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Mesoamerican Figurines
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Book Synopsis Human Figuration and Fragmentation in Preclassic Mesoamerica by : Julia Guernsey
Download or read book Human Figuration and Fragmentation in Preclassic Mesoamerica written by Julia Guernsey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the social significance of representation of the human body in Preclassic Mesoamerica.
Book Synopsis Mesoamerican Figurines by : Christina T. Halperin
Download or read book Mesoamerican Figurines written by Christina T. Halperin and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines figurines from the Olmec to the Aztec civilizations. This book analyzes these objects by their stylistic attributes, archaeological content, function, and meaning.
Book Synopsis Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands by : Brigitte Faugère
Download or read book Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands written by Brigitte Faugère and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2020-02-15 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands, Latin American, North American, and European researchers explore the meanings and functions of two- and three-dimensional human representations in the Precolumbian communities of the Mexican highlands. Reading these anthropomorphic representations from an ontological perspective, the contributors demonstrate the rich potential of anthropomorphic imagery to elucidate personhood, conceptions of the body, and the relationship of human beings to other entities, nature, and the cosmos. Using case studies covering a broad span of highlands prehistory—Classic Teotihuacan divine iconography, ceramic figures in Late Formative West Mexico, Epiclassic Puebla-Tlaxcala costumed figurines, earth sculptures in Prehispanic Oaxaca, Early Postclassic Tula symbolic burials, Late Postclassic representations of Aztec Kings, and more—contributors examine both Mesoamerican representations of the body in changing social, political, and economic conditions and the multivalent emic meanings of these representations. They explore the technology of artifact production, the body’s place in social structures and rituals, the language of the body as expressed in postures and gestures, hybrid and transformative combinations of human and animal bodies, bodily representations of social categories, body modification, and the significance of portable and fixed representations. Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands provides a wide range of insights into Mesoamerican concepts of personhood and identity, the constitution of the human body, and human relationships with gods and ancestors. It will be of great value to students and scholars of the archaeology and art history of Mexico. Contributors: Claire Billard, Danièle Dehouve, Cynthia Kristan-Graham, Melissa Logan, Sylvie Peperstraete, Patricia Plunket, Mari Carmen Serra Puche, Juliette Testard, Andrew Turner, Gabriela Uruñuela, Marcus Winter
Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines by : Timothy Insoll
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines written by Timothy Insoll and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-13 with total page 1123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Figurines dating from prehistory have been found across the world but have never before been considered globally. The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines is the first book to offer a comparative survey of this kind, bringing together approaches from across the landscape of contemporary research into a definitive resource in the field. The volume is comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible, with dedicated and fully illustrated chapters covering figurines from the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia and the Pacific laid out by geographical location and written by the foremost scholars in figurine studies; wherever prehistoric figurines are found they have been expertly described and examined in relation to their subject matter, form, function, context, chronology, meaning, and interpretation. Specific themes that are discussed by contributors include, for example, theories of figurine interpretation, meaning in processes and contexts of figurine production, use, destruction and disposal, and the cognitive and social implications of representation. Chronologically, the coverage ranges from the Middle Palaeolithic through to areas and periods where an absence of historical sources renders figurines 'prehistoric' even though they might have been produced in the mid-2nd millennium AD, as in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The result is a synthesis of invaluable insights into past thinking on the human body, gender, identity, and how the figurines might have been used, either practically, ritually, or even playfully.
Book Synopsis Maya Figurines by : Christina T. Halperin
Download or read book Maya Figurines written by Christina T. Halperin and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rather than view the contours of Late Classic Maya social life solely from towering temple pyramids or elite sculptural forms, this book considers a suite of small anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and supernatural figurative remains excavated from household refuse deposits. Maya Figurines examines these often neglected objects and uses them to draw out relationships between the Maya state and its subjects. These figurines provide a unique perspective for understanding Maya social and political relations; Christina T. Halperin argues that state politics work on the microscale of everyday routines, localized rituals, and small-scale representations. Her comprehensive study brings together archeology, anthropology, and art history with theories of material culture, performance, political economy, ritual humor, and mimesis to make a fascinating case for the role politics plays in daily life. What she finds is that, by comparing small-scale figurines with state-sponsored, often large-scale iconography and elite material culture, one can understand how different social realms relate to and represent one another. In Maya Figurines, Halperin compares objects from diverse households, archeological sites, and regions, focusing especially on figurines from Petén, Guatemala, and comparing them to material culture from Belize, the northern highlands of Guatemala, the Usumacinta River, the Campeche coastal area, and Mesoamerican sites outside the Maya zone. Ultimately, she argues, ordinary objects are not simply passive backdrops for important social and political phenomena. Instead, they function as significant mechanisms through which power and social life are intertwined.
