Author: Karl A. TaubePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Indians of Mexico
Languages : en
Pages : 62
Book Description
The Writing System of Ancient Teotihuacán
Author: Karl A. TaubePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Indians of Mexico
Languages : en
Pages : 62
Book Description
Ancient Teotihuacan
Author: George L. CowgillPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316298019
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
First comprehensive English-language book on the largest city in the Americas before the 1400s. Teotihuacan is a UNESCO world heritage site, located in highland central Mexico, about twenty-five miles from Mexico City, visited by millions of tourists every year. The book begins with Cuicuilco, a predecessor that arose around 400 BCE, then traces Teotihuacan from its founding in approximately 150 BCE to its collapse around 600 CE. It describes the city's immense pyramids and other elite structures. It also discusses the dwellings and daily lives of commoners, including men, women, and children, and the craft activities of artisans. George L. Cowgill discusses politics, economics, technology, art, religion, and possible reasons for Teotihuacan's rise and fall. Long before the Aztecs and 800 miles from Classic Maya centers, Teotihuacan was part of a broad Mesoamerican tradition but had a distinctive personality that invites comparison with other states and empires of the ancient world.
The Teotihuacan Trinity
Author: Annabeth HeadrickPublisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292749872
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 415
Book Description
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 century, the precise nature of its religious and political life has remained unclear, in part because no one has yet deciphered the glyphs that may explain much about the city's organization and belief systems. In this groundbreaking book, Annabeth Headrick analyzes Teotihuacan's art and architecture, in the light of archaeological data and Mesoamerican ethnography, to propose a new model for the city's social and political organization. Challenging the view that Teotihuacan was a peaceful city in which disparate groups united in an ideology of solidarity, Headrick instead identifies three social groups that competed for political power—rulers, kin-based groups led by influential lineage heads, and military orders that each had their own animal insignia. Her findings provide the most complete evidence to date that Teotihuacan had powerful rulers who allied with the military to maintain their authority in the face of challenges by the lineage heads. Headrick's analysis also underscores the importance of warfare in Teotihuacan society and clarifies significant aspects of its ritual life, including shamanism and an annual tree-raising ceremony that commemorated the Mesoamerican creation story.
Western Mesoamerican Calendars and Writing Systems
Author: Mikkel Bøg ClemmensenPublisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1803274867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
Mesoamerica is one of the few places to witness the independent invention of writing. Bringing together new research, papers discuss the writing systems of Teotihuacan, Mixteca Baja, the Epiclassic period and Aztec writing of the Postclassic. These writing systems represent more than a millennium of written records and literacy in Mesoamerica.
Writing and the Ancient State
Author: Haicheng WangPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107785871
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 435
Book Description
Writing and the Ancient State explores the early development of writing and its relationship to the growth of political structures. The first part of the book focuses on the contribution of writing to the state's legitimating project. The second part deals with the state's use of writing in administration, analyzing both textual and archaeological evidence to reconstruct how the state used bookkeeping to allocate land, police its people, and extract taxes from them. The third part focuses on education, the state's system for replenishing its staff of scribe-officials. The first half of each part surveys evidence from Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya lowlands, Central Mexico, and the Andes; against this background the second half examines the evidence from China. The chief aim of this book is to shed new light on early China (from the second millennium BC through the end of the Han period, ca. 220 AD) while bringing to bear the lens of cross-cultural analysis on each of the civilizations under discussion.
Teotihuacan
Author: Kathleen BerrinPublisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 9780500277676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Fifteen hundred years ago, Teotihuacan was one of the world's greatest cities. Some 200,000 people lived in this Mexican metropolis, with its massive public buildings, grid plan of streets and imposing murals and sculpture. Its trading empire dominated much of ancient Mexico. Then, in the 8th century, came a mysterious collapse. Even knowledge of the original name was lost: Teotihuacan, City of the Gods, was a title bestowed by the Aztecs six hundred years later.
