Download or read book Archaeological Thought in America written by C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American archaeology today encompasses a huge range of approaches and draws eclectically on a multitude of academic disciplines. Until now, however, there has been no book seeking to separate the main strands and traditions of research and present a rounded picture of American archaeological thought in all its diversity. The seventeen essays in Archaeological Thought in America describe recent theoretical advances and present substantive interpretations of prehistoric data drawn from a variety of cultures and time-frames, including Mesoamerica, Central Asia, India and China. The contributors include many of the leading North American archaeologists of this generation.

Download or read book The Tenochca Empire of Ancient Mexico written by Pedro Carrasco and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-09-24 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most important political entity in pre-Spanish Mesoamerica was the Tenochca Empire, founded in 1428 when the three kingdoms of Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan formed an alliance that controlled the Basin of Mexico and other extensive areas of Mesoamerica. In a unique political structure, each of the three allies headed a group of kingdoms in the core of the Empire. Each capital possessed settlements of peasants both in its own domain and in those of the other two capitals; in conquered areas nearby, the three capitals had their separate tributaries. In The Tenochca Empire Pedro Carrasco incorporates years of research in the archives of Mexico and Spain and compares primary sources, some not yet published, from all three of the great kingdoms. Carrasco takes in the total tripartite structure of the Empire, defining its component entities and determining how they were organized and how they functioned.

Download or read book The Tale of Healer Miguel Perdomo Neira written by David Sowell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new book tells the story of Miguel Perdomo Niera, a healer whose amazing cures during his travels through the northern Andes in the 1860s and 1870s evoked both enormous hostility and widespread adulation. A combination of narrative and analysis, the book documents Perdomo's experiences in Colombia and Ecuador and offers valuable insights into the social history of medicine during the Great Transformation in nineteenth-century Latin America. Reactions to Perdomo also illuminate the conflicts between colonial and modern and between religious and secular belief systems in Latin America during this time. This era pitted the norms of colonial Latin America against forces of change that shaped contemporary Latin America. Perdomo's practice of medicine demonstrated a strong religious influence that liberals thought were incompatible with a modern, secular society. Seldom have the contentions surrounding competitive medical systems been so starkly illuminated as in the case of Perdomo. One of a group of empirics, also known as cranderos, bleeders or barbers, who offered health care to people in Latin America, Perdomo did not charge for his services. Many people were perplexed by his cures. The drugs that he used allegedly enabled him to perform minor surgery without pain, swelling, or excessive bleeding. Supporters wrote numerous testimonials expressing their gratitude for his ability to cure illnesses that had plagued them for years. But Perdomo also had his detractors. Physicians, formally trained medicos, and those who supported scientific modernization were critical of Perdomo's practice of Hispanic medicine, even though it was part of the medical system of the day. Blending Catholic healing beliefs with indigenous and African medical ideologies, Hispanic medicine challenged the innovations occurring in the professional medical community. This volume also makes a singular contribution to a scholarly understanding of the emergence of medical pluralism, tracking the submergence of traditional

Download or read book The Art of Urbanism written by William Leonard Fash and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Art of Urbanism explores how the royal courts of powerful Mesoamerican centers represented their kingdoms in architectural, iconographic, and cosmological terms. Through an investigation of the ecological contexts and environmental opportunities of urban centers, the contributors consider how ancient Mesoamerican cities defined themselves and reflected upon their physicalâe"and metaphysicalâe"place via their built environment. Themes in the volume include the ways in which a kingdomâe(tm)s public monuments were fashioned to reflect geographic space, patron gods, and mythology, and how the Olmec, Maya, Mexica, Zapotecs, and others sought to center their world through architectural monuments and public art. This collection of papers addresses how communities leveraged their environment and built upon their cultural and historical roots as well as the ways that the performance of calendrical rituals and other public events tied individuals and communities to both urban centers and hinterlands. Twenty-three scholars from archaeology, anthropology, art history, and religious studies contribute new data and new perspectives to the understanding of ancient Mesoamericansâe(tm) own view of their spectacular urban and ritual centers.

Download or read book Prehispanic Domestic Units in Western Mesoamerica written by Robert S. Santley and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 1992-11-23 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prehispanic Domestic Units in Western Mesoamerica presents different analytical approaches for interpreting household composition and cultural site formation processes in prehispanic western Mesoamerica. Archaelogical data collected using both stratigraphic and reconnaisance methods are combined with and interpreted using a combination of ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and ethnoarchaeological information. The result is a richer and more complete picture of prehispanic household structure than any single analytic approach could produce on its own. The book is organized into several sections based on common theme and geographic area. The first three chapters provide a broad discussion of conceptual and methodological difficulties that archaeologists must resolve in the study of prehispanic households. Subsequent chapters present case studies which examine households from two areas of western Mesoamerica: the Central Mexican highlands and the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Eight case studies from the Central Mexican highlands provide a longitudinal perspective on changing household composition. Four of these examine households during the late Formative, Classic, Epiclassic, and Early Postclassic periods (650 B.C.-A.D. 1200), while four others focus specifically on household structure during the century immediately preceding the Spanish Conquest. Two additional case studies provide comparative information on household organization in the South Gulf Coast region during the Classic period. Prehispanic Domestic Units in Western Mesoamerica: Studies of the Household, Compound, and Residence will be an excellent reference for all anthropologists and archaeologists interested in prehispanic western Mesoamerica.

