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Focusing on three communities in North, Central, and South America, Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage layers archaeological research with local knowledge in its interpretations of these cultural landscapes. Using the perspective of Earth Politics, Christie demonstrates a way of reconciling the tension between Western scientific approaches to history and the more intangible heritage derived from Indigenous oral narratives and social memories. Jessica Christie presents case studies from Canyon de Chelly National Monument on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, United States; the Yucatec Maya village of Coba in Quintana Roo, Mexico; and the Aymara town of Copacabana on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia...
The Long Silence is a short series about architectural surveys in the Maya Puuc region. Two volumes are available: The Long Silence and The Long Silence (2). In The Long Silence Stephan Merk describes the outcome of his Chunhuaymil project, an architectural survey of standing Maya Puuc ruins in a mostly untouched 100 square kilometer sector in Northeastern Campeche, México. Nineteen ancient settlements were recorded, many of them for the first time. Their remaining architecture is presented here together with important hieroglyphic inscriptions from the sites. With additional contributions by Antonio Benavides Castillo, Daniel Graña-Behrens, Nikolai Grube, Carlos Pallan Gayol, and Julie Patrois.
During Mexico's first century of independence, European and American explorers rediscovered its pre-Hispanic past. Finding the jungle-covered ruins of lost cities and artifacts inscribed with unintelligible hieroglyphs—and having no idea of the age, authorship, or purpose of these antiquities—amateur archaeologists, artists, photographers, and religious writers set about claiming Mexico's pre-Hispanic patrimony as a rightful part of the United States' cultural heritage. In this insightful work, Tripp Evans explores why nineteenth-century Americans felt entitled to appropriate Mexico's cultural heritage as the United States' own. He focuses in particular on five well-known figures—Ameri...
In The Long Silence, first published 2011, Stephan Merk described the standing Maya Puuc architecture of a 100 square kilometer wide area in Northern Campeche, México. The Long Silence (2) presents the results of the architectural survey of an equally large and almost untouched region immediately south, and compares the results of both projects. With additional contributions by Nicholas Dunning and Eric Weaver, Daniel Graña-Behrens, Guido Krempel, and Karl Herbert Mayer.
The Central Andes, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Peru, and Bolivia all have deep roots in their pre-Columbian civilizations. The first chapters of Latin America's history correspond to those who inhabited it before encountering Europeans. This is especially true in Mesoamerica. The objectives are to show the development of the peoples and high civilizations of Mesoamerica before the arrival of the Mexica (Aztecs) in the Valley of Mexico (1325); second, to examine the key features of the political and socioeconomic organization, as well as the artistic and intellectual achievements achieved during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries under Mexica (Aztec) r...
Though a 1996 peace accord brought a formal end to a conflict that had lasted for thirty-six years, Guatemala's violent past continues to scar its troubled present and seems destined to haunt its uncertain future. George Lovell brings to this revised and expanded edition of A Beauty That Hurts decades of fieldwork throughout Guatemala, as well as archival research. He locates the roots of conflict in geographies of inequality that arose during colonial times and were exacerbated by the drive to develop Guatemala's resources in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The lines of confrontation were entrenched after a decade of socioeconomic reform between 1944 and 1954 saw modernizing i...
While ritual and archaic states have both been prominent topics in recent archaeological studies, this is the first volume to combine both subjects by exploring the varying nature, expression, and significance of ritual in archaic states. It compares archaic rituals across many different cultures--Vijayanagara, Swahili Lamu, Venice, Asante, Aztec, Ming China, Oaxaca, Greece, Inca, Wari, and Chaco. The contributors posit that the nature of rituals, the level of investment in rituals, and their sociopolitical significance can vary greatly from state to state, even among societies with similar levels of social complexity, population, and spatial distribution. Highlighting the importance of ritual as an inherent part of a cultural narrative, and demonstrating how the study of ritual enables a better understanding of diverse social groups, this volume shows how the location, frequency, and role of ritual differed significantly across archaic states.
Most treatments of large Classic Maya sites such as Caracol and Tikal regard Maya political organization as highly centralized. Because investigations have focused on civic buildings and elite palaces, however, a critical part of the picture of Classic Maya political organization has been missing. The contributors to this volume chart the rise and fall of the Classic Maya center of Xunantunich, paying special attention to its changing relationships with the communities that comprised its hinterlands. They examine how the changing relationships between Xunantunich and the larger kingdom of Naranjo affected the local population, the location of their farms and houses, and the range of economic...
"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.
This is the first book to summarize the results of long-term field research at the major Maya site of Waka'. Bringing together findings from diverse research programs of the El Perú-Waka' Regional Archaeological Project, its fifteen wide-ranging contributions lead to a greater understanding of the richness and complexity of Classic-period Maya culture.