Download or read book Unconquered Lacandon Maya written by Joel W. Palka and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1946, explorers stumbled upon two unexpected discoveries in the jungles of Chiapas, Mexico: a treasure of well-preserved Classic Maya murals and a thriving society of indigenous Maya peoples living in the lowland rainforest. Over subsequent decades, these Lacandon Maya were assumed to be the direct descendants of the Classic Maya, who created the spectacular temples and monumental art of the region. As impressive as this lineage may be, Joel Palka argues that many scholars have romanticized it at the expense of documenting the substantive social changes the Lacandon experienced after the Spanish Colonial Period. The Lacandon are unique among the Maya of Mesoamerica because they remained free while others were conquered; the Lacandon Maya were the only Maya people never completely colonized by Spain, which led to specific cultural adaptations to contact. Using new cultural, historical, and archeological evidence, Palka offers the most comprehensive and balanced study of the Lacandon to date. His groundbreakingargument is that other Maya, and not just the Spanish, brought extensive changes to the Lacandon way of life. The unearthing of neglected areas of Lacandon ethnohistory, the synthesis of data from archival and ethnographic studies, and the addition of compelling archaeological information from newly discovered sites all add to this complete and richly elucidated treatise of Lacandon cultural change. Palka's study is a fine and significant contribution to the story of the Lacandon Maya and is of interest to archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and anthropologists of the Maya and Mesoamerica as a whole.
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 Lacand n Maya in the Twenty First Century written by James D. Nations and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2023-09-12 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ancient traditions of the Lacandón Maya comes an Indigenous model for a sustainable future Having lived for centuries isolated within Mexico’s largest remaining tropical rainforest, the Indigenous Lacandón Maya now live at the nexus of two worlds—ancient and modern. While previous research has focused on documenting Lacandón oral traditions and religious practices in order to preserve them, this book tells the story of how Lacandón families have adapted to the contemporary world while applying their ancestral knowledge to create an ecologically sustainable future. Drawing on his 49 years of studying and learning from the Lacandón Maya, James Nations discusses how in the midst of external pressures such as technological changes, missionary influences, and logging ventures, Lacandón communities are building an economic system of agroforestry and ecotourism that produces income for their families while protecting biodiversity and cultural resources. Nations describes methods they use to plant and harvest without harming the forest, illustrating that despite drastic changes in lifestyle, respect for the environment continues to connect Lacandón families across generations. By helping with these tasks and inheriting the fables and myths that reinforce this worldview, Lacandón children continue to learn about the plants, animals, and spiritual deities that coexist in their land. Indigenous peoples such as the Lacandón Maya control one-third of the intact forest landscapes left on Earth, and Indigenous knowledge and practices are increasingly recognized as key elements in the survival of the planet’s biological diversity. The story of the Lacandón Maya serves as a model for Indigenous-controlled environmental conservation, and it will inform anyone interested in supporting sustainable Indigenous futures. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase
Download or read book The Maya written by Megan E. O’Neil and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-07-06 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating look at the myriad communities who have engaged with the ancient Maya over the centuries. This book reveals how the ancient Maya—and their buildings, ideas, objects, and identities—have been perceived, portrayed, and exploited over five hundred years in the Americas, Europe, and beyond. Engaging in interdisciplinary analysis, the book summarizes ancient Maya art and history from the preclassical period to the Spanish invasion, as well as the history of outside engagement with the ancient Maya, from Spanish invaders in the sixteenth century to later explorers and archaeologists, taking in scientific literature, visual arts, architecture, world’s fairs, and Indigenous activism. It also looks at the decipherment of Maya inscriptions, Maya museum exhibitions and artists’ responses, and contemporary Maya people’s engagements with their ancestral past. Featuring the latest research, this book will interest scholars as well as general readers who wish to know more about this ancient, fascinating culture.
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 Before Kukulk n written by Vera Tiesler and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2017-12-19 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A significant look at Maya life prior to Chichén Itzá during the Classic Period in the Yucatán"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Coloniality in the Maya Lowlands written by Kasey Diserens Morgan and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2022-12-28 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coloniality in the Maya Lowlands explores what has been required of the Maya to survive both internal and external threats and other destabilizing forces. These include shifting power dynamics and sociocultural transformations, tumultuous political regimes, the precarity of newly formed nation states, migration in search of refuge, and newly globalizing economies in the Yucatecan lowlands in the Late Colonial to Early National periods—the times when formal Spanish colonial rule was giving way to Yucatecan and Mexican neocolonial settler systems. The work takes a hemispheric approach to the historical and material analysis of colonialism, bridging the often disparate literatures on coloniality and settler colonialism. Archaeologists and anthropologists working in what are today southeastern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras grapple with the material realities of coloniality at a regional level. They provide sustained discussions of Maya experiences with wide-ranging colonial endurances: violence, resource insecurity, land rights, refugees, the control of borders, the movement of contraband, surveillance, individual and collective agency, consumption, and use of historic resources. Considering a future for historical archaeologies of the Maya region that bridges anthropology, ethnohistory, Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, and Latin American studies, Coloniality in the Maya Lowlands presents a new understanding of how ways of being in the Maya world have formed and changed over time, as well as the shared investments of historical archaeologists and sociocultural anthropologists working in the Maya region. Contributors: Fernando Armstrong-Fumero, Alejandra Badillo Sánchez, Adolfo Iván Batún Alpuche, A. Brooke Bonorden, Maia C. Dedrick, Scott L. Fedick, Fior García Lara, John Gust, Brett A. Houk, Rosemary A. Joyce, Gertrude B. Kilgore, Jennifer P. Mathews, Patricia A. McAnany, James W. Meierhoff, Fabián A. Olán de la Cruz, Julie K. Wesp
Download or read book Maya Conquistador written by Matthew Restall and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 1999-08-30 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring firsthand accounts written by Maya nobles from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries-many of them previously untranslated-Restall offers the first Maya account of the conquest. The story holds surprising twists: The conquistadors were not only Spaniards but also Mayas, reconstructing their own governance and society, and the Spanish colonization of the Yucatan was part of an ongoing pattern of adaptation and survival for centuries.
