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Maya Art
Ancient Maya art is the visual arts of the Maya civilization, an eastern and south-eastern Mesoamerican culture made up of a great number of small kingdoms in present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. Many regional artistic traditions existed side by side, usually coinciding with the changing boundaries of Maya polities. This civilization took shape in the course of the later Preclassic Period (from c. 750 BC to 100 BC), when the first cities and monumental architecture started to develop and the hieroglyphic script came into being. Its greatest artistic flowering occurred during the seven centuries of the Classic Period (c. 250 to 950 CE). Maya art forms tend to be more stiffly organized during the Early Classic (250-550 CE) and to become more expressive during the Late Classic phase (550-950 CE). In the course of history, influences of various other Mesoamerican cultures were absorbed. In the late Preclassic, the influence of the Olmec style is still discernible (as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Visual Arts
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts also involve aspects of visual arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design and decorative art. Current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine art as well as the applied or decorative arts and crafts, but this was not always the case. Before the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, the term 'artist' had for some centuries often been restricted to a person working in the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the decorative arts, craft, or applied Visual arts media. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Move ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Kubler
George Alexander Kubler (26 July 1912 - 3 October 1996) was an American art historian and among the foremost scholars on the art of Pre-Columbian America and Ibero-American Art. Biography Kubler was born in Hollywood, California, but most of his early education was in Europe. He attended high school at Western Reserve Academy, a private, coeducational boarding school in Hudson, Ohio. He then went to Yale University, where he earned an A.B. (1934), A.M. (1936) and Ph.D. degree (1940), the latter two under guidance of Henri Focillon. From 1938 onwards, Kubler was a member of the Yale University faculty and was the first Robert Lehman Professor (1964-1975), Sterling Professor of the History of Art (1975-1983) and after his retirement, a senior resident scholar. He received several awards, including three Guggenheim Fellowships, an American Council of Learned Societies Grant-in-Aid for research in Mexico and the Order of the Aztec Eagle by the Mexican Government. He also was ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piedras Negras (Maya Site)
Piedras Negras is the modern name for a ruined city of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization located on the north bank of the Usumacinta River in the Petén department of northwestern Guatemala. Piedras Negras is one of the most powerful of the Usumacinta ancient Maya urban centers. Occupation at Piedras Negras is known from the Late Preclassic period onward, based on dates retrieved from epigraphic information found on multiple stelae and altars at the site. Piedras Negras is an archaeological site known for its large sculptural output when compared to other ancient Maya sites. The wealth of sculpture, in conjunction with the precise chronological information associated with the lives of elites of Piedras Negras, has allowed archaeologists to reconstruct the political history of the Piedras Negras polity and its geopolitical footprint. Location Southern Lowlands, Modern-Day: Guatemala Geography Piedras Negras is located along the eastern banks of the Usumacinta River. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesoamerican Ball Court
A Mesoamerican ballcourt ( nah, tlachtli) is a large masonry structure of a type used in Mesoamerica for over 2,700 years to play the Mesoamerican ballgame, particularly the hip-ball version of the ballgame. More than 1,300 ballcourts have been identified, 60% in the last 20 years alone. Although there is a tremendous variation in size, in general all ballcourts are the same shape: a long narrow alley flanked by two walls with horizontal, vertical, and sloping faces. Although the alleys in early ballcourts were open-ended, later ballcourts had enclosed end-zones, giving the structure an -shape when viewed from above. Ballcourts were also used for functions other than, or in addition to, ballgames. Ceramics from western Mexico show ballcourts being used for other sporting endeavours, including what appears to be a wrestling match. It is also known from archaeological excavations that ballcourts were the sites of sumptuous feasts, although whether these were conducted in the contex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Acropolis, Tikal
The North Acropolis of the ancient Maya city of Tikal in Guatemala is an architectural complex that served as a royal necropolis and was a centre for funerary activity for over 1300 years. The acropolis is located near the centre of the city and is one of the most studied of Maya architectural complexes. Excavations were carried out from 1957 to 1969 by the University of Pennsylvania, directed by Edwin M. Shook and William Coe.Martin and Grube 2000, p. 43. The first traces of human activity at the site date to approximately 800 BCE, with the first structures being built about 350 BCE. Around 250 CE the complex underwent a major redevelopment with the construction of a massive basal platform that supported a cluster of temples; this was followed around 450 CE by the addition of a row of four pyramids on a terrace to the south of the main platform. A number of royal tombs have been excavated that have been identified with named kings, including the tombs of Yax Nuun Ayiin I (rul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre State
