Download or read book Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico written by David M. Carballo and published by Oxford Studies in the Archaeol. This book was released on 2016 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the ways in which urbanisation and religion intersected in pre-Columbian central Mexico. It provides a materially informed history of religion and an archaeology of cities that considers religion as a generative force in societal change

Download or read book Ancient Teotihuacan written by George L. Cowgill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First comprehensive English-language book on the largest city in the Americas before the 1400s. Teotihuacan is a UNESCO world heritage site, located in highland central Mexico, about twenty-five miles from Mexico City, visited by millions of tourists every year. The book begins with Cuicuilco, a predecessor that arose around 400 BCE, then traces Teotihuacan from its founding in approximately 150 BCE to its collapse around 600 CE. It describes the city's immense pyramids and other elite structures. It also discusses the dwellings and daily lives of commoners, including men, women, and children, and the craft activities of artisans. George L. Cowgill discusses politics, economics, technology, art, religion, and possible reasons for Teotihuacan's rise and fall. Long before the Aztecs and 800 miles from Classic Maya centers, Teotihuacan was part of a broad Mesoamerican tradition but had a distinctive personality that invites comparison with other states and empires of the ancient world.

Download or read book Religion and Politics in the Ancient Americas written by Sarah B. Barber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-20 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exciting collection explores the interplay of religion and politics in the precolumbian Americas. Each thought-provoking contribution positions religion as a primary factor influencing political innovations in this period, reinterpreting major changes through an examination of how religion both facilitated and constrained transformations in political organization and status relations. Offering unparalleled geographic and temporal coverage of this subject, Religion and Politics in the Ancient Americas spans the entire precolumbian period, from Preceramic Peru to the Contact period in eastern North America, with case studies from North, Middle, and South America. Religion and Politics in the Ancient Americas considers the ways in which religion itself generated political innovation and thus enabled political centralization to occur. It moves beyond a "Great Tradition" focus on elite religion to understand how local political authority was negotiated, contested, bolstered, and undermined within diverse constituencies, demonstrating how religion has transformed non-Western societies. As well as offering readers fresh perspectives on specific archaeological cases, this book breaks new ground in the archaeological examination of religion and society.

Download or read book Rethinking the Aztec Economy written by Deborah L. Nichols and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rethinking the Aztec Economy provides new perspectives on the society and economy of the ancient Aztecs by focusing on goods and their patterns of circulation"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Ancient Tollan written by Alba Guadalupe Mastache and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A work of both consensus and innovation based upon extensive archaeological research, Ancient Tollan: Tula and the Toltec Heartland studies Mesoamerica's problem city--Tula, or Tollan, seat of the Toltec state. Along with Teotihuancan and Tenochtitlan, Tula was one of the most important prehispanic urban centers in Highland Central Mexico, reaching the height of its influence during the early Postclassic period between A.D. 900-1200. Chapters of the book are dedicated to topics ranging from the Teotihuancan occupation in the area, architectural and iconographic analysis of Tula's Sacred Precinct, the urban domestic architecture, settlement patterns, and irrigation systems. Using a wealth of data and focusing on the developmental processes of the city's functions on a regional level, Mastche, Cobean, and Healan offer a fresh view and a new understanding of this cultural center, its urban structure, and its rural environment.

Download or read book Collision of Worlds written by David M. Carballo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mexico of five centuries ago was witness to one of the most momentous encounters between human societies, when a group of Spaniards led by Hernando Cortés joined forces with tens of thousands of Mesoamerican allies to topple the mighty Aztec Empire. It served as a template for the forging of much of Latin America and initiated the globalized world we inhabit today. The violent clash that culminated in the Aztec-Spanish war of 1519-21 and the new colonial order it created were millennia in the making, entwining the previously independent cultural developments of both sides of the Atlantic. Collision of Worlds provides a deep history of this encounter, one that considers temporal depth in the richly layered cultures of Mexico and Spain, from their prehistories to the urban and imperial societies they built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Leading Mesoamerican archaeologist David Carballo offers a unique perspective on these fabled events with a focus on the physical world of places and things, their similarities and differences in trans-Atlantic perspective, and their interweaving in an encounter characterized by conquest and colonialism, but also resilience on the part of Native peoples. An engrossing and sweeping account, Collision of Worlds debunks long-held myths and contextualizes the deep roots and enduring consequences of the Aztec-Spanish conflict as never before.

