Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Symposia and Colloquia

Papers from the 1986 Summer Seminar, “Empire, Province, and Village in Aztec History.”

This volume consists of papers from the 1992 Dumbarton Oaks conference marking the quincentennial of Columbus’s landing in the Americas.

These articles mark a significant stage in the study of Maya architecture and the society that built it. They represent advances in our understandings of the past, point toward avenues for further studies, and note the distance yet to travel in fully appreciating and understanding this ancient American culture and its material remains.

This volume is both a summation of work that has been carried out over a long period of time and a signpost pointing the way for future studies. Issues regarding gender, social identity, and landscape archaeology are present, as are the analysis of mortuary practices, questions of social hierarchy, and conjunctive studies of art and society.

This volume is devoted to the archaeology of Formative Ecuador in order to bring new information on this important period of the region’s past to the attention of New World scholars.

This volume explores how ancient Mesoamerican cities defined themselves through their built environments. Themes include the ways in which a kingdom’s monuments reflected 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.

Based on a set of papers presented by sixteen international scholars at the Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Studies symposium held in Lima, Peru, in 2004, this volume brings together essays on the nature of political organization of the Moche, a complex pre-Inca society that existed on the north coast of Peru from c. 100 to 800 CE.

This volume considers the significance of stone monuments in Preclassic Mesoamerica. By placing sculptures in their cultural, historical, social, political, religious, and cognitive contexts, the seventeen contributors utilize archaeological and art historical methods to understand the origins, growth, and spread of civilization in Middle America.

Their Way of Writing considers substantive and theoretical issues concerning writing and signing systems in the ancient Americas. The contributions here not only present the latest thinking about graphic and tactile systems of communication but constitute a major contribution to our comparative and global understanding of writing and literacy.

The history of Pre-Columbian collecting is a social and aesthetic history—of ideas, people and organizations, and objects. This richly illustrated volume examines these histories by considering the collection and display of Pre-Columbian objects in Europe, Latin America, and the United States.

Tombs for the Living examines how mortuary practices functioned in different cultures across the Andes. By examining rich sets of archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric data, this collection enriches our understanding of the context and meaning of mortuary traditions in the region.

This volume is a “must read” for all Mesoamericanists. Originally published in 2007, it revisits long-standing questions regarding the relationship between Chichén Itzá and Tula and considers their roles in the social, political, and economic relationships that emerged during the transition from the Epiclassic to the Early Postclassic period.

Archaeological illustrations are often treated as neutral representations. This volume considers them instead as products of time and place that actively shape the construction of knowledge. Taking the visual presentation of the Pre-Columbian past from the fifteenth century to today, these essays explore the culture of archaeological illustration.

Merchants, Markets, and Exchange in the Pre-Columbian World investigates the complex structure of economic systems in the pre-Hispanic Americas, with a focus on the central highlands of Mexico, the Maya Lowlands, and the central Andes. Essays examine the use of marketplaces, the role of merchants and artisans, and the operation of trade networks.

Embattled Bodies, Embattled Places examines the nature of war in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Drawing on anthropological archaeology, bioarchaeology, and ethnohistory, the essays consider the similarities and differences of warfare in cross-cultural perspective, from the importance of captive-taking to rituals of sacrifice and performance.

Anthony F. Aveni gathers specialists from diverse fields to discuss temporal concepts gleaned from the people of Mesoamerica and the Andes. Essays address how they reckon and register time and how they sense time and its moral dimensions. To them, time is a feature of the process of perception, not just the sharp present ingrained in Western minds.

Making Value, Making Meaning explores the concept of techné—the application of a thorough and masterful knowledge of a specific field—as an analytic tool useful for understanding how the production process created value and meaning for objects and public monuments in complex societies of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes.

Smoke, Flames, and the Human Body in Mesoamerican Ritual Practice address the traditions, circumstances, and practices that involved the burning of bodies and bone, to better understand the ideologies behind these acts. It brings together scholars working across Mesoamerica with different methodologies and interdisciplinary lenses.

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.

Teotihuacan: The World Beyond the City brings together specialists in art and archaeology to develop a synthetic overview of the urban, political, economic, and religious organization of Teotihuacan, one of the major cities of Classic-period Mesoamerica.

Waves of Influence brings fresh attention to connections among regions often seen as isolated from one another. Drawing upon recent models of globalization alongside methods such as computer simulation and iconographic analysis, authors present individual case studies to demonstrate how each region participated in its own distinct network.

Reconsidering the Chavín Phenomenon in the Twenty-First Century builds upon a surge of archaeological research over the last twenty years at Chavín de Huántar, bringing together the work of scholars researching the UNESCO World Heritage Site and offering a cohesive vision of the Chavín Phenomenon at both the local and interregional level.