Mesoamerican Memory

2012-11-08

Rather than dividing Mesoamerica’s past into pre-contact, colonial, and modern periods, the essays in this volume emphasize continuity from the pre-conquest era to the present, underscoring the ongoing importance of indigenous texts in ...

Author: Stephanie Wood

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

ISBN: 9780806188096

Category: History

Page: 328

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Euro-Americans see the Spanish conquest as the main event in the five-century history of Mesoamerica, but the people who lived there before contact never gave up their own cultures. Both before and after conquest, indigenous scribes recorded their communities’ histories and belief systems, as well as the events of conquest and its effects and aftermath. Today, the descendants of those native historians in modern-day Mexico and Guatemala still remember their ancestors’ stories. In Mesoamerican Memory, volume editors Amos Megged and Stephanie Wood have gathered the latest scholarship from contributors around the world to compare these various memories and explore how they were preserved and altered over time. Rather than dividing Mesoamerica’s past into pre-contact, colonial, and modern periods, the essays in this volume emphasize continuity from the pre-conquest era to the present, underscoring the ongoing importance of indigenous texts in creating and preserving community identity, history, and memory. In addition to Nahua and Maya recollections, contributors examine the indigenous traditions of Mixtec, Zapotec, Tarascan, and Totonac peoples. Close analysis of pictorial and alphabetic manuscripts, and of social and religious rituals, yields insight into community history and memory, political relations, genealogy, ethnic identity, and portrayals of the Spanish invaders. Drawing on archaeology, art history, ethnology, ethnohistory, and linguistics, the essays consider the function of manuscripts and ritual in local, regional, and, now, national settings. Several scholars highlight direct connections between the collective memory of indigenous communities and the struggles of contemporary groups. Such modern documents as land titles, for example, gain legitimacy by referring to ancestral memory. Crossing disciplinary, methodological, and temporal boundaries, Mesoamerican Memory advances our understanding of collective memory in Mexico and Guatemala. Through diverse sources—pictorial and alphabetic, archaeological, archival, and ethnographic—readers gain a glimpse into indigenous remembrances that, without the research exhibited here, might have remained unknown to the outside world.

Social Memory in Ancient and Colonial Mesoamerica

2010-02-26

The ancient, subtextual contents of such acts, their distinct formulas, lingered on
in the indigenous social memory well into the mid-colonial period. WHAT IS THE
SIGNIFICANCE OF FOUNDATIONAL EVENTS IN MESOAMERICAN MEMORY ...

Author: Amos Megged

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 9780521112277

Category: History

Page: 342

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Before the Spanish Conquest and well into the eighteenth century, Mesoamerican peoples believed that "time" and "space" were contained in earthly and heavenly receptacles that were visualized metaphorically. This circumscribed space contained the abodes of the dead. There, deities and ancestral spirits could be revived and the living could communicate with them. 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. He also explores how cherished and revived practices evolved, how they were adapted to changing circumstances, and how they helped various ethnic groups cope with the tribulations of colonization and Christianization. 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.

Mesoamerican Manuscripts

2018-12-20

Painted Books and Indigenous Knowledge in Mesoamerica: Manuscript Studies
in Honor of Mary Elizabeth Smith. ... Itz ́aat and Tlamatini: The “Wise Man” as
keeper of Maya and Nahua Collective Memory, in Mesoamerican Memory:
Enduring ...

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

ISBN: 9789004388116

Category: History

Page: 508

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Mesoamerican Manuscripts: New Scientific Approaches and Interpretations presents and connects a wide range of high-tech scientific and cultural-interpretative studies of pre-colonial and early colonial Mesoamerican manuscripts.

Memory Traces

2015-10-15

In Memory Traces, art historians and archaeologists come together to examine the nature of sacred space in Mesoamerica.