Download or read book Star Gods of the Maya written by Susan Milbrath and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A prodigious work of unmatched interdisciplinary scholarship” on Maya astronomy and religion (Journal of Interdisciplinary History). Observations of the sun, moon, planets, and stars played a central role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the astronomical information encoded in Pre-Columbian Maya art and confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples. Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to Pre-Columbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the major astronomical gods and their associated glyphs, astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices and changes in the imagery of the heavens over time. This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of information about the specific astronomical events and cycles recorded in Maya art and architecture. Indeed, it constitutes the first major study of the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya culture. “Milbrath has given us a comprehensive reference work that facilitates access to a very broad and varied body of literature spanning several disciplines.” ―Isis “Destined to become a standard reference work on Maya archeoastronomy . . . Utterly comprehensive.” —Andrea Stone, Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology written by William F. Keegan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology provides an overview of archaeological investigations in the insular Caribbean, understood here as the islands whose shores surround the Caribbean Sea and the islands of the Bahama Archipelago. Though these islands were never isolated from the surrounding mainland, their histories are sufficiently diverse to warrant their identification as distinct areas of culture. Over the past 20 years, Caribbean archaeology has been transformed from a focus on reconstructing culture histories to one on the mobility and exchange expressed in cultural and social dynamics. This Handbook brings together, for the first time, examples of the best research conducted by scholars from across the globe to address the complexity of the Caribbean past. The Handbook is divided into five sections. Part I, Islands of History and the Precolonial History of the Caribbean Islands, provides an introduction to Caribbean Archaeology and its history. The papers in the following Ethnohistory section address the diversity of cultural practices expressed in the insular Caribbean and develop historical descriptions in concert with archaeological evidence in order to place language, social organization, and the native Taínos and Island Caribs in perspective. The following section, Culture History, provides the latest research on specific geographical locations and cross-cultural engagements, from Jamaica and the Bahama archigelago to the Saladoid and the Isthmo-Antillean Engagements. Creating History, the fourth section, includes papers on specific issues related to the field, such as Zooarchaeology, Rock Art, and DNA analysis, among others. The final section, World History, centers on the consequences of European colonization.

Download or read book Insignia of Rank in the Nahua World written by Justvna Olko and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this significant work, Olko reconstructs the repertory of insignia of rank and the contexts and symbolic meanings of their use, along with their original terminology, among the Nahuatl-speaking communities of Mesoamerica from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. In this interpretive study and handy reference, Olko engages with and builds upon extensive worldwide scholarship and skillfully illuminates this complex topic, creating a vital contribution to the fields of pre-Columbian and colonial Mexican studies. Insignia of Rank in the Nahua World substantially expands and elaborates the themes of Olko’s Turquoise Diadems and Staffs of Office: Elite Costume and Insignia of Power in Aztec and Early Colonial Mexico, originally published in Poland and never released in North America.

Download or read book Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica written by Joshua Englehardt and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2019-05-27 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica explores the role of interregional interaction in the dynamic sociocultural processes that shaped the pre-Columbian societies of Mesoamerica. Interdisciplinary contributions from leading scholars investigate linguistic exchange and borrowing, scribal practices, settlement patterns, ceramics, iconography, and trade systems, presenting a variety of case studies drawn from multiple spatial, temporal, and cultural contexts within Mesoamerica. Archaeologists have long recognized the crucial role of interregional interaction in the development and cultural dynamics of ancient societies, particularly in terms of the evolution of sociocultural complexity and economic systems. Recent research has further expanded the archaeological, art historical, ethnographic, and epigraphic records in Mesoamerica, permitting a critical reassessment of the complex relationship between interaction and cultural dynamics. This volume builds on and amplifies earlier research to examine sociocultural phenomena—including movement, migration, symbolic exchange, and material interaction—in their role as catalysts for variability in cultural systems. Interregional cultural exchange in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica played a key role in the creation of systems of shared ideologies, the production of regional or “international” artistic and architectural styles, shifting sociopolitical patterns, and changes in cultural practices and meanings. Interregional Interaction in Ancient Mesoamerica highlights, engages with, and provokes questions pertinent to understanding the complex relationship between interaction, sociocultural processes, and cultural innovation and change in the ancient societies and cultural histories of Mesoamerica and will be of interest to archaeologists, linguists, and art historians. Contributors: Philip J. Arnold III, Lourdes Budar, José Luis Punzo Diaz, Gary Feinman, David Freidel, Elizabeth Jiménez Garcia, Guy David Hepp, Kerry M. Hull, Timothy J. Knab, Charles L. F. Knight, Blanca E. Maldonado, Joyce Marcus, Jesper Nielsen, John M. D. Pohl, Iván Rivera, D. Bryan Schaeffer, Niklas Schulze

Download or read book Becoming Villagers written by Matthew S. Bandy and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outgrowth of a symposium at the 2006 Society for American Archaeology meetings in San Juan, and of a seminar at the Amerind Foundation. Cf. pref.

