climate and uninformed excavations have resulted in decomposed, poorly collected samples. But during the last twenty years, new techniques in osteology have yielded finds on Maya diet and health that challenge the accepted ecological model of overpopulation and overcultivation leading to collapse. Fifteen essays on skeltons from a wide range of sites in Mexico and Central America address such subjects as cranial deforamtion, tooth filing, damage caused by sacrificial rites and evidence of nutritional and infectious diseases. What emerges is a picture of regional variation and the importance of local context in order to reconstruct ancinet Maya culture and explain its demise.


The Memory of Bones

The Memory of Bones

Author: Stephen D. Houston

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2013-05-01

Total Pages: 758

ISBN-13: 0292756186

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An analysis of the intellectual and emotional life of ancient Mesoamerican people through studies of figural works and inscriptions. All of human experience flows from bodies that feel, express emotion, and think about what such experiences mean. But is it possible for us, embodied as we are in a particular time and place, to know how people of long ago thought about the body and its experiences? In this groundbreaking book, three leading experts on the Classic Maya (ca. AD 250 to 850) marshal a vast array of evidence from Maya iconography and hieroglyphic writing, as well as archaeological findings, to argue that the Classic Maya developed an approach to the human body that we can recover and understand today. Starting with a cartography of the Maya body as depicted in imagery and texts, the authors explore how the body was replicated in portraiture; how it experienced the world through ingestion, the senses, and the emotions; how the body experienced war and sacrifice and the pain and sexuality; how words, often heaven-sent, could be embodied; and how bodies could be blurred through spirit possession. From these investigations, the authors convincingly demonstrate that the Maya conceptualized the body in varying roles, as a metaphor of time, as a gendered, sexualized being, in distinct stages of life, as an instrument of honor and dishonor, as a vehicle for communication and consumption, as an exemplification of beauty and ugliness, and as a dancer and song-maker. Their findings open a new avenue for empathetically understanding the ancient Maya as living human beings who experienced the world as we do, through the body.


An Osteology of Some Maya Mammals

An Osteology of Some Maya Mammals

Author: Stanley John Olsen

Publisher: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University Publications Department

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13:

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As outspoken in his day as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens are today, American freethinker and author ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL (1833-1899) was a notorious radical whose uncompromising views on religion and slavery (they were bad, in his opinion), women's suffrage (a good idea, he believed), and other contentious matters of his era made him a wildly popular orator and critic of 19th-century American culture and public life. As a speaker dedicated to expanding intellectual horizons and celebrating the value of skepticism, Ingersoll spoke frequently on such topics as atheism, freedom from the pressures of conformity, and the lives of philosophers who espoused such concepts. This collection of his most famous speeches includes the lectures: [ "The Gods" (1872) [ "Humboldt" (1869) [ "Thomas Paine" (1870) [ "Individuality" (1873) [ "Heretics and Heresies" (1874)


New Perspectives on Human Sacrifice and Ritual Body Treatments in Ancient Maya Society

New Perspectives on Human Sacrifice and Ritual Body Treatments in Ancient Maya Society

Author: Vera Tiesler

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2007-02-15

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0387488715

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This book examines Maya sacrifice and related posthumous body manipulation. The editors bring together an international group of contributors from the area studied: archaeologists as well as anthropologists, forensic anthropologists, art historians and bioarchaeologists. This interdisciplinary approach provides a comprehensive perspective on these sites as well as the material culture and biological evidence found there


The Toe Bone and the Tooth

The Toe Bone and the Tooth

Author: Martin Prechtel

Publisher: HarperElement

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13:

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A wonderful blend of polemic, autobiography, travel adventure, and myth.


Animals and Plants of the Ancient Maya

Animals and Plants of the Ancient Maya

Author: Victoria Schlesinger

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780292777606

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A growing interest in all things Maya brings an increasing number of visitors to prehistoric Maya ruins and contemporary Maya communities in Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, western Honduras, the Yucatán Peninsula, and the southern areas of Chiapas and Tabasco, Mexico. For these visitors and indeed everyone with an interest in the Maya, this field guide highlights nearly 100 species of plants and animals that were significant to the ancient Maya and that continue to inhabit the Maya region today. Drawing from the disciplines of biology, ecology, and anthropology, Victoria Schlesinger describes each plant or animal's habitat and natural history, identifying characteristics (also shown in a black-and-white drawing), and cultural significance to the ancient and contemporary Maya. An introductory section explains how to use the book and offers a concise overview of the history, lifeways, and cosmology of the ancient Maya. The concluding section describes the collapse of ancient Maya society and briefly traces the history of the Maya region from colonial times to the present.


The New Archaeology and the Ancient Maya

The New Archaeology and the Ancient Maya

Author: Jeremy A. Sabloff

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

Published: 1994-08-15

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1466814446

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Nowadays, archaeological investigators don't just dig up the past They use high-tech equipment, chemical analyses, sampling strategies, and other modern means to gain a better understanding of why and how cultures change. Using the study of the Maya as a test case, Jeremy Sabloff shows how the exciting transformation of archaeology is shedding new light on past civilizations.


The Ancient Maya

The Ancient Maya

Author: Jackie Maloy

Publisher: C. Press/F. Watts Trade

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780531241103

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Provides information about the ancient Maya, discussing farming, daily life, beliefs, and other related topics.