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Landscapes of Origin in the Americas
Landscape is a powerful factor in the operation of memory because of the associations narrators make between the local landscape and the events of the stories they tell. Ancestors and mythological events often become fixed in a specific landscape and act as timeless reference points. In conventional anthropological literature, "landscape" is the term applied to the meaning local people bestow on their cultural and physical surroundings. In this work, the authors explore the cultural and physical landscapes an individual or cultural group has constructed to define the origins or beginnings of that cultural group as revealed through shared or traditional memory. The cultural landscapes of origins in diverse sites throughout the Americas are investigated through multidisciplinary research, not only to reveal the belief system and mythologies but also to place these origin beliefs in context and relationship to each other. In a continual interaction between the past, present, and future, time is subordinate to place, and history, as defined in Western academic terms, does not exist.
Earth Politics and Intangible Heritage
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 (2)
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.
Political Landscapes of Capital Cities
Political Landscapes of Capital Cities investigates the processes of transformation of the natural landscape into the culturally constructed and ideologically defined political environments of capital cities. In this spatially inclusive, socially dynamic interpretation, an interdisciplinary group of authors including archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians uses the methodology put forth in Adam T. Smith’s The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities to expose the intimate associations between human-made environments and the natural landscape that accommodate the sociopolitical needs of governmental authority. Political Landscapes of Capital Cit...
Ancient Origins of Mesoamerica
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...
The Maya and Their Central American Neighbors
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 Yuc...
Mysterious Mesoamerican Cultures
Mayan ideas spread via broadcast and influenced divergent cultures and languages. It is possible to trace the influence of the Mayan civilization far beyond its confines (400 to 600 A.D.). One or two of these lesser civilizations may have existed contemporaneously with the great Mayan civilization, but most were at their best long after the great culture had declined. This chapter will emphasize the ties between these lesser civilizations and the Mayas and analyze their characteristics. Toward Mexico and the Isthmus of Panama, we will proceed northwest. Along the Gulf of Mexico and across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Mayas developed their arts of life in narrowing bands. In terms of impor...
The Birth of Technology in Mesoamerica
For thousands of years, people in Central America have found ways to improve their lives. Tools and technologies help us do more work with less effort and make our lives easier. But how did those tools and technologies come about? The Maya people were among the first groups to make discoveries that led to new technology in Mesoamerica. And now scientists uncover more about these ancient people by using modern technologies like computers and lasers! In the past, people could only see the universe in one way. They could not travel very far or very fast. But now that science and technology have changed the world, we can see things that were hidden before. We have new ways of getting from one pl...
Archaeology and Ancient Religion in the American Midcontinent
Analyses of big datasets signal important directions for the archaeology of religion in the Archaic to Mississippian Native North America Across North America, huge data accumulations derived from decades of cultural resource management studies, combined with old museum collections, provide archaeologists with unparalleled opportunities to explore new questions about the lives of ancient native peoples. For many years the topics of technology, economy, and political organization have received the most research attention, while ritual, religion, and symbolic expression have largely been ignored. This was often the case because researchers considered such topics beyond reach of their methods a...
A Social History of Modern Tehran
Tehran, the capital of Iran since the late eighteenth century, is now one of the largest cities in the Middle East. Exploring Tehran's development from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Ashkan Rezvani Naraghi paints a vibrant picture of a city undergoing rapid and dynamic social transformation. Rezvani Naraghi demonstrates that this shift was the product of a developing discourse around spatial knowledge, in which the West became the model for the social practices of the state and sections of Iranian society. As traditional social spaces, such as coffee houses, bathhouses, and mosques, were replaced by European-style cafes, theatres, and sports clubs, Tehran and its people were irreversibly altered. Using an array of archival sources, Rezvani Naraghi stresses the agency of everyday inhabitants in shaping urban change. This enlightening history not only allows us to better understand the contours of contemporary Tehran, but to develop a new way of imagining, talking about, and building 'the city'.
