Download or read book Modern Maya Houses written by Robert Wauchope and published by Martino Pub. This book was released on 2006-10-01 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wauchopes study of modern Mayan houses made an important contribution to archaeology both in general and specific terms. Not only does he cover the filed of ancient and modern houses as to plan and construction, but he also covers their historical, ethnological and sociological aspects.The implication of the research is two-fold. The integration of the life of the past population with that of the living exercises a humanizing influence on the extremities of modern archaeological technique, and a survey of village household life gives a more continuous picture of culture evolution in Middle American than the concentration of research on the essentially specialized ceremonial centers. It is also very important for an understanding of these monumental centers to know something of the nature of the population concentration and the extent of the social units affiliated to such centers.---quoted from G.C. Vaillant in a review of the book, 1938

Download or read book Modern Maya Houses written by Robert Wauchope and published by . This book was released on 1938 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Houses in a Landscape written by Julia A. Hendon and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-22 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Houses in a Landscape, Julia A. Hendon examines the connections between social identity and social memory using archaeological research on indigenous societies that existed more than one thousand years ago in what is now Honduras. While these societies left behind monumental buildings, the remains of their dead, remnants of their daily life, intricate works of art, and fine examples of craftsmanship such as pottery and stone tools, they left only a small body of written records. Despite this paucity of written information, Hendon contends that an archaeological study of memory in such societies is possible and worthwhile. It is possible because memory is not just a faculty of the individual mind operating in isolation, but a social process embedded in the materiality of human existence. Intimately bound up in the relations people develop with one another and with the world around them through what they do, where and how they do it, and with whom or what, memory leaves material traces. Hendon conducted research on three contemporaneous Native American civilizations that flourished from the seventh century through the eleventh CE: the Maya kingdom of Copan, the hilltop center of Cerro Palenque, and the dispersed settlement of the Cuyumapa valley. She analyzes domestic life in these societies, from cooking to crafting, as well as public and private ritual events including the ballgame. Combining her findings with a rich body of theory from anthropology, history, and geography, she explores how objects—the things people build, make, use, exchange, and discard—help people remember. In so doing, she demonstrates how everyday life becomes part of the social processes of remembering and forgetting, and how “memory communities” assert connections between the past and the present.

Download or read book The Madrid Codex written by Gabrielle Vail and published by . This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers new calendrical models and methodologies for reading, dating, and interpreting the general significance of the Madrid Codex. The longest of the surviving Maya codices, this manuscript includes texts and images painted by scribes conversant in Maya hieroglyphic writing, a written means of communication practiced by Maya elites from the second to the fifteenth centuries A.D. Some scholars have recently argued that the Madrid Codex originated in the Petén region of Guatemala and postdates European contact. The contributors to this volume challenge that view by demonstrating convincingly that it originated in northern Yucatán and was painted in the Pre-Columbian era. In addition, several contributors reveal provocative connections among the Madrid and Borgia group of codices from Central Mexico. Contributors include: Harvey M. Bricker, Victoria R. Bricker, John F. Chuchiak IV, Christine L. Hernández, Bryan R. Just, Merideth Paxton, and John Pohl. Additional support for this publication was generously provided by the Eugene M. Kayden Fund at the University of Colorado.

Download or read book Modern Maya Houses written by Robert Wauchope and published by . This book was released on 1938 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Popol Vuh written by Lewis Spence and published by New York : AMS Press. This book was released on 1908 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Maya Salt Works written by Heather McKillop and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Maya Salt Works, Heather McKillop details her archaeological team’s groundbreaking discovery of a unique and massive salt production complex submerged in a lagoon in southern Belize. Exploring the organization of production and trade at the Paynes Creek Salt Works, McKillop offers a fascinating new look at the role of salt in the ancient Maya economy. McKillop maps over 4,000 wooden posts and wedges, the first known wooden structures preserved underwater from the Classic period, describing new methods of underwater archaeology developed specifically for this shallow maritime setting. She explains the technology of salt production, examining fragments of briquetage—the pots that boiled brine over fires in the kitchens—and provides evidence that salt workers relied on specific types of wood for building construction. McKillop theorizes that different households operated salt kitchens and distributed their goods via canoe to sell at inland marketplaces for use as dietary salt, a flavor enhancer, and preservative. Complex distribution networks reveal expertise in water transportation and knowledge of the sea by Maya mariners, skills that allowed them to control the transport of commodities like salt. By evaluating the scale, concentration, intensity, and context of the Paynes Creek Salt Works, McKillop provides a model for interpreting existing salt works sites as well as future discoveries along the Yucatán Peninsula. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

Download or read book Popol Vuh written by and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1996 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most extraordinary works of the human imagination and the most important text in the native languages of the Americas, Popul Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life was first made accessible to the public 10 years ago. This new edition retains the quality of the original translation, has been enriched, and includes 20 new illustrations, maps, drawings, and photos.

Download or read book Houses and Households written by Richard E. Blanton and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author presents a large comparative database derived from ethnographic and architectural research in Southeast Asia, Egypt, Mesoamerica, and other areas; proposes new methodologies for comparative analyses of houses; and critically examines existing methodologies, theories, and data. His work expands on and systematizes comparative and cross-cultural approaches to the study of households and their environments to provide a firm foundation for this emerging line of study.

