Download or read book The Social Experience of Childhood in Ancient Mesoamerica written by Traci Ardren and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to focus on children in ancient Mesoamerica, this vital reference offers a key methodological guide for archaeologists studying children and their roles not only in Mesoamerica, but also in ancient societies worldwide. Contributors examine material evidence, historical records, and iconography, productively criticizing the claim that children are invisible in the archaeological record and elucidating an ancient childhood comprising multiple and complex identities. They explore the methodological and theoretical difficulties created when investigating childhood - a category defined by each culture - in the archaeological record. Sure to appeal widely to New World and Old World archaeologists and anthropologists, The Social Experience of Childhood in Ancient Mesoamerica will open up new avenues of research into the lives of this previously overlooked yet remarkably large population. Contributors include Traci Ardren, Ximena Chávez Balderas, Billie Follensbee, Byron Hamann, Scott R. Hutson, Rosemary A. Joyce, Stacie M. King, Jeanne Lopiparo, Patricia McAnany, Geoffrey G. McCafferty, Sharisse D. McCafferty, Juan Alberto Román Berrelleza, Rebecca Storey, Rissa M. Trachman, Fred Valdez Jr.
Download or read book Historical Archaeology of Childhood and Parenting written by April Kamp-Whittaker and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tracing Childhood written by Jennifer L. Thompson and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bioarchaeological studies of children have, until recently, centered on population data-driven topics like mortality rates and growth and morbidity patterns. This volume examines emerging issues in childhood studies, looking at historic and prehistoric contexts and framing questions about the nature and quality of children’s lives. How did they develop their social identity? Were they economic actors in early civilizations? Does their health reflect the larger community? Comparing and contrasting field research from a variety of sites across Europe and the Americas, the contributors to this volume demonstrate that children not only have unique experiences but they also share, cross-culturally, in daily struggles. Their lives differ significantly from those of adults due to disparate social identities and variable growth needs. In some of the cases presented, this is the first time that child remains have been examined in any detail, making Tracing Childhood an essential resource for scholars and researchers in this growing field.
Download or read book The Archaeology of Childhood written by Güner Coşkunsu and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2015-11-16 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical interdisciplinary examination of archeaology's approach to childhood in prehistory. Children existed in ancient times as active participants in the societies in which they lived and the cultures they belonged to. Despite their various roles, and in spite of the demographic composition of ancient societies where children comprised a large percentage of the population, children are almost completely missing in many current archaeological discourses. To remedy this, The Archaeology of Childhood aims to instigate interdisciplinary dialogues between archaeologists and other disciplines on the notion of childhood and children and to develop theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze the archaeological record in order to explore and understand children and their role in the formation of past cultures. Contributors consider how the notion of childhood can be expressed in artifacts and material records and examine how childhood is described in literary and historical sources of people from different regions and cultures. While we may never be able to reconstruct every last aspect of what childhood was like in the past, this volume argues that we can certainly bring children back into archaeological thinking and research, and correct many erroneous and gender-biased interpretations. Güner Coşkunsu is Assistant Professor of Archaeology at the Mardin Artuklu University, Turkey.
Download or read book Children in Culture Revisited written by K. Lesnik-Oberstein and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-06-13 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children in Culture, Revisited follows on from the first volume, Children in Culture , and is composed of a range of chapters, newly written for this collection, which offer further fully inter- and multidisciplinary considerations of childhood as a culturally and historically constructed identity rather than a constant psycho-biological entity.
Download or read book Ancient Households of the Americas written by John G. Douglas and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2012-04-15 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ancient Households of the Americas archaeologists investigate the fundamental role of household production in ancient, colonial, and contemporary households. Several different cultures—Iroquois, Coosa, Anasazi, Hohokam, San Agustín, Wankarani, Formative Gulf Coast Mexico, and Formative, Classic, Colonial, and contemporary Maya—are analyzed through the lens of household archaeology in concrete, data-driven case studies. The text is divided into three sections: Section I examines the spatial and social organization and context of household production; Section II looks at the role and results of households as primary producers; and Section III investigates the role of, and interplay among, households in their greater political and socioeconomic communities. In the past few decades, household archaeology has made substantial contributions to our understanding and explanation of the past through the documentation of the household as a social unit—whether small or large, rural or urban, commoner or elite. These case studies from a broad swath of the Americas make Ancient Households of the Americas extremely valuable for continuing the comparative interdisciplinary study of households.
