The Myths of the Popol Vuh in Cosmology, Art, and Ritual

The Myths of the Popol Vuh in Cosmology, Art, and Ritual

Author: Holley Moyes

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2021-11-08

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 164642199X

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This volume offers an integrated and comparative approach to the Popol Vuh, analyzing its myths to elucidate the ancient Maya past while using multiple lines of evidence to shed light on the text. Combining interpretations of the myths with analyses of archaeological, iconographic, epigraphic, ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and literary resources, the work demonstrates how Popol Vuh mythologies contribute to the analysis and interpretation of the ancient Maya past. The chapters are grouped into four sections. The first section interprets the Highland Maya worldview through examination of the text, analyzing interdependence between deities and human beings as well as the textual and cosmological coherence of the Popol Vuh as a source. The second section analyzes the Precolumbian Maya archaeological record as it relates to the myths of the Popol Vuh, providing new interpretations of the use of space, architecture, burials, artifacts, and human remains found in Classic Maya caves. The third explores ancient Maya iconographic motifs, including those found in Classic Maya ceramic art; the nature of predatory birds; and the Hero Twins’ deeds in the Popol Vuh. The final chapters address mythological continuities and change, reexamining past methodological approaches using the Popol Vuh as a resource for the interpretation of Classic Maya iconography and ancient Maya religion and mythology, connecting the myths of the Popol Vuh to iconography from Preclassic Izapa, and demonstrating how narratives from the Popol Vuh can illuminate mythologies from other parts of Mesoamerica. The Myths of the Popol Vuh in Cosmology, Art, and Ritual is the first volume to bring together multiple perspectives and original interpretations of the Popol Vuh myths. It will be of interest not only to Mesoamericanists but also to art historians, archaeologists, ethnohistorians, iconographers, linguists, anthropologists, and scholars working in ritual studies, the history of religion, historic and Precolumbian literature and historic linguistics. Contributors: Jaime J. Awe, Karen Bassie-Sweet, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Michael D. Coe, Iyaxel Cojtí Ren, Héctor Escobedo, Thomas H. Guderjan, Julia Guernsey, Christophe Helmke, Nicholas A. Hopkins, Barbara MacLeod, Jesper Nielsen, Colin Snider, Karl A. Taube


Migrations in Late Mesoamerica

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica

Author: Christopher S. Beekman

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2019-10-14

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 081305723X

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Bringing the often-neglected topic of migration to the forefront of ancient Mesoamerican studies, this volume uses an illuminating multidisciplinary approach to address the role of population movements in Mexico and Central America from AD 500 to 1500, the tumultuous centuries before European contact. Clarifying what has to date been chiefly speculation, researchers from the fields of archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, ethnohistory, and art history delve deeply into the causes and impacts of prehistoric migration in the region. They draw on evidence including records of the Nahuatl language, murals painted at the Cacaxtla polity, ceramics in the style known as Coyotlatelco, skeletal samples from multiple sites, and conquest-era accounts of the origins of the Chichén Itzá Maya from both Native and Spanish scribes. The diverse datasets in this volume help reveal the choices and priorities of migrants during times of political, economic, and social changes that unmoored populations from ancestral lands. Migrations in Late Mesoamerica shows how migration patterns are vitally important to study due to their connection to environmental and political disruption in both ancient societies and today’s world. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase


The Maya of the Cochuah Region

The Maya of the Cochuah Region

Author: Justine M. Shaw

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0826348645

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This book, the first major collection of data from the Cochuah region investigations, presents and analyzes findings on more than eighty sites and puts them in the context of the findings of other investigations from outside the area.


Mayan Tales from Chiapas, Mexico

Mayan Tales from Chiapas, Mexico

Author: Robert M. Laughlin

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2014-05-01

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0826354491

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The forty-two stories presented in this book were told to Robert Laughlin in Tzotzil by Francisca Hernández Hernández, an elderly woman known as Doña Pancha, the only speaker of Tzotzil left in the village of San Felipe Ecatepec in Chiapas, Mexico. Laughlin and Doña Pancha’s running conversation is the source for the stories, which means they are told in much the same way that stories are told in traditional native settings. Doña Pancha is bilingual in Tzotzil and Spanish, and the stories are presented here in English, Tzotzil, and Spanish. They range from mythological sacred stories to quasi-historical legends to historical accounts of life in the twentieth century.


