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"Indians of Central America"
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Migrations in late Mesoamerica
This volume gathers scholars from different disciplines to address the role of migration during the most tumultuous centuries of Mesoamerican prehistory (A.D. 500-1500).
Book
Pulltrouser Swamp
Among Mesoamericanists, the agricultural basis of the ancient Maya civilization of the Yucatan Peninsula has been an important topic of research—and controversy. Interest in the agricultural system of the Maya greatly increased as new discoveries showed that the lowland Maya were not limited to slash-and-burn technology, as had been previously believed, but used a variety of more sophisticated agricultural techniques and practices, including terracing, raised fields, and, perhaps, irrigation. Because of the nature of the data and because this form of agricultural technology had been key to explanations of state formation elsewhere in Mesoamerica, raised-field agriculture became a particular focus of investigation. Pulltrouser Swamp conclusively demonstrates the existence of hydraulic, raised-field agriculture in the Maya lowlands between 150 B.C. and A.D. 850. It presents the findings of the University of Oklahoma's Pulltrouser SwampProject, an NSF-supported interdisciplinary study that combined the talents of archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, paleobotanists, biologists, and zoologists to investigate the remains of the Maya agricultural system in the swampy region of northern Belize. By examining soils, fossil pollen and other plant remains, gastropods, relic settlements, ceramics, lithics, and other important evidence, the Pulltrouser Swamp team has clearly demonstrated that the features under investigation are relics of Maya-made raised and channelized fields and associated canals. Other data suggest the nature of the swamps in which the fields were constructed, the tools used for construction and cultivation, the possible crops cultivated, and at least one type of settlement near the fields, with its chronology. This verification of raised fields provides dramatic evidence of a large and probably organized workforce engaged in sophisticated and complex agricultural technology. As record of this evidence, Pulltrouser Swamp is a work of seminal importance for all students and scholars of New World prehistory.
eBook
Bioarchaeology of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica : an interdisciplinary approach
This edited volume presents work from both Mesoamerican-based and U.S.-based researchers who use a combination of cultural ethnohistorical, (bio)archaeological, dental, and chemical data in an interdisciplinary approach to research population history in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. The goals for such a project are threefold: 1) to encourage more cross-fertilization of work between fields and subfields, in order to more appropriately address large regional questions of population history; 2) to explicitly address the theoretical and methodological challenges and rewards of interdisciplinary work; and 3) to introduce a larger audience to the state of interdisciplinary work in Mesoamerica.
Book
Visual culture and indigenous agency in the early Americas
This volume explores how visual arts functioned in the indigenous pre- and post-conquest New World as vehicles of social, religious, and political identity. Twelve scholars in the field of visual arts examine indigenous artistic expressions in the American continent from the pre-Hispanic age to the present. The contributions offer new interpretations of materials, objects, and techniques based on a critical analysis of historical and iconographic sources and argue that indigenous agency in the continent has been primarily conceived and expressed in visual forms in spite of the textual epistemology imposed since the conquest. Contributors are: Miguel Arisa, Mary Brown, Ananda Cohen-Aponte, Elena FitzPatrick Sifford, Alessia Frassani, Jeremy James George, Orlando Hernández Ying, Angela Herren Rajagopalan, Keith Jordan, Lorena Tezanos Toral, Marcus B. Burke, and Lawrence Waldron.
eBook
Ancient Maya Cities of the Eastern Lowlands
For more than a century researchers have studied Maya ruins, and sites like Tikal, Palenque, Copán, and Chichén Itzá have shaped our understanding of the Maya. Yet the lowlands of Belize, which were once home to a rich urban tradition that persisted and evolved for almost 2,000 years, are treated as peripheral to these great Classic period sites. The hot and humid climate and dense forests are inhospitable and make preservation of the ruins difficult, but this oft-ignored area reveals much about Maya urbanism and culture.
Using data collected from different sites throughout the Maya lowlands, including the Vaca Plateau and the Belize River Valley, Brett Houk presents the first synthesis of these unique monuments and discusses methods for mapping and excavating. Considering the sites through the theoretical lenses of the built environment and ancient urban planning, Houk vividly reconstructs their political history, how they fit into the larger political landscape of the Classic Maya, and how the ancient cities fell apart over time.
eBook
The Jaguar Within
Shamanism-the practice of entering a trance state to experience
visions of a reality beyond the ordinary and to gain esoteric
knowledge-has been an important part of life for indigenous
societies throughout the Americas from prehistoric times until the
present. Much has been written about shamanism in both scholarly
and popular literature, but few authors have linked it to another
significant visual realm-art. In this pioneering study, Rebecca R.
Stone considers how deep familiarity with, and profound respect
for, the extra-ordinary visionary experiences of shamanism
profoundly affected the artistic output of indigenous cultures in
Central and South America before the European invasions of the
sixteenth century.
Using ethnographic accounts of shamanic trance experiences,
Stone defines a core set of trance vision characteristics,
including enhanced senses, ego dissolution, bodily distortions,
flying, spinning and undulating sensations, synaesthesia, and
physical transformation from the human self into animal and other
states of being. Stone then traces these visionary characteristics
in ancient artworks from Costa Rica and Peru. She makes a
convincing case that these works, especially those of the Moche,
depict shamans in a trance state or else convey the perceptual
experience of visions by creating deliberately chaotic and
distorted conglomerations of partial, inverted, and incoherent
images.
eBook