In political anthropology, a theatre state is a political state directed towards the performance of drama and ritual rather than more conventional ends such as warfare and welfare. Power in a theatre state is exercised through spectacle. The term was coined by Clifford Geertz in 1980 in reference to political practice in the nineteenth-century Balinese Negara, but its usage has since expanded. Hunik Kwon and Byung-Ho Chung, for example, argue that contemporary North Korea is a theatre state. In Geertz's original usage, the concept of the theatre state contests the notion that precolonial society can be analysed in the conventional discourse of Oriental despotism.Heder, S. "Political Theatre in the 2003 Cambodian Elections", in Strauss, J. C. & O'Brien, D. C. (eds.) (2007) ''Staging Politics: Power and Performance in Asia and Africa''. I. B. Tauris, p. 151. See also * '' Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali'' * Bread and circuses * Military parades in North Korea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sacbe
Sacbe at Dzibilchaltun in the Yucatán Arch at the end of the sacbé, Kabah, Yucatán A sacbe, plural sacbeob ( Yucatec Maya: singular ''sakbej'', plural ''sakbejo'ob''), or "white way", is a raised paved road built by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Most connect temples, plazas, and groups of structures within ceremonial centers or cities, but some longer roads between cities are also known. The term "sacbe" is Yucatec Maya for "white road"; white perhaps because there is evidence that they were originally coated with limestone stucco or plaster, which was over a stone and rubble fill.Roys and Shook 1966, 43 Etymology The word "Beh" operates as the root term for "Sacbe" it is a Mayan term for "road, pathway, or trail." Beh is spelled alternately as Be, bej, bey, be, bih, as well as "beel" in the possessive. It has many distinctions from English concepts of roads, pathways, or trails. Beh's metaphoric meanings are just as important if not more important t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acropolis
An acropolis was the settlement of an upper part of an ancient Greek city, especially a citadel, and frequently a hill with precipitous sides, mainly chosen for purposes of defense. The term is typically used to refer to the Acropolis of Athens, yet every Greek city had an acropolis of its own. Acropoloi were used as religious centers and places of worship, forts, and places in which the royal and high-status resided. Acropolises became the nuclei of large cities of classical ancient times, and served as important centers of a community. Some well-known acropoloi have become the centers of tourism in present-day, and, especially, the Acropolis of Athens has been a revolutionary center for the studies of ancient Greece since the Mycenaean period. Many of them have become a source of revenue for Greece, and represent some great technology during the period. Origin An acropolis is defined by the Greek definition of ἀκρόπολις, akropolis; from akros (άκρος) or (άκ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya City
Maya cities were the centres of population of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica. They served the specialised roles of administration, commerce, manufacturing and religion that characterised ancient cities worldwide.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.71. Maya cities tended to be more dispersed than cities in other societies, even within Mesoamerica, as a result of adaptation to a lowland tropical environment that allowed food production amidst areas dedicated to other activities. They lacked the grid plans of the highland cities of central Mexico, such as Teotihuacán and Tenochtitlan. Maya kings ruled their kingdoms from palaces that were situated within the centre of their cities.Martin & Grube 2000, p.15. Cities tended to be located in places that controlled trade routes or that could supply essential products.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.85. This allowed the elites that controlled trade to increase their wealth and status. Such cities were able to construct temples for p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Taube
Karl Andreas Taube (born September 14, 1957) is an American Mesoamericanist, Mayanist, iconographer and ethnohistorian, known for his publications and research into the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. he holds a position as Professor of Anthropology at the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, University of California, Riverside.Board of Regents, UC (2006) In 2008 he was named the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences distinguished lecturer. Family Background Karl Taube's father, Canadian-born Henry Taube (d. 2005), whose parents were ethnic Germans, was the recipient of the 1983 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Education Taube commenced his undergraduate education at Stanford, relocating to Berkeley where he completed a B.A. in Anthropology in 1980. His graduate studies were undertaken in Anthropology at Yale, where he completed his Masters degree in 1983 and was awarded his Doctorate in 1988. At Yale, Taube st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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