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Author: Susan Milbrath Publisher: University of Texas Press ISBN: 0292778511 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 558
Book Description
“A prodigious work of unmatched interdisciplinary scholarship” on Maya astronomy and religion (Journal of Interdisciplinary History). Observations of the sun, moon, planets, and stars played a central role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the astronomical information encoded in Pre-Columbian Maya art and confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples. Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to Pre-Columbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the major astronomical gods and their associated glyphs, astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices and changes in the imagery of the heavens over time. This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of information about the specific astronomical events and cycles recorded in Maya art and architecture. Indeed, it constitutes the first major study of the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya culture. “Milbrath has given us a comprehensive reference work that facilitates access to a very broad and varied body of literature spanning several disciplines.” ―Isis “Destined to become a standard reference work on Maya archeoastronomy . . . Utterly comprehensive.” —Andrea Stone, Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Author: Susan Milbrath Publisher: University of Texas Press ISBN: 0292778511 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 558
Book Description
“A prodigious work of unmatched interdisciplinary scholarship” on Maya astronomy and religion (Journal of Interdisciplinary History). Observations of the sun, moon, planets, and stars played a central role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the astronomical information encoded in Pre-Columbian Maya art and confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples. Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to Pre-Columbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the major astronomical gods and their associated glyphs, astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices and changes in the imagery of the heavens over time. This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of information about the specific astronomical events and cycles recorded in Maya art and architecture. Indeed, it constitutes the first major study of the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya culture. “Milbrath has given us a comprehensive reference work that facilitates access to a very broad and varied body of literature spanning several disciplines.” ―Isis “Destined to become a standard reference work on Maya archeoastronomy . . . Utterly comprehensive.” —Andrea Stone, Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Author: Gerardo Aldana Publisher: University of Arizona Press ISBN: 0816542201 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 465
Book Description
This book contextualizes the discovery of a Venus astronomical pattern by a female Mayan astronomer at Chich'en Itza and the discovery's later adaptation and application at Mayapan. Calculating Brilliance brings different intellectual threads together across time and space, from the Classic to the Postclassic, the colonial period to the twenty-first century to offer a new vision for understanding Mayan astronomy.
Author: Prudence M. Rice Publisher: University of Texas Press ISBN: 0292757840 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 388
Book Description
How did the ancient Maya rule their world? Despite more than a century of archaeological investigation and glyphic decipherment, the nature of Maya political organization and political geography has remained an open question. Many debates have raged over models of centralization versus decentralization, superordinate and subordinate status—with far-flung analogies to emerging states in Europe, Asia, and Africa. But Prudence Rice asserts that neither the model of two giant "superpowers" nor that which postulates scores of small, weakly independent polities fits the accumulating body of material and cultural evidence. In this groundbreaking book, Rice builds a new model of Classic lowland Maya (AD 179-948) political organization and political geography. Using the method of direct historical analogy, she integrates ethnohistoric and ethnographic knowledge of the Colonial-period and modern Maya with archaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic data from the ancient Maya. On this basis of cultural continuity, she constructs a convincing case that the fundamental ordering principles of Classic Maya geopolitical organization were the calendar (specifically a 256-year cycle of time known as the may) and the concept of quadripartition, or the division of the cosmos into four cardinal directions. Rice also examines this new model of geopolitical organization in the Preclassic and Postclassic periods and demonstrates that it offers fresh insights into the nature of rulership, ballgame ritual, and warfare among the Classic lowland Maya.
Author: Gerardo Aldana y Villalobos Publisher: Oxbow Books ISBN: 1782976442 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 177
Book Description
Archaeoastronomy and the Maya illustrates archaeoastronomical approaches to ancient Mayan cultural production. The book is contextualized through a history of archaeoastronomical investigations into Mayan sites, originating in the 19th century discovery of astronomical tables within hieroglyphic books. Early 20th century archaeological excavations revealed inscriptions carved into stone that also preserved astronomical records, along with architecture that was built to reflect astronomical orientations. These materials provided the basis of a growing professionalized archaeoastronomy, blossoming in the 1970s and expanding into recent years. The chapters here exemplify the advances made in the field during the early 21st century as well as the on-going diversity of approaches, presenting new perspectives and discoveries in ancient Mayan astronomy that result from recent studies of architectural alignments, codices, epigraphy, iconography, ethnography, and calendrics. More than just investigations of esoteric ancient sciences, studies of ancient Mayan astronomy have profoundly aided our understanding of Mayan worldviews. Concepts of time and space, meanings encoded in religious art, intentions underlying architectural alignments, and even methods of political legitimization are all illuminated through the study of Mayan astronomy.
