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Perhaps the contributions of South American archaeology to the larger field of world archaeology have been inadequately recognized. If so, this is probably because there have been relatively few archaeologists working in South America outside of Peru and recent advances in knowledge in other parts of the continent are only beginning to enter larger archaeological discourse. Many ideas of and about South American archaeology held by scholars from outside the area are going to change irrevocably with the appearance of the present volume. Not only does the Handbook of South American Archaeology (HSAA) provide immense and broad information about ancient South America, the volume also showcases t...
The third volume in the Andean Archaeology series, this book focuses on the marked cultural differences between the northern and southern regions of the Central Andes, and considers the conditions under which these differences evolved, grew pronounced, and diminished. This book continues the dynamic, current problem-oriented approach to the field of Andean Archaeology that began with Andean Archaeology I and Andean Archaeology II. Combines up-to-date research, diverse theoretical platforms, and far-reaching interpretations to draw provocative and thoughtful conclusions.
This edited volume focuses on the funerary archaeology of the Pan-Andean area in the pre-Hispanic period. The contributors examine the treatment of the dead and provide an understanding of how these ancient groups coped with mortality, as well as the ways in which they strove to overcome the effects of death. The contributors also present previously unpublished discoveries and employ a range of academic and analytical approaches that have rarely - if ever - been utilised in South America before. The book covers the Formative Period to the end of the Inca Empire, and the chapters together comprise a state-of-the-art summary of all the best research on Andean funerary archaeology currently being carried out around the globe.
The Moche, or Mochica, created an extraordinary civilization on the north coast of Peru for most of the first millennium AD. Although they had no written language with which to record their history and beliefs, the Moche built enormous ceremonial edifices and embellished them with mural paintings depicting supernatural figures and rituals. Highly skilled Moche artisans crafted remarkable ceramic vessels, which they painted with figures and scenes or modeled like sculpture, and mastered metallurgy in gold, silver, and copper to make impressive symbolic ornaments. They also wove textiles that were complex in execution and design. A senior scholar renowned for her discoveries about the Moche, E...
Ancient South America, 2nd edition features the full panorama of the South American past from the first inhabitants to the European invasions Isolated for all of prehistory and much of history, the continent witnessed the rise of cultures and advanced civilizations rivalling those of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Independently of developments elsewhere, South American peoples invented agriculture, domesticated animals, and created pottery, elaborate architecture, and the arts of working metals. Tribes, chiefdoms, and immense conquest states rose, flourished, and disappeared, leaving only their ruined monuments and broken artifacts as testimonials to past greatness. This new edition is completely revised and updated to reflect archaeological discoveries and insights made in the past three decades. Incorporating new findings on northern and eastern lowlands, and discussions of the first civilizations, it also examines the first inhabitants of Brazil and Patagonia as well as the Andes. Accessibly written and abundantly illustration, the volume also includes chronological charts and new examples.
"The Oxford Handbook of the Incas aims to be the first comprehensive book on the Inca, the largest empire in the pre-Columbian world. Using archaeology, ethnohistory and art history, the central goal of this handbook is to bring together novel recent research conducted by experts from different fields that study the Inca empire, from its origins and expansion to its demise and continuing influence in contemporary times"--Provided by publisher.
In this provocative book, The Cydonia Codex authors George J. Haas and William R. Saunders use archaeological research discoveries and photographs from NASA and other space programs to document the uncanny similarities between Martian and now-extinct Earth cultures. The Martian Codex begins with a review of the thirty-year history of documenting the famous “Face on Mars” landform from NASA’s first photographs in 1976 to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE shots in 2007. Detailed analysis shows it as a split-faced structure that precisely resembles a set of masks from a temple in Cerros, Mexico. Part two provides additional examples of two-faced and composite structures all over ...
This is the third in the five-yearly series of surveys of what is happening in rock art studies around the world. As always, the texts reflect something of the great differences in approach and emphasis that exist in different regions. The volume presents examples from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the New World. During the period in question, 1999 to 2004, there have been few major events, although in the field of Pleistocene art many new discoveries have been made, and a new country added to the select list of those with Ice Age cave art. Some regions such as North Africa and the former USSR have seen a tremendous amount of activity, focusing not only on recording but also on chronology, and the conservation of sites. With the global increase of tourism, the management of rock art sites that are accessible to the public is a theme of ever-growing importance.
Challuabamba (chī-wa-bamba)—now a developing suburb of Cuenca, the principal city in the southern highlands of Ecuador—has been known for a century as an ancient site that produced exceptionally fine pottery in great quantities. Suspecting that Challuabamban ceramics might provide a link between earlier, preceramic culture and later, highly developed Formative period art, Terence Grieder led an archaeological investigation of the site between 1995 and 2001. In this book, he and the team of art historians and archaeologists who excavated at Challuabamba present their findings, which establish the community's importance as a center in a network of trade and artistic influence that extende...
Moche murals of northern Peru represent one of the great, yet still largely unknown, artistic traditions of the ancient Americas. Created in an era without written scripts, these murals are key to understandings of Moche history, society, and culture. In this first comprehensive study on the subject, Lisa Trever develops an interdisciplinary methodology of “archaeo art history” to examine how ancient histories of art can be written without texts, boldly inverting the typical relationship of art to archaeology. Trever argues that early coastal artistic traditions cannot be reduced uncritically to interpretations based in much later Inca histories of the Andean highlands. Instead, the auth...