Author: Cynthia Kristan-Graham

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

ISBN: 9781607323778

Category: Social Science

Page: 264

View: 110

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In Memory Traces, art historians and archaeologists come together to examine the nature of sacred space in Mesoamerica. Through five well-known and important centers of political power and artistic invention in Mesoamerica—Tetitla at Teotihuacan, Tula Grande, the Mound of the Building Columns at El Tajín, the House of the Phalli at Chichén Itzá, and Tonina—contributors explore the process of recognizing and defining sacred space, how sacred spaces were viewed and used both physically and symbolically, and what theoretical approaches are most useful for art historians and archaeologists seeking to understand these places. Memory Traces acknowledges that the creation, use, abandonment, and reuse of sacred space have a strongly recursive relation to collective memory and meanings linked to the places in question and reconciles issues of continuity and discontinuity of memory in ancient Mesoamerican sacred spaces. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Mesoamerican studies and material culture, art historians, architectural historians, and cultural anthropologists. Contributors: Laura M. Amrhein, Nicholas P. Dunning, Rex Koontz, Cynthia Kristan-Graham, Matthew G. Looper, Travis Nygard, Keith M. Prufer, Matthew H. Robb, Patricia J. Sarro, Kaylee Spencer, Eric Weaver, Linnea Wren

Archaeometallurgy in Mesoamerica

2012-01-15

1, 2010) and “Memories of a Kingdom: The Tarascan and Nahua Foundation of
PreHispanic Tzintzuntzan, West Mexico,” in Mesoamerican Memory: Enduring
Systems of Remembrance, edited by Amos Megged and Stephanie Wood (
Norman: ...

Author: Aaron N. Shugar

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

ISBN: 9781457174056

Category: Social Science

Page: 288

View: 335

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"This book will be a basic reference on the topic for many years to come, and will remain an essential source even as new field and laboratory studies develop. It is by far the best reference for metallurgy within the ancient Mesoamerican world system, and will be important for comparative studies between Mesoamerican and other early civilizations."—Phil Weigand, Colegio de Michoacán Presenting the latest in archaeometallurgical research in a Mesoamerican context, Archaeometallurgy in Mesoamerica brings together up-to-date research from the most notable scholars in the field. These contributors analyze data from a variety of sites, examining current approaches to the study of archaeometallurgy in the region as well as new perspectives on the significance metallurgy and metal objects had in the lives of its ancient peoples. The chapters are organized following the cyclical nature of metals—beginning with extracting and mining ore, moving to smelting and casting of finished objects, and ending with recycling and deterioration back to the original state once the object is no longer in use. Data obtained from archaeological investigations, ethnohistoric sources, ethnographic studies, along with materials science analyses, are brought to bear on questions related to the integration of metallurgy into local and regional economies, the sacred connotations of copper objects, metallurgy as specialized crafting, and the nature of mining, alloy technology, and metal fabrication.

The White Shaman Mural

2016-11-29

Shamanistic Survivals in Mesoamerican Religion. Actas del XLI Congreso
Internacional ... In Mesoamerican Memory: Enduring Systems of Remembrance,
edited by Amos Megged and Stephanie Wood, pp. 193–214. University of
Oklahoma ...

Author: Carolyn E. Boyd

Publisher: University of Texas Press

ISBN: 9781477310304

Category: Social Science

Page: 219

View: 435

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Folded plate (1 leaf, 39 x 61 cm, folded to 19 x 16 cm) in pocket.

Memories of Conquest

2012

Historians of Mesoamerica looking for threads of continuity with the precolonial
past, newly rewoven into the fabric of colonial ... the Mexicanos of Ciudad Vieja
maintained a persistent, dynamic memory of their particular Mesoamerican
history.

Author: Laura E. Matthew

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

ISBN: 9780807835371

Category: History

Page: 318

View: 399

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Indigenous allies helped the Spanish gain a foothold in the Americas. What did these Indian conquistadors expect from the partnership, and what were the implications of their involvement in Spain's New World empire? Laura Matthew's study of Ciudad Vieja,

Houses in a Landscape

2009-01-01

In Houses in a Landscape, Julia A. Hendon examines the connections between social identity and social memory using archaeological research on indigenous societies that existed more than one thousand years ago in what is now Honduras.

