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"When the Smithsonian Institution's first Hall of Physical Anthropology opened in 1965, the first thing visitors saw were 160 Andean skulls fixed to the wall like a mushroom cloud. Empires of the Dead explains that Skull Wall's origins, and this introduction establishes its scope: a history from 1532 to the present of how the collection of Inca mummies, Andean crania, and a pre-Hispanic surgery named trepanation made "ancient Peruvians" the single largest population in the Smithsonian and many other museums in Peru, the Americas, and the world. This introduction argues that the Hall of Physical Anthropology displayed these collections while hiding their foundation on Indigenous, Andean, and Peruvian cultures of healing and science. These "Peruvian ancestors" of American anthropology reveal the importance of Indigenous and Latin American science and empire to global history, and their relevance to debates over museums and Indigenous human remains today"--
This book explores anthropological and global art collections as a catalyst, a medium, and an expression of relations. Relations—between and among objects and media, people, and material and immaterial contexts—define, configure, and potentially transform collection-related social and professional networks, discourses and practices, and increasingly museums and other collecting institutions themselves. The contributors argue that a focus on the—often contested—making and remaking of relations provides a unique conceptual entrypoint for understanding collections’—and ‘their’ objects’ and media’s—complex histories, contemporary webs of interactions, and potential futures....
Bringing the often-neglected topic of migration to the forefront of ancient Mesoamerican studies, this volume uses an illuminating multidisciplinary approach to address the role of population movements in Mexico and Central America from AD 500 to 1500, the tumultuous centuries before European contact. Clarifying what has to date been chiefly speculation, researchers from the fields of archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, ethnohistory, and art history delve deeply into the causes and impacts of prehistoric migration in the region. They draw on evidence including records of the Nahuatl language, murals painted at the Cacaxtla polity, ceramics in the style known as Coyotlatelco, s...
Wie lassen sich die kulturellen Gemeinsamkeiten Mesoamerikas erklären, obwohl hier - anders als im alten China oder in Europa unter der Herrschaft Roms - kein Reich prägend gewesen ist? Als Antwort auf diese Frage machen die Autoren des vorliegenden Bandes das theoretische Konstrukt eines 'kulturellen Gedächtnisses' für Mesoamerika fruchtbar. Die Beiträge widmen sich der Bedeutung des Rituals sowohl in der oralen Tradition als auch in der Schriftlichkeit Mesoamerikas und des alten Chinas. Es geht um gemeinsame kulturelle Grundlagen ebenso wie um die Herausbildung von regionalen Besonderheiten durch kollektives Erinnern und Vergessen in der Folge von einschneidenden historischen Ereignissen.
The study of enslavement has become urgent over the last two decades. Social scientists, legal scholars, human rights activists, and historians, who study forms of enslavement in both modern and historical societies, have sought - and often achieved - common conceptual grounds, thus forging a new perspective that comprises historical and contemporary forms of slavery. What could certainly be termed a turn in the study of slavery has also intensified awareness of enslavement as a global phenomenon, inviting a comparative, trans-regional approach across time-space divides. Though different aspects of enslavement in different societies and eras are discussed, each of the volume's three parts co...
Political authority contains an inherent contradiction. Rulers must reinforce social inequality and bolster their own unique position at the top of the sociopolitical hierarchy, yet simultaneously emphasize social similarities and the commonalities shared by all. Political Strategies in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica explores the different and complex ways that those who exercised authority in the region confronted this contradiction. New data from a variety of well-known scholars in Mesoamerican archaeology reveal the creation, perpetuation, and contestation of politically authoritative relationships between rulers and subjects and between nobles and commoners. The contributions span the geograp...
3,000 Years of War and Peace in the Maya Lowlands presents the cutting-edge research of 25 authors in the fields of archaeology, biological anthropology, art history, ethnohistory, and epigraphy. Together, they explore issues central to ancient Maya identity, political history, and warfare. The Maya lowlands of Guatemala, Belize, and southeast Mexico have witnessed human occupation for at least 11,000 years, and settled life reliant on agriculture began some 3,100 years ago. From the earliest times, Maya communities expressed their shifting identities through pottery, architecture, stone tools, and other items of material culture. Although it is tempting to think of the Maya as a single unif...
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Die Digitalisierung ethnologischer Sammlungen ist ein wichtiger Schritt für eine »Öffnung der Inventare«. Mit ihren neuen Möglichkeiten bietet sie vielfältige Formen eines dialogischen Austauschs - auch mit sogenannten Herkunftsgesellschaften -, generiert erweiterte Perspektiven auf die eigenen Sammlungen und ermächtigt neue Akteur*innen. Dabei ergeben sich Fragen nach Ordnungssystemen, der angemessenen Beschreibung der Sammlungen, der Verantwortung für ihr Zustandekommen und der Legitimierung bestimmter Verbreitungspraktiken. Auf der Grundlage von Fallbeispielen präsentieren die Beiträger*innen des Bandes Antworten und zeichnen ein praxisorientiertes Bild von Wirkungen der Digitalisierung ethnologischer Sammlungen heute.