Download or read book Maya Pilgrimage to Ritual Landscape written by Joel W. Palka and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through cross-cultural comparisons, archaeological data, and ethnographic insights, Joel W. Palka addresses central questions about Maya pilgrimage practice and discusses the broad importance of Maya ritual landscapes and pilgrimage for Mesoamerica as a whole.
Download or read book The Mayan Languages written by Judith Aissen and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-05-12 with total page 790 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mayan Languages presents a comprehensive survey of the language family associated with the Classic Mayan civilization (AD 200–900), a family whose individual languages are still spoken today by at least six million indigenous Maya in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. This unique resource is an ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Mayan languages and linguistics. Written by a team of experts in the field, The Mayan Languages presents in-depth accounts of the linguistic features that characterize the thirty-one languages of the family, their historical evolution, and the social context in which they are spoken. The Mayan Languages: provides detailed grammatical sketches of approximately a third of the Mayan languages, representing most of the branches of the family; includes a section on the historical development of the family, as well as an entirely new sketch of the grammar of "Classic Maya" as represented in the hieroglyphic script; provides detailed state-of-the-art discussions of the principal advances in grammatical analysis of Mayan languages; includes ample discussion of the use of the languages in social, conversational, and poetic contexts. Consisting of topical chapters on the history, sociolinguistics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse structure, and acquisition of the Mayan languages, this book will be a resource for researchers and other readers with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic anthropology, language acquisition, and linguistic typology.
Download or read book The Maya written by Michael D. Coe and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2023-09-28 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maya has long been established as the best, most readable introduction to the ancient Maya on the market today. This classic book has been updated by distilling the latest scholarship for the general reader and student. This tenth edition incorporates the most recent archaeological and epigraphic findings, which continue to proceed at a fast pace, along with full-colour illustrations. The new material includes evidence of the earliest human occupants of the Maya region and the beginnings of agriculture and settled life; analysis from lidar on swampy areas, such as Usumacinta, that show enormous rectangle earthworks, including Aguada Fénix, dating from 1050 to 750 BC; and recent advances in decoding Maya writing and imagery. It also expands on information on the roles of women, courtiers and outsiders; covers novel research about Maya cities, including research into water quality, marketplaces, fortifications and integrated road systems; and features coverage of more recent Maya history, including the displacement and mistreatment of the Maya people, along with growing affirmations of their cultural identity and rights. Highlighting the vitality of current scholarship about this brilliant culture, The Maya remains the gold standard introductory book on the subject.
Download or read book Politics of the Maya Court written by Sarah E. Jackson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2013-06-24 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, advances in deciphering Maya hieroglyphic writing have given scholars new tools for understanding key aspects of ancient Maya society. This book—the first comprehensive examination of the Maya royal court—exemplifies the importance of these new sources. Authored by anthropologist Sarah E. Jackson and richly illustrated with drawings, photographs, and maps, Politics of the Maya Court uses hieroglyphic and iconographic evidence to explore the composition and social significance of royal courts in the Late Classic period (a.d. 600–900), with a special emphasis on the role of courtly elites. As Jackson explains, the Maya region of southern Mexico and Central America was not a unified empire but a loosely aggregated culture area composed of independent kingdoms. Royal courts had a presence in large, central communities from Chiapas to Yucatan and the highlands of Guatemala and western Honduras. Each major polity was ruled by a k’uhul ajaw, or holy lord, who embodied intertwined aspects of religious and political authority. The hieroglyphic texts that adorned walls, furniture, and portable items in these centers of power provide specific information about the positions, roles, and meanings of the courts. Jackson uses these documents as keys to understanding Classic Maya political hierarchy and, specifically, the institution of the royal court. Within this context, she investigates the lives of the nobility and the participation of elites in court politics. By identifying particular individuals and their life stories, Jackson humanizes Maya society, showing how events resulted from the actions and choices of specific people. Jackson’s innovative portrayal of court membership provides a foundation for scholarship on the nature, functions, and responsibilities of Maya royal courts.
