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Breaks new ground with a close ethnography of one Andean village where villagers, surprisingly, have conserved a set of ancient, knowledge-encoded cords to the present day.
In 1976, Scottish engineer Stan Hall organized a landmark expedition to the caves of the Tayos Indians in Ecuador, involving a dozen institutions, joint Special Forces and astronaut professor Neil Armstrong as Honorary President and participant. Hall was driven by curiosity about Erich von Däniken's report of a Metal Library allegedly found in the caves by investigator Juan Moricz in the mid-1960s (published in von Däniken's 1972 blockbuster Gold of the Gods). The story was considered unacceptable within an orthodox view of global history, especially in the absence of any ancient written script in South America. On this expedition, Hall began a personal odyssey into the heart of global eni...
The traditional costumes worn by people in the Andes—women's woolen skirts, men's ponchos, woven belts, and white felt hats—instantly identify them as natives of the region and serve as revealing markers of ethnicity, social class, gender, age, and so on. Because costume expresses so much, scholars study it to learn how the indigenous people of the Andes have identified themselves over time, as well as how others have identified and influenced them. Costume and History in Highland Ecuador assembles for the first time for any Andean country the evidence for indigenous costume from the entire chronological range of prehistory and history. The contributors glean a remarkable amount of infor...
A groundbreaking analysis of the relationship between culture and technology.
Based on the 28th International Archaeometry Symposium jointly sponsored by the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Getty Conservation Institute, this volume offers a rare opportunity to survey under a single cover a wide range of investigations concerning pre-Columbian materials. Twenty chapters detail research in five principal areas: anthropology and materials science; ceramics; stone and obsidian; metals; and archaeological sites and dating. Contributions include Heather Lechtman's investigation of “The Materials Science of Material Culture,” Ron L. Bishop on the compositional analysis of pre-Columbian pottery from the Maya region, Ellen Howe on the use of silver and lead from the Mantaro Valley in Peru, and J. Michael Elam and others on source identification and hydration dating of obsidian artifacts.
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Until recently, Guerrero's past has suffered from relative neglect by archaeologists and historians. While a number of excellent studies have expanded our knowledge of certain aspects of the region's history or of particular areas or topics, the absence of a thorough scholarly overview has left Guerrero's significant contributions to the history of Mesoamerica and colonial Mexico greatly underestimated. With Indigenous Culture and Change in Guerrero, Mexico, 7000 BCE to 1600 CE Ian Jacobs at last puts Guerrero's history firmly on the map of Mexican archaeology and history. The book brings together a vast amount of cross-disciplinary information to understand the deep roots of the Indigenous cultures of a complex region of Mexico and the forces that shaped the foundations of colonial Mexico in the sixteenth century and beyond. This book is particularly significant for its exploration of archaeological, Indigenous, and historical sources.