Research Catalog

Sacred matter : animacy and authority in the Americas

Title: Sacred matter : animacy and authority in the Americas / Steve Kosiba, John Wayne Janusek, and Thomas B.F. Cummins, editors.
Publication: Washington, D.C. : Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, [2020]

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Not available - Please for assistance.	Book/Text	Use in library	GN471 .S24 2020	Off-site

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Description

xi, 457 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color); 29 cm.

Summary

"Sacred Matter: Animacy and Authority in the Americas examines animism in Pre-Columbian America, focusing on how objects and places played central social roles in practices that expressed and sanctified political authority in the Andes, Amazon, and Mesoamerica. Pre-Columbian peoples staked claims to their authority when they animated matter by giving life to grandiose buildings, speaking with deified boulders, and killing valued objects. Likewise, things and places often animated people by demanding labor, care, and nourishment. In these practices of animation, things were cast as active subjects, agents of political change, and representatives of communities. People were positioned according to specific social roles and stations: workers, worshippers, revolutionaries, tribute payers, or authorities. Such practices manifested political visions of social order by defining relationships between people, things, and the environment. Contributors to this volume present a range of perspectives (archaeological, art historical, ethnohistorical, and linguistic) to shed light on how Pre-Columbian social authority was claimed and sanctified in practices of transformation and transubstantiation-that is, practices that birthed, converted, or destroyed certain objects and places, as well as the social and natural order from which these things were said to emerge"--Provided by publisher.

Series Statement

Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian symposia and colloquia

Uniform Title

Sacred matter (2020)
Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian symposia and colloquia.

Alternative Title

Animacy and authority in the Americas

Subject

Genre/Form

Conference papers and proceedings.

Note

"Volume based on papers presented at the Pre-Columbian Studies symposium 'Sacred Matter: Animism and Authority in Pre-Columbian America,' held at the Naval Heritage Center, Washington, D.C., on October 7-8, 2016"--Title page verso.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

The nature of the world, the stuff of politics: exploring animacy and authority in the indigenous Americas / Steve Kosiba -- Chiefly jaguar, chiefly tree: mastery and authority in the Upper Xingu / Carlos Fausto -- Soul proprietors: durable ontologies of Maya deep time / Patricia A. McAnany -- Burning sorrow: engaging the animacy of social-ecological life processes in native Amazonian death rituals / Beth A. Conklin -- Descartes, Jesus, and Huitzilopochtli: ontologies / Byron Ellsworth Hamann -- "Metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties": incarnation, incantations, animism, and the powers of Pre-Columbian visual imagery / Thomas B. F. Cummins -- The Lanzón's tale / Mary Weismantel -- Cosmopolitical bodies: living monoliths, vital tectonics, and the production of Tiwanaku / John Wayne Janusek -- On the threshold of the huaca: sanctuaries of sound in the ancient Andean world / Marco Curatola Petrocchi -- Buried alive: buildings, authority, and gradients of being in Northern Yucatan, Mexico / Scott Hutson, Jacob Welch, Shannon Plank, and Barry Kidder -- Animating public buildings in Formative Period Oaxaca: political and ontological implications / Arthur A. Joyce -- The material ambivalence of health and spirituality in colonial northeastern New Spain / Diana DiPaolo Loren -- Southern Quechua ontology / Bruce Mannheim -- Purpose, belief, and political action in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta / Santiago Giraldo -- Shifts in the light: a journey through varied perspectives on animacy and authority in the Americas / Catherine J. Allen.

ISBN

9780884024668
0884024660

LCCN

2019030734

OCLC

on1110673579
1110673579
SCSB-14348548

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries