Download or read book Maya Sacred Geography and the Creator Deities written by Karen Bassie-Sweet and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-10-22 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The K’iche’ Maya creation story preserved in the sixteenth-century manuscript Popol Vuh describes the origin of the world and its people in a setting long assumed to be the Guatemalan central highlands. Now a scholar with a deep knowledge of Maya history shows that all of these mythological events occurred at specific locations and that this landscape was the template for the Maya worldview. Examining the primary Maya deities, Karen Bassie-Sweet links geographic features to gods and beliefs. She reconstructs key elements of the Popol Vuh to argue that the three volcanoes around Lake Atitlan were the three thunderbolt gods and that the lake was the center of the world. She also shows that the Maya view of the creation of humans is centered on corn and examines core beliefs about the corn cycle to propose that the creation myth was established much earlier in Maya history than previously supposed. Generously illustrated, Maya Sacred Geography and the Creator Deities is a detailed ethnohistorical analysis of Maya religion, cosmology, and ritual practice that convincingly links mythology to the land. A comprehensive treatment of Maya religion, it provides an essential resource for scholars and will fascinate any reader captivated by these ancient beliefs.

Download or read book Watching Lacandon Maya Lives written by R. Jon McGee and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-02-22 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although romanticized as the last of the ancient Maya living isolated in the forest, several generations of the Lacandon Maya have had their lives shaped by the international oil economy, tourism, and political unrest. Watching Lacandon Maya Lives is an examination of dramatic cultural changes in a Maya rainforest farming community over the last forty years, including changes to their families, industries, religion, health and healing practices, and gender roles. The book contains several discussions of anthropological theory in accessible, jargon-free language, including how the use of different theoretical perspectives impacts an ethnographer’s fieldwork experience. While relating his own mishaps, experiences of community strife, and conflicts, Jon McGee encourages students to shed the romantic veil through which ethnographies are usually viewed and think more deeply about how events in our own lives influence how we understand the behavior of people around us. New to the Second Edition: Revised Introduction incorporates the author’s recent work with the Lacandon and discussions of anthropological writing, culture theory, and how events in the author’s personal life have changed his approach to anthropological fieldwork. Revised chapter, “Finding an Income in the Lacandon Jungle” focuses on families who have shifted from a subsistence farming economy to earning revenue by renting facilities to tourists, owning small community stores, working as hired labor for archaeologists, or make use of a variety of government rural aid programs created in the last two decades (Chapter 5). New chapter, “Forty Years Among the Lacandon: Some Lessons Learned,” discusses what the author’s 40 years of experience as an ethnographer has taught him about the discipline of anthropology and the concept of culture (Chapter 8)

Download or read book Maya History and Religion written by John Eric Sidney Thompson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, a distinguished Maya scholar seeks to correlate data from colonial writings and observations of the modern Indian with archaeological information in order to extend and clarify the panorama of Maya culture.

Download or read book The Black Man of Zinacantan written by Sarah C. Blaffer and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-07-03 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of this work is anomalies—those things that are between one state and another, neither dead nor alive, neither animal nor human. In this instance, they are the "spooks" (espantos) that inhabit the Maya area: the charcoal-cruncher, a disembodied head that goes off into the night to eat charcoal; the characotels, men who have turned into animals in order to steal chickens; and others. The victims chosen by spooks are likewise between two states: they are caught while asleep or drunk; or they may be humans who ignore social conventions and behave in "un-human" manner. The Black-man of Zinacantan focuses on a small, super-sexed demon who possesses a six-foot-long, death-dealing penis and a penchant for mischief-making. This demon is known in Highland Chiapas as h'ik'al, the Black-man. Although h'ik'al's prototype may have been the bat deity, an ancient Maya god of sacrifice, the demon has been adapted to contemporary life. Sarah Blaffer analyzes the position of anomalies in societies and shows h'ik'al as a norm-offending, yet norm-reinforcing, specter, who by his character and actions demonstrates the proper sex roles for Zinacantec men and women. The data for the study was recorded in Zinacantan, a Tzotzil-speaking Maya community, and in other Maya towns in southern Mexico and Guatemala; the study includes an analysis of tales recorded and translated by Robert M. Laughlin. The drawings that decorate the text were adapted by Virginia Savage and Joseph Barbieri. Besides being a comprehensive treatment of Maya demonology, the book demonstrates the newer approaches in comparative mythology of Claude Lévi-Strauss and others.

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 2013-04-01 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.