Author: Julia A. Hendon

Publisher: Duke University Press

ISBN: 9780822391722

Category: Social Science

Page: 309

View: 642

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In Houses in a Landscape, Julia A. Hendon examines the connections between social identity and social memory using archaeological research on indigenous societies that existed more than one thousand years ago in what is now Honduras. While these societies left behind monumental buildings, the remains of their dead, remnants of their daily life, intricate works of art, and fine examples of craftsmanship such as pottery and stone tools, they left only a small body of written records. Despite this paucity of written information, Hendon contends that an archaeological study of memory in such societies is possible and worthwhile. It is possible because memory is not just a faculty of the individual mind operating in isolation, but a social process embedded in the materiality of human existence. Intimately bound up in the relations people develop with one another and with the world around them through what they do, where and how they do it, and with whom or what, memory leaves material traces. Hendon conducted research on three contemporaneous Native American civilizations that flourished from the seventh century through the eleventh CE: the Maya kingdom of Copan, the hilltop center of Cerro Palenque, and the dispersed settlement of the Cuyumapa valley. She analyzes domestic life in these societies, from cooking to crafting, as well as public and private ritual events including the ballgame. Combining her findings with a rich body of theory from anthropology, history, and geography, she explores how objects—the things people build, make, use, exchange, and discard—help people remember. In so doing, she demonstrates how everyday life becomes part of the social processes of remembering and forgetting, and how “memory communities” assert connections between the past and the present.

Journal of Mesoamerican Studies

2012

2011 Producción artesanal y especializada en Mesoamérica : áreas de actividad
y procesos productivos . Universidad ... Megged , Amos and Stephanie Wood
2012 Mesoamerican memory : Enduring systems of remembrance . University of
 ...

Author:

Publisher:

ISBN: UCLA:L0106184500

Category: Central America

Page:

View: 288

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Native Mesoamerican Spirituality

1980

... which he preserved the memory of his past and his own views on things
human and divine. Extremely important achievements of the Mesoamerican
peoples were actually their discoveries of precise systems of measuring the
passing of time ...

Author: Miguel León Portilla

Publisher: Paulist Press

ISBN: 0809122316

Category: Religion

Page: 300

View: 150

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This volume presents a carefully edited and translated collection of Pre-Columbian ancient spiritual texts. It presents relevant examples of those sacred writings of the indigenous peoples of Central America, especially Mexico, that have survived destruction. The majority of texts were conceived in the 950-1521 A.D. period. Their authors were primarily anonymous sages, priests and members of the ancient nobility. Most were written in Nahuath (also known as Aztec or Mexican), in Yucatec and Quiche-Maya languages.

Mesoamerican Studies

1969

Table I Contemporary and Inhabited - - - - ( See Text and Other Tables ) - - - - -
Contemporary but Uninhabited 11 19 15 l 16 l 1 1 5 | 27 Out - of - Memory but
with Glaze Ware sherds 9 9 12 18 129 Out - of - Memory and without Sherd
Cover 49 ...

Author:

Publisher:

ISBN: STANFORD:36105015902203

Category: Illinois

Page:

View: 433

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Twin Tollans

2007

In Smoke and Mist : Mesoamerican Studies in Memory of Thelma D . Sullivan (
Kathryn Josserand and Karen Dakin , eds . ) : 289 - 327 . BAR International
Series 402 . British Archaeological Reports , Oxford , England . Pohl , Mary E . D .
, and ...

Author: Cynthia Kristan-Graham

Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks

ISBN: 0884023230

Category: History

Page: 640

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This volume had its beginnings in the two-day colloquium, "Rethinking Chichén Itzá, Tula and Tollan," that was held at Dumbarton Oaks. The selected essays revisit long-standing questions regarding the nature of the relationship between Chichen Itza and Tula. Rather than approaching these questions through the notions of migrations and conquests, these essays place the cities in the context of the emerging social, political, and economic relationships that took shape during the transition from the Epiclassic period in Central Mexico, the Terminal Classic period in the Maya region, and the succeeding Early Postclassic period.

National Narratives in Mexico

2006

The Memory of the Kingdom of Teotihuacán Perhaps it was Teotihuacán , the
State that dominated the central part of Mesoamerica for more than six centuries ,
that canonized the symbols of power and gave them a Mesoamerican dimension
.

Author: Enrique Florescano

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

ISBN: 0806137010

Category: History

Page: 430

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If history is written by the victors, then as the rulers of a nation change, so too does the history. Mexico has had many distinct periods of history, demonstrating clearly that the tale changes with the writer. In National Narratives in Mexico, Enrique Florescano examines each historical vision of Mexico as it was interpreted in its own time, revealing the influences of national or ethnic identity, culture, and evolving concepts of history and national memory. Florescano shows how the image of Mexico today is deeply rooted in ideas of past Mexicos—ancient Mexico, colonial Mexico, revolutionary Mexico—and how these ideas can be more fully understood by examining Mexico’s past historians. An awareness of the historian’s cultural perspective helps us to understand which types of evidence would be considered valid in constructing a national narrative. These considerations are important in modern Mexican historiography, as historians begin to question the validity of Mexico’s “collective memory.” Enhanced by more than two hundred drawings, photographs, and maps, National Narratives in Mexico offers a new vision of Mexico’s turbulent history.

