Mesoamerican Voices

Mesoamerican Voices PDF Author: Matthew Restall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521812795
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
A 2006 collection of indigenous-language writings from central Mexico and Guatemala, written during the colonial period.

Mesoamerican Voices

Mesoamerican Voices PDF Author: Matthew Restall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521812795
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
A 2006 collection of indigenous-language writings from central Mexico and Guatemala, written during the colonial period.

The Unheard Voice of Law in Bartolomé de Las Casas’s Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de las Indias

The Unheard Voice of Law in Bartolomé de Las Casas’s Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de las Indias PDF Author: David T. Orique
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000365344
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
The Unheard Voice of Law in Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias reinterprets Las Casas’s controversial treatise as a legal document, whose legal character is linked to civil and ecclesial genres of the Early Modern and late Renaissance juridical tradition. Bartolomé de las Casas proclaimed: "I have labored to inquire about, study, and discern the law; I have plumbed the depths and have reached the headwaters." The Unheard Voice also plumbs the depths of Las Casas’s voice of law in his widely read and highly controversial Brevísima relación—a legal document published and debated since the 16th century. This original reinterpretation of his Very Brief Account uncovers the juridical approach voiced in his defense of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Unheard Voice innovatively asserts that the Brevísima relación’s legal character is intimately linked to civil and ecclesial genres of the late Renaissance juridical tradition. This paradigm-shifting book contextualizes the formation of Las Casas’s juridical voice in canon law and theology—initially as a secular cleric, subsequently as a Dominican friar, and finally as a diocesan bishop—and demonstrates how his experienced juridical voice fought for justice in trans-Atlantic debates about Indigenous peoples’ level of humanity, religious freedom, enslavement, and conquest. Reaching the headwaters of Las Casas’s hitherto unheard juridical voice of law in the Brevísima relación provides readers with a previously unheard interpretation—an appealing voice for readers and students of this powerful Early Modern text that still resonates today. The Unheard Voice of Law is a valuable companion text for many in the disciplines of literature, history, theology, law, and philosophy who read Bartolomé de las Casas’s Very Brief Account and study his life, labor, and legacy.

The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology

The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology PDF Author: Deborah L. Nichols
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195390938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 996

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology provides a current and comprehensive guide to the recent and on-going archaeology of Mesoamerica. Though the emphasis is on prehispanic societies, this Handbook also includes coverage of important new work by archaeologists on the Colonial and Republican periods. Unique among recent works, the text brings together in a single volume article-length regional syntheses and topical overviews written by active scholars in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology. The first section of the Handbook provides an overview of recent history and trends of Mesoamerica and articles on national archaeology programs and practice in Central America and Mexico written by archaeologists from these countries. These are followed regional syntheses organized by time period, beginning with early hunter-gatherer societies and the first farmers of Mesoamerica and concluding with a discussion of the Spanish Conquest and frontiers and peripheries of Mesoamerica. Topical and comparative articles comprise the remainder of Handbook. They cover important dimensions of prehispanic societies—from ecology, economy, and environment to social and political relations—and discuss significant methodological contributions, such as geo-chemical source studies, as well as new theories and diverse theoretical perspectives. The Handbook concludes with a section on the archaeology of the Spanish conquest and the Colonial and Republican periods to connect the prehispanic, proto-historic, and historic periods. This volume will be a must-read for students and professional archaeologists, as well as other scholars including historians, art historians, geographers, and ethnographers with an interest in Mesoamerica.

Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands

Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands PDF Author: Brigitte Faugère
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607329956
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
In Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands, Latin American, North American, and European researchers explore the meanings and functions of two- and three-dimensional human representations in the Precolumbian communities of the Mexican highlands. Reading these anthropomorphic representations from an ontological perspective, the contributors demonstrate the rich potential of anthropomorphic imagery to elucidate personhood, conceptions of the body, and the relationship of human beings to other entities, nature, and the cosmos. Using case studies covering a broad span of highlands prehistory—Classic Teotihuacan divine iconography, ceramic figures in Late Formative West Mexico, Epiclassic Puebla-Tlaxcala costumed figurines, earth sculptures in Prehispanic Oaxaca, Early Postclassic Tula symbolic burials, Late Postclassic representations of Aztec Kings, and more—contributors examine both Mesoamerican representations of the body in changing social, political, and economic conditions and the multivalent emic meanings of these representations. They explore the technology of artifact production, the body’s place in social structures and rituals, the language of the body as expressed in postures and gestures, hybrid and transformative combinations of human and animal bodies, bodily representations of social categories, body modification, and the significance of portable and fixed representations. Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands provides a wide range of insights into Mesoamerican concepts of personhood and identity, the constitution of the human body, and human relationships with gods and ancestors. It will be of great value to students and scholars of the archaeology and art history of Mexico. Contributors: Claire Billard, Danièle Dehouve, Cynthia Kristan-Graham, Melissa Logan, Sylvie Peperstraete, Patricia Plunket, Mari Carmen Serra Puche, Juliette Testard, Andrew Turner, Gabriela Uruñuela, Marcus Winter

