Author: William J. Folan Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
The essays in this book present the integrated application of prehistoric, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic data centering on the interpretation of past and present peoples residing in Greater Mesoamerica. These groups, at some time in their existence, had much in common: a corn-, bean-, and squash-farming base; permanent villages with plazas; public religious structures; and well-developed ceremonialism involving astronomical-ceremonial concepts including calendrics. They form an area designated by scholars as the Continental Core of North/Central America. Each essay offers a methodological approach or the documentation leading to a better understanding of such aspects of Greater Mesoamerica as climate, cultural history and sociopolitical organization. Contributors include Roman Piña Chan, William J. Folan, Basil C. Hedrick, J. Charles Kelley, Burma H. Hyde, Gabriel DeCicco, Michael W. Spence, Phil C. Weigand, Jay K. Johnson, Charles D. Trombold, Jr., Joseph B. Mountjoy, Dale P. Smith, Harold Franklin McGee, Jr., and Jonathan E. Reyman.
Author: Frances F. Berdan Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107729025 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 369
Book Description
This book provides an up-to-date synthesis of Aztec culture, applying interdisciplinary approaches (archaeology, ethnohistory and ethnography) to reconstructing the complex and enigmatic civilization. Frances F. Berdan offers a balanced assessment of complementary and sometimes contradictory sources in unravelling the ancient way of life. The book provides a cohesive view of the Aztecs and their empire, emphasizing the diversity and complexity of social, economic, political and religious roles played by the many kinds of people we call 'Aztecs'. Concluding with three integrative case studies, the book examines the stresses, dynamics and anchors of Aztec culture and society.
Author: Harvey Weiss Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190660279 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 345
Book Description
Megadrought and Collapse is the first book to treat in one volume the current paleoclimatic and archaeological evidence of megadrought events coincident with major prehistoric and historical examples of societal collapse. Previous works have offered multi-causal explanations for collapse, from overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, and warfare to poor leadership and failure to adapt to environmental changes. In earlier synthetic studies of major instances of collapse, the full force of climate change has often not been considered. This volume includes nine case studies that span the globe and stretch over fourteen thousand years, from the paleolithic hunter-gatherer collapse of the 12th millennium BC to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer capital at Angkor. Together, the studies constitute a primary sourcebook in which principal investigators in archaeology and paleoclimatology present their original research. Each case study juxtaposes the latest paleoclimatic evidence of megadrought (so-called for its severity and its decades - to centuries-long duration) with available archaeological records of synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from all five archival paleoclimate proxy sources: speleothems (cave stalagmites), tree rings, and lake, marine, and glacial cores. The archaeological records in each case are the most recently retrieved. With Megadrought and Collapse, Harvey Weiss and his team of expert contributors have assembled an authoritative investigation that is certain to engage environmental history readers across disciplines in the sciences and social sciences.
Author: Larry Steinbrenner Publisher: University Press of Colorado ISBN: 1646421515 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 565
Book Description
The Archaeology of Greater Nicoya is the first edited volume in a quarter century to provide an overview of this fascinating archaeological subarea of Mesoamerica, encompassing Pacific Nicaragua and northwestern Costa Rica. Inhabited by diverse peoples of Mesoamerican origin centuries before Spanish colonization, Greater Nicoya remains controversial in the twenty-first century as scholars struggle to achieve consensus on questions of geography, chronology, and cultural identity. Drawing on approaches ranging from ethnohistory to bioarchaeology to scientific and culture-historical archaeology, the book is organized into sections on redefining Greater Nicoya, projects and surveys, material culture, and mortuary practices. Individual chapters explore Indigenous groups and their origins, extensive summaries of the three largest scholarly archaeological projects completed in Pacific Nicaragua in the last quarter century, clear evidence of Mesoamerican connections from Costa Rica’s Bay of Culebra, detailed histories of lithic analysis and rock art studies in Nicaragua, new insights into mortuary and cultural practices based on osteological evidence, and reinterpretations of diagnostic ceramic types as products of related potting communities and the first definitive identification of production centers for these types. Drawing upon new 14C dates, this volume also provides the most substantial revision of the late pre-colonial chronology since the 1960s, a correction that has critical implications for understanding the prehistory of Greater Nicoya.