Download or read book The Archaeology of Childhood written by Jane Eva Baxter and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-06-09 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of The Archaeology of Childhood has been credited by many as launching an entire new area of scholarship in archaeology. This second edition, published 17 years later, retains the first edition’s emphasis on combining sources from archaeology, anthropology, environmental studies, psychology, and sociology, to create a rich interdisciplinary basis for studying childhood across time and across cultures. The second edition is updated with archaeological studies about childhood that have been published in the past 20 years, and readers will see that the archaeology of childhood is a field with a relatively short history but a rich and varied scholarship. Archaeologists study children in the very recent past, as well as Neanderthal and early modern human children, and every period in between. These studies use artifacts, the built environment, spatial analyses, the artistic representations, skeletal remains, and mortuary assemblages to illuminate the lives of children, their families, and communities. The book’s eight chapters cover: 1: The Archaeology of Childhood in Context 2: Childhood in Archaeology: Themes, Terms, and Foundations 3: The Cultural Creation of Childhood: The Idea of Socialization 4: Socialization and the Material Culture of Childhood 5: Socialization, Behavior, and the Spaces and Places of Childhood 6: Socialization, Symbols, and Artistic Representations of Children 7: Socialization, Childhood, and Mortuary Remains 8: Looking Back and Moving Forward This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the major themes in the archaeological study of childhood and introduces the concept of socialization as a way of framing archaeological scholarship on children. Case studies and examples from around the globe are included, and the author’s expertise on childhood in 18th-20th century America is drawn upon to provide more familiar examples for readers allowing them to question their own assumptions and understandings of what it means to be a child. Each chapter ends with discussion questions and learning activities.
Download or read book Identities Experience and Change in Early Mexican Villages written by Catharina E. Santasilia and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New perspectives on an important era in Mesoamerican history This volume examines shifting social identities, lived experiences, and networks of interaction in Mexico during the Mesoamerican Formative period (2000 BCE–250 CE), an era that helped produce some of the world’s most renowned complex civilizations. The chapters offer significant data, innovative methodologies, and novel perspectives on Mexican archaeology. Using diverse and non-traditional theoretical approaches, contributors discuss interregional relationships and the exchange of ideas in contexts ranging from the Gulf Coast Olmec region to the site of Tlatilco in Central Mexico to the often-overlooked cultures of the far western states. Their essays explore identity formation, cosmological perspectives, the first hints of social complexity, the underpinnings of Formative period economies, and the sensorial implications of sociocultural change. Identities, Experience, and Change in Early Mexican Villages is one of the first volumes to address the entirety of this rich and complex era and region, offering a new and holistic view. Through a wealth of exciting interpretations from international senior and emerging scholars, this volume shows the strong influence of cultural exchange as well as the compelling individuality of local and regional contexts over two thousand years of history. Contributors: Catharina E. Santasilia | Guy D. Hepp | Richard A. Diehl | Jeffrey P. Blomster | Philip (Flip) J. Arnold III | Patricia Ochoa Castillo | Christopher Beekman | Tatsuya Murakami | Jeffrey S. Brzezinski | Vanessa Monson | Arthur A. Joyce | Sarah B. Barber | Henri Noel Bernard| Sara Ladrón de Guevara| Mayra Manrique| José Luis Ruvalcaba
Download or read book Children and Childhood in Bioarchaeology written by Patrick Beauchesne and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As researchers become increasingly interested in studying the lives of children in antiquity, this volume argues for the importance of a collaborative biocultural approach. Contributors draw on fields including skeletal biology and physiology, archaeology, sociocultural anthropology, pediatrics, and psychology to show that a diversity of research methods is the best way to illuminate the complexities of childhood. Contributors and case studies span the globe with locations including Egypt, Turkey, Italy, England, Japan, Peru, Bolivia, Canada, and the United States. Time periods range from the Neolithic to the Industrial Revolution. Leading experts in the bioarchaeology of childhood investigate breastfeeding and weaning trends of the past 10,000 years; mortuary data from child burials; skeletal trauma and stress events; bone size, shape, and growth; plasticity; and dietary histories. Emphasizing a life course approach and developmental perspective, this volume's interdisciplinary nature marks a paradigm shift in the way children of the past are studied. It points the way forward to a better understanding of childhood as a dynamic lived experience both physically and socially. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen Contributors: Sabrina C. Agarwal | Patrick Beauchesne | Tina Moffat | Tracy Prowse | Dan Temple | Marla Toyne | Haagen D. Klaus | Siân Halcrow | Raelene Inglis | Rebecca Gowland | Sophie L. Newman | Jessica Pearson | James H. Gosman | David A. Raichlen | Tim Ryan | Tosha L. Dupras | Lana J. Williams | Sandra M. Wheeler | Carl Henrik Langebaek Rueda | Melanie J. Miller
Download or read book Ancient Southeast Mesoamerica written by Patricia A. Urban and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-21 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Southeast Mesoamerica explores the distinctive development and political history of the region from its earliest inhabitants up to the Spanish conquest. It demonstrates how inhabitants from different locales were organized within a matrix of social networks, and how they mobilized the assets that they needed to achieve their own goals.
