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Maya Figurines
Rather than view the contours of Late Classic Maya social life solely from towering temple pyramids or elite sculptural forms, this book considers a suite of small anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and supernatural figurative remains excavated from household refuse deposits. Maya Figurines examines these often neglected objects and uses them to draw out relationships between the Maya state and its subjects. These figurines provide a unique perspective for understanding Maya social and political relations; Christina T. Halperin argues that state politics work on the microscale of everyday routines, localized rituals, and small-scale representations. Her comprehensive study brings together archeolo...
The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines
The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines is the first text to offer a comparative survey of figurines from across the globe, bringing together myriad contemporary research approaches to provide invaluable insights into their function, context, meaning, and use, as well as past thinking on the human body, gender, and identity.
Housework
Households are, without question, the most important social units in human society. They are interactive social units whose primary concern is the day-to-day well being of their kith and kin. Households reproduce themselves and provide their members with the economic, psychological, and social resources necessary to live their lives. Although households vary enormously in size and organization, they are the fundamental social settings in which families are defined and cultural values are transmitted through a range of domestic activities and rituals. Despite their many functions, it is the range and productivity of their economic activities that determine the success, survival and well being of their members. Households are the primary production and consumption units in society and provide the vehicle through which resources are pooled, stored, and distributed to their members. Survival and reproduction is their business and the work they do determines their success.
Interpreting Ancient Figurines
This book examines ancient figurines from several world areas to address recurring challenges in the interpretation of prehistoric art. Sometimes figurines from one context are perceived to resemble those from another. Richard G. Lesure asks whether such resemblances play a role in our interpretations. Early interpreters seized on the idea that figurines were recurringly female and constructed the fanciful myth of a primordial Neolithic Goddess. Contemporary practice instead rejects interpretive leaps across contexts. Dr Lesure offers a middle path: a new framework for assessing the relevance of particular comparisons. He develops the argument in case studies that consider figurines from Paleolithic Europe, the Neolithic Near East and Formative Mesoamerica.
Material Relations
Focusing on marriage figurines—double human figurines that represent relations formed through social alliances—Hendon, Joyce, and Lopiparo examine the material relations created in Honduras between AD 500 and 1000, a period of time when a network of social houses linked settlements of a variety of sizes in the region. The authors analyze these small, seemingly insignificant artifacts using the theory of materiality to understand broader social processes. They examine the production, use, and disposal of marriage figurines from six sites—Campo Dos, Cerro Palenque, Copán, Currusté, Tenampua, and Travesia—and explore their role in rituals and ceremonies, as well as in the forming of s...
The Offerings of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan
The spectacular findings of the historic Templo Mayor Project, which took place in the heart of Mexico City from 1978 to 1997.
The Murals of Cacaxtla
"Between AD 650 and 950, a small city-state in central Mexico produced dazzling murals of gods, historical figures, and supernatural creatures on the walls of its most important sacred and public spaces. This study explores how the Cacaxtla murals constitute a sustained and local painting tradition, in which generations of ancient Mexican artists, patrons, and audiences created a powerful statement of communal identity that still captures the imagination"--
Antiquarianisms
Antiquarianism and collecting have been associated intimately with European imperial and colonial enterprises, although both existed long before the early modern period and both were (and continue to be) practiced in places other than Europe. Scholars have made significant progress in the documentation and analysis of indigenous antiquarian traditions, but the clear-cut distinction between “indigenous” and “colonial” archaeologies has obscured the intense and dynamic interaction between these seemingly different endeavours. This book concerns the divide between local and foreign antiquarianisms focusing on case studies drawn primarily from the Mediterranean and the Americas. Both reg...
Human Figuration and Fragmentation in Preclassic Mesoamerica
Explores the social significance of representation of the human body in Preclassic Mesoamerica.
Conceptualization of 'xihuitl'
This study is concerned with how the Postclassic Mexica people developed their unique perspective of history and environment in a dynamic cultural context. By focusing on the process of conceptualization of the Nahuatl word 'xihuitl', the author analyzes the way the Mexica expressed their cognition. Xihuitl covers a range of meanings: 'turquoise', 'grass', 'solar year', 'comet', 'preciousness', 'blue-green' and 'fire'. The correlations of the meanings of xihuitl can be explained from a structural point of view. However, structural analysis does not reveal the dynamic experiential processes that produced such correlations in the minds of the Mexica. In order to account for this dynamic aspect...