Author: Walter Robert Thurmond Witschey Publisher: Scarecrow Press ISBN: 081087167X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 447
Book Description
Mesoamerica is one of six major areas of the world where humans independently changed their culture from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle into settled communities, cities, and civilization. In addition to China (twice), the Indus Valley, the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia, Egypt, and Peru, Mesoamerica was home to exciting and irreversible changes in human culture called the "Neolithic Revolution." The changes included domestication of plants and animals, leading to agriculture, husbandry, and eventually sedentary village life. These developments set the stage for the growth of cities, social stratification, craft specialization, warfare, writing, mathematics, and astronomy, or what we call the rise of civilization. These changes forever transformed humankind. The Historical Dictionary of Mesoamerica covers the history of Mesoamerica through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 900 cross-referenced dictionary entries covering the major peoples, places, ideas, and events related to Mesoamerica. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Mesoamerica.
Author: A. Bernard Knapp Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521411745 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 178
Book Description
This collection considers the relevance of the Annales 'school' for archaeology. The Annales movement regarded orthodox history as too much concerned with events, too narrowly political, too narrative in form and too isolated from neighbouring disciplines. Annalistes attempted to construct a 'total' history, dealing with a wide range of human activity, and combining divergent material, documentary, and theoretical approaches to the past. Annales-oriented research utilizes the techniques and tools of various ancillary fields, and integrates temporal, spatial, material and behavioural analyses. Such an approach is obviously attractive to archaeologists, for even though they deal with material data rather than social facts, they are just as much as historians interested in understanding social, economic and political factors such as power and dominance, conflict, exchange and other human activities. Three introductory essays consider the relationship between Annales methodology and current archaeological theory. Case studies draw upon methodological variations of the multifaceted Annales approach. The volume concludes with two overviews, one historical and the other archaeological.
Author: Stacy B. Schaefer Publisher: UNM Press ISBN: 9780826319050 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 580
Book Description
The first substantial study of a Mexican Indian society that more than any other has preserved much of its ancient way of life and religion.
Author: Frances F. Berdan Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521881277 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 369
Book Description
This book provides an up-to-date synthesis of Aztec culture, encompassing topics of history, economy, social life, political relations, and religious beliefs and ceremonies. It offers an integrated view of Aztec life, grappling with thorny issues such as human sacrifice and the controversial role of up-and-coming merchants. The book meshes data, methods, and theories from a variety of disciplines including archaeology, ethnohistory, ethnography, and art history.
Author: Charles D. Trombold Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521383374 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 300
Book Description
The presence of ancient road networks in the New World is a puzzle, because they predate the use of wheeled transport vehicles. But whatever their diverse functions may have been, they remain the only tangible indication of how extinct American societies were regionally organised. Contributors to this volume, originally published in 1991, describe past studies of prehispanic roads in the southwestern United States, Mexico, Central and South America, paying special attention to their significance for economic and political organisation, as well as regional communication.
Author: Andrew L. Christenson Publisher: SIU Press ISBN: 9780809315239 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
In 17 critical essays, the first book to address the historiography of archaeology evaluates how and why the history of archaeology is written. The emphasis in the first section is on how archaeologists use historical knowledge of their discipline. For example, it can help them to understand the origin of current archaeological ideas, to learn from past errors, and to apply past research to current questions. It can even be integrated into the new liberal arts curricula in an attempt to instruct students in critical thinking. The second section considers the sociopolitical context within which past archaeologists lived and worked and the contexts within which historians of archaeology write. The topics treated include the rise of capitalism and colonialism and the rise of "modern archaeology," the political contexts and changing form of the history of Mesoamerican archaeology, the decline to obscurity of once prominent archaeologists, and the institutional and ideological "fossilization" of American classical archaeology. The final section focuses on researching and presenting the history of archaeology. The authors discuss past archaeologists in light of their institutional affiliations, the use of historic methods to interpret past archaeological notes and collections, and the means of presenting the history of archaeology on videotape. The final paper offers a plan for documenting the many records (diaries, fieldnotes, correspondence, unpublished reports) in public and private hands that contain the history of archaeology.
Author: William J. Folan
Author: Frances F. Berdan
Author: Harvey Weiss
Author: Larry Steinbrenner
Author: Walter Robert Thurmond Witschey
Author: A. Bernard Knapp
Author: Stacy B. Schaefer
Author: Frances F. Berdan
Author: Charles D. Trombold
Author: Andrew L. Christenson