Download or read book The Archaeology of Greater Nicoya written by Larry Steinbrenner and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Archaeology of Greater Nicoya is the first edited volume in a quarter century to provide an overview of this fascinating archaeological subarea of Mesoamerica, encompassing Pacific Nicaragua and northwestern Costa Rica. Inhabited by diverse peoples of Mesoamerican origin centuries before Spanish colonization, Greater Nicoya remains controversial in the twenty-first century as scholars struggle to achieve consensus on questions of geography, chronology, and cultural identity. Drawing on approaches ranging from ethnohistory to bioarchaeology to scientific and culture-historical archaeology, the book is organized into sections on redefining Greater Nicoya, projects and surveys, material culture, and mortuary practices. Individual chapters explore Indigenous groups and their origins, extensive summaries of the three largest scholarly archaeological projects completed in Pacific Nicaragua in the last quarter century, clear evidence of Mesoamerican connections from Costa Rica’s Bay of Culebra, detailed histories of lithic analysis and rock art studies in Nicaragua, new insights into mortuary and cultural practices based on osteological evidence, and reinterpretations of diagnostic ceramic types as products of related potting communities and the first definitive identification of production centers for these types. Drawing upon new 14C dates, this volume also provides the most substantial revision of the late pre-colonial chronology since the 1960s, a correction that has critical implications for understanding the prehistory of Greater Nicoya.

Download or read book The Archaeology of the Greater Nicoya Subarea written by Albert H. Norweb and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Archaeology of Pacific Nicaragua written by Frederick W. Lange and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Costa Rican Art and Archaeology written by Frederick W. Lange and published by Johnson Books. This book was released on 1988 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America written by Susan Toby Evans and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2001 with total page 1322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reference is devoted to the pre-Columbian archaeology of the Mesoamerican culture area, one of the six cradles of early civilization. It features in-depth articles on the major cultural areas of ancient Mexico and Central America; coverage of important sites, including the world-renowned discoveries as well as many lesser-known locations; articles on day-to-day life of ancient peoples in these regions; and several bandw regional and site maps and photographs. Entries are arranged alphabetically and cover introductory archaeological facts (flora, fauna, human growth and development, nonorganic resources), chronologies of various periods (Paleoindian, Archaic, Formative, Classic and Postclassic, and Colonial), cultural features, Maya, regional summaries, research methods and resources, ethnohistorical methods and sources, and scholars and research history. Edited by archaeologists Evans and Webster, both of whom are associated with Pennsylvania State University. c. Book News Inc.

Download or read book Jade in Ancient Costa Rica written by Mark Miller Graham and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 1998 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in conjunction with its namesake Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition (September 16, 1998-February 28, 1999), this finely illustrated catalogue providing context to pre-Columbian works of jade tempts one to see the originals from Costa Rica's Museo del Jade Marco Fidel Tristan Castro and elsewhere. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book The Archaeology of Lower Central America written by Frederick W. Lange and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 Chocolate in Mesoamerica written by Cameron L. McNeil and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New models of research and analysis, as well as breakthroughs in deciphering Mesoamerican writing, have recently produced a watershed of information on the regional use and importance of cacao, or chocolate as it is commonly called today. McNeil brings together scholars in the fields of archaeology, history, art history, linguistics, epigraphy, botany, chemistry, and cultural anthropology to explore the domestication, preparation, representation, and significance of cacao in ancient and modern communities of the Americas, with a concentration on its use in Mesoamerica. Cacao was used by many cultures in the pre-Columbian Americas as an important part of rituals associated with birth, coming of age, marriage, and death, and was strongly linked with concepts of power and rulership. While Europeans have for hundreds of years claimed that they introduced “chocolate” as a sauce for foods, evidence from ancient royal tombs indicates cacao was used in a range of foods as well as beverages in ancient times. In addition, the volume’s authors present information that supports a greater importance for cacao in pre-Columbian South America, where ancient vessels depicting cacao pods have recently been identified. From the botanical structure and chemical makeup of Theobroma cacao and methods of identifying it in the archaeological record, to the importance of cacao during the Classic period in Mesoamerica, to the impact of European arrival on the production and use of cacao, to contemporary uses in the Americas, this volume provides a richly informed account of the history and cultural significance of chocolate.