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.
Download or read book Vernacular Architecture in the Pre Columbian Americas written by Christina Halperin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vernacular Architecture in the Pre-Columbian Americas reveals the dynamism of the ancient past, where social relations and long-term history were created posthole by posthole, brick by brick. This collection shifts attention away from the elite and monumental architectural traditions of the region to instead investigate the creativity, subtlety and variability of common architecture and the people who built and dwelled in them. At the heart of this study of vernacular architecture is an emphasis on ordinary people and their built environments, and how these everyday spaces were pivotal in the making and meaning of social and cultural dynamics. Providing a deeper and more nuanced temporal perspective of common buildings in the Americas, the editors have deftly framed a study that highlights sociocultural diversity while at the same time facilitating broader comparative conversations around the theme of vernacular architecture. With diverse case studies covering a broad range of periods and regions, Vernacular Architecture in the Pre-Columbian Americas is an important addition to the growing body of scholarship on the indigenous architecture of the Americas and is a key contribution to our archaeological understandings of past built environments.
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 The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs written by Deborah L. Nichols and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, the first of its kind, provides a current overview of recent research on the Aztec empire, the best documented prehispanic society in the Americas. Chapters span from the establishment of Aztec city-states to the encounter with the Spanish empire and the Colonial period that shaped the modern world. Articles in the Handbook take up new research trends and methodologies and current debates. The Handbook articles are divided into seven parts. Part I, Archaeology of the Aztecs, introduces the Aztecs, as well as Aztec studies today, including the recent practice of archaeology, ethnohistory, museum studies, and conservation. The articles in Part II, Historical Change, provide a long-term view of the Aztecs starting with important predecessors, the development of Aztec city-states and imperialism, and ending with a discussion of the encounter of the Aztec and Spanish empires. Articles also discuss Aztec notions of history, writing, and time. Part III, Landscapes and Places, describes the Aztec world in terms of its geography, ecology, and demography at varying scales from households to cities. Part IV, Economic and Social Relations in the Aztec Empire, discusses the ethnic complexity of the Aztec world and social and economic relations that have been a major focus of archaeology. Articles in Part V, Aztec Provinces, Friends, and Foes, focuses on the Aztec's dynamic relations with distant provinces, and empires and groups that resisted conquest, and even allied with the Spanish to overthrow the Aztec king. This is followed by Part VI, Ritual, Belief, and Religion, which examines the different beliefs and rituals that formed Aztec religion and their worldview, as well as the material culture of religious practice. The final section of the volume, Aztecs after the Conquest, carries the Aztecs through the post-conquest period, an increasingly important area of archaeological work, and considers the place of the Aztecs in the modern world.
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.
Download or read book Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca written by Arthur A. Joyce and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encapsulating two decades of research, Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca is the first major treatment of the lower Río Verde region of Oaxaca, investigating its social, political, and ecological history. Tracing Formative period developments from the earliest known evidence of human presence to the collapse of Río Viejo (the region's first centralized polity), the volume synthesizes the archaeological and paleoecological evidence from the valley. This period saw the earliest agricultural settlements in the region as well as the origins of sedentism and social complexity, and witnessed major changes in floodplain and coastal environments that expanded the productivity of subsistence resources. The book addresses theoretically significant questions of broad relevance such as the origins and spread of agriculture, the social negotiation of complex political formations, the effects of long-distance trade and interaction, the macroregional effects of landscape change, and prehispanic ideology and political power. Focusing on questions of interregional interaction, environmental change, and political centralization, Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca provides a comprehensive understanding of the Formative period archaeology of this important and long neglected region of Oaxaca.
Download or read book The Maya World written by Scott R. Hutson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 983 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maya World brings together over 60 authors, representing the fields of archaeology, art history, epigraphy, geography, and ethnography, who explore cutting-edge research on every major facet of the ancient Maya and all sub-regions within the Maya world. The Maya world, which covers Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador, contains over a hundred ancient sites that are open to tourism, eight of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and many thousands more that have been dug or await investigation. In addition to captivating the lay public, the ancient Maya have attracted scores of major interdisciplinary research expeditions and hundreds of smaller projects going back to the 19th century, making them one of the best-known ancient cultures. The Maya World explores their renowned writing system, towering stone pyramids, exquisitely painted murals, and elaborate funerary tombs as well as their creative agricultural strategies, complex social, economic, and political relationships, widespread interactions with other societies, and remarkable cultural resilience in the face of historical ruptures. This is an invaluable reference volume for scholars of the ancient Maya, including archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists.
