Access your Project MUSE content using one of the login options below Close(X)
Browse Results For:
An Ancient Andean Society of the Peruvian North Coast
Renowned for their monumental architecture and rich visual culture, the Moche inhabited the north coast of Peru during the Early Intermediate Period (AD 100–800). Archaeological discoveries over the past century and the dissemination of Moche artifacts to museums around the world have given rise to a widespread and continually increasing fascination with this complex culture, which expressed its beliefs about the human and supernatural worlds through finely crafted ceramic and metal objects of striking realism and visual sophistication. In this standard-setting work, an international, multidisciplinary team of scholars who are at the forefront of Moche research present a state-of-the-art overview of Moche culture. The contributors address various issues of Moche society, religion, and material culture based on multiple lines of evidence and methodologies, including iconographic studies, archaeological investigations, and forensic analyses. Some of the articles present the results of long-term studies of major issues in Moche iconography, while others focus on more specifically defined topics such as site studies, the influence of El Niño/Southern Oscillation on Moche society, the nature of Moche warfare and sacrifice, and the role of Moche visual culture in decoding social and political frameworks.
Tikal Report 27B
Occupied continuously for 1,500 years, Tikal was the most important demographic, economic, administrative, and ritual center of its region. The collection of materials recovered at Tikal is the largest and most diverse known from the Lowlands.
This book provides a major body of primary data. The artifacts, represented by such raw materials as chert and shell are classified by type, number, condition, possible ancient use, form, material, size, and such secondary modifications as decoration and reworking, as well as by spatial distribution, occurrence in the various types of structure groups, recovery context, and date. The same format, with the exception of typology, is used for unworked materials such as mineral pigments and vertebrate remains.
While few artifact reports go beyond a catalog of objects organized by type or raw material, this report puts the materials into their past cultural contexts and thus is of interest to a wide range of scholars.
Vol. 39 (2000) through current issue
Asian Perspectivesis the leading archaeological journal devoted to the prehistory of Asia and the Pacific region. In addition to archaeology, it features articles and book reviews on ethnoarchaeology, palaeonanthropology, physical anthropology, and ethnography of interest and use to the prehistorian. International specialists contribute regional reports summarizing current research and fieldwork, and present topical reports of significant sites.
Architecture, Space, and Legacy at Chinchero
This major architectural survey and analysis of the Inca royal estate at Chinchero significantly increases our understanding of how the Inca conceived, constructed, and gave meaning to their built environment.
"Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes provides a pregnant opportunity to integrate specific Mesoamerican materials into the wider discussions of major theoretical issues in the general and comparative history of religions."—History of Religions
A result of four years of cooperative research between the University of Colorado and the Templo Mayor Project of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes (formerly available as To Change Place) offers new interpretive models from the fields of archaeoastronomy, history of religion, anthropology, art history, and archaeology.
Native American Ethnogenesis and Endurance in the Modern World
A History and Archaeology of Jicarilla Apache Enclavement
The story of one of the longest-lived and most successful nomadic enclaves in North America provides a rare glimpse into the material expressions of Apache self-determination and survival. For nearly 200 years the Jicarilla Apache of New Mexico thrived in the interstices of Pueblo and Spanish settlements following their expulsion from the Plains. Critical to their success was their ability to extend key aspects of Plains-Pueblo exchange to Indian and mixed-blood communities on the fringes of colonial rule. More than other nomadic tribes, the Jicarilla played an enormous role in holding together the social fabric of New Mexican villages after the fall of the Spanish Empire.
This comprehensive study by Sunday Eiselt begins with the great Athapaskan migration out of Canada during prehis-toric times and ends with the forced settlement of the Jicarilla on the Dulce reservation in the 1880s. Eiselt combines archaeological and ethnohistorical data in an examination of Jicarilla strategies for self-preservation. She reveals the ideological and political imperatives of “belonging” that shaped their interactions with local communities and the state and that enabled them to avoid reservation life well into the 1880s. Throughout their long history, Jicarilla identity remained intact, distinctive, and discernable even as life on the reservation disrupted the intimate connections that once existed with their Hispanic and Pueblo neighbors.
The Ancient Cerén Village in Central America
On an August evening around AD 600, residents of the Cerén village in the Zapotitán Valley of what is now El Salvador were sitting down to their nightly meal when ground tremors and loud steam emissions warned of an impending volcanic eruption. The villagers fled, leaving their town to be buried under five meters of volcanic ash and forgotten until a bulldozer uncovered evidence of the extraordinarily preserved town in 1976. The most intact Precolumbian village in Latin America, Cerén has been called the "Pompeii of the New World." This book and its accompanying CD-ROM and website (ceren.colorado.edu) present complete and detailed reports of the excavations carried out at Cerén since 1978 by a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists, ethnographers, volcanologists, geophysicists, botanists, conservators, and others. The book is divided into sections that discuss the physical environment and resources, household structures and economy, special buildings and their uses, artifact analysis, and topical and theoretical issues. As the authors present and analyze Cerén’s houses and their goods, workshops, civic and religious buildings, kitchen gardens, planted fields, and garbage dumps, a new and much clearer picture of how commoners lived during the Maya Classic Period emerges. These findings constitute landmark contributions to the anthropology and archaeology of Central America.
An Interpretive Guide