Vital Voids

Vital Voids

Author: Andrew Finegold

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1477322434

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The Resurrection Plate, a Late Classic Maya dish, is decorated with an arresting scene. The Maize God, assisted by two other deities, emerges reborn from a turtle shell. At the center of the plate, in the middle of the god’s body and aligned with the point of emergence, there is a curious sight: a small, neatly drilled hole. Art historian Andrew Finegold explores the meanings attributed to this and other holes in Mesoamerican material culture, arguing that such spaces were broadly understood as conduits of vital forces and material abundance, prerequisites for the emergence of life. Beginning with, and repeatedly returning to, the Resurrection Plate, this study explores the generative potential attributed to a wide variety of cavities and holes in Mesoamerica, ranging from the perforated dishes placed in Classic Maya burials, to caves and architectural voids, to the piercing of human flesh. Holes are also discussed in relation to fire, based on the common means through which both were produced: drilling. Ultimately, by attending to what is not there, Vital Voids offers a fascinating approach to Mesoamerican cosmology and material culture.


Time, Space, Matter in Translation

Time, Space, Matter in Translation

Author: Pamela Beattie

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-09-28

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1000641627

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Time, Space, Matter in Translation considers time, space, and materiality as legitimate habitats of translation. By offering a linked series of interdisciplinary case studies that show translation in action beyond languages and texts, this book provides a capacious and innovative understanding of what translation is, what it does, how, and where. The volume uses translation as a means through which to interrogate processes of knowledge transfer and creation, interpretation and reading, communication and relationship building—but it does so in ways that refuse to privilege one discipline over another, denying any one of them an entitled perspective. The result is a book that is grounded in the disciplines of the authors and simultaneously groundbreaking in how its contributors incorporate translation studies into their work. This is key reading for students in comparative literature—and in the humanities at large—and for scholars interested in seeing how expanding intellectual conversations can develop beyond traditional questions and methods.


Chocolate

Chocolate

Author: Louis E. Grivetti

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-09-20

Total Pages: 1556

ISBN-13: 1118210220

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International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) 2010 Award Finalists in the Culinary History category. Chocolate. We all love it, but how much do we really know about it? In addition to pleasing palates since ancient times, chocolate has played an integral role in culture, society, religion, medicine, and economic development across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. In 1998, the Chocolate History Group was formed by the University of California, Davis, and Mars, Incorporated to document the fascinating story and history of chocolate. This book features fifty-seven essays representing research activities and contributions from more than 100 members of the group. These contributors draw from their backgrounds in such diverse fields as anthropology, archaeology, biochemistry, culinary arts, gender studies, engineering, history, linguistics, nutrition, and paleography. The result is an unparalleled, scholarly examination of chocolate, beginning with ancient pre-Columbian civilizations and ending with twenty-first-century reports. Here is a sampling of some of the fascinating topics explored inside the book: Ancient gods and Christian celebrations: chocolate and religion Chocolate and the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1764 Chocolate pots: reflections of cultures, values, and times Pirates, prizes, and profits: cocoa and early American east coast trade Blood, conflict, and faith: chocolate in the southeast and southwest borderlands of North America Chocolate in France: evolution of a luxury product Development of concept maps and the chocolate research portal Not only does this book offer careful documentation, it also features new and previously unpublished information and interpretations of chocolate history. Moreover, it offers a wealth of unusual and interesting facts and folklore about one of the world's favorite foods.


Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests

Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests

Author: Gabrielle Vail

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9780884023463

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This book examines evidence for cultural interchange among the intellectual powerbrokers in Postclassic Mesoamerica, specifically those centered in the northern Maya lowlands and the central Mexican highlands. It includes a wealth of new data and interpretive frameworks in a comprehensive discussion of a critical time period in Mesoamerica.


Tongues of Fire

Tongues of Fire

Author: Nancy Farriss

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-05

Total Pages: 621

ISBN-13: 0190884126

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In Tongues of Fire, Nancy Farriss investigates the role of language and translation in the creation of Mexican Christianity during the first centuries of colonial rule. Spanish missionaries collaborated with indigenous intellectuals to communicate the gospel in dozens of unfamiliar local languages that had previously lacked grammars, dictionaries, or alphabetic script. The major challenge to translators, more serious than the absence of written aids or the great diversity of languages and their phonetic and syntactical complexity, was the vast cultural difference between the two worlds. The lexical gaps that frustrated the search for equivalence in conveying fundamental Christian doctrines derived from cultural gaps that separated European experiences and concepts from those of the Indians. Farriss shows that the dialogue arising from these efforts produced a new, culturally hybrid form of Christianity that had become firmly established by the end of the 17th century. The study focuses on the Otomangue languages of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, especially Zapotec, and relates their role within the Dominican program of evangelization to the larger context of cultural contact in post-conquest Mesoamerica. Fine-grained analysis of translated texts reveals the rhetorical strategies of missionary discourse. Spotlighting the importance of the native elites in shaping what emerged as a new form of Christianity, Farriss shows how their participation as translators and parish administrators helped to make evangelization an indigenous enterprise, and the new Mexican church an indigenous one.