Popol Vuh, the Quiché Mayan book of creation is not only the most important text in the native language of the Americas, it is also an extraordinary document of the human imagination. It begins with the deeds of Mayan Gods in the darkness of a primeval sea and ends with the radiant splendor of the Mayan Lords who founded the Quiché Kingdom in the Guatemalan highlands. Originally written in Mayan hieroglyphs, it was translated into the Roman alphabet in the 16th century. The new edition o...

Here is one of the most important surviving works of pre-Columbian civilization, Rabinal Achi, a Mayan drama set a century before the arrival of the Spanish, produced by the translator of the best selling Popol Vuh. The first direct translation into English from Quiché Maya, based on the original text, Rabinal Achi is the story of city-states, war, and nobility, of diplomacy, mysticism, and psychic journeys. Cawek of the Forest People has been captured by Man of ...

Here is one of the most important surviving works of pre-Columbian civilization, Rabinal Achi, a Mayan drama set a century before the arrival of the Spanish, produced by the translator of the best selling Popol Vuh. The first direct translation into English from Quiché Maya, based on the original text, Rabinal Achi is the story of city-states, war, and nobility, of diplomacy, mysticism, and psychic journeys. Cawek of the Forest People has been captured by Man of ...

This exploration of the influence of Mayan hieroglyphics on the great American poet Charles Olson (1910–1970) is an important document in the history of New World verse. Olson spent six months in the Yucatan in 1951 studying Maya culture and language, an interlude that has been largely overlooked by students of his work. Like Olson and Robert Creeley, Olson’s disciple who published Olson’s letters from Mexico, the poet Dennis Tedlock taught at the University of Buffalo. Unlike his two pred...

Page by page, this book takes us on a journey through the built world that ranges from Greece to Guatemala and from New York to San Francisco. Tedlock practices what he calls photowriting, a creative process that brings photographer and writer together in the same person. It may be true enough that a photograph can show more than words can say, but it is equally true that words can say more than a photograph can show. A third space opens up in the middle, where the viewer reader c...

Numerous archaeological projects have found substantial evidence of the military nature of Maya society, and warfare is a frequent theme of Maya art. Maya Gods of War investigates the Classic period Maya gods who were associated with weapons of war and the flint and obsidian from which those weapons were made.Author Karen Bassie-Sweet traces the semantic markers used to distinguish flint from other types of stone, surveys various types of Chahk thunderbolt deities and thei...

The definitive history of the Maya, fully updated with the latest archaeological studies and featuring full-color illustrations.The Maya has long been established as the best, most readable introduction to the ancient Maya by experts Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston. In this new edition, this classic has been updated by distilling the latest scholarship for the general reader and student.This edition incorporates the most recent archaeological an...

An analysis of the intellectual and emotional life of ancient Mesoamerican people through studies of figural works and inscriptions.All of human experience flows from bodies that feel, express emotion, and think about what such experiences mean. But is it possible for us, embodied as we are in a particular time and place, to know how people of long ago thought about the body and its experiences? In this groundbreaking book, three leading experts on the Classic Maya...

Northeast of modern-day Mexico City stand the remnants of one of the world's largest preindustrial cities, Teotihuacan. Monumental in scale, Teotihuacan is organized along a three-mile-long thoroughfare, the Avenue of the Dead, that leads up to the massive Pyramid of the Moon. Lining the avenue are numerous plazas and temples, which indicate that the city once housed a large population that engaged in complex rituals and ceremonies. Although scholars have studied Teotihuacan for over a cen...

Winner, Association for Latin American Art Book Award, 2010The Maya of Mexico and Central America have performed ritual dances for more than two millennia. Dance is still an essential component of religious experience today, serving as a medium for communication with the supernatural. During the Late Classic period (AD 600-900), dance assumed additional importance in Maya royal courts through an association with feasting and gift exchange. These performances allowe...

As archaeologists peel away the jungle covering that has both obscured and preserved the ancient Maya cities of Mexico and Central America, other scholars have only a limited time to study and understand the sites before the jungle, weather, and human encroachment efface them again, perhaps forever. This urgency underlies Yaxchilan: The Design of a Maya Ceremonial City, Carolyn Tate's comprehensive catalog and analysis of all the city's extant buildings and sculptures.Duri...

An in-depth look at Maya cave painting from Preconquest times to the Colonial period, plus a complete visual catalog of the cave art of Naj Tunich.In 1979, a Kekchi Maya Indian accidentally discovered the entrance to Naj Tunich, a deep cave in the Maya Mountains of El Peten, Guatemala. One of the world's few deep caves that contain rock art, Naj Tunich features figural images and hieroglyphic inscriptions that have helped to revolutionize our understanding of ancie...