This accessible, state-of-the-art review of Mayan hieroglyphics and cosmology also serves as a tribute to one of the field's most noted pioneers.The core of this book focuses on the current study of Mayan hieroglyphics as inspired by the recently deceased Mayanist Linda Schele. As author or coauthor of more than 200 books or articles on the Maya, Schele served as the chief disseminator of knowledge to the general public about this ancient Mesoamerican culture, simi...

Northeast of modern-day Mexico City stand the remnants of one of the world's largest preindustrial cities, Teotihuacan. Monumental in scale, Teotihuacan is organized along a three-mile-long thoroughfare, the Avenue of the Dead, that leads up to the massive Pyramid of the Moon. Lining the avenue are numerous plazas and temples, which indicate that the city once housed a large population that engaged in complex rituals and ceremonies. Although scholars have studied Teotihuacan for over a cen...

The understanding of warfare in ancient Mesoamerica has blossomed in recent years. In this volume, the authors use recent empirical studies to help us understand the patterns and nature of Mesoamerican warfare. Using evidence from ceramics, settlement pattern, epigraphy, ethnohistory, and ethnography, these projects define the martial nature of Mesoamerican societies and link it to ritual, political economy, and other cultural systems. The studies range from preclassic to post-contact and ...

A fascinating history of the Maya - drawing on a wealth of recent archaeological discoveries - whose civilisation in the jungles of Central America was for almost a thousand years hidden from the world.Over the last two centuries explorers have made the most remarkable discoveries in the tropical forests of Central America. Across much of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras dozens of cities - some with populations of well over 100,000 - have been unv...

Lost Cities author Childress takes us deep into Mexico and Central America in search of the mysterious Olmecs, North America’s early, advanced civilization. The Olmecs, now sometimes called Proto-Mayans, were not acknowledged to have existed as a civilization until an international archeological meeting in Mexico City in 1942. Now, the Olmecs are slowly being recognized as the Mother Culture of Mesoamerica, having invented writing, the ball game and the “Mayan†Calendar. But who were the...

As portals to the supernatural realm that creates and animates the universe, caves have always been held sacred by the peoples of Mesoamerica. From ancient times to the present, Mesoamericans have made pilgrimages to caves for ceremonies ranging from rituals of passage to petitions for rain and a plentiful harvest. So important were caves to the pre-Hispanic peoples that they are mentioned in Maya hieroglyphic writing and portrayed in the Central Mexican and Oaxacan pictorial codices. Many...

Definitively tracing the evolution and history of the Maya civilization from the arrival of migrating 'first peoples' to the end of the Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican World with the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century. A span of some thousands of years are concisely covered in one volume in a thorough study of the evolution of a complex Maya society. A new world of understanding about the ancient Maya civilization has been opened up from new archaeological discoveries and studies.Easy...

The Legacy of Mesoamerica: History and Culture of a Native American Civilization summarizes and integrates information on the origins, historical development, and current situations of the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. It describes their contributions from the development of Mesoamerican Civilization through 20th century and their influence in the world community. For courses on Mesoamerica (Middle America) taught in departments of anthropology, history, and Latin American St...

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 ...

A transdisciplinary collaboration among ethnologists, linguists, and archaeologists, Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia traces the emergence, expansion, and decline of cultural identities in indigenous Amazonia.Hornborg and Hill argue that the tendency to link language, culture, and biology--essentialist notions of ethnic identities--is a Eurocentric bias that has characterized largely inaccurate explanations of the distribution of ethnic groups and languages in Amazonia. The e...

The Mixtec peoples were among the major original developers of Mesoamerican civilization. Centuries before the Spanish Conquest, they formed literate urban states and maintained a uniquely innovative technology and a flourishing economy. Today, thousands of Mixtecs still live in Oaxaca, in present-day southern Mexico, and thousands more have migrated to locations throughout Mexico, the United States, and Canada. In this comprehensive survey, Ronald Spores and Andrew K. Balkansky—both preem...

A Prehistory of South America is an overview of the ancient and historic native cultures of the entire continent of South America based on the most recent archaeological investigations. This accessible, clearly written text is designed to engage undergraduate and beginning graduate students in anthropology.For more than 12,000 years, South American cultures ranged from mobile hunters and gatherers to rulers and residents of colossal cities. In the process, native South Ame...