Chapters include: High Resolution Documentation of the Murals of San Bartolo, Guatemala, by William Saturno....Strontium Isotopic Identification of an Early Classic Migrant to Punta de Chimino, Guatemala, by Lori E. Wright and Bruce R. Bachand....Communal and Personal Hunting Shrines Around Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, by Linda A. Brown....The Discovery of Plan de Ayutla, Mexico, by Luis Alberto Martos López....Painted Lithic Artifacts from Piedras Negras, Guatemala, by Zachary X. Hruby and Gene Ware....The Womb of the World: The Cuauhxicalli and Other Offering Bowls of Ancient and Contemporary Mesoamerica, by Karl Taube

Maya Archaeology 1: Featuring the Ancient Maya Murals of San Bartolo, Guatemala

Politics & Social Sciences

Karl Taube

William Saturno

Bruce Bachand

Linda Brown

Luis Alberto Martos

Zachary Hruby

Gene Ware

Lori Wright

Archaeology

Precolumbia Mesoweb Press

Noted anthropologist Bruce Love's classic text on Maya shamanism is now revised and fully illustrated with color photographs by the author. A first-hand account based on years of fieldwork, it tells how Maya shamans in Yucatan manipulate and orchestrate the spirit world that surrounds them. Spirit beings can be allies or enemies, helpers or pranksters, life givers or death dealers. The shaman with his rituals and ceremonies guides his fellow villagers through this cosmic jungle. Dr. Bruce Love, Ph.D., has written a landmark book on Maya shamanism as practiced in Yucatan today, representing 30 years of fieldwork among the living Maya in remote forest villages and hamlets. More than 75 color photographs show details of ceremonies never before seen in the anthropological literature. Love's narrative and analysis come from living in the villages, speaking Mayan, gaining the trust of the local Maya shamans, and participating in the ceremonies. Written for the general reader, these eye-witness accounts go below the surface and into the consciousness of the Maya people themselves.

Maya Shamanism Today: Connecting with the Cosmos in Rural Yucatan (Revised Second Edition)

Bruce Love

From 1895 to 1900 the explorer Teobert Maler traveled the Usumacinta River of Mexico and Guatemala on a series of missions in Maya archaeology. Over the course of his travels, Maler mapped, photographed, and described many of the most significant Precolumbian settlements along the Usumacinta. Among his most important contributions was the photographic documentation of inscribed monuments (some later damaged or destroyed and no longer extant) that provide rich histories for ancient Maya kingdoms. Today, many of the sites that Maler visited have receded into obscurity, and a few have become lost entirely. In February of 2010, the authors set out to re-identify sites first reported by Maler over a century ago, provide updated documentation of those sites, and locate new sites overlooked by Maler during his expedition, which was conducted when dense forest still covered the landscape. This book documents that research.

Revisiting Maler's Usumacinta: Recent Archaeological Investigations in Chiapas, Mexico

Andrew K. Scherer

Charles Golden

The ruins of Calakmul, Mexico, have produced a series of significant archaeological finds over the years. Among the most recent and important is a buried platform whose exterior is covered in figural murals. Mural paintings are among the greatest artistic achievements of the Maya, and yet very few have survived ancient destruction or the subsequent ravages of the tropical climate. Thanks to these well-preserved images we are offered an important view of Maya society, one very different from the normal representations of the lordly elite or supernatural. Maya Archaeology 2 offers extensive photographic coverage of this important find and others, together with numerous insights by leading authors into the world of the ancient Maya.

Maya Archaeology 2: Featuring the Ancient Maya Murals of Calakmul, Mexico

David, Stuart

Ramón Carrasco Vargas

María Cordeiro

Arnoldo González Cruz

Guillermo Bernal Romero

Greg Borgstede

Simon, Martin

Maya kings led opulent lives and, in death, lay in spectacular tombs. This book, illustrated with over 350 photographs and graphics in full color, publishes a royal crypt found in 2010 at El Zotz, Guatemala. Covered by a temple with celestial symbols, the tomb proved unusually rich. The main body belonged to the likely founder of a dynasty in the fourth century AD. The treasure with him included effigy ceramics, jade masks, regalia, textiles, objects of decayed wood, straw mats, necklaces, and paint cakes of specular hematite. For companions he had sacrificed infants and children, some decapitated, who were then burned and placed in bowls. Above, his temple displayed stucco effigies highlighting the sun at night, conceived to be jaguar-like and powdered with stars. Built to house a dead king, the temple continued for a century or more as a dynastic memorial, visible for miles. During its heyday, red paint blazed at sunrise and sunset, a sign of daily renewal for the dead king and testimony to a powerful story of dynastic origin and survival. This volume reports in detail on the excavation of the tomb, as clarified by numerous drawings, photographs, and technical studies by renowned experts. Temple of the Night Sun stands as one of the most important and revealing accounts of royal interment in the New World.

