Preceramic Mesoamerica

Preceramic Mesoamerica PDF

Author: Jon C. Lohse

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-30

Total Pages: 713

ISBN-13: 0429620098

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Preceramic Mesoamerica delivers cutting-edge research on the Mesoamerican Paleoindian and Archaic periods. The chapters address a series of fundamental questions in American archaeology including the peopling of the Americas, human adaptations to late glacial landscapes, the Neolithic transition, and the origins of sedentism and early village life. This volume presents innovative and previously unpublished research on the Paleoindian and Archaic periods and evaluates current models in light of new findings. Examples include breakthroughs in dating Mesoamerica’s earliest sites and their implications for models of hemispheric colonization; the transition to postglacial patterns of settlement and subsistence; divergent pathways to initial sedentism; the possibility of Archaic-period monumentality; changing patterns of interregional exchange and interaction; and debates surrounding the origins of agriculture, ceramics, and full-time village life. The volume provides a new perspective on the Mesoamerican Preceramic for students and scholars in archaeology, anthropology, and history. Readers will come to understand how the Preceramic contributed to the emergence of the cultural traditions that anthropologists recognize as Mesoamerica.

Ancient Mesoamerica

Ancient Mesoamerica PDF

Author: Richard E. Blanton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-04-30

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 9780521446068

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In this revised and updated 1993 edition the authors synthesize recent research to provide a comprehensive survey of Mesoamerica.

Social Patterns in Pre-classic Mesoamerica

Social Patterns in Pre-classic Mesoamerica PDF

Author: David C. Grove

Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780884022527

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This volume is both a summation of work that has been carried out over a long period of time and a signpost pointing the way for future studies. Issues regarding gender, social identity, and landscape archaeology are present, as are the analysis of mortuary practices, questions of social hierarchy, and conjunctive studies of art and society that are in the best tradition of scholarship at Dumbarton Oaks.

Collective Action and the Reframing of Early Mesoamerica

Collective Action and the Reframing of Early Mesoamerica PDF

Author: David M. Carballo

Publisher:

Published: 2024-02-28

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 1009338692

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In considering the long trajectory of human societies, researchers have too often favored models of despotic control by the few or structural models that fail to grant agency to those with less power in shaping history. Recent scholarship demonstrates such models to be not only limiting but also empirically inaccurate. This Element reviews archaeological approaches to collective action drawing on theoretical perspectives from across the globe and case studies from prehispanic Mesoamerica. It highlights how institutions and systems of governance matter, vary over space and time, and can oscillate between more pluralistic and more autocratic forms within the same society, culture, or polity. The historical coverage examines resource dilemmas and ways of mediating them, how ritual and religion can foster both social solidarity and hierarchy, the political financing of institutions and variability in forms of governance, and lessons drawn to inform the building of more resilient communities in the present.

Framing Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica

Framing Complexity in Formative Mesoamerica PDF

Author: Lisa Delance

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2022-09-28

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1646422880

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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

Published: 2017-12-15

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0826359078

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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.

Historical Dictionary of Mesoamerica

Historical Dictionary of Mesoamerica PDF

Author: Walter Robert Thurmond Witschey

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 081087167X

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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.

Historical Dictionary of Ancient Mesoamerica

Historical Dictionary of Ancient Mesoamerica PDF

Author: Joel W. Palka

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9780810837157

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"This historical dictionary covers some of the major discoveries of the diverse investigations that have taken place throughout ancient Mesoamerican over the last 100 years."--Preface.

The A to Z of Ancient Mesoamerica

The A to Z of Ancient Mesoamerica PDF

Author: Joel W. Palka

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0810875667

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Ancient Mesoamerica drew world interest in the 19th century when photographs, drawings, and descriptions of discoveries of ruined cities in exotic locations in Mexico and Central America were published. These accounts from early explorers, archaeologists, and travelers made the cultures and archaeological sites of ancient Mesoamerica including the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Mixtec, Tarascan, Toltec, Zapotec, and other civilizations a major focus of intensive research, public and private funding, and lay interest. The A to Z of Ancient Mesoamerica covers some of the major discoveries throughout ancient Mesoamerica from the last 100 years. The results of previous and continuing research and explorations, plus recent interpretations of ancient cultures and new work at archaeological sites in Mesoamerica are summarized here. Included in this volume are information and insights on archaeological sites, material culture, social and economic organization, religion and belief systems, and the social history of ancient Mesoamerica. The entries contain geographical, chronological, historical, and interpretive data that serve as a condensed and accessible resource of reference material. Also presented here are select historical personages of ancient times and some brief notes on their lives and accomplishments taken from hieroglyphic texts, painted books or codices, and written documents and oral histories from the colonial period. With a bibliography and chronology, this text will be the perfect starting point for high school or undergraduate research, and a helpful ready-reference for more experienced scholars.