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This volume accompanies a major international loan exhibition featuring more than three hundred works of art, many rarely or never before seen in the United States. It traces the development of gold working and other luxury arts in the Americas from antiquity until the arrival of Europeans in the early sixteenth century. Presenting spectacular works from recent excavations in Peru, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico, this exhibition focuses on specific places and times—crucibles of innovation—where artistic exchange, rivalry, and creativity led to the production of some of the greatest works of art known from the ancient Americas. The book and exhibition explore not only artistic practices but also the historical, cultural, social, and political conditions in which luxury arts were produced and circulated, alongside their religious meanings and ritual functions. Golden Kingdoms creates new understandings of ancient American art through a thematic exploration of indigenous ideas of value and luxury. Central to the book is the idea of the exchange of materials and ideas across regions and across time: works of great value would often be transported over long distances, or passed down over generations, in both cases attracting new audiences and inspiring new artists. The idea of exchange is at the intellectual heart of this volume, researched and written by twenty scholars based in the United States and Latin America.
This is a historical work on life in pre-Columbian America. It includes the theories of the origins of the indigenous peoples of America and the main developments in their political, cultural, and economic life. Although published about a century ago and presenting possibly outdated views, this work is still an interesting source of information and a great resource for historical research.
Errata slip inserted. Bibliography: p. 135-136.
In the past fifty years, the study of indigenous and pre-Columbian art has evolved from a groundbreaking area of inquiry in the mid-1960s to an established field of research. This period also spans the career of art historian Esther Pasztory. Few scholars have made such a broad and lasting impact as Pasztory, both in terms of our understanding of specific facets of ancient American art as well as in our appreciation of the evolving analytical tendencies related to the broader field of study as it developed and matured. The essays collected in this volume reflect scholarly rigor and new perspectives on ancient American art and are contributed by many of Pasztory’s former students and colleagues. A testament to the sheer breadth of Pasztory's accomplishments, Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas covers a wide range of topics, from Aztec picture-writing to nineteenth-century European scientific illustration of Andean sites in Peru. The essays, written by both established and rising scholars from across the field, focus on three areas: the ancient Andes, including its representation by European explorers and scholars of the nineteenth century; Classic period Mesoamerica and its uses within the cultural heritage debate of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; and Postclassic Mesoamerica, particularly the deeper and heretofore often hidden meanings of its cultural production. Figures, maps, and color plates demonstrate the vibrancy and continued allure of indigenous artworks from the ancient Americas. “Pre-Columbian art can give more,” Pasztory declares, and the scholars featured here make a compelling case for its incorporation into art theory as a whole. The result is a collection of essays that celebrates Pasztory’s central role in the development of the field of Ancient American visual studies, even as it looks toward the future of the discipline.
This stunning volume presents nearly 150 pre-Columbian works from the collection assembled by John Bourne in the 1950s and 1960s.
This exciting collection explores the interplay of religion and politics in the precolumbian Americas. Each thought-provoking contribution positions religion as a primary factor influencing political innovations in this period, reinterpreting major changes through an examination of how religion both facilitated and constrained transformations in political organization and status relations. Offering unparalleled geographic and temporal coverage of this subject, Religion and Politics in the Ancient Americas spans the entire precolumbian period, from Preceramic Peru to the Contact period in eastern North America, with case studies from North, Middle, and South America. Religion and Politics in the Ancient Americas considers the ways in which religion itself generated political innovation and thus enabled political centralization to occur. It moves beyond a "Great Tradition" focus on elite religion to understand how local political authority was negotiated, contested, bolstered, and undermined within diverse constituencies, demonstrating how religion has transformed non-Western societies. As well as offering readers fresh perspectives on specific archaeological cases, this book breaks new ground in the archaeological examination of religion and society.
A beautifully illustrated look at the forces that help cities grow—and eventually cause their destruction—told through the stories of the great civilizations of ancient America. You may think you know all of the American cities. But did you know that long before New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or Boston ever appeared on the map—thousands of years before Europeans first colonized North America—other cities were here? They grew up, fourished, and eventually disappeared in the same places that modern cities like St. Louis and Mexico City would later appear. In the pages of this book, you'll find the astonishing story of how they grew from small settlements to booming city centers—and then crumbled into ruins.
Through 250 exquisite full-color and black-and-white photos, photographer David Muench presents a superb visual interpretation of what the North American continent was like before the arrival of Europeans. Printed on high-quality paper with excellent reproduction, this is a stunning collection that will appeal to photographers as well as nature lovers.