Download or read book Xurt an written by Suzanne Cook and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Xurt'an (the end of the world) showcases the rich storytelling traditions of the northern Lacandones of Naha' through a collection of traditional narratives, songs, and ritual speech. Formerly isolated in the dense, tropical rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico, the Lacandon Maya constitute one of the smallest language groups in the world. Although their language remains active and alive, their traditional culture was abandoned after the death of their religious and civic leader in 1996. Lacking the traditional contexts in which the culture was transmitted, the oral traditions are quickly being forgotten. This collection includes creation myths that describe the cycle of destruction and renewal of the world, the structure of the universe, the realms of the gods and their intercessions in the affairs of their mortals, and the journey of the souls after death. Other traditional stories are non-mythic and fictive accounts involving talking animals, supernatural beings, and malevolent beings that stalk and devour hapless victims. In addition to traditional narratives, Xurt'an presents many songs that are claimed to have been received from the Lord of Maize, magical charms that invoke the forces of the natural world, invocations to the gods to heal and protect, and work songs of Lacandon women, whose contribution to Lacandon culture has been hitherto overlooked by scholars. Women's songs offer a rare glimpse into the other half of Lacandon society and the arduous distaff work that sustained the religion. The compilation concludes with descriptions of rainbows, the Milky Way as "the white road of Our Lord," and an account of the solstices. Transcribed and translated by a foremost linguist of the northern Lacandon language, the literary traditions of the Lacandones are finally accessible to English readers. The result is a masterful and authoritative collection of oral literature that will both entertain and provoke, while vividly testifying to the power of Lacandon Maya aesthetic expression.

Download or read book The Last Lords of Palenque written by Victor Perera and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Lords of Lalenque is an extraordinary firsthand account of life among the Lacandon Indians of Nah in southern Mexico. A community of 250 whose genealogy has been obscured by the absence of a written tradition, the Lacandones may nevertheless be traced back linguistically and culturally to the great Maya civilization. They are the sole inheritors of an oral tradition that preserves-more than 400 years after the Spanish Conquest-a cosmology, a morality and a psychology as sophisticated as our own. Journalist and novelist Victor Perera and linguist Robert Bruce have lived among the Lacandones, chronicling their imperiled Mayan culture.

Download or read book Handbook of Middle American Indians Volumes 7 and 8 written by Robert Wauchope and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-01-16 with total page 992 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnology comprises the seventh and eighth volumes in the Handbook of Middle American Indians, published in cooperation with the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University under the general editorship of Robert Wauchope (1909–1979). The editor of the Ethnology volumes is Evon Z. Vogt (1918–2004), Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Social Relations, Harvard University. These two books contain forty-three articles, all written by authorities in their field, on the ethnology of the Maya region, the southern Mexican highlands and adjacent regions, the central Mexican highlands, western Mexico, and northwest Mexico. Among the topics described for each group of Indians are the history of ethnological investigations, cultural and linguistic distributions, major postcontact events, population, subsistence systems and food patterns, settlement patterns, technology, economy, social organization, religion and world view, aesthetic and recreational patterns, life cycle and personality development, and annual cycle of life. The volumes are illustrated with photographs and drawings of contemporary and early historical scenes of native Indian life in Mexico and Central America. The Handbook of Middle American Indians was assembled and edited at the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University with the assistance of grants from the National Science Foundation and under the sponsorship of the National Research Council Committee on Latin American Anthropology.

Download or read book Handbook of Latin American Studies written by and published by . This book was released on 1944 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains scholarly evaluations of books and book chapters as well as conference papers and articles published worldwide in the field of Latin American studies. Covers social sciences and the humanities in alternate years.

Download or read book Anthropology and History in Yucat n written by Grant D. Jones and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-05-12 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropology and History in Yucatán is a collection of ten essays that offer new evidence and interpretations of the survival and adaptation of lowland Maya culture from its earliest contact with the Spanish to the 1970s. These case studies reflect a growing interest in the use of historical approaches in the development of models of cultural change that will integrate archaeological, historical, and ethnographic data. The portrait of the Maya emerging from this collection is that of a remarkably vital people who have skillfully resisted total incorporation with their neighbors and who continue even today to emphasize their cultural independence and historical uniqueness. In his introduction, Grant D. Jones synthesizes previous studies of the anthropological history of Yucatán and summarizes the theoretical issues underlying the volume. Section I, which focuses on continuity and change in the boundaries of Maya ethnicity in Yucatán, includes contributions by the late Sir Eric Thompson, France V. Scholes, and O. Nigel Bolland. Section II presents comparative regional perspectives of Maya adaptations to external forces of change and contains essays by D. E. Dumond, Grant D. Jones, James W. Ryder, and Anne C. Collins. In the closing section, three articles, by Victoria Reifler Bricker, Allan F. Burns, and Irwin Press, treat Maya concepts of their own history. Throughout the book, the authors demonstrate that models far more complex than Robert Redfield’s folk-urban continuum must be developed to account for the great regional variations in responses by the Maya to the pressures of economic, cultural, and political control as exerted by Spanish, Mexican, Guatemalan, and British authorities over the past four centuries. The essays demonstrate a variety of methodological approaches that will be of interest to historians, ethnohistorians, ethnologists, archaeologists, and those who have a general interest in the survival of Maya culture.

