Download or read book Lifeways in the Northern Maya Lowlands written by Jennifer P. Mathews and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The flat, dry reaches of the northern Yucat‡n Peninsula have been largely ignored by archaeologists drawn to the more illustrious sites of the south. This book is the first volume to focus entirely on the northern Maya lowlands, presenting a broad cross-section of current research projects in the region by both established and up-and-coming scholars. To address the heretofore unrecognized importance of the northern lowlands in Maya prehistory, the contributors cover key topics relevant to Maya studies: the environmental and historical significance of the region, the archaeology of both large and small sites, the development of agriculture, resource management, ancient politics, and long-distance interaction among sites. As a volume in the series Native Peoples of the Americas, it adds a human dimension to archaeological findings by incorporating modern ethnographic data. By exploring various social and political levels of Maya society through a broad expanse of time, Lifeways in the Northern Maya Lowlands not only reconstructs a little-known past, it also suggests the broad implications of archaeology for related studies of tourism, household economies, and ethno-archaeology. It is a benchmark work that pointedly demonstrates the need for researchers in both north and south to ignore modern geographic boundaries in their search for new ideas to further their understanding of the ancient Maya.

Download or read book The Ancient Maya of Mexico written by Geoffrey E Braswell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The archaeological sites of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula are among the most visited ancient cities of the Americas. Archaeologists have recently made great advances in our understanding of the social and political milieu of the northern Maya lowlands. However, such advances have been under-represented in both scholarly and popular literature until now. 'The Ancient Maya of Mexico' presents the results of new and important archaeological, epigraphic, and art historical research in the Mexican states of Yucatan, Campeche, and Quintana Roo. Ranging across the Middle Preclassic to the Modern periods, the volume explores how new archaeological data has transformed our understanding of Maya history. 'The Ancient Maya of Mexico' will be invaluable to students and scholars of archaeology and anthropology, and all those interested in the society, rituals and economic organisation of the Maya region.

Download or read book The Archaeology of Yucat n New Directions and Data written by Travis W. Stanton and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2014-10-10 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume was conceived to provide a forum for Mexican and foreign scholars to publish new data and interpretations on the archaeology of the northern Maya lowlands, specifically the State of Yucatan.

Download or read book Landscapes of the Itza written by Linnea Wren and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An insightful collection, rich in new data and insights; at once the harvest of a generation of fieldwork and the foundation for work to come."--Mary E. Miller, coauthor of The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak "Reminds us that there are always new things to learn about iconic places like Chichen Itza and that we can fall in love with them all over again."--Jennifer P. Mathews, coeditor of Lifeways in the Northern Maya Lowlands: New Approaches to Archaeology in the Yucatan Peninsula "Long overdue. Brings together new data and interpretations about Chichen Itza through a refreshing mix of art history and archaeology, particularistic interpretation, and cross-cultural modeling."--Scott R. Hutson, author of The Ancient Urban Maya: Neighborhoods, Inequality, and Built Form Chichen Itza, the legendary capital and trading hub of the late Maya civilization, continues to fascinate visitors and researchers with unanswered questions about its people, rulers, rituals, economics, religion, politics, and even chronology. Addressing many of these current debates, contributors to Landscapes of the Itza question when the city's construction was completed, what the purposes of its famous pyramid and other buildings were, whether the city maintained strict territorial borders, and how the city's influence was felt in smaller neighboring settlements such as Popola, Ichmul de Morley, and Ek Balam. Special attention is given to the site's visual culture, including its architecture, epigraphy, ceramics, sculptures, and murals. This volume is a much-needed update on recent archaeological and art historical work being done at Chichen Itza, offering new ways of understanding the site and its role in the Yucatan landscape.

Download or read book A Forest of History written by Travis W. Stanton and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2020-07-01 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Freidel and Linda Schele’s monumental work A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya (1990) offered an innovative, rigorous, and controversial approach to studying the ancient Maya, unifying archaeological, iconographic, and epigraphic data in a form accessible to both scholars and laypeople. Travis Stanton and Kathryn Brown’s A Forest of History: The Maya after the Emergence of Divine Kingship presents a collection of essays that critically engage with and build upon the lasting contributions A Forest of Kings made to Maya epigraphy, iconography, material culture, and history. These original papers present new, cutting-edge research focusing on the social changes leading up to the spread of divine kingship across the lowlands in the first part of the Early Classic. The contributors continue avenues of inquiry such as the timing of the Classic Maya collapse across the southern lowlands, the nature of Maya warfare, the notion of usurpation and “stranger-kings” in the Classic period, the social relationships between the ruler and elite of the Classic period Yaxchilán polity, and struggles for sociopolitical dominance among the later Classic period polities of Chichén Itzá, Cobá, and the Puuc kingdoms. Many of the interpretations and approaches in A Forest of Kings have withstood the test of time, while others have not; a complete understanding of the Classic Maya world is still developing. In A Forest of History recent discoveries are considered in the context of prior scholarship, illustrating both the progress the field has made in the past quarter century and the myriad questions that remain. The volume will be a significant contribution to the literature for students, scholars, and general readers interested in Mesoamerican and Maya archaeology. Contributors: Wendy Ashmore, Arlen F. Chase, Diane Z. Chase, Wilberth Cruz Alvarado, Arthur A. Demarest, Keith Eppich, David A. Freidel, Charles W. Golden, Stanley P. Guenter, Annabeth Headrick, Aline Magnoni, Joyce Marcus, Marilyn A. Masson, Damaris Menéndez, Susan Milbrath, Olivia C. Navarro-Farr, José Osorio León, Carlos Peraza Lope, Juan Carlos Pérez Calderón, Griselda Pérez Robles, Francisco Pérez Ruíz, Michelle Rich, Jeremy A. Sabloff, Andrew K. Scherer, Karl A. Taube

