Research Catalog

Title

Reinterpreting prehistory of Central America / Mark Miller Graham, editor.

Publication

• Niwot, Colo. : University Press of Colorado, [1993]
• ©1993.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Graham, Mark Miller, 1944-

Description

xvi, 336 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"Reinterpreting Prehistory of Central America provides reassessments of the paradigms that have guided - sometimes unconsciously and uncritically - interpretations of ancient Central American society, culture, and art. This volume challenges prevailing notions of Mesoamerica and other intellectual constructs of Central American prehistory, drawing on deconstruction, structuralism, diffusionism, and postprocessual archaeology."--BOOK JACKET. "Nine chapters by distinguished art historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists from the United States, Costa Rica, and Panama illuminate diverse perspectives on common themes in Central American prehistory, such as the definition of center and periphery, the relation between ethnicity and polychrome ceramic traditions, the cultural meanings of color, and the social reality in mortuary art. A common focus among the authors is the relationship between the so-called high cultures, especially the Maya and their supposedly less-developed neighbors in southern Central America."--BOOK JACKET. "This volume has more than 150 illustrations. The contributors include Mark Miller Graham, Terence Grieder, Rosemary Joyce, Oscar Fonseca Zamora, Peter S. Briggs, Mary W. Helms, Richard Cooke, Whitney Davis, and Frederick W. Lange."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Central America > Antiquities > Congresses
• Indians of Central America > Antiquities > Congresses

Genre/Form

• Conference papers and proceedings
• Congresses (form)

Note

• Papers presented at a conference held at the Denver Museum of Natural History, Nov. 1-4, 1990.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Displacing the center : constructing prehistory in Central America / Mark Miller Graham -- A global view of Central America / Terence Grieder -- The construction of the Mesoamerican frontier and Mayoid image of Honduran polychromes / Rosemary A. Joyce -- Art, ideology, and totality : representational art of Costa Rica's Central Region in the Late Period (A.D. 800-1500) / Oscar M. Fonseca Zamora -- Fatal attractions : interpretation of prehistoric mortuary remains from Lower Central America / Peter S. Briggs -- Animal icons and Pre-Columbian society : the Felidae with special reference to Panama / Richard Cooke -- Cosmological chromatics : color-related symbolism in the ceramic art of ancient Panama / Mary W. Helms -- Writing culture in prehistoric Central America / Whitney Davis -- The conceptual structure in Lower Central American Studies : a Central American view / Frederick W. Lange.

ISBN

• 0870812556
• 9780870812552

LCCN

92030675

OCLC

• ocm26723742
• 26723742
• SCSB-1979396

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library