Book Synopsis Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos by : Prudence M. Rice
Download or read book Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos written by Prudence M. Rice and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2019-04-14 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos explores the sociocultural significance of more than three hundred Middle Preclassic Maya figurines uncovered at the site of Nixtun-Ch'ich' on Lake Petén Itzá in northern Guatemala. In this careful, holistic, and detailed analysis of the Petén lakes figurines—hand-modeled, terracotta anthropomorphic fragments, animal figures, and musical instruments such as whistles and ocarinas—Prudence M. Rice engages with a broad swath of theory and comparative data on Maya ritual practice. Presenting original data, Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos offers insight into the synchronous appearance of fired-clay figurines with the emergence of societal complexity in and beyond Mesoamerica. Rice situates these Preclassic Maya figurines in the broader context of Mesoamerican human figural representation, identifies possible connections between anthropomorphic figurine heads and the origins of calendrics and other writing in Mesoamerica, and examines the role of anthropomorphic figurines and zoomorphic musical instruments in Preclassic Maya ritual. The volume shows how community rituals involving the figurines helped to mitigate the uncertainties of societal transitions, including the beginnings of settled agricultural life, the emergence of social differentiation and inequalities, and the centralization of political power and decision-making in the Petén lowlands. Literature on Maya ritual, cosmology, and specialized artifacts has traditionally focused on the Classic period, with little research centering on the very beginnings of Maya sociopolitical organization and ideological beliefs in the Middle Preclassic. Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos is a welcome contribution to the understanding of the earliest Maya and will be significant to Mayanists and Mesoamericanists as well as nonspecialists with interest in these early figurines
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.
Download or read book Figurines written by Jaś Elsner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-22 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Figurines are objects of handling. As touchable objects, they engage the viewer in different ways from flat art, whether relief sculpture or painting. Unlike the voyeuristic relationship of viewing a neatly framed pictorial narrative as if from the outside, the viewer as handler is always potentially and without protection within the narrative of figurines. As such, they have potential for a potent, even animated, agency in relation to those who use them. This volume concerns figurines as archaeologically-attested materials from literate cultures with surviving documents that have no direct links of contiguity, appropriation, or influence in relation to each other. It is an attempt to put the category of the figurine on the table as a key conceptual and material problematic in the art history of antiquity. It does so through comparative juxtaposition of close-focused chapters drawn from deep art-historical engagement with specific ancient cultures - Chinese, pre-Columbian Mesoamerican, and Greco-Roman. It encourages comparative conversation across the disciplines that constitute the art history of the ancient world through finding categories and models of discourse that may offer fertile ground for comparison and antithesis. It extends the rich and astute literature on prehistoric figurines into understanding the figurine in historical contexts, where literary texts and documents, inscriptions, or surviving terminologies can be adduced alongside material culture. At stake are issues of figuration and anthropomorphism, miniaturization and portability, one-off production and replication, and substitution and scale at the interface of archaeology and art history.