Download or read book Paths to Central American Prehistory written by Frederick W. Lange and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark volume brings together contributions by some of the most distinguished pioneers of Central American archaeology as well as those of younger scholars from North America, Europe, and Central America. This ambitious work demonstrates the parallel ongoing needs to pursue theoretical and methodological advances while dedicating equal efforts to filling in the blank spaces in the archaeological map of Central America, where even the most basic surveys and chronological sequences are lacking. The contributions represent a range in specialties that include archaeology, precolumbian art history, new analytical techniques, and exploration of unknown geographical areas. Paths to Central American Prehistory covers El Salvador and Honduras through Panama, from the Paleoindian period to the time of the Spanish invasion. It will have wide appeal to Mesoamerican and Central American archaeologists as well as to general readers with a serious interest in the archaeology of the area.

Download or read book Archaeology Volcanism and Remote Sensing in the Arenal Region Costa Rica written by Payson D. Sheets and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book contains 17 chapters by 13 authors; 10 are single-authored and the others by various combinations of multiple authors. The work is meticulous ranging from regional to site descriptions, and covering remote sensing applications, chipped stone, ground stone, jewelry, phytoliths, pollen, and macrobotanicals. An excellent account of the archaeology in this region beginning with Paleoindian occupations. Provides a complementary data set to those collected under similar circumstances in El Salvador and Panama"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.

Download or read book The Archaeology of Mesoamerican Animals written by Kitty F. Emery and published by Lockwood Press. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 809 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recognition of the role of animals in ancient diet, economy, politics, and ritual is vital to understanding ancient cultures fully, while following the clues available from animal remains in reconstructing environments is vital to understanding the ancient relationship between humans and the world around them. In response to the growing interest in the field of zooarchaeology, this volume presents current research from across the many cultures and regions of Mesoamerica, dealing specifically with the most current issues in zooarchaeological literature. Geographically, the essays collected here index the different aspects of animal use by the indigenous populations of the entire area between the northern borders of Mexico and the southern borders of lower Central America. This includes such diverse cultures as the north Mexican hunter-gatherers, the Olmec, Maya, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Central American Indians. The time frame of the volume extends from the earliest human occupation, the Preclassic, Classic, Postclassic, and Colonial manifestations, to recent times. The book's chapters, written by experts in the field of Mesoamerican zooarchaeology, provide important general background on the domestic and ritual use of animals in early and classic Mesoamerica and Central America, but deal also with special aspects of human-animal relationships such as early domestication and symbolism of animals, and important yet otherwise poorly represented aspects of taphonomy and zooarchaeological methodology. Spanish-language version also available (ISBN 978-1-937040-12-3).

Download or read book Reinterpreting Prehistory of Central America written by Mark Miller Graham and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reinterpreting Prehistory of Central America provides reassessments of the paradigms that have guided - sometimes unconsciously and uncritically - interpretations of ancient Central American society, culture, and art. This volume challenges prevailing notions of Mesoamerica and other intellectual constructs of Central American prehistory, drawing on deconstruction, structuralism, diffusionism, and postprocessual archaeology. Nine chapters by distinguished art historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists from the United States, Costa Rica, and Panama illuminate diverse perspectives on common themes in Central American prehistory, such as the definition of center and periphery, the relation between ethnicity and polychrome ceramic traditions, the cultural meanings of color, and the social reality in mortuary art. A common focus among the authors is the relationship between the so-called high cultures, especially the Maya and their supposedly less-developed neighbors in southern Central America. This volume has more than 150 illustrations. The contributors include Mark Miller Graham, Terence Grieder, Rosemary Joyce, Oscar Fonseca Zamora, Peter S. Briggs, Mary W. Helms, Richard Cooke, Whitney Davis, and Frederick W. Lange.