Author: David A. Freidel Publisher: University Press of Florida ISBN: 0813052815 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 655
Book Description
As complex societies emerged in the Maya lowlands during the first millennium BCE, so did stable communities focused around public squares and the worship of a divine ruler tied to a Maize God cult. “E Groups,” central to many of these settlements, are architectural complexes: typically, a long platform supporting three struc¬tures and facing a western pyramid across a formal plaza. Aligned with the movements of the sun, E Groups have long been interpreted as giant calendrical devices crucial to the rise of Maya civilization. This volume presents new archaeological data to reveal that E Groups were constructed earlier than previously thought. In fact, they are the earliest identifiable architectural plan at many Maya settlements. More than just astronomical observatories or calendars, E Groups were a key element of community organization, urbanism, and identity in the heart of the Maya lowlands. They served as gathering places for emerging communities and centers of ritual; they were the very first civic-religious public architecture in the Maya lowlands. Investigating a wide variety of E Group sites—including some of the most famous like the Mundo Perdido in Tikal and the hitherto little known complex at Chan, as well as others in Ceibal, El Palmar, Cival, Calakmul, Caracol, Xunantunich, Yaxnohcah, Yaxuná, and San Bartolo—this volume pieces together the development of social and political complexity in ancient Maya civilization. James Aimers | Anthony F. Aveni | Jamie J. Awe | Boris Beltran | M. Kathryn Brown | Arlen F. Chase | Diane Z. Chase | Anne S. Dowd | James Doyle | Francisco Estrada-Belli | David A. Freidel | Julie A. Hoggarth | Takeshi Inomata | Patricia A. Mcanany | Susan Milbrath | Jerry Murdock | Kathryn Reese-Taylor | Prudence M. Rice | Cynthia Robin | Franco D. Rossi | Jeremy A. Sabloff | William A. Saturno | Travis W. Stanton A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase
Author: Evan Hadingham Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press ISBN: 9780806119199 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 292
Book Description
An examination of ancient astronomy looks at the myths and beliefs about the heavens that influenced everyday life in these primitive cultures
Author: Charles River Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 78
Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading Many ancient civilizations have influenced and inspired people in the 21st century, and the Greeks and Romans continue to fascinate the West today, but of all the world's civilizations, none have intrigued people more than the Mayans, whose culture, astronomy, language, and mysterious disappearance all continue to captivate people. In the past decade especially, there has been a renewed focus on the Mayans, whose advanced calendar led many to speculate the world would end on the same date the Mayan calendar ended in 2012. The focus on the "doomsday" scenario, however, overshadowed the Mayans' true contributions to astronomy, language, sports, and art. While many incorrectly presume that the Maya were predicting the world to end on that date, it is not a coincidence that their calendar ended on the winter solstice. The Maya developed a sophisticated method of calculating and creating a calendar that is astonishing even by today's standards, and their advancements in applied mathematics not only has intrigued archaeologists but has been incorporated into the beliefs of New Agers and modern apocalyptic doomsayers. In the history of arithmetic, their use of zero stands as a milestone of great significance, which placed them ahead of contemporary Europeans. In Europe, this essential concept was not part of the canon of calculation until the Renaissance. For the Maya, astronomy was not a purely scientific pursuit but intimately linked to religious, mythological, and ideological elements that were of the highest importance. The celestial realm held a sacred nature, as did the many gods and goddesses that dwelt there, so for all Mesoamerican cultures, astronomy was a fundamental part of their everyday lives. Thus, astronomy was present in their calendars, religion, and even agriculture, and in close relation to astronomy, the concept of time was also an essential part of their worldview. The Maya recorded time on almost every surface they could, including lintels, cornices, panels, stelae, friezes, ceramics, and paper. This insistence on capturing dates has led many scholars to suggest the Maya were obsessed with time. The Maya had some of the most advanced astronomical measurements in the world, and their work built upon thousands of years, spanning from around 2500 BCE until the the arrival of the Spanish in 1519. Thanks to their hieroglyphic writing, archaeologists have been able to learn a wealth of information about the way they lived and their complex system of beliefs. Susan Milbrath, a leading expert on Mayan astronomy, noted that the "study of Pre-Columbian Maya astronomical imagery must begin with an understanding of the contemporary Maya worldview, because we cannot hope to penetrate the ancient beliefs without an understanding of what the Maya say about the heavens today." Many contemporary Mayans still use one or several of the ancient calendars, as well as Precolumbian rituals and astronomical cycles. Mayan Astronomy: The History of the Maya's Measurements of the Planets and Stars examines what is known and unknown about the Maya's astronomy, and why their astronomy was among the most accurate in the world. Along with pictures and a bibliography for further reading, you will learn about Mayan astronomy like never before.
Author: Anne S. Dowd Publisher: University Press of Colorado ISBN: 1457193752 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 413
Book Description
Cosmology, Calendars, and Horizon-Based Astronomy in Ancient Mesoamerica is an interdisciplinary tour de force that establishes the critical role astronomy played in the religious and civic lives of the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica. Providing extraordinary examples of how Precolumbian peoples merged ideas about the cosmos with those concerning calendar and astronomy, the volume showcases the value of detailed examinations of astronomical data for understanding ancient cultures. The volume is divided into three sections: investigations into Mesoamerican horizon-based astronomy, the cosmological principles expressed in Mesoamerican religious imagery and rituals related to astronomy, and the aspects of Mesoamerican calendars related to archaeoastronomy. It also provides cutting-edge research on diverse topics such as records of calendar and horizon-based astronomical observation (like the Dresden and Borgia codices), iconography of burial assemblages, architectural alignment studies, urban planning, and counting or measuring devices. Contributors—who are among the most respected in their fields— explore new dimensions in Mesoamerican timekeeping and skywatching in the Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacano, Zapotec, and Aztec cultures. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of anthropology, archaeology, art history, and astronomy.
Author: Susan Milbrath
Author: Susan Milbrath
Author: Gerardo Aldana
Author: Prudence M. Rice
Author: Gerardo Aldana y Villalobos
Author: David A. Freidel
Author: Evan Hadingham
Author: Charles River
Author: Elizabeth P. Benson
Author: James Edward McClellan
Author: Anne S. Dowd