Mesoamerican Architecture As A Cultural Symbol

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Mesoamerican Architecture as a Cultural Symbol

Author : Jeff Karl Kowalski
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 442 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Mesoamerican Architecture as a Cultural Symbol by : Jeff Karl Kowalski

Download or read book Mesoamerican Architecture as a Cultural Symbol written by Jeff Karl Kowalski and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection, prominent scholars provide new interpretations and useful syntheses of many of the most significant Mesoamerican architectural traditions from the Preclassic to the Postclassic periods. The essays examine the built environment as a carrier of cultural meanings. The many pyramid-temples, palaces, and ballcourts comprising Mesoamerican centers were constructed in the context of hierarchical societies, and provided monumental expressions of elite authority. The design of individual buildings, as well as the layout of site plans, often embodied Mesoamerican beliefs about the structure of the cosmos, natural forces, or the numinous power of landscape forms, thus providing sanction for the sociopolitical order.

Mesoamerican Architecture as a Cultural Symbol

Author : Jeff Karl Kowalski
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Mesoamerican Architecture as a Cultural Symbol by : Jeff Karl Kowalski

Download or read book Mesoamerican Architecture as a Cultural Symbol written by Jeff Karl Kowalski and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection, prominent scholars provide new interpretations and useful syntheses of many of the most significant Mesoamerican architectural traditions from the Preclassic to the Postclassic periods. The essays examine the built environment as a carrier of cultural meanings. The many pyramid-temples, palaces, and ballcourts comprising Mesoamerican centers were constructed in the context of hierarchical societies, and provided monumental expressions of elite authority. The design of individual buildings, as well as the layout of site plans, often embodied Mesoamerican beliefs about the structure of the cosmos, natural forces, or the numinous power of landscape forms, thus providing sanction for the sociopolitical order.

Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture

Author : Carolyn E. Tate
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292728522
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture by : Carolyn E. Tate

Download or read book Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture written by Carolyn E. Tate and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2012-01-18 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently, scholars of Olmec visual culture have identified symbols for umbilical cords, bundles, and cave-wombs, as well as a significant number of women portrayed on monuments and as figurines. In this groundbreaking study, Carolyn Tate demonstrates that these subjects were part of a major emphasis on gestational imagery in Formative Period Mesoamerica. In Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, she identifies the presence of women, human embryos, and fetuses in monuments and portable objects dating from 1400 to 400 BC and originating throughout much of Mesoamerica. This highly original study sheds new light on the prominent roles that women and gestational beings played in Early Formative societies, revealing female shamanic practices, the generative concepts that motivated caching and bundling, and the expression of feminine knowledge in the 260-day cycle and related divinatory and ritual activities. Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture is the first study that situates the unique hollow babies of Formative Mesoamerica within the context of prominent females and the prevalent imagery of gestation and birth. It is also the first major art historical study of La Venta and the first to identify Mesoamerica's earliest creation narrative. It provides a more nuanced understanding of how later societies, including Teotihuacan and West Mexico, as well as the Maya, either rejected certain Formative Period visual forms, rituals, social roles, and concepts or adopted and transformed them into the enduring themes of Mesoamerican symbol systems.

Sculpture and Social Dynamics in Preclassic Mesoamerica

Author : Julia Guernsey
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107012465
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Sculpture and Social Dynamics in Preclassic Mesoamerica by : Julia Guernsey

Download or read book Sculpture and Social Dynamics in Preclassic Mesoamerica written by Julia Guernsey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-23 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the functions of sculpture during the Preclassic period in Mesoamerica and its significance in statements of social identity. Julia Guernsey situates the origins and evolution of monumental stone sculpture within a broader social and political context and demonstrates the role that such sculpture played in creating and institutionalizing social hierarchies. This book focuses specifically on an enigmatic type of public, monumental sculpture known as the "potbelly" that traces its antecedents to earlier, small domestic ritual objects and ceramic figurines. The cessation of domestic rituals involving ceramic figurines along the Pacific slope coincided not only with the creation of the first monumental potbelly sculptures, but with the rise of the first state-level societies in Mesoamerica by the advent of the Late Preclassic period. The potbellies became central to the physical representation of new forms of social identity and expressions of political authority during this time of dramatic change.