Download or read book The Bioarchaeology of Space and Place written by Gabriel D. Wrobel and published by Springer Science & Business. This book was released on 2014-04-16 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bioarchaeology of Space and Place investigates variations in social identity among the ancient Maya by focusing on individuals and small groups identified archaeologically by their inclusion in specific, discrete mortuary contexts or by unusual mortuary treatments. Utilizing archaeological, biological and taphonomic data from these contexts, the studies employ a variety of methodological approaches to reconstruct aspects of individuals’ life-course and mortuary pathways. Following this, specific mortuary behaviors are discussed in relation to their local or regional cultural setting using relevant archaeological, ethnohistoric, and/or ethnographic data in an effort to interpret their meaning within the broader social, political and economic contexts in which they were carried out. This volume covers a number of topics that are currently being debated in Maya archaeology, including identification and discussion of the role and extent of human sacrifice in Maya culture, the use of ancestors for maintaining political power, the mortuary use of caves by both elites and non-elites, ethnic distinctions within urban areas and the extent of movement of people between communities. Importantly, the papers in this volume attempt to test and move beyond static, dichotic categories that are often employed in mortuary studies in an effort to better understand the complex ways in which the Maya conceptualized and manipulated social identity. This type of nuanced case-study approach that incorporates historical, archaeological and theoretical contextualization is becoming increasingly important in the field of bioarchaeology, providing valuable sources of data where small, diverse samples impede populational approaches.

Download or read book Handbook of Middle American Indians Volume 16 written by Robert Wauchope and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The publication of Volume 16 of this distinguished series brings to a close one of the largest research and documentation projects ever undertaken on the Middle American Indians. Since the publication of Volume 1 in 1964, the Handbook of Middle American Indians has provided the most complete information on every aspect of indigenous culture, including natural environment, archaeology, linguistics, social anthropology, physical anthropology, ethnology, and ethnohistory. Culminating this massive project is Volume 16, divided into two parts. Part I, Sources Cited, by Margaret A. L. Harrison, is a listing in alphabetical order of all the bibliographical entries cited in Volumes 1-11. (Volumes 12-15, comprising the Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, have not been included, because they stand apart in subject matter and contain or constitute independent bibliographical material.) Part II, Location of Artifacts Illustrated, by Marjorie S. Zengel, details the location (at the time of original publication) of the owner of each pre-Columbian American artifact illustrated in Volumes 1-11 of the Handbook, as well as the size and the catalog, accession, and/or inventory number that the owner assigns to the object. The two parts of Volume 16 provide a convenient and useful reference to material found in the earlier volumes. The Handbook of Middle American Indians was assembled and edited at the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University with the assistance of grants from the National Science Foundation and under the sponsorship of the National Research Council Committee on Latin American Anthropology.

Download or read book Mesoamerican Religions and Archaeology written by Aleksandar Bošković and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main goal of this book is to produce a methodologically sound and ethically valid interdisciplinary introduction into the exciting world of ancient Mesoamerica.

Download or read book Re Creating Primordial Time written by Gabrielle Vail and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2013-06-15 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Re-Creating Primordial Time offers a new perspective on the Maya codices, documenting the extensive use of creation mythology and foundational rituals in the hieroglyphic texts and iconography of these important manuscripts. Focusing on both pre-Columbian codices and early colonial creation accounts, Vail and Hernández show that in spite of significant cultural change during the Postclassic and Colonial periods, the mythological traditions reveal significant continuity, beginning as far back as the Classic period. Remarkable similarities exist within the Maya tradition, even as new mythologies were introduced through contact with the Gulf Coast region and highland central Mexico. Vail and Hernández analyze the extant Maya codices within the context of later literary sources such as the Books of Chilam Balam, the Popol Vuh, and the Códice Chimalpopoca to present numerous examples highlighting the relationship among creation mythology, rituals, and lore. Compiling and comparing Maya creation mythology with that of the Borgia codices from highland central Mexico, Re-Creating Primordial Time is a significant contribution to the field of Mesoamerican studies and will be of interest to scholars of archaeology, linguistics, epigraphy, and comparative religions alike.

Download or read book Cosmology Calendars and Horizon Based Astronomy in Ancient Mesoamerica written by Anne S. Dowd and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cosmology, Calendars, and Horizon-Based Astronomy in Ancient Mesoamerica is an interdisciplinary tour de force that establishes the critical role astronomy played in the religious and civic lives of the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica. Providing extraordinary examples of how Precolumbian peoples merged ideas about the cosmos with those concerning calendar and astronomy, the volume showcases the value of detailed examinations of astronomical data for understanding ancient cultures. The volume is divided into three sections: investigations into Mesoamerican horizon-based astronomy, the cosmological principles expressed in Mesoamerican religious imagery and rituals related to astronomy, and the aspects of Mesoamerican calendars related to archaeoastronomy. It also provides cutting-edge research on diverse topics such as records of calendar and horizon-based astronomical observation (like the Dresden and Borgia codices), iconography of burial assemblages, architectural alignment studies, urban planning, and counting or measuring devices. Contributors—who are among the most respected in their fields— explore new dimensions in Mesoamerican timekeeping and skywatching in the Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacano, Zapotec, and Aztec cultures. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of anthropology, archaeology, art history, and astronomy.

Download or read book Two Studies on the Lacandones of Mexico written by Phillip Baer and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Ancient Maya written by Sylvanus Griswold Morley and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 940 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Comprehensive synthesis of ancient Maya scholarship. Extensive summary of the archaeology of the Maya world provides the historical context for a detailed topical synthesis of chronological and geographic variability within the Maya cultural tradition"--