Download or read book Construction of Maya Space written by Thomas H. Guderjan and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Construction of Maya Spaces sheds new light on how Maya society may have shaped—and been shaped by—the constructed environment. Moving beyond the towering pyramids and temples often associated with Maya spaces, this volume focuses on how those in power used features such as walls, roads, rails, and symbolic boundaries to control those without power, and how the powerless pushed back. Through fifteen engaging chapters, contributors examine the construction of spatial features by ancient, historic, and contemporary Maya elite and nonelite peoples to understand how they used spaces differently. Through cutting-edge methodologies and case studies, chapters consider how and why Maya people connected and divided the spaces they used daily in their homes, in their public centers, in their sacred places such as caves, and across their regions to inform us about the mental constructs they used to create their lives and cultures of the past. Contributors Elias Alcocer Puerto Alejandra Alonso Olvera Traci Ardren Jaime J. Awe Alejandra Badillo Sánchez Nicolas C. Barth Grace Lloyd Bascopé Adolpho Iván Batún-Alpuche Elizabeth Beckner M. Kathryn Brown Bernadette Cap Miguel Covarrubias Reyna Juan Fernandez Diaz Alberto G. Flores Colin Thomas H. Guderjan C. Colleen Hanratty Héctor Hernández Álvarez Scott R. Hutson Joshua J. Kwoka Whitney Lytle Aline Magnoni Jennifer P. Mathews Stephanie J. Miller Shawn G. Morton Holley Moyes Shannon Plank Dominique Rissolo Patrick Rohrer Carmen Rojas Sandoval Justine M. Shaw J. Gregory Smith Travis W. Stanton Karl A. Taube Daniel Vallejo-Cáliz

Download or read book Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World written by Lynn V. Foster and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A presentation of research on all aspects of Maya civilization, from its earliest beginnings to the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. It profiles the everyday routines of the Maya with coverage of society, warfare, religion, architecture, astronomy, economy, writing and daily life.

Download or read book The Maya and Their Central American Neighbors written by Geoffrey E Braswell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-16 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Maya created one of the most studied and best-known civilizations of the Americas. Nevertheless, Maya civilization is often considered either within a vacuum, by sub-region and according to modern political borders, or with reference to the most important urban civilizations of central Mexico. Seldom if ever are the Maya and their Central American neighbors of El Salvador and Honduras considered together, despite the fact that they engaged in mutually beneficial trade, intermarried, and sometimes made war on each other. The Maya and Their Central American Neighbors seeks to fill this lacuna by presenting original research on the archaeology of the whole of the Maya area (from Yucatan to the Maya highlands of Guatemala), western Honduras, and El Salvador. With a focus on settlement pattern analyses, architectural studies, and ceramic analyses, this ground breaking book provides a broad view of this important relationship allowing readers to understand ancient perceptions about the natural and built environment, the role of power, the construction of historical narrative, trade and exchange, multiethnic interaction in pluralistic frontier zones, the origins of settled agricultural life, and the nature of systemic collapse.

Download or read book The Ancient Maya written by Sylvanus Griswold Morley and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 940 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Comprehensive synthesis of ancient Maya scholarship. Extensive summary of the archaeology of the Maya world provides the historical context for a detailed topical synthesis of chronological and geographic variability within the Maya cultural tradition"--

Download or read book Twin Tollans written by Cynthia Kristan-Graham and published by Dumbarton Oaks. This book was released on 2007 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume had its beginnings in the two-day colloquium, "Rethinking Chichén Itzá, Tula and Tollan," that was held at Dumbarton Oaks. The selected essays revisit long-standing questions regarding the nature of the relationship between Chichen Itza and Tula. Rather than approaching these questions through the notions of migrations and conquests, these essays place the cities in the context of the emerging social, political, and economic relationships that took shape during the transition from the Epiclassic period in Central Mexico, the Terminal Classic period in the Maya region, and the succeeding Early Postclassic period.

