Bodies of maize, eaters of grain : comparing material worlds, metaphor and the agency of art in the Preclassic Maya and Mycenaean early civilisations / Marcus Jan Bajema.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bajema, Marcus Jan, 1970- author.

Series:

Archaeopress archaeology.

Archaeopress archaeology

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art, Mycenaean.

Maya art.

Civilization, Mycenaean.

Mayas--Intellectual life.

Mayas.

Mayas--Antiquities.

Comparative civilization.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (364 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, [2017]

Summary:

Bodies of Maize, Eaters of Grain provides a comparative study of the earliest urban civilisations of the Maya lowlands and the Greek mainland. It builds upon earlier comparative studies by Gordon Childe, Robert Adams and Bruce Trigger, extending their work into new directions. Specifically, the focus lies on the art styles of the Late Preclassic lowland Maya and Mycenaean Greece. The approach used here seeks to combine more traditional iconographic approaches with more recent models on metaphor and the social agency of things. Comparing Maya and Mycenaean art styles through the three aspects of metaphor, semiotics and praxis, their differences and similarities are made clear. The book shows art to have played a more active role in the development of the earliest urban civilisations, rather than passively reflecting economic and political trends. In that way, the social role of art provides a key to understanding the relations between the different factors in the development of the two societies, as they played out at different temporal and geographical scales. To understand this, the notion of distinct Maya and Mycenaean 'material worlds', involving both materials and ideas, is proposed, with consequences for models about the earliest urban civilisations in general.

Contents:

Cover

Copyright Page

Contents Page

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Summary of the Book’s Arguments

Chapter One: Introduction

Chapter Two: Philosophical - Methodological Issues for Cross-cultural Comparison in Archaeology

Chapter Three: Introduction to Mycenaean Early Civilisation

Chapter Four: General Characteristics of Mycenaean Art

Chapter Five: Contexts and Agency of Mycenaean Art

Chapter Six: Introduction to Late Preclassic Lowland Maya Early Civilisation

Chapter Seven: General Characteristics of Late Preclassic Lowland Maya Art

Chapter Eight: Contexts and Agency of Late Preclassic Lowland Maya Art

Chapter Nine: Comparing the Art of the Mycenaean and Late Preclassic Lowland Maya Early Civilisations

Chapter Ten: Conclusion

Bibliography

Appendix: Overview of the Narrative Micro-structures in the San Bartolo Wall-paintings

Table 1.1: Overview of chapters.

Table 2.1: Approaches to cross-cultural comparison in archaeology.

Table 2.2: Cities and state forms in early civilisations

Table 2.3: Sample of early civilisations in Trigger’s Understanding.

Table 2.4: Elements used to delineate early civilisations.

Table 2.5: Basic and high-level analytic categories for the interpretation of art.

Table 3.1: Aegean Bronze Age chronology

Table 3.2: Starting-points of