Stone Trees Transplanted? Central Mexican Stelae of the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic and the Question of Maya ‘Influence’

Author : Keith Jordan
Publisher : Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1784910112
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (849 download)

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Book Synopsis Stone Trees Transplanted? Central Mexican Stelae of the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic and the Question of Maya ‘Influence’ by : Keith Jordan

Download or read book Stone Trees Transplanted? Central Mexican Stelae of the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic and the Question of Maya ‘Influence’ written by Keith Jordan and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2014-10-10 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stelae dating to the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic from Tula, Xochicalco, and other sites in Central Mexico have been cited as evidence of Classic Maya `influence' on Central Mexican art during these periods. This book re-evaluates these claims via detailed comparative analysis of the Central Mexican stelae and their claimed Maya counterparts.

The Beginnings of Mesoamerican Civilization

Author : Robert M. Rosenswig
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139483722
Total Pages : 397 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis The Beginnings of Mesoamerican Civilization by : Robert M. Rosenswig

Download or read book The Beginnings of Mesoamerican Civilization written by Robert M. Rosenswig and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-28 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mesoamerica is one of several cradles of civilization in the world. In this book, Robert M. Rosenswig proposes that we understand Early Formative Mesoamerica as an archipelago of complex societies that interacted with one another over long distances and that were separated by less sedentary peoples. These early 'islands' of culture shared an Olmec artistic aesthetic, beginning approximately 1250 BCE (uncalibrated), that first defined Mesoamerica as a culture area. Rosenswig frames the Olmec world from the perspective of the Soconusco area on Pacifica Chiapas and Guatemala. The disagreements about Early Formative society that have raged over the past thirty years focus on the nature of inter-regional interaction between San Lorenzo and other Early Formative regions. He evaluates these debates from a fresh theoretical perspective and integrates new data into an assessment of Soconusco society before, during, and after the apogee of the San Lorenzo polity.

Wearing Culture

Author : Heather Orr
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 160732282X
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Wearing Culture by : Heather Orr

Download or read book Wearing Culture written by Heather Orr and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wearing Culture connects scholars of divergent geographical areas and academic fields—from archaeologists and anthropologists to art historians—to show the significance of articles of regalia and of dressing and ornamenting people and objects among the Formative period cultures of ancient Mesoamerica and Central America. Documenting the elaborate practices of costume, adornment, and body modification in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Oaxaca, the Soconusco region of southern Mesoamerica, the Gulf Coast Olmec region (Olman), and the Maya lowlands, this book demonstrates that adornment was used as a tool for communicating status, social relationships, power, gender, sexuality, behavior, and political, ritual, and religious identities. Despite considerable formal and technological variation in clothing and ornamentation, the early indigenous cultures of these regions shared numerous practices, attitudes, and aesthetic interests. Contributors address technological development, manufacturing materials and methods, nonfabric ornamentation, symbolic dimensions, representational strategies, and clothing as evidence of interregional sociopolitical exchange. Focusing on an important period of cultural and artistic development through the lens of costuming and adornment, Wearing Culture will be of interest to scholars of pre-Hispanic and pre-Columbian studies.

Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas

Author : Esther Pasztory
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 0806158212
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)

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Book Synopsis Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas by : Esther Pasztory

Download or read book Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas written by Esther Pasztory and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past fifty years, the study of indigenous and pre-Columbian art has evolved from a groundbreaking area of inquiry in the mid-1960s to an established field of research. This period also spans the career of art historian Esther Pasztory. Few scholars have made such a broad and lasting impact as Pasztory, both in terms of our understanding of specific facets of ancient American art as well as in our appreciation of the evolving analytical tendencies related to the broader field of study as it developed and matured. The essays collected in this volume reflect scholarly rigor and new perspectives on ancient American art and are contributed by many of Pasztory’s former students and colleagues. A testament to the sheer breadth of Pasztory's accomplishments, Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas covers a wide range of topics, from Aztec picture-writing to nineteenth-century European scientific illustration of Andean sites in Peru. The essays, written by both established and rising scholars from across the field, focus on three areas: the ancient Andes, including its representation by European explorers and scholars of the nineteenth century; Classic period Mesoamerica and its uses within the cultural heritage debate of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; and Postclassic Mesoamerica, particularly the deeper and heretofore often hidden meanings of its cultural production. Figures, maps, and color plates demonstrate the vibrancy and continued allure of indigenous artworks from the ancient Americas. “Pre-Columbian art can give more,” Pasztory declares, and the scholars featured here make a compelling case for its incorporation into art theory as a whole. The result is a collection of essays that celebrates Pasztory’s central role in the development of the field of Ancient American visual studies, even as it looks toward the future of the discipline.

Unseen Art

Author : Claudia Brittenham
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 1477325964
Total Pages : 188 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (773 download)

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Book Synopsis Unseen Art by : Claudia Brittenham

Download or read book Unseen Art written by Claudia Brittenham and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of how ancient Mesoamerican sculpture was experienced by its original audiences.