Download or read book Maya History written by Tatiana Proskouriakoff and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2011-01-19 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tatiana Proskouriakoff, a preeminent student of the Maya, made many breakthroughs in deciphering Maya writing, particularly in demonstrating that the glyphs record the deeds of actual human beings, not gods or priests. This discovery opened the way for a history of the Maya, a monumental task that Proskouriakoff was engaged in before her death in 1985. Her work, Maya History, has been made ready for press by the able editorship of Rosemary Joyce. Maya History reconstructs the Classic Maya period (roughly A.D. 250-900) from the glyphic record on stelae at numerous sites, including Altar de Sacrificios, Copan, Dos Pilas, Naranjo, Piedras Negras, Quirigua, Tikal, and Yaxchilan. Proskouriakoff traces the spread of governmental institutions from the central Peten, especially from Tikal, to other city-states by conquest and intermarriage. Thirteen line drawings of monuments and over three hundred original drawings of glyphs amplify the text.

Download or read book Understanding Maya Inscriptions written by John F. Harris and published by UPenn Museum of Archaeology. This book was released on 1997-01-29 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second edition includes revised and updated versions of three earlier publications: Understanding Maya Inscriptions: A Hieroglyph Handbook; New and Recent Maya Hieroglyph Readings; and A Resource Bibliography for the Decipherment of Maya Hieroglyphs and New Maya Hieroglyph Readings. This volume is designed to function as a self-teaching tool to help the neophyte, and yet be of value to scholars. It introduces the latest methods of analysis, illustrates techniques for computing Maya calendrics, uses the currently accepted orthography, provides syllabary and syntax, suggests new glyph readings, and presents various interpretations.

Download or read book Ancient Maya Pottery written by James John Aimers and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2013-01-20 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Maya produced a broad range of ceramics that has attracted concerted scholarly attention for over a century. Pottery sherds--the most abundant artifacts recovered from sites--reveal much about artistic expression, religious ritual, economic systems, cooking traditions, and cultural exchange in Maya society. Today, nearly every Maya archaeologist uses the type-variety classificatory framework for studying sherd collections. This impressive volume brings together many of the archaeologists signally involved in the analysis and interpretation of ancient Maya ceramics and represents new findings and state-of-the-art thinking. The result is a book that serves both as a valuable resource for archaeologists involved in pottery classification, analysis, and interpretation and as an illuminating exploration of ancient Mayan culture.

Download or read book Patron Gods and Patron Lords written by Joanne Baron and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first comprehensive treatment of Classic Maya patron deity veneration, Joanne P. Baron demonstrates the central importance of patron deity cults in political relationships between both rulers and their subjects and among different Maya kingdoms. Weaving together evidence from inscriptions, images, and artifacts, Patron Gods and Patron Lords provides new insights into how the Classic Maya polity was organized and maintained. Using semiotic theory, Baron draws on three bodies of evidence: ethnographies and manuscripts from Postclassic, Colonial, and modern Maya communities that connect patron saints to pre-Columbian patron gods; hieroglyphic texts from the Classic period that discuss patron deity veneration; and excavations from four patron deity temples at the site of La Corona, Guatemala. She shows how the Classic Maya used patron deity effigies, temples, and acts of devotion to negotiate group membership, social entitlements, and obligations between individuals and communities. She also explores the wider role of these processes in politics, arguing that rituals and discourses related to patron deities ultimately formulated Maya rulership as a locally oriented institution, which limited the ability of powerful kingdoms to create wider religious communities. Applying a new theoretical approach for the archaeological study of ideology and power dynamics, Patron Gods and Patron Lords reveals an overlooked aspect of the belief system of Maya communities.

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.

Download or read book Common Knowledge written by Christian Isendahl and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands written by Arthur Andrew Demarest and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands revisits one of the great problems in Mayan archaeology - the apparent collapse of Classic Maya civilization from roughly A.D. 830 to 950. During this period the Maya abandoned their power centers in the southern lowlands and rather abruptly ceased the distinctive cultural practices that marked their apogee in the Classic period. Archaeological fieldwork during the past three decades, however, has uncovered enormous regional variability in the ways the Maya experienced the shift from Classic to Postclassic society, revealing a period of cultural change more complex than acknowledged by traditional models. Featuring an impressive roster of scholars, The Terminal Classic presents the most recent data and interpretations pertaining to this perplexing period of cultural transformation in the Maya lowlands. Although the research reveals clear interregional patterns, the contributors resist a single overarching explanation. Rather, this volume's diverse and nuanced interpretations provide a new, more properly grounded beginning for continued debate on the nature of lowland Terminal Classic Maya civilization.