Temple of the Night Sun: A Royal Maya Tomb at El Diablo, Guatemala

Sarah Newman

Stephen Houston

Andrew Scherer

Edwin Roman

Thomas Garrison

Nicholas Carter

Alyce de Carteret

Continuing in the tradition of the Maya Archaeology series from Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, this volume offers chapters by leading authorities on discoveries and research in the field of Maya archaeology. Topics include a royal tomb at Palenque, an early Maya ceremonial center at Ceibal, a hieroglyphic stairway at El Palmar recording a pilgrimage to distant Copan, and breakthrough insights into Maya divinity. The volume is accompanied by a facsimile of an authentic Maya screenfold book, the Grolier Codex. 
 Chapters include: The Text and Context of the Cuychen Vase, Macal Valley, Belize, by Christophe Helmke, Jaime J. Awe, Shawn G. Morton, and Gyles Iannone....Ajpach' Waal: The Hieroglyphic Stairway of the Guzman Group of El Palmar, Campeche, Mexico, by Kenichiro Tsukamoto and Octavio Esparza....Middle Preclassic Caches from Ceibal, Guatemala, by Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan....The Funerary Complex of Temple XX: Offering and Ritual in the Early Classic Period of Palenque, by Arnoldo Gonzalez Cruz and Joshua Balcells....The Fourth Maya Codex, by Michael Coe, Mary Miller, Stephen Houston, and Karl Taube...Royal Death, Tombs, and Cosmic Landscapes: Early Classic Maya Tomb Murals from Rio Azul, Guatemala, by Mary Jane Acuña...The Old Man of the Maya Universe: A Unitary Dimension to Ancient Maya Religion, by Simon Martin.

Maya Archaeology 3: Featuring the Grolier Codex

Michael Coe

Kenichiro Tsukamoto

Mary Miller

Takeshi Inomata

Daniela Triadan

Christophe Helmke

Jaime Awe

Shawn Morton

Gyles Iannone

Octavio Esparza

Arnoldo Gonzalez

Joshua Balcells

Mary Jane Acuña

Among the most striking and enigmatic objects of the Classic Maya are the chipped stone artifacts commonly referred to as eccentric flints. These have been the focus of research among Maya scholars for close to a century. Unfortunately, most elaborate eccentrics in museums and private collections were looted and thus are lacking in information about their archaeological context and dating. Therefore most remain as intricately elaborate, enigmatic artifacts, with their meaning, iconography, and objectives of manufacture and placement forever hidden from scholarship. This study focuses on a cache of nine eccentrics and three bifaces placed within the Rosalila structure at Copan, Honduras, and excavated in 1990. The nine are the largest and most elaborate set of eccentrics ever excavated in the Maya area, and because they required extraordinary skill, indicting their unusual importance, their manufacture is considered here in detail. Given that eccentrics were complex representations of Maya art, this study provides the interpretive iconographic context of elaborate eccentrics in Mesoamerica in general and of these nine eccentrics from the Rosalila cache in particular.

Protecting Sacred Space: Rosalila's Eccentric Chert Cache at Copan and Eccentrics among the Classic Maya

Ricardo Agurcia Fasquelle

Payson Sheets

Palenque es una meca turística, con casi un millón de visitantes cada año. Éstos llegan de todas partes del mundo y la mayoría llegan al sitio en incontables autobuses. No es difícil adivinar qué es lo que llama a estos visitantes a las afueras de un pueblo pequeño del noreste de Chiapas, México, aparentemente alejado de todo. Los atrae la singular belleza del arte y la arquitectura de esta antigua capital maya. Para la mayor parte de los visitantes, Palenque ha sido durante mucho tiempo la ciudad de Pakal y de Kan Bahlam, y otros gobernantes parecen dejarse de lado, considerándolos apenas como reverenciados ancestros o como sucesores menos importantes de este par de gobernantes, que fueron respectivamente padre e hijo. Esta imagen cambió dramáticamente a partir de 1998, cuando el Proyecto Grupo de las Cruces de PARI, con Merle Greene Robertson y Alfonso Morales Cleveland a la cabeza, se propuso llevar a cabo la primera investigación seria del Templo XIX, que se erguía apenas al sur de los famosos edificios del Grupo de las Cruces. Aunque las esculturas del Templo XIX de Palenque y la importancia histórica de sus textos ya se han publicado de la manera más completa y hermosa en un libro de David Stuart, nunca se han publicado todos los materiales arqueológicos, ni los resultados de los análisis de materiales, ni los detalles de las excavaciones en el templo. En este volumen, tenemos aquí por primera vez una colaboración entre historia y arqueología, con el fin de pintar la imagen completa de esta espectacular y hasta hace poco casi desconocida obra maestra de K inich Ahkal Mo Nahb.

Excavaciones en el Templo XIX de Palenque, Chiapas, México (Spanish Edition)

History

Cuevas García, Martha

Morales Cleveland, Alfonso

Americas

Maya archaeologist Frans Blom (1893-1963) was among the last great explorers in Mesoamerica and did pioneering work at major Olmec and Maya sites such as La Venta, Palenque, Tonina, and Uxmal. Restless Blood is the first biography of Blom to draw extensively on archival sources in Denmark, Mexico, and the U.S. Born into a wealthy Danish family in Copenhagen, Blom first came to Mexico in 1919 and worked his way from an oil scout to become director of the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane University in New Orleans and a successful Maya scholar, known for his great expeditions and for books like Tribes and Temples (1926-27). Moving back to Mexico in 1943, Blom and his second wife Getrude Duby founded Na Bolom, the famous research center and library in the highland town of San Cristóbal de las Casas. Blom's story is one of great success and terrible downfall, torn as he was between his eminent intuition, alcoholism, and his all too restless blood. Illustrated with more than 100 photos and drawings, many previously unpublished. With a preface by Michael D. Coe.

Restless Blood: Frans Blom, Explorer and Maya Archaeologist

Biographies & Memoirs

Leifer, Tore

Nielsen, Jesper

Reunert, Toke Sellner

Travelers & Explorers

Studies in Ancient Mesoamerican Art and Architecture: Selected Works by Karl Andreas Taube, Volume 1

Karl Andreas Taube

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Precolumbia Mesoweb Press publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Precolumbia Mesoweb Press