Teotihuacan
Author: Matthew RobbPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520296559
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 444
Book Description
Founded in the first century BCE near a set of natural springs in an otherwise dry northeastern corner of the Valley of Mexico, the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacan was on a symbolic level a city of elements. With a multiethnic population of perhaps one hundred thousand, at its peak in 400 CE, it was the cultural, political, economic, and religious center of ancient Mesoamerica. A devastating fire in the city center led to a rapid decline after the middle of the sixth century, but Teotihuacan was never completely abandoned or forgotten; the Aztecs revered the city and its monuments, giving many of them the names we still use today. Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire examines new discoveries from the three main pyramids at the site—the Sun Pyramid, the Moon Pyramid, and, at the center of the Ciudadela complex, the Feathered Serpent Pyramid—which have fundamentally changed our understanding of the city’s history. With illustrations of the major objects from Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropología and from the museums and storage facilities of the Zona de Monumentos Arqueológicos de Teotihuacan, along with selected works from US and European collections, the catalogue examines these cultural artifacts to understand the roles that offerings of objects and programs of monumental sculpture and murals throughout the city played in the lives of Teotihuacan’s citizens. Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Exhibition dates: de Young, San Francisco, September 30, 2017–February 11, 2018 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), March–June 2018
Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs
Author: Gordon WhittakerPublisher:
ISBN: 9780520380370
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
A portal to the ancient hieroglyphic script of the Aztec Empire. For more than three millennia the cultures of Mesoamerica flourished, yielding the first cities of the Western Hemisphere and developing writing systems that could rival those of the East in their creativity and efficiency. The Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs reigned over one of the greatest imperial civilizations the Americas had ever seen, and until now their intricate and visually stunning hieroglyphs have been overlooked in the story of writing. In this innovative volume Gordon Whittaker provides the reader with a step-by-step, illustrated guide to reading Aztec glyphs, as well as the historical and linguistic context needed to appreciate and understand this fascinating writing system. He also tells the story of how this enigmatic language has been deciphered and gives a tour through Aztec history as recorded in the richly illustrated hieroglyphic codices. This groundbreaking guide is essential reading for anyone interested in the Aztecs, hieroglyphs, or ancient languages.
The World's Writing Systems
Author: Peter T. DanielsPublisher:
ISBN: 0195079930
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 970
Book Description
Ranging from cuneiform to shorthand, from archaic Greek to modern Chinese, from Old Persian to modern Cherokee, this is the only available work in English to cover all of the world's writing systems from ancient times to the present. Describing scores of scripts in use now or in the past around the world, this unusually comprehensive reference offers a detailed exploration of the history and typology of writing systems. More than eighty articles by scholars from over a dozen countries explain and document how a vast array of writing systems work--how alphabets, ideograms, pictographs, and hieroglyphics convey meaning in graphic form. The work is organized in thirteen parts, each dealing with a particular group of writing systems defined historically, geographically, or conceptually. Arranged according to the chronological development of writing systems and their historical relationships within geographical areas, the scripts are divided into the following sections: the ancient Near East, East Asia, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Additional parts address the ongoing process of decipherment of ancient writing systems; the adaptation of traditional scripts to new languages; new scripts invented in modern times; and graphic symbols for numerical, music, and movement notation. Each part begins with an introductory article providing the social and cultural context in which the group of writing systems was developed. Articles on individual scripts detail the historical origin of the writing system, its structure (with tables showing the forms of the written symbols), and its relationship to the phonology of the corresponding spoken language. Each writing system is illustrated by a passage of text, and accompanied by a romanized version, a phonetic transcription, and a modern English translation. A bibliography suggesting further reading concludes each entry. Matched by no other work in English, The World's Writing Systems is the only comprehensive resource covering every major writing system. Unparalleled in its scope and unique in its coverage of the way scripts relate to the languages they represent, this is a resource that anyone with an interest in language will want to own, and one that should be a part of every library's reference collection.
The First Writing
Author: Stephen D. HoustonPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521838610
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444
Book Description
In this book, leading scholars in the field discuss and analyse the origins of ancient writing.