Download or read book Central American and West Indian Archaeology written by Thomas Athol Joyce and published by London, Warner. This book was released on 1916 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Political Identity and Archaeology in Northeast Honduras written by Thomas W. Cuddy and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Political Identity and Archaeology in Northeast Honduras, Thomas Cuddy fills a substantial void in the scholarship on the origins of complex societies and the Central American political landscape, drawing on previously unexamined research conducted by anthropologist William Duncan Strong during a 1933 expedition to find the southern reaches of Maya culture. From AD 200 until the Spanish conquests of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Pech chiefdoms of northeast Honduras maintained their autonomy through tactful engagement with the powerful states and empires of Mesoamerica and increasingly large societies like the Greater Nicoya region of Costa Rica. Cuddy, working with Strong's untapped fieldwork, examines symbolic expressions to reconstruct the dynamic contexts that structured power in Central American prehistory and shaped the political identity of northeast Honduras. By being similar to, but distinct from, their powerful neighbors, the polities of northeast Honduras created their own senses of power and identity that served their continued growth while states and empires crumbled around them. Political Identity and Archaeology in Northeast Honduras suggests new avenues for understanding the structure and administration of chiefdoms by revealing the archaeological resources and rich ethnohistoric context of the area and the compelling history of its early scholarly explorations.

Download or read book Personal Adornment and the Construction of Identity written by Hannah V. Mattson and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2021-06-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Objects of adornment have been a subject of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic study for well over a century. Within archaeology, personal ornaments have traditionally been viewed as decorative embellishments associated with status and wealth, materializations of power relations and social strategies, or markers of underlying social categories such as those related to gender, class, and ethnic affiliation. Personal Adornment and the Construction of Identity seeks to understand these artefacts not as signals of steady, pre-existing cultural units and relations, but as important components in the active and contingent constitution of identities. Drawing on contemporary scholarship on materiality and relationality in archaeological and social theory, this book uses one genre of material culture - items of bodily adornment - to illustrate how humans and objects construct one another. Providing case studies spanning 10 countries, three continents, and more than 9,000 years of human history, the authors demonstrate the myriad and dynamic ways personal ornaments were intertwined with embodied practice and identity performativity, the creation and remaking of social memories, and relational collections of persons, materials, and practices in the past. The authors’ careful analyses of production methods and composition, curation/heirlooming and reworking, decorative attributes and iconography, position within assemblages, and depositional context illuminate the varied material and relational axes along which objects of adornment contained social value and meaning. When paired with the broad temporal and geographic scope collectively represented by these studies, we gain a deeper appreciation for the subtle but vital roles these items played in human lives.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Prehistory written by Peter N. Peregrine and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Prehistory represents temporal dimension. Major traditions are an attempt to provide basic information also defined by a somewhat different set of on all archaeologically known cultures, sociocultural characteristics than are eth covering the entire globe and the entire nological cultures. Major traditions are prehistory of humankind. It is designed as defined based on common subsistence a tool to assist in doing comparative practices, sociopolitical organization, and research on the peoples of the past. Most material industries, but language, ideology, of the entries are written by the world's and kinship ties play little or no part in foremost experts on the particular areas their definition because they are virtually and time periods. unrecoverable from archaeological con The Encyclopedia is organized accord texts. In contrast, language, ideology, and ing to major traditions. A major tradition kinship ties are central to defining ethno is defined as a group of populations sharing logical cultures. similar subsistence practices, technology, There are three types of entries in the and forms of sociopolitical organization, Encyclopedia: the major tradition entry, which are spatially contiguous over a rela the regional subtradition entry, and the tively large area and which endure tempo site entry. Each contains different types of rally for a relatively long period. Minimal information, and each is intended to be areal coverage for a major tradition can used in a different way.