The Highland Maya

Author : Barbara Tedlock
Publisher : UNM Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0826313582

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Time and the Highland Maya by Barbara Tedlock Pdf

Described as a landmark in the ethnographic study of the Maya, this study of ritual and cosmology among the contemporary Quiché Indians of highland Guatemala has now been updated to address changes that have occurred in the last decade. The Classic Mayan obsession with time has never been better known. Here, Barbara Tedlock redirects our attention to the present-day keepers of the ancient calendar. Combining anthropology with formal apprenticeship to a diviner, she refutes long-held ethnographic assumptions and opens a door to the order of the Mayan cosmos and its daily ritual. Unable to visit the region for over ten years, Tedlock returned in 1989 to find that observance of the traditional calendar and religion is stronger than ever, despite a brutal civil war. ". . . a well-written, highly readable, and deeply convincing contribution. . . ." --Michael Coe

Author : Robert S. Carlsen
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2011-04-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780292723986

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The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town by Robert S. Carlsen Pdf

This compelling ethnography explores the issue of cultural continuity and change as it has unfolded in the representative Guatemala Mayan town Santiago Atitlán. Drawing on multiple sources, Robert S. Carlsen argues that local Mayan culture survived the Spanish Conquest remarkably intact and continued to play a defining role for much of the following five centuries. He also shows how the twentieth-century consolidation of the Guatemalan state steadily eroded the capacity of the local Mayas to adapt to change and ultimately caused some factions to reject—even demonize—their own history and culture. At the same time, he explains how, after a decade of military occupation known as la violencia, Santiago Atitlán stood up in unity to the Guatemalan Army in 1990 and forced it to leave town. This new edition looks at how Santiago Atitlán has fared since the expulsion of the army. Carlsen explains that, initially, there was hope that the renewed unity that had served the town so well would continue. He argues that such hopes have been undermined by multiple sources, often with bizarre outcomes. Among the factors he examines are the impact of transnational crime, particularly gangs with ties to Los Angeles; the rise of vigilantism and its relation to renewed religious factionalism; the related brutal murders of followers of the traditional Mayan religion; and the apocalyptic fervor underlying these events.

Author : Allen J. Christenson
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2010-06-28
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780292789838

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Art and Society in a Highland Maya Community by Allen J. Christenson Pdf

A study of a major piece of modern Mayan religious art.

Author : Christine Eber
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 342 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2010-06-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780292789326

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Women and Alcohol in a Highland Maya Town by Christine Eber Pdf

Healing roles and rituals involving alcohol are a major source of power and identity for women and men in Highland Chiapas, Mexico, where abstention from alcohol can bring a loss of meaningful roles and of a sense of community. Yet, as in other parts of the world, alcohol use sometimes leads to abuse, whose effects must then be combated by individuals and the community. In this pioneering ethnography, Christine Eber looks at women and drinking in the community of San Pedro Chenalhó to address the issues of women’s identities, roles, relationships, and sources of power. She explores various personal and social strategies women use to avoid problem drinking, including conversion to Protestant religions, membership in cooperatives or Catholic Action, and modification of ritual forms with substitute beverages. The book’s women-centered perspective reveals important data on women and drinking not reported in earlier ethnographies of Highland Chiapas communities. Eber’s reflexive approach, blending the women’s stories, analyses, songs, and prayers with her own and other ethnographers’ views, shows how Western, individualistic approaches to the problems of alcohol abuse are inadequate for understanding women’s experiences with problem and ritual drinking in a non-Western culture. In a new epilogue, Christine Eber describes how events of the last decade, including the Zapatista uprising, have strengthened women's resolve to gain greater control over their lives by controlling the effects of alcohol in the community.

Author : Lewis Spence
Publisher : New York : AMS Press
Page : 80 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 1908
Category : Social Science
ISBN : UOM:39015005170801

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The Popol Vuh by Lewis Spence Pdf

Author : Tedlock Barbara
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 1985
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0317380516

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Time & the Highland Maya by Tedlock Barbara Pdf

Author : Roland Bunch
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 120 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 1977
Category : Indians of Central America
ISBN : UTEXAS:059173022533780

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The Highland Maya by Roland Bunch Pdf

Well complimented with photographs, this narrative offers a rounded perspective on the Maya and their changing way of life.

Author : Robert M. Hill
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015029580084

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Colonial Cakchiquels by Robert M. Hill Pdf

This case study presents a reconstruction of the culture of the Cakchiquel Maya people of highland Guatemala during the seventeenth century. The Cakchiquel had been caught up in the early phase of European empire buliding and were fully incorporated within the Spanish regime. They were subjected to a range of demands from their Spanish overloads: that they adopt a new faith, change their settlement patterns and political organization, pay tribute in goods, services and money, and more. There was also a population loss due to the introduction of Old World diseases to which the Maya people had no immunity. This loss combined with Spanish demands caused them to have to adapt and survive as a culturally distinct population.

