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In this thought-provoking book, preeminent scholar Stephen Houston turns his attention to the crucial role of young males in Classic Maya society, drawing on evidence from art, writing, and material culture. The Gifted Passage establishes that adolescent men in Maya art were the subjects and makers of hieroglyphics, painted ceramics, and murals, in works that helped to shape and reflect masculinity in Maya civilization. The political volatility of the Classic Maya period gave male adolescents valuable status as potential heirs, and many of the most precious surviving ceramics likely celebrated their coming-of-age rituals. The ardent hope was that youths would grow into effective kings and noblemen, capable of leadership in battle and service in royal courts. Aiming to shift mainstream conceptions of the Maya, Houston argues that adolescent men were not simply present in images and texts, but central to both.
Thousands of years ago, people settled in the part of the world called Mesoamerica. This region consists of southern Mexico and most of Central America as it stretches between what is now called the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Although many different countries now exist within this space, it was the original home to just one civilisation: the Olmec. As time advanced, other well-known groups became dominant in the area. These were primarily the Aztecs and the Mayan. All these early civilizations that existed from approximately 1200 BCE to 900 CE were steeped with culture, tradition, commerce, and conflict. They also offer many mysteries and enigmas to modern understanding. These are the things that make people wonder about how the civilisations arose, gained such power, and why they disappeared. Travel back in time to the first days to discover the questions that still exist in the minds of archaeologists, historians, and others who strive to understand the ancient mysteries of Mesoamerica.
Presenting new data from leading scholars in the field, this collection uses evidence from archaeology, hieroglyphic texts, chemical analyses, and art to explore the many ways food was integral to Classic Maya society.
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...
An examination of how ancient Mesoamerican sculpture was experienced by its original audiences.
The Adorned Body is the first truly comprehensive book on what the ancient Maya wore, a systematic survey of dress and ornaments, from head to toe and everything in between.
This volume accompanies a major international loan exhibition featuring more than three hundred works of art, many rarely or never before seen in the United States. It traces the development of gold working and other luxury arts in the Americas from antiquity until the arrival of Europeans in the early sixteenth century. Presenting spectacular works from recent excavations in Peru, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico, this exhibition focuses on specific places and times—crucibles of innovation—where artistic exchange, rivalry, and creativity led to the production of some of the greatest works of art known from the ancient Americas. The book and exhibition explore not only...
This book examines evidence for cultural interchange among the intellectual powerbrokers in Postclassic Mesoamerica, specifically those centered in the northern Maya lowlands and the central Mexican highlands. It includes a wealth of new data and interpretive frameworks in a comprehensive discussion of a critical time period in Mesoamerica.
An analysis of the intellectual and emotional life of ancient Mesoamerican people through studies of figural works and inscriptions. All of human experience flows from bodies that feel, express emotion, and think about what such experiences mean. But is it possible for us, embodied as we are in a particular time and place, to know how people of long ago thought about the body and its experiences? In this groundbreaking book, three leading experts on the Classic Maya (ca. AD 250 to 850) marshal a vast array of evidence from Maya iconography and hieroglyphic writing, as well as archaeological findings, to argue that the Classic Maya developed an approach to the human body that we can recover a...
This reference is devoted to the pre-Columbian archaeology of the Mesoamerican culture area, one of the six cradles of early civilization. It features in-depth articles on the major cultural areas of ancient Mexico and Central America; coverage of important sites, including the world-renowned discoveries as well as many lesser-known locations; articles on day-to-day life of ancient peoples in these regions; and several bandw regional and site maps and photographs. Entries are arranged alphabetically and cover introductory archaeological facts (flora, fauna, human growth and development, nonorganic resources), chronologies of various periods (Paleoindian, Archaic, Formative, Classic and Postclassic, and Colonial), cultural features, Maya, regional summaries, research methods and resources, ethnohistorical methods and sources, and scholars and research history. Edited by archaeologists Evans and Webster, both of whom are associated with Pennsylvania State University. c. Book News Inc.