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Mesoamerican writing systems : propaganda, myth, and history in four ancient civilizations / Joyce Marcus.
Penn Museum Library F1219.3.W94 M37 1992
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Marcus, Joyce.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Indians of Mexico--Languages--Writing.
- Indians of Mexico.
- Mayan languages--Writing.
- Mayan languages.
- Indians of Mexico--Names.
- Names, Mayan.
- Indians of Mexico--Politics and government.
- Mayas--Politics and government.
- Mayas.
- Ethnohistory--Mexico.
- Ethnohistory.
- Ethnohistory--Central America.
- Central America.
- Mexico.
- Physical Description:
- xxiii, 495 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1992.
- Summary:
- This is an anthropological study of the role of hieroglyphic writing in the prehispanic Aztec, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Maya states. First, Joyce Marcus compares the four systems with regard to eight major themes: calendrics, the naming of nobles, the naming of places, royal marriages, accession to the throne, divine ancestors, warfare, and the rewriting of history. Then she establishes a new theoretical framework within which to conduct further analysis. Her basic contention is that ancient Mesoamerican writing was a tool used by an elite minority in their competition for positions of leadership, prestige, territory, tribute, and advantageous marriages. Marcus convincingly demonstrates that while it may have been based on actual persons and events, this body of prehistoric writing is a deliberately created tangle of what we could call propaganda, myth, and fact, written for political purposes, and not (as many contemporary scholars have come to believe) reliable "history" in a modern sense.
- Contents:
- 1 Truth, Propaganda, and Noble Speech 3
- 2 The Evolutionary Context of Early Writing 17
- 3 Mesoamerica's Four Major Writing Systems: The Ethnohistoric Background 45
- 4 Not One Calendar, but Many 95
- 5 Rewriting History 143
- 6 Place Names and the Establishment of Political Territories 153
- 7 The Naming of Nobles 191
- 8 Royal Marriages 223
- 9 Euhemerism and Royal Ancestors 261
- 10 Accession to the Throne 303
- 11 Raiding and Warfare 353
- 12 An Anthropological Theory of Mesoamerican Writing 435.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 0691094748 :
- OCLC:
- 25549355
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