Palaces and Courtly Culture in Ancient Mesoamerica

Author : Julie Nehammer Knub
Publisher : Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1784910511
Total Pages : 138 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (849 download)

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Book Synopsis Palaces and Courtly Culture in Ancient Mesoamerica by : Julie Nehammer Knub

Download or read book Palaces and Courtly Culture in Ancient Mesoamerica written by Julie Nehammer Knub and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2014-01-19 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects eight recent and innovative studies spanning the breadth of Mesoamerica, from the Early Classic metropolis of Teotihuacan, to Tenochtitlan, the Late Postclassic capital of the Aztec, and from the arid central Mexican highlands in the west to the humid Maya lowlands in the east.

Imagining the Fetus

Author : Vanessa R Sasson
Publisher : OUP USA
ISBN 13 : 0195380045
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (953 download)

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Book Synopsis Imagining the Fetus by : Vanessa R Sasson

Download or read book Imagining the Fetus written by Vanessa R Sasson and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contemporary Western culture, the word "fetus" introduces either a political subject or a literal, medicalized entity. Neither of these frameworks does justice to the vast array of religious literature and oral traditions from cultures around the world in which the fetus emerges as a powerful symbol or metaphor. This volume presents essays that explore the depiction of the fetus in the world's major religious traditions, finding some striking commonalities as well as intriguing differences. Among the themes that emerge is the tendency to conceive of the fetus as somehow independent of the mother's body — as in the case of the Buddha, who is described as inhabiting a palace while gestating in the womb. On the other hand, the fetus can also symbolically represent profound human needs and emotions, such as the universal experience of vulnerability. The authors note how the advent of the fetal sonogram has transformed how people everywhere imagine the unborn today, giving rise to a narrow range of decidedly literal questions about personhood, gender, and disability.

In the Maw of the Earth Monster

Author : James E. Brady
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292705867
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis In the Maw of the Earth Monster by : James E. Brady

Download or read book In the Maw of the Earth Monster written by James E. Brady and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2005-02-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As portals to the supernatural realm that creates and animates the universe, caves have always been held sacred by the peoples of Mesoamerica. From ancient times to the present, Mesoamericans have made pilgrimages to caves for ceremonies ranging from rituals of passage to petitions for rain and a plentiful harvest. So important were caves to the pre-Hispanic peoples that they are mentioned in Maya hieroglyphic writing and portrayed in the Central Mexican and Oaxacan pictorial codices. Many ancient settlements were located in proximity to caves. This volume gathers papers from twenty prominent Mesoamerican archaeologists, linguists, and ethnographers to present a state-of-the-art survey of ritual cave use in Mesoamerica from Pre-Columbian times to the present. Organized geographically, the book examines cave use in Central Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Maya region. Some reports present detailed site studies, while others offer new theoretical understandings of cave rituals. As a whole, the collection validates cave study as the cutting edge of scientific investigation of indigenous ritual and belief. It confirms that the indigenous religious system of Mesoamerica was and still is much more terrestrially focused that has been generally appreciated.

The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology

Author : Deborah L. Nichols
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199875006
Total Pages : 1000 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology by : Deborah L. Nichols

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology written by Deborah L. Nichols and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-22 with total page 1000 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology provides a current and comprehensive guide to the recent and on-going archaeology of Mesoamerica. Though the emphasis is on prehispanic societies, this Handbook also includes coverage of important new work by archaeologists on the Colonial and Republican periods. Unique among recent works, the text brings together in a single volume article-length regional syntheses and topical overviews written by active scholars in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology. The first section of the Handbook provides an overview of recent history and trends of Mesoamerica and articles on national archaeology programs and practice in Central America and Mexico written by archaeologists from these countries. These are followed by regional syntheses organized by time period, beginning with early hunter-gatherer societies and the first farmers of Mesoamerica and concluding with a discussion of the Spanish Conquest and frontiers and peripheries of Mesoamerica. Topical and comparative articles comprise the remainder of Handbook. They cover important dimensions of prehispanic societies--from ecology, economy, and environment to social and political relations--and discuss significant methodological contributions, such as geo-chemical source studies, as well as new theories and diverse theoretical perspectives. The Handbook concludes with a section on the archaeology of the Spanish conquest and the Colonial and Republican periods to connect the prehispanic, proto-historic, and historic periods. This volume will be a must-read for students and professional archaeologists, as well as other scholars including historians, art historians, geographers, and ethnographers with an interest in Mesoamerica.

