Art of Urbanism Paperback by William L. Fash

Product Details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press (2012-04-03)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 488 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780884023784
• Item Weight: 368.55 grams
• Dimensions: 0.0 x 0.0 x 0.0 cm

The Art of Urbanism explores how the royal courts of powerful Mesoamerican centers represented their kingdoms in architectural, iconographic, and cosmological terms. Through an investigation of the ecological contexts and environmental opportunities of urban centers, the contributors consider how ancient Mesoamerican cities defined themselves and reflected upon their physical—and metaphysical—place via their built environment. Themes in the volume include the ways in which a kingdom’s public monuments were fashioned to reflect geographic space, patron gods, and mythology, and how the Olmec, Maya, Mexica, Zapotecs, and others sought to center their world through architectural monuments and public art.

This collection of papers addresses how communities leveraged their environment and built upon their cultural and historical roots as well as the ways that the performance of calendrical rituals and other public events tied individuals and communities to both urban centers and hinterlands. Twenty-three scholars from archaeology, anthropology, art history, and religious studies contribute new data and new perspectives to the understanding of ancient Mesoamericans’ own view of their spectacular urban and ritual centers.

About the Author

William L. Fash, Jr., is Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and Ethnology and William and Muriel Seabury Howells Director of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.

Leonardo López Luján is the Director of the Proyecto Templo Mayor in Mexico City, and senior researcher at Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

Barbara W. Fash is Director and Series Editor of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Program at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University.

David C. Grove (1935–2023) was an American anthropologist, archaeologist, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Joyce Marcus is Robert L. Carneiro Distinguished University Professor of Social Evolution and Curator of Latin American Archaeology at the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan.

Alexandre Tokovinine is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alabama.