Book Synopsis The Mesoamerican Ballgame by : Vernon L. Scarborough
Download or read book The Mesoamerican Ballgame written by Vernon L. Scarborough and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Precolumbian ballgame, played on a masonry court, has long intrigued scholars because of the magnificence of its archaeological remains. From its lowland Maya origins it spread throughout the Aztec empire, where the game was so popular that sixteen thousand rubber balls were imported annually into Tenochtitlan. It endured for two thousand years, spreading as far as to what is now southern Arizona. This new collection of essays brings together research from field archaeology, mythology, and Maya hieroglyphic studies to illuminate this important yet puzzling aspect of Native American culture. The authors demonstrate that the game was more than a spectator sport; serving social, political, mythological, and cosmological functions, it celebrated both fertility and the afterlife, war and peace, and became an evolving institution functioning in part to resolve conflict within and between groups. The contributors provide complete coverage of the archaeological, sociopolitical, iconographic, and ideological aspects of the game, and offer new information on the distribution of ballcourts, new interpretations of mural art, and newly perceived relations of the game with material in the Popol Vuh. With its scholarly attention to a subject that will fascinate even general readers, The Mesoamerican Ballgame is a major contribution to the study of the mental life and outlook of New World peoples.
Book Synopsis The Neighborhood as a Social and Spatial Unit in Mesoamerican Cities by : M. Charlotte Arnauld
Download or read book The Neighborhood as a Social and Spatial Unit in Mesoamerican Cities written by M. Charlotte Arnauld and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent realizations that prehispanic cities in Mesoamerica were fundamentally different from western cities of the same period have led to increasing examination of the neighborhood as an intermediate unit at the heart of prehispanic urbanization. This book addresses the subject of neighborhoods in archaeology as analytical units between households and whole settlements. The contributions gathered here provide fieldwork data to document the existence of sociopolitically distinct neighborhoods within ancient Mesoamerican settlements, building upon recent advances in multi-scale archaeological studies of these communities. Chapters illustrate the cultural variation across Mesoamerica, including data and interpretations on several different cities with a thematic focus on regional contrasts. This topic is relatively new and complex, and this book is a strong contribution for three interwoven reasons. First, the long history of research on the “Teotihuacan barrios” is scrutinized and withstands the test of new evidence and comparison with other Mesoamerican cities. Second, Maya studies of dense settlement patterns are now mature enough to provide substantial case studies. Third, theoretical investigation of ancient urbanization all over the world is now more complex and open than it was before, giving relevance to Mesoamerican perspectives on ancient and modern societies in time and space. This volume will be of interest not only to scholars and student specialists of the Mesoamerican past but also to social scientists and urbanists looking to contrast ancient cultures worldwide.
Book Synopsis Domestic Ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica by : Patricia Plunket
Download or read book Domestic Ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica written by Patricia Plunket and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2002-07-30 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the concepts and patterns of ritual varied through time in relation to general sociopolitical transformations and local historical circumstances in ancient Mesoamerica, most archaeologists would agree that certain underlying themes and structures modeled the ritual phenomena of this complex culture area. By focusing on ritual expression at the household level, this volume seeks to compare the manifestations of domestic ritual across time and space in both the cores and peripheries, in the cities and in the villages. The authors explore the ways in which cosmological principles and concepts of the sacred were used in the construction of ritual space and practice, how local landscapes provided templates for the images and paraphernalia recovered from archaeological contexts, how foreign enclaves relied on ritual for social reproduction, and how domestic ritual was related to, and indeed embedded in, institutionalized state religions.
Book Synopsis Birds and Beasts of Ancient Mesoamerica by : Susan Milbrath
Download or read book Birds and Beasts of Ancient Mesoamerica written by Susan Milbrath and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2023-12-15 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Birds and Beasts of Ancient Mesoamerica links Precolumbian animal imagery with scientific data related to animal morphology and behavior, providing in-depth studies of the symbolic importance of animals and birds in Postclassic period Mesoamerica. Representations of animal deities in Mesoamerica can be traced back at least to Middle Preclassic Olmec murals, stone carvings, and portable art such as lapidary work and ceramics. Throughout the history of Mesoamerica real animals were merged with fantastical creatures, creating zoological oddities not unlike medieval European bestiaries. According to Spanish chroniclers, the Aztec emperor was known to keep exotic animals in royal aviaries and zoos. The Postclassic period was characterized by an iconography that was shared from central Mexico to the Yucatan peninsula and south to Belize. In addition to highlighting the symbolic importance of nonhuman creatures in general, the volume focuses on the importance of the calendrical and astronomical symbolism associated with animals and birds. Inspired by and dedicated to the work of Mesoamerican scholar Cecelia Klein and featuring imagery from painted books, monumental sculpture, portable arts, and archaeological evidence from the field of zooarchaeology, Birds and Beasts of Ancient Mesoamerica highlights the significance of the animal world in Postclassic and early colonial Mesoamerica. It will be important to students and scholars studying Mesoamerican art history, archaeology, ethnohistory, and zoology.