Download or read book Transcendent Wisdom of the Maya written by Gabriela Jurosz-Landa and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An initiate’s inside account of ancient Maya spiritual practices alive today • Includes a Foreword by José Luis Tigüilá NABÉ kaxbaltzij, spokesperson of the Maya municipality • Details the initiation process the author went through to become a Maya shaman-priestess, including rituals, prayers, and ceremonies • Explains the foundational spiritual wisdom of the Maya calendar as a living entity, its cycles of time, and the significance of “the counting of the days”, which helps keep time itself alive • Examines the power of dance and Maya ceremonies, Maya future-telling, and communication with ancestors through the sacred fire Offering an insider’s experiential account of ancient Maya spiritual wisdom and practices, initiated Maya shaman-priestess Gabriela Jurosz-Landa opens up the mysterious world of the Maya, dispelling the rampant misinformation about their beliefs and traditions, sharing the transcendent beauty of their ceremonies, and explaining the Maya understanding of time, foundational to their spiritual worldview and cosmology. The author, an anthropologist, details the initiation process she went through to become a Maya shaman-priestess in Guatemala, including rituals, prayers, the presence of numinous forces, and the transmission of sacred knowledge. She explains the spiritual wisdom of the Maya calendar as a living entity, its cycles of time, and the significance of “the counting of the days,” which helps keep time itself alive. She examines Maya spiritual and cosmological concepts such as how the universe is shaped like a triangle over a square. She reveals the profound power of dance in Maya tradition, explaining how ritual dance halts the flow of time, reactivates primordial events, and captures vital energies that keep the Maya spiritual tradition vital and alive. Exploring other Maya secret knowledge, she also details Maya ritual attire, Maya future-telling with the calendar, the reading of the Tzi’te beans, and how the Maya communicate with ancestors through the sacred fire. Illustrating how contemporary Maya life is suffused with spiritual tradition and celebration, the author shares the teachings of the Maya from her initiate and anthropologist point of view in order to help us all learn from the ancient wisdom of their beliefs and worldview. Because, to truly understand the Maya, one must think like the Maya.

Download or read book In Search of Maya Sea Traders written by Heather Irene McKillop and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeologist Heather McKillop shares the experiences she had off the coast of Belize while searching for clues about the little known ancient Maya sea trade. This recollection of her work there includes the adventure of discovery, as the story of the traders emerges from the excavations. She describes the trading port of Wild Cane Cay, where exotic goods were traded from distant lands, and also discusses the more coastal-inland trade there. Through the story of her work, McKillop models the research design and field work required to interpret civilizations of the past.

Download or read book The Ancient Maya written by Heather McKillop and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-08-19 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thanks to powerful innovations in archaeology and other types of historical research, we now have a picture of everyday life in the Mayan empire that turns the long-accepted conventional wisdom on its head. Ranging from the end of the Ice Age to the flourishing of Mayan culture in the first millennium to the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, The Ancient Maya takes a fresh look at a culture that has long held the public's imagination. Originally thought to be peaceful and spiritual, the Mayans are now also known to have been worldly, bureaucratic, and violent. Debates and unanswered questions linger. Mayan expert Heather McKillop shows our current understanding of the Maya, explaining how interpretations of "dirt archaeology," hieroglyphic inscriptions, and pictorial pottery are used to reconstruct the lives of royalty, artisans, priests, and common folk. She also describes the innovative focus on the interplay of the people with their environments that has helped further unravel the mystery of the Mayans' rise and fall.

Download or read book Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture written by Stephen D. Houston and published by Dumbarton Oaks. This book was released on 1998 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These articles mark a significant stage in the study of Maya architecture and the society that built it. They represent advances in our understandings of the past, point toward avenues for further studies, and note the distance yet to travel in fully appreciating and understanding this ancient American culture and its material remains.

Download or read book Living with the Ancestors written by Patricia A. McAnany and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of this book proved to be extremely useful to students of archaeology because it provided a highly readable explanation for why people might bury valued family members under house and plaza floors in Preclassic and Classic Maya societies of the first millennium BCE and CE. By casting this ancestralizing practice within the larger framework of land, inheritance, identity, and genealogies of place, the author demonstrates the cultural logic of a practice that initially appears alien to Western eyes. This new edition contains an entirely new introduction that synthesizes new scholarship, as well as an updated bibliography.

Download or read book Maya Society Under Colonial Rule written by Nancy Marguerite Farriss and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1984-06-21 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of the Maya Indians of Yucatan, Mexico, from late preconquest times through the end of the Spanish colonial rule.

Download or read book The New Archaeology and the Ancient Maya written by Jeremy A. Sabloff and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 1994-08-15 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Ancient Maya Women written by Traci Ardren and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2002 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The flood of archaeological work in Maya lands has revolutionized our understanding of gender in ancient Maya society. The dozen contributors to this volume use a wide range of methodological strategies--archaeology, bioarchaeology, iconography, ethnohistory, epigraphy, ethnography--to tease out the details of the lives, actions, and identities of women of Mesoamerica. The chapters, most based upon recent fieldwork in Central America, examine the role of women in Maya society, their place in the political hierarchy and lineage structures, the gendered division of labor, and the discrepancy between idealized Mayan womanhood and the daily reality, among other topics. In each case, the complexities and nuances of gender relations is highlighted and the limitations of our knowledge acknowledged. These pieces represent an important advance in the understanding of Maya socioeconomic, political, and cultural life--and the archaeology of gender--and will be of great interest to scholars and students.