Mestiz Scripts Digital Migrations and the Territories of Writing

2008-05-15

With the defeat of the Aztec Empire and the Triple Alliance , Mesoamerica ' s
highly developed education system and ... Their second responsibility was to
reconstruct Mesoamerican memory by literally rewriting the codices that had
been ...

Author: Damián Baca

Publisher: New Concepts in Latino America

ISBN: UOM:39015076139396

Category: History

Page: 210

View: 682

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Conventional scholarship on written communication positions the Western alphabet as a precondition for literacy. Thus, pictographic, non-verbal writing practices of Mesoamerica remain obscured by representations of lettered speech. This book examines how contemporary [email protected] scripts challenge alphabetic dominance, thereby undermining the colonized territories of "writing." Strategic weavings of Aztec and European inscription systems not only promote historically-grounded accounts of how recorded information is expressed across cultures, but also speak to emerging studies on "visual/multimodal" education. Baca-Espinosa argues that [email protected] literacies advance "new" ways of reading and writing, applicable to diverse classrooms of the twenty-first century.

Pre Columbian Landscapes of Creation and Origin

2008-03-12

Frauke Sachse Mesoamerican myths of origin typically involve the concept of
migration. ... a concept which may have deep roots in the cultural memory of the
Mesoamerican past and calls for a re-analysis of Mesoamerican migration myths.

Author: John Staller

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

ISBN: 0387769102

Category: History

Page: 389

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Pre-Columbian Andean and Mesoamerican cultures have inspired a special fascination among historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, as well as the general public. As two of the earliest known and studied civilizations, their origin and creation mythologies hold a special interest. The existing and Pre-Columbian cultures from these regions are particularly known for having a strong connection with the natural landscape, and weaving it into their mythologies. A landscape approach to archaeology in these areas is uniquely useful shedding insight into their cultural beliefs, practices, and values. The ways in which these cultures imbued their landscape with symbolic significance influenced the settlement of the population, the construction of monuments, as well as their rituals and practices. This edited volume combines research on Pre-Columbian cultures throughout Mesoamerica and South America, examining their constructed monuments and ritual practices. It explores the foundations of these cultures, through both the creation mythologies of ancient societies as well as the tangible results of those beliefs. It offers insight on specific case studies, combining evidence from the archaeological record with sacred texts and ethnohistoric accounts. The patterns developed throughout this work shed insight on the effect that perceived sacredness can have on the development of culture and society. This comprehensive and much-needed work will be of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists focused on Pre-Columbian studies, as well as those in the fields of cultural or religious studies with a broader geographic focus.

Commoner Ritual and Ideology in Ancient Mesoamerica

2007-01-30

The study of collective memory , also called public or social memory ( Hendon
2000 ; R . Joyce 2000b ; Shackel 2001 ; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003 ) , was
pioneered by the Durkheim - influenced French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs .

Author: Nancy Gonlin

Publisher:

ISBN: UVA:X030109550

Category: Social Science

Page: 304

View: 459

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This volume explores the ritual life of Mesoamerica's common citizens, inside and outside of the domestic sphere, from Formative through Postclassic periods. Building from the premise that ritual and ideological expression inhered at all levels of society in Mesoamerica, the contributors demonstrate that ideology did not emanate solely from exalted individuals and that commoner ritual expression was not limited to household contexts. Taking an empirical approach to this under-studied and under-theorized area, contributors use material evidence to discover how commoner status conditioned the expression of ideas and values.

Ritual Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerica

1984

Memory Clothing : Costumes Associated with Aztec Human Sacrifice PATRICIA
RIEFF ANAWALT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES IN THE
COURSE OF RESEARCH into depictions of ancient Mesoamerican Iclothing , I
have ...

Author: Elizabeth Hill Boone

Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Pub Service

ISBN: UVA:X002736700

Category: Religion

Page: 247

View: 234

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Collected Works in Mesoamerican Linguistics and Archaeology

1998

We have tracings of the mural paintings as seen on the walls of the inner
chamber of the monument raised by the queen of Itza to the memory of her
husband , Chac - Mool . Stephens mistook it for a shrine where the winners at the
games of ...

Author: Eduard Seler

Publisher:

ISBN: UOM:39015047482479

Category: Aztecs

Page: 328

View: 266

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