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
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 996 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.
Download or read book Maya E Groups written by David A. Freidel and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As complex societies emerged in the Maya lowlands during the first millennium BCE, so did stable communities focused around public squares and the worship of a divine ruler tied to a Maize God cult. “E Groups,” central to many of these settlements, are architectural complexes: typically, a long platform supporting three struc¬tures and facing a western pyramid across a formal plaza. Aligned with the movements of the sun, E Groups have long been interpreted as giant calendrical devices crucial to the rise of Maya civilization. This volume presents new archaeological data to reveal that E Groups were constructed earlier than previously thought. In fact, they are the earliest identifiable architectural plan at many Maya settlements. More than just astronomical observatories or calendars, E Groups were a key element of community organization, urbanism, and identity in the heart of the Maya lowlands. They served as gathering places for emerging communities and centers of ritual; they were the very first civic-religious public architecture in the Maya lowlands. Investigating a wide variety of E Group sites—including some of the most famous like the Mundo Perdido in Tikal and the hitherto little known complex at Chan, as well as others in Ceibal, El Palmar, Cival, Calakmul, Caracol, Xunantunich, Yaxnohcah, Yaxuná, and San Bartolo—this volume pieces together the development of social and political complexity in ancient Maya civilization. James Aimers | Anthony F. Aveni | Jamie J. Awe | Boris Beltran | M. Kathryn Brown | Arlen F. Chase | Diane Z. Chase | Anne S. Dowd | James Doyle | Francisco Estrada-Belli | David A. Freidel | Julie A. Hoggarth | Takeshi Inomata | Patricia A. Mcanany | Susan Milbrath | Jerry Murdock | Kathryn Reese-Taylor | Prudence M. Rice | Cynthia Robin | Franco D. Rossi | Jeremy A. Sabloff | William A. Saturno | Travis W. Stanton A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase
Book Synopsis The Early Olmec and Mesoamerica by : Jeffrey P. Blomster
Download or read book The Early Olmec and Mesoamerica written by Jeffrey P. Blomster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Early Formative Olmec are central in a wide variety of debates regarding the development of Mesoamerican societies. A fundamental issue in Olmec archaeology is the nature of interregional interaction among contemporaneous societies and the possible Olmec role in it. Previous debates have often not been informed by recent research and data, often relying on materials lacking archaeological context. In order to approach these issues from new perspectives, this book introduces readers to the full spectrum of the material culture of the Olmec and their contemporaries, relying primarily on archaeological data, much of which has not been previously published. For the first time, using a standard lexicon to consider the nature of the interaction among Early Formative societies, the authors, experts in diverse regions of Mesoamerican art and archaeology, provide carefully considered contrasts and comparisons that advance the understanding of the Early Formative origins of social complexity in Mesoamerica.
Book Synopsis Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica by : Rosemary A. Joyce
Download or read book Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica written by Rosemary A. Joyce and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-06-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender was a fluid potential, not a fixed category, before the Spaniards came to Mesoamerica. Childhood training and ritual shaped, but did not set, adult gender, which could encompass third genders and alternative sexualities as well as "male" and "female." At the height of the Classic period, Maya rulers presented themselves as embodying the entire range of gender possibilities, from male through female, by wearing blended costumes and playing male and female roles in state ceremonies. This landmark book offers the first comprehensive description and analysis of gender and power relations in prehispanic Mesoamerica from the Formative Period Olmec world (ca. 1500-500 BC) through the Postclassic Maya and Aztec societies of the sixteenth century AD. Using approaches from contemporary gender theory, Rosemary Joyce explores how Mesoamericans created human images to represent idealized notions of what it meant to be male and female and to depict proper gender roles. She then juxtaposes these images with archaeological evidence from burials, house sites, and body ornaments, which reveals that real gender roles were more fluid and variable than the stereotyped images suggest.