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The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town
This compelling ethnography explores the issue of cultural continuity and change as it has unfolded in the representative Guatemala Mayan town Santiago Atitlán. Drawing on multiple sources, Robert S. Carlsen argues that local Mayan culture survived the Spanish Conquest remarkably intact and continued to play a defining role for much of the following five centuries. He also shows how the twentieth-century consolidation of the Guatemalan state steadily eroded the capacity of the local Mayas to adapt to change and ultimately caused some factions to reject—even demonize—their own history and culture. At the same time, he explains how, after a decade of military occupation known as la violen...
Hugh Roberts
None
Agent of Change
Ash is an important and yet understudied aspect of ritual deposition in the archaeological record of North America. Ash has been found in a wide variety of contexts across many regions and often it is associated with rare or unusual objects or in contexts that suggest its use in the transition or transformation of houses and ritual features. Drawn from across the U.S. and Mesoamerica, the chapters in this volume explore the use, meanings, and cross-cultural patterns present in the use of ash. and highlight the importance of ash in ritual closure, social memory, and cultural transformation.
Crafts in the World Market
The growing exchange of traditional craft objects in world markets has had a profound impact on the lives of the women and men who produce them. These essays describe how the flow of goods from the industrial centers of the world to the colonies in earlier centuries is now met by a reverse flow as consumers seek the exotic and unique objects of handicraft production in Third World countries. The book explores the paradox of how artisans continue to create traditional objects, yet new sources of wealth and intensified production are transforming their traditional lifeways in areas such as the Oaxaca Valley, the Yucatan, Highland Chiapas, and Guatemala.
Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya
From the tombs of the elite to the graves of commoners, mortuary remains offer rich insights into Classic Maya society. In Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya: Rituals of Body and Soul, the anthropological archaeologist and bioarchaeologist Andrew K. Scherer explores the broad range of burial practices among the Maya of the Classic period (AD 250–900), integrating information gleaned from his own fieldwork with insights from the fields of iconography, epigraphy, and ethnography to illuminate this society’s rich funerary traditions. Scherer’s study of burials along the Usumacinta River at the Mexican-Guatemalan border and in the Central Petén region of Guatemala—areas that includ...
The Burden of the Ancients
In Maya theology, everything from humans and crops to gods and the world itself passes through endless cycles of birth, maturation, dissolution, death, and rebirth. Traditional Maya believe that human beings perpetuate this cycle through ritual offerings and ceremonies that have the power to rebirth the world at critical points during the calendar year. The most elaborate ceremonies take place during Semana Santa (Holy Week), the days preceding Easter on the Christian calendar, during which traditionalist Maya replicate many of the most important world-renewing rituals that their ancient ancestors practiced at the end of the calendar year in anticipation of the New Year’s rites. Marshaling...
Textile Traditions of Mesoamerica and the Andes
In this volume, anthropologists, art historians, fiber artists, and technologists come together to explore the meanings, uses, and fabrication of textiles in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia from Precolumbian times to the present. Originally published in 1991 by Garland Publishing, the book grew out of a 1987 symposium held in conjunction with the exhibit "Costume as Communication: Ethnographic Costumes and Textiles from Middle America and the Central Andes of South America" at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University.
Maya Palaces and Elite Residences
Maya "palaces" have intrigued students of this ancient Mesoamerican culture since the early twentieth century, when scholars first applied the term "palace" to multi-room, gallery-like buildings set on low platforms in the centers of Maya cities. Who lived in these palaces? What types of ceremonial and residential activities took place there? How do the physical forms and spatial arrangement of the buildings embody Maya concepts of social organization and cosmology? This book brings together state-of-the-art data and analysis regarding the occupants, ritual and residential uses, and social and cosmological meanings of Maya palaces and elite residences. A multidisciplinary team of senior rese...
Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala
Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala marks a new era in Guatemalan studies by offering an up-to-the-minute look at the pan-Maya movement and the future of the Maya people as they struggle to regain control over their cultural destiny. The successful emergence of what is in some senses a nationalism grounded in ethnicity and language has challenged scholars to reconsider their concepts of nationalism, community, and identity. Editors Edward F. Fischer and R. McKenna Brown have brought together essays by virtually all the leading U.S. experts on contemporary Maya communities and the top Maya scholars working in Guatemala today. Supplementing scholarly analysis of Mayan cultural activism is a po...