The Neighborhood as a Social and Spatial Unit in Mesoamerican Cities

The Neighborhood as a Social and Spatial Unit in Mesoamerican Cities PDF Author: M. Charlotte Arnauld
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816599513
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Recent realizations that prehispanic cities in Mesoamerica were fundamentally different from western cities of the same period have led to increasing examination of the neighborhood as an intermediate unit at the heart of prehispanic urbanization. This book addresses the subject of neighborhoods in archaeology as analytical units between households and whole settlements. The contributions gathered here provide fieldwork data to document the existence of sociopolitically distinct neighborhoods within ancient Mesoamerican settlements, building upon recent advances in multi-scale archaeological studies of these communities. Chapters illustrate the cultural variation across Mesoamerica, including data and interpretations on several different cities with a thematic focus on regional contrasts. This topic is relatively new and complex, and this book is a strong contribution for three interwoven reasons. First, the long history of research on the “Teotihuacan barrios” is scrutinized and withstands the test of new evidence and comparison with other Mesoamerican cities. Second, Maya studies of dense settlement patterns are now mature enough to provide substantial case studies. Third, theoretical investigation of ancient urbanization all over the world is now more complex and open than it was before, giving relevance to Mesoamerican perspectives on ancient and modern societies in time and space. This volume will be of interest not only to scholars and student specialists of the Mesoamerican past but also to social scientists and urbanists looking to contrast ancient cultures worldwide.

Without History

Without History PDF Author: Jose Rabasa
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082297374X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Rabasa offers new interpretations of the meaning of history from indigenous perspectives and develops the concept of a communal temporality that is not limited by time, but rather exists within the individual, community, and culture as a living knowledge that links both past and present. Rabasa recalls the works of Marx, Lenin, and Gramsci, and contemporary south Asian subalternists Ranajit Guha and Dipesh Chakrabarty, among others. He incorporates their conceptions of communality, insurgency, resistance to hegemonic governments, and the creation of autonomous spaces as strategies employed by indigenous groups around the globe, but goes further in defining these strategies as millennial and deeply rooted in Mesoamerican antiquity.

Palaces and Courtly Culture in Ancient Mesoamerica

Palaces and Courtly Culture in Ancient Mesoamerica PDF Author: Julie Nehammer Knub
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1784910511
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
This volume collects eight recent and innovative studies spanning the breadth of Mesoamerica, from the Early Classic metropolis of Teotihuacan, to Tenochtitlan, the Late Postclassic capital of the Aztec, and from the arid central Mexican highlands in the west to the humid Maya lowlands in the east.

Social Memory in Ancient and Colonial Mesoamerica

Social Memory in Ancient and Colonial Mesoamerica PDF Author: Amos Megged
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521112273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
In Social Memory in Ancient and Colonial Mesoamerica, Amos Megged uncovers the missing links in Mesoamerican peoples' quest for their collective past. Analyzing ancient repositories of knowledge, as well as social and religious practices, he uncovers the unique procedures and formulas by which social memory was communicated and how it operated in Mesoamerica prior to the Spanish conquest. Megged's volume also suggests how social and cultural historians, ethnohistorians, and anthropologists can rethink indigenous representations of the past while taking into account the deep transformations in Mexican society during the colonial era.

Framing Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica

Framing Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica PDF Author: Lisa Delance
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1646422880
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
A fresh examination of variable social and economic processes, Framing Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica explores nascent social complexity during the Preclassic/Formative period in Mesoamerica and addresses broader social questions about egalitarian and transegalitarian prehispanic Mesoamerican cultural groups. Contributors present multiple lines of evidence demonstrating the process of social complexity and reconsider a number of traditionally accepted models and presumed tenets as a result of the wealth of empirical data that has been gathered over the past four decades. Their chapters approach complexity as a process rather than a state of being by exploring social aggregation, the emergence of ethnic affiliations, and aspects of regional and macroregional variability. Framing Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica presents some of the most recent data—and the implications of that data—for understanding the development of complex societies as human beings moved into urban environments. The book is an especially important volume for researchers and students working in Mesoamerica, as well as archaeologists taking a comparative approach to questions of complexity. Contributors: Jaime J. Awe, Sarah B. Barber, Jeffrey S. Brezezinski, M. Kathryn Brown, Ryan H. Collins, Kaitlin Crow, Lisa DeLance, Gary M. Feinman, Sara Dzul Gongora, Guy David Hepp, Arthur A. Joyce, Rodrigo Martin Morales, George Micheletti, Deborah L. Nichols, Terry G. Powis, Zoe J. Rawski, Prudence M. Rice, Michael P. Smyth, Katherine E. South, Jon Spenard, Travis W. Stanton, Wesley D. Stoner, Teresa Tremblay Wagner

Constructing Power and Place in Mesoamerica

Constructing Power and Place in Mesoamerica PDF Author: Merideth Paxton
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826359078
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Identities of power and place, as expressed in paintings from the periods before and after the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica, are the subject of this book of case studies from Central Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Maya area. These sophisticated, skillfully rendered images occur with architecture, in manuscripts, on large pieces of cloth, and on ceramics.