Search results for ""author stephen houston""

In this thought-provoking book, preeminent scholar Stephen Houston turns his attention to the crucial role of young males in Classic Maya society, drawing on evidence from art, writing, and material culture. The Gifted Passage establishes that adolescent men in Maya art were the subjects and makers of hieroglyphics, painted ceramics, and murals, in works that helped to shape and reflect masculinity in Maya civilization. The political volatility of the Classic Maya period gave male adolescents valuable status as potential heirs, and many of the most precious surviving ceramics likely celebrated their coming-of-age rituals. The ardent hope was that youths would grow into effective kings and noblemen, capable of leadership in battle and service in royal courts. Aiming to shift mainstream conceptions of the Maya, Houston argues that adolescent men were not simply present in images and texts, but central to both.

Read more less

In 1950, Dana Lamb, an explorer of some notoriety, stumbled on a Maya ruin in the tropical forests of northern Guatemala. Lamb failed to record the location of the site he called Laxtunich, turning his find into the mystery at the center of this book. The lintels he discovered there, long since looted, are probably of a set with two others that are among the masterworks of Maya sculpture from the Classic period. Using fieldwork, physical evidence, and Lamb's expedition notes, the authors identify a small area with archaeological sites where the carvings were likely produced. Remarkably, the vividly colored lintels, replete with dynastic and cosmic information, can be assigned to a carver, Mayuy, who sculpted his name on two of them. To an extent nearly unique in ancient America, Mayuy can be studied over time as his style developed and his artistic ambition grew. An in-depth analysis of Laxtunich Lintel 1 examines how Mayuy grafted celestial, seasonal, and divine identities onto a local magnate and his overlord from the kingdom of Yaxchilan, Mexico. This volume contextualizes the lintels and points the way to their reprovenancing and, as an ultimate aim, repatriation to Guatemala.

Read more less

The definitive history of the Maya, fully updated with the latest archaeological studies. The Maya has long been established as the best, most readable introduction to the ancient Maya on the market today. This classic book has been updated by distilling the latest scholarship for the general reader and student. This tenth edition incorporates the most recent archaeological and epigraphic findings, which continue to proceed at a fast pace, along with full-colour illustrations. The new material includes evidence of the earliest human occupants of the Maya region and the beginnings of agriculture and settled life; analysis from lidar on swampy areas, such as Usumacinta, that show enormous rectangle earthworks, including Aguada Fénix, dating from 1050 to 750 BC; and recent advances in decoding Maya writing and imagery. It also expands on information on the roles of women, courtiers and outsiders; covers novel research about Maya cities, including research into water quality, marketplaces, fortifications and integrated road systems; and features coverage of more recent Maya history, including the displacement and mistreatment of the Maya people, along with growing affirmations of their cultural identity and rights. Highlighting the vitality of current scholarship about this brilliant culture, The Maya remains the gold standard introductory book on the subject.

Read more less

This volume gathers papers from the first conference ever to be held on the disappearance of writing systems, in Oxford in March 2004. While the invention and decipherment of writing systems have long been focuses of research, their eclipse or replacement have been little studied. Because writing is so important in many cultures and civilizations, its disappearance - followed by a period without it or by replacement by a different writing system - is of almost equal significance to invention as a mark of radical change. Probably more writing systems have disappeared than survived in the last five thousand years. Case studies from the Old and New Worlds are presented, ranging over periods from the first millennium BC to the present. In order to address many types of transmission, the broadest possible definition of 'writing' is used, notably including Mexican pictography and the Andean khipu system.One chapter discusses the larger proportion of known human societies which have not possessed complex material codes like writing, offering an alternative perspective on the long-term transmission of socially salient subjects. A concluding essay draws out common themes and offers an initial synthesis of results. This volume offers a new perspective on approaches to writing that will be significant for the understanding of writing systems and their social functions, literacy, memory, and high-cultural communication systems in general.

Read more less