Download or read book Crafting Wounaan Landscapes written by Julie Velásquez Runk and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book reveals how indigenous Wounaan practice conservation in the face of national and international environmental governance"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Continuities and Changes in Maya Archaeology written by Charles Golden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-03 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the current state of Maya archaeology by focusing on the history of the field for the last 100 years, present day research, and forward looking prescription for the direction of the field.

Download or read book Science and Other Cultures written by Sandra Harding and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pioneering new book, Sandra Harding and Robert Figueroa bring together an important collection of original essays by leading philosophers exploring an extensive range of diversity issues for the philosophy of science and technology. The essays gathered in this volume extend current philosophical discussion of science and technology beyond the standard feminist and gender analyses that have flourished over the past two decades, by bringing a thorough and truly diverse set of cultural, racial, and ethical concerns to bear on questioning in these areas. Science and Other Cultures charts important new directions in ongoing discussions of science and technology, and makes a significant contribution to both scholarly and teaching resources available in the field.

Download or read book Ontology of Consciousness written by Helmut Wautischer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008-04-11 with total page 669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars from many different disciplines examine consciousness through the lens of intellectual approaches and cultures ranging from cosmology research and cell biophysics laboratories to pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and Tibetan Tantric Buddhism in a volume that extends consciousness studies beyond the limits of current neuroscience research. The "hard problem" of today's consciousness studies is subjective experience: understanding why some brain processing is accompanied by an experienced inner life. Recent scientific advances offer insights for understanding the physiological and chemical phenomenology of consciousness. But by leaving aside the internal experiential nature of consciousness in favor of mapping neural activity, such science leaves many questions unanswered. In Ontology of Consciousness, scholars from a range of disciplines—from neurophysiology to parapsychology, from mathematics to anthropology and indigenous non-Western modes of thought—go beyond these limits of current neuroscience research to explore insights offered by other intellectual approaches to consciousness. These scholars focus their attention on such philosophical approaches to consciousness as Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, North American Indian insights, pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilization, and the Byzantine Empire. Some draw on artifacts and ethnographic data to make their point. Others translate cultural concepts of consciousness into modern scientific language using models and mathematical mappings. Many consider individual experiences of sentience and existence, as seen in African communalism, Hindi psychology, Zen Buddhism, Indian vibhuti phenomena, existentialism, philosophical realism, and modern psychiatry. Some reveal current views and conundrums in neurobiology to comprehend sentient intellection. Contributors Karim Akerma, Matthijs Cornelissen, Antoine Courban, Mario Crocco, Christian de Quincey, Thomas B. Fowler, Erlendur Haraldsson, David. J. Hufford, Pavel B. Ivanov, Heinz Kimmerle, Stanley Krippner, Armand J. Labbé, James Maffie, Hubert Markl, Graham Parkes, Michael Polemis, E Richard Sorenson, Mircea Steriade, Thomas Szasz, Mariela Szirko, Robert A.F. Thurman, Edith L.B. Turner, Julia Watkin, Helmut Wautischer

Download or read book Contexts for Prehistoric Exchange written by PERISIC and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-06-28 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contexts for Prehistoric Exchange

Download or read book Skeletal Biology of the Ancient Rapanui Easter Islanders written by Vincent H. Stefan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-07 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disseminating what is currently known about the skeletal biology of the ancient Rapanui and placing it within the wider context of Polynesian skeletal variation, this volume is the culmination of over thirty years of research into the remotely inhabited Easter Island. Compiling osteological data deriving from Rapanui skeletal remains into one succinct analysis, this book demonstrates how the application of modern skeletal biology research techniques can effectively be employed to address questions of human population origins and microevolution. Craniometrics and DNA analysis are used to provide indications as to Rapanui ancestral lineage. Evidence is presented in a user-friendly manner to allow researchers and graduates to critically analyse the current knowledge of prehistoric Rapanui skeletal variation. An important resource providing valuable evidence from human biology that modifies earlier archaeological and cultural anthropological views, this book will stimulate further research into the Rapanui.

Download or read book Archaeometry of Pre Columbian Sites and Artifacts written by David A. Scott and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 1994-10-27 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the 28th International Archaeometry Symposium jointly sponsored by the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Getty Conservation Institute, this volume offers a rare opportunity to survey under a single cover a wide range of investigations concerning pre-Columbian materials. Twenty chapters detail research in five principal areas: anthropology and materials science; ceramics; stone and obsidian; metals; and archaeological sites and dating. Contributions include Heather Lechtman's investigation of “The Materials Science of Material Culture,” Ron L. Bishop on the compositional analysis of pre-Columbian pottery from the Maya region, Ellen Howe on the use of silver and lead from the Mantaro Valley in Peru, and J. Michael Elam and others on source identification and hydration dating of obsidian artifacts.