Download or read book The Natural History of the Soul in Ancient Mexico written by Jill Leslie McKeever Furst and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A richly illustrated look at basic Precolumbian beliefs among ancient Mesoamerican peoples about life and death, body and soul. Drawing on linguistic, ethnographic, and iconographic sources, art historian Jill McKeever Furst argues that the Mexica turned not to mental or linguistic constructions for verifying ideas about the soul, but to what they experienced through the senses. 32 illustrations.

Download or read book Collective Action and the Reframing of Early Mesoamerica written by David M. Carballo and published by . This book was released on 2024-02-28 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In considering the long trajectory of human societies, researchers have too often favored models of despotic control by the few or structural models that fail to grant agency to those with less power in shaping history. Recent scholarship demonstrates such models to be not only limiting but also empirically inaccurate. This Element reviews archaeological approaches to collective action drawing on theoretical perspectives from across the globe and case studies from prehispanic Mesoamerica. It highlights how institutions and systems of governance matter, vary over space and time, and can oscillate between more pluralistic and more autocratic forms within the same society, culture, or polity. The historical coverage examines resource dilemmas and ways of mediating them, how ritual and religion can foster both social solidarity and hierarchy, the political financing of institutions and variability in forms of governance, and lessons drawn to inform the building of more resilient communities in the present.

Download or read book City of Sacrifice written by David Carrasco and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2000-12-08 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At an excavation of the Great Aztec Temple in Mexico City, amid carvings of skulls and a dismembered warrior goddess, David Carrasco stood before a container filled with the decorated bones of infants and children. It was the site of a massive human sacrifice, and for Carrasco the center of fiercely provocative questions: If ritual violence against humans was a profound necessity for the Aztecs in their capital city, is it central to the construction of social order and the authority of city states? Is civilization built on violence? In City of Sacrifice,Carrasco chronicles the fascinating story of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, investigating Aztec religious practices and demonstrating that religious violence was integral to urbanization; the city itself was a temple to the gods. That Mexico City, the largest city on earth, was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, is a point Carrasco poignantly considers in his comparison of urban life from antiquity to modernity. Majestic in scope, City of Sacrifice illuminates not only the rich history of a major Meso american city but also the inseparability of two passionate human impulses: urbanization and religious engagement. It has much to tell us about many familiar events in our own time, from suicide bombings in Tel Aviv to rape and murder in the Balkans.

Download or read book Burning Water written by Laurette Séjourné and published by London ; New York : Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 1956 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This vivid reconstruction of the religious and ethical edifice of pre-Columbian culture makes the great ruined cities of Mexico come alive again with the gods and myths of a people and civilization long extinct. The author relates the startling findings of her excavations at Teotihuacan, once a great metropolis of an ancient empire that gave its gods and its theology to the conquering Aztecs.

Download or read book Urban Life in the Distant Past written by Michael Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book describes a novel approach to early cities that is transdisciplinary, scientific, historical, and based on social-science knowledge.

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

Download or read book A Concise History of Mexico written by Brian R. Hamnett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-04 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated edition offers an accessible and richly illustrated study of Mexico's political, social, economic and cultural history.