Author : Joyce N. Bennett
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
Page : 161 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2022-02-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780817321161

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Good Maya Women by Joyce N. Bennett Pdf

"Analyzes the forced migration of Maya women from the highlands of Guatemala and their turn toward language and indigenous clothing revitalization upon their return home"--

Author : Garrett W. Cook
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2010-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780292782518

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Renewing the Maya World by Garrett W. Cook Pdf

Each year in the Highland Guatemala town of Santiago Momostenango, Maya religious societies, dance teams, and cofradías perform the annual cycle of rituals and festivals prescribed by Costumbre (syncretized Maya Christian religion), which serves to renew the cosmic order. In this richly detailed ethnography, Garrett Cook explores how these festivals of Jesucristo and the saints derive from and reenact three major ancient Maya creation myths, thus revealing patterns of continuity between contemporary expressive culture and the myths, rituals, and iconography of the Classic and Postclassic Maya. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the 1970s and renewed in the 1990s, Cook describes the expressive culture tradition performed in and by the cofradías and their dance teams. He listens as dancers and cofrades explain the meaning of service and of the major ritual symbols in the cults of the saints and Jesucristo. Comparing these symbols to iconographic evidence from Palenque and myths from the Popol Vuh, Cook persuasively argues that the expressive culture of Momostenango enacts major Maya creation myths—the transformative sunrise, the representation of the year as the life cycle of anthropomorphized nature, and the erection of an axis mundi. This research documents specific patterns of continuity and discontinuity in the communal expression of Maya religious and cosmogonic themes. Along with other recent research, it demonstrates the survival of a basic Maya pattern—the world-creating vegetative renewal cycle—in the highland Maya cults of the saints and Jesucristo.

Author : Elois Ann Berlin,Brent Berlin
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2016-04-19
Category : Ethnobiology
ISBN : 0691632170

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Medical Ethnobiology of the Highland Maya of Chiapas, Mexico by Elois Ann Berlin,Brent Berlin Pdf

Whereas most previous work on Maya healing has focused on ritual and symbolism, this book presents evidence that confirms the scientific foundations of traditional Maya medicine. Data drawn from analysis of the medical practices of two Mayan-speaking peoples, the Tzeltal and Tzotzil, reveal that they have developed a large number of herbal remedies based on a highly sophisticated understanding of the physiology and symptomatology of common diseases and on an in-depth knowledge of medicinal plants. Here Elois Ann Berlin and Brent Berlin, along with their many collaborators, provide detailed information on Maya disease classification, symptomatology, and treatment of the most significant health conditions affecting the Highland Maya, the gastrointestinal diseases. The authors base their work on broad-ranging comparative ethno-medical and ethnobotanical data collected over seven years of original field research. In describing the Mayas' understanding and treatment of gastrointestinal diseases, Berlin and Berlin show that the plants used as remedies are condition specific.> Moreover, laboratory studies demonstrate that the most commonly agreed upon herbal remedies are potentially effective against the pathogenic agents underlying specific diseases and that they strongly affect the physiological processes associated with intestinal peristalsis. These findings suggest that the traditional Maya medical system is the result of long-term explicit empirical experimentation with the effects of herbal remedies on bodily function. Originally published in 1996. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author : Jon C. Lohse,Fred Valdez
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2010-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780292778146

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Ancient Maya Commoners by Jon C. Lohse,Fred Valdez Pdf

Much of what we currently know about the ancient Maya concerns the activities of the elites who ruled the societies and left records of their deeds carved on the monumental buildings and sculptures that remain as silent testimony to their power and status. But what do we know of the common folk who labored to build the temple complexes and palaces and grew the food that fed all of Maya society? This pathfinding book marshals a wide array of archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic evidence to offer the fullest understanding to date of the lifeways of ancient Maya commoners. Senior and emerging scholars contribute case studies that examine such aspects of commoner life as settlement patterns, household organization, and subsistence practices. Their reports cover most of the Maya area and the entire time span from Preclassic to Postclassic. This broad range of data helps resolve Maya commoners from a faceless mass into individual actors who successfully adapted to their social environment and who also held primary responsibility for producing the food and many other goods on which the whole Maya society depended.

Author : Robert M. Hill II,John Monaghan
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2018-01-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781512802740

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Continuities in Highland Maya Social Organization by Robert M. Hill II,John Monaghan Pdf

Continuities in Highland Maya Social Organization innovatively combines ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and archaeological research to present the first study of the Maya community from preconquest to modern times.

Author : Liliana R. Goldín
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2011-04-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780816501175

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Global Maya by Liliana R. Goldín Pdf

In the central highland Maya communities of Guatemala, the demands of the global economy have become a way of life. This book explores how rural peoples experience economic and cultural change as their country joins the global market, focusing on their thoughts about work and sustenance as a way of learning about Guatemala’s changing economy. For more than a decade, Liliana Goldín observed in highland towns both the intensification of various forms of production and their growing links to wider markets. In this first book to compare economic ideology across a range of production systems, she examines how people make a living and how they think about their options, practices, and constraints. Drawing on interviews and surveys—even retellings of traditional narratives—she reveals how contemporary Maya respond to the increasingly globalized yet locally circumscribed conditions in which they work. Goldín presents four case studies: cottage industries devoted to garment production, vegetable growing for internal and border markets reached through direct commerce, crops grown for export, and wage labor in garment assembly factories. By comparing generational and gendered differences among workers, she reveals not only complexities of change but also how these complexities arereflected in changing attitudes, understandings, and aspirations that characterize people’s economic ideology. Further, she shows that as rural people take on diverse economic activities, they also reinterpret their views on such matters as accumulation, cooperation, competition, division of labor, and community solidarity. Global Maya explores global processes in local terms, revealing the interplay of traditional values, household economics, and the inescapable conditions of demographic growth, a shrinking land base, and a global economy always looking for cheap labor. It offers a wealth of new insights not only for Maya scholars but also for anyone concerned with the effects of globalization on the Third World.

Author : Patricia B. Altman,Caroline D. West
Publisher : University of California Los Angeles, Fowler Museum of Cultural History
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : UTEXAS:059173008331710

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Threads of Identity by Patricia B. Altman,Caroline D. West Pdf