Ancient Mesoamerican Warfare

Author : Kathryn M. Brown
Publisher : Rowman Altamira
ISBN 13 : 0759116067
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (591 download)

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Book Synopsis Ancient Mesoamerican Warfare by : Kathryn M. Brown

Download or read book Ancient Mesoamerican Warfare written by Kathryn M. Brown and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2003-10-07 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The understanding of warfare in ancient Mesoamerica has blossomed in recent years. In this volume, the authors use recent empirical studies to help us understand the patterns and nature of Mesoamerican warfare. Using evidence from ceramics, settlement pattern, epigraphy, ethnohistory, and ethnography, these projects define the martial nature of Mesoamerican societies and link it to ritual, political economy, and other cultural systems. The studies range from preclassic to post-contact and from Belize to Central Mexico. A comparison between this corpus and warfare studies in the American Southwest is also included. This volume will be of interest to Mesoamericanists and other archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians of ancient warfare.

Ancient Teotihuacan

Author : George L. Cowgill
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316298019
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (162 download)

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Book Synopsis Ancient Teotihuacan by : George L. Cowgill

Download or read book Ancient Teotihuacan written by George L. Cowgill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First comprehensive English-language book on the largest city in the Americas before the 1400s. Teotihuacan is a UNESCO world heritage site, located in highland central Mexico, about twenty-five miles from Mexico City, visited by millions of tourists every year. The book begins with Cuicuilco, a predecessor that arose around 400 BCE, then traces Teotihuacan from its founding in approximately 150 BCE to its collapse around 600 CE. It describes the city's immense pyramids and other elite structures. It also discusses the dwellings and daily lives of commoners, including men, women, and children, and the craft activities of artisans. George L. Cowgill discusses politics, economics, technology, art, religion, and possible reasons for Teotihuacan's rise and fall. Long before the Aztecs and 800 miles from Classic Maya centers, Teotihuacan was part of a broad Mesoamerican tradition but had a distinctive personality that invites comparison with other states and empires of the ancient world.

Twin Tollans

Author : Cynthia Kristan-Graham
Publisher : Dumbarton Oaks
ISBN 13 : 9780884023234
Total Pages : 658 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (232 download)

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Book Synopsis Twin Tollans by : Cynthia Kristan-Graham

Download or read book Twin Tollans written by Cynthia Kristan-Graham and published by Dumbarton Oaks. This book was released on 2007 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume had its beginnings in the two-day colloquium, "Rethinking Chichén Itzá, Tula and Tollan," that was held at Dumbarton Oaks. The selected essays revisit long-standing questions regarding the nature of the relationship between Chichen Itza and Tula. Rather than approaching these questions through the notions of migrations and conquests, these essays place the cities in the context of the emerging social, political, and economic relationships that took shape during the transition from the Epiclassic period in Central Mexico, the Terminal Classic period in the Maya region, and the succeeding Early Postclassic period.

Framing Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica

Author : Lisa Delance
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1646422880
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (464 download)

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Book Synopsis Framing Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica by : Lisa Delance

Download or read book Framing Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica written by Lisa Delance and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2022-09-28 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh examination of variable social and economic processes, Framing Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica explores nascent social complexity during the Preclassic/Formative period in Mesoamerica and addresses broader social questions about egalitarian and transegalitarian prehispanic Mesoamerican cultural groups. Contributors present multiple lines of evidence demonstrating the process of social complexity and reconsider a number of traditionally accepted models and presumed tenets as a result of the wealth of empirical data that has been gathered over the past four decades. Their chapters approach complexity as a process rather than a state of being by exploring social aggregation, the emergence of ethnic affiliations, and aspects of regional and macroregional variability. Framing Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica presents some of the most recent data—and the implications of that data—for understanding the development of complex societies as human beings moved into urban environments. The book is an especially important volume for researchers and students working in Mesoamerica, as well as archaeologists taking a comparative approach to questions of complexity. Contributors: Jaime J. Awe, Sarah B. Barber, Jeffrey S. Brezezinski, M. Kathryn Brown, Ryan H. Collins, Kaitlin Crow, Lisa DeLance, Gary M. Feinman, Sara Dzul Gongora, Guy David Hepp, Arthur A. Joyce, Rodrigo Martin Morales, George Micheletti, Deborah L. Nichols, Terry G. Powis, Zoe J. Rawski, Prudence M. Rice, Michael P. Smyth, Katherine E. South, Jon Spenard, Travis W. Stanton, Wesley D. Stoner, Teresa Tremblay Wagner