Download or read book Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities written by M. Charlotte Arnauld and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities is the first focused book-length discussion of migration in central Mexico, west Mexico and the Maya region, presenting case studies on population movement in and among Classic, Epiclassic, and Postclassic Mesoamerican societies and polities within the framework of urbanization and de-urbanization. Looking beyond the conceptual dichotomy of sedentism versus mobility, the contributors show that mobility and migration reveal a great deal about the formation, development, and decline of town- and city-based societies in the ancient world. In a series of data-rich chapters that address specific evidence for movement in their respective study areas, an international group of scholars assesses mobility through the isotopic and demographic analysis of human remains, stratigraphic identification of gaps in occupation, and local intensification of water capture in the Maya lowlands. Others examine migration through the integration of historic and archaeological evidence in Michoacán and Yucatán and by registering how daily life changed in response to the influx of new people in the Basin of Mexico. Offering a range of critical insights into the vital and under-studied role that mobility and migration played in complex agrarian societies, Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerican Cities will be of value to Mesoamericanist archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and bioarchaeologists and to any scholars working on complex societies. Contributors: Jaime J. Awe, Meggan Bullock, Sarah C. Clayton, Andrea Cucina, Véronique Darras, Nicholas P. Dunning, Mélanie Forné, Marion Forest, Carolyn Freiwald, Elizabeth Graham, Nancy Gonlin, Julie A. Hoggarth, Linda Howie, Elsa Jadot, Kristin V. Landau, Eva Lemonnier, Dominique Michelet, David Ortegón Zapata, Prudence M. Rice, Thelma N. Sierra Sosa, Michael P. Smyth, Vera Tiesler, Eric Weaver

Download or read book Teotihuacan written by Matthew Robb and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Founded in the first century BCE near a set of natural springs in an otherwise dry northeastern corner of the Valley of Mexico, the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacan was on a symbolic level a city of elements. With a multiethnic population of perhaps one hundred thousand, at its peak in 400 CE, it was the cultural, political, economic, and religious center of ancient Mesoamerica. A devastating fire in the city center led to a rapid decline after the middle of the sixth century, but Teotihuacan was never completely abandoned or forgotten; the Aztecs revered the city and its monuments, giving many of them the names we still use today. Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire examines new discoveries from the three main pyramids at the site—the Sun Pyramid, the Moon Pyramid, and, at the center of the Ciudadela complex, the Feathered Serpent Pyramid—which have fundamentally changed our understanding of the city’s history. With illustrations of the major objects from Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropología and from the museums and storage facilities of the Zona de Monumentos Arqueológicos de Teotihuacan, along with selected works from US and European collections, the catalogue examines these cultural artifacts to understand the roles that offerings of objects and programs of monumental sculpture and murals throughout the city played in the lives of Teotihuacan’s citizens. Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Exhibition dates: de Young, San Francisco, September 30, 2017–February 11, 2018 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), March–June 2018

Download or read book Religion in Sixteenth Century Mexico written by Cheryl Claassen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-10 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion in Sixteenth-Century Mexico explores the development of religion as transferred from Spain to Tenochtitlan. The religious world of both Aztecs and Spanish Catholics at time of encounter was organized through large and small scale community, family, and personal devotions. Devotion expressed through cults was the single most salient aspect in the transfer of Catholicism to New World people. This book highlights the role that ideas such as afterlife, apocalypticism, iconoclasm, Marianism, resistance, and saints played in the emergence of Mexican Catholicism in the sixteenth century. The larger Atlantic world context, as seen in the regions of Iberia, Anahuac, and 'New Spain', or central Mexico from Zacatecas to Oaxaca, is explored in detail. Beginning with an extensive historical essay to contextualize the pre-contact period, the bulk of this volume contains 118 separate keywords each with three comparative essays examining Aztec and Catholic religious practices before and after contact.

Download or read book Tenochtitlan written by José Luis de Rojas and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2012-12-04 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire before the Spanish conquest, rivaled any other great city of its time. In Europe, only Paris, Venice, and Constantinople were larger. Cradled in the Valley of Mexico, the city is unique among New World capitals in that it was well-described and chronicled by the conquistadors who subsequently demolished it. This means that, though centuries of redevelopment have frustrated efforts to access the ancient city’s remains, much can be told about its urban landscape, politics, economy, and religion. While Tenochtitlan commands a great deal of attention from archaeologists and Mesoamerican scholars, very little has been written about the city for a non-technical audience in English. In this fascinating book, eminent expert José Luis de Rojas presents an accessible yet authoritative exploration of this famous city--interweaving glimpses into its inhabitants’ daily lives with the broader stories of urbanization, culture, and the rise and fall of the Aztec empire.