Download or read book The Ch ol Maya of Chiapas written by Robert M. Laughlin and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2015-04-08 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ch’ol Maya who live in the western Mexican state of Chiapas are direct descendants of the Maya of the Classic period. Exploring their history and culture, volume editor Karen Bassie-Sweet and the other authors assembled here uncover clear continuity between contemporary Maya rituals and beliefs and their ancient counterparts. With evocative and thoughtful essays by leading scholars of Maya culture, The Ch’ol Maya of Chiapas, the first collection to focus fully on the Ch’ol Maya, takes readers deep into ancient caves and reveals new dimensions of Ch’ol cosmology. In contemporary Ch’ol culture the contributors find a wealth of historical material that they then interweave with archaeological data to yield surprising and illuminating insights. The colonial and twentieth-century descendants of the Postclassic period Ch’ol and Lacandon Ch’ol, for instance, provide a window on the history and conquest of the early Maya. Several authors examine Early Classic paintings in the Ch’ol ritual cave known as Jolja that document ancient cave ceremonies not unlike Ch’ol rituals performed today, such as petitioning a cave-dwelling mountain spirit for health, rain, and abundant harvests. Other essays investigate deities identified with caves, mountains, lightning, and meteors to trace the continuity of ancient Maya beliefs through the centuries, in particular the ancient origin of contemporary rituals centering on the Ch’ol mountain deity Don Juan. An appendix containing three Ch’ol folktales and their English translations rounds out the volume. Charting paths literal and figurative to earlier trade routes, pre-Columbian sites, and ancient rituals and beliefs, The Ch’ol Maya of Chiapas opens a fresh, richly informed perspective on Maya culture as it has evolved and endured over the ages.
Download or read book Maya Christians and Their Churches in Sixteenth Century Belize written by Elizabeth Graham and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely held that Christianity came to Belize as an extension of the conquest of Yucatan and that adherence to Christian belief and practice was abandoned in the absence of enduring Spanish authority. An alternative view comes from the excavations of Maya churches at Tipu and Lamanai, which show that the dead were buried in Christian churchyards long after the churches themselves fell into disuse, and pre-Columbian ritual objects were cached in Christian sacred spaces both during and after Spanish occupation. Excavations also reveal that the architectural style of these early churches is Franciscan in inspiration but nonetheless the product of continuing community efforts at construction and repair. A conclusion difficult to ignore is that the Maya of Tipu and Lamanai considered themselves Christians with or without Spanish presence. Viewing historical and archaeological data through the lens of her personal experience of Roman Catholicism, and informed by feminist approaches, Elizabeth Graham assesses the concept of religion, the significance of doctrine, the empowerment of the individual, and the process of conversion by examining the meanings attributed to ideas, objects and images by the Maya, by Iberian Christians, and by archaeologists. Graham’s provocative study also makes the case that the impact of Christianity in Belize was a phenomenon that uniquely shaped the development of the modern nation. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase
Download or read book Colonial and Postcolonial Change in Mesoamerica written by Rani T. Alexander and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new account of human interaction and culture change for Mesoamerica that connects the present to the past. Social histories that assess the cultural upheavals between the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica and the ethnographic present overlook the archaeological record, with its unique capacity to link local practices to global processes. To fill this gap, the authors weigh the material manifestations of the colonial and postcolonial trajectory in light of local, regional, and global historical processes that have unfolded over the last five hundred years. Research on a suite of issues—economic history, production of commodities, agrarian change, resistance, religious shifts, and sociocultural identity—demonstrates that the often shocking patterns observed today are historically contingent and culturally mediated, and therefore explainable. This book belongs to a new wave of scholarship that renders the past immediately relevant to the present, which Alexander and Kepecs see as one of archaeology’s most crucial goals.
Download or read book Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas brings together 15 archaeological case studies that offer new perspectives on colonial period interactions in the Caribbean and surrounding areas through a specific focus on material culture and indigenous agency.
Download or read book Archaeologies of the British in Latin America written by Charles E. Orser Jr. and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume includes chapters by historical archaeologists engaged in original research examining the role of the British Empire in Latin America. The archaeology of Latin America is today a rapidly expanding field, with new research being accomplished every day. Currently, the vast amount of research is being focused on the Spanish Empire and its agents’ interactions with the region’s indigenous peoples. Spain, however, was not the only international power intent on colonizing and controlling Latin America. The British Empire had a smaller albeit significant role in the cultural history of Latin America. This history constitutes an important piece of the historical story of Latin America. Archaeologies of the British in Latin America presents the results of original research and begins a dialogue about the archaeology of the British Empire in Latin America by an international group of archaeological scholars. Fresh insights on the complex history of cultural interaction in one of the world’s most important regions are included. It will be of interest to historical archaeologists, Mesoamerican archaeologists engaged in pre-contact research, Latin American and global historians, Latin American anthropologists, material culture specialists, cultural geographers, and others interested in the cultural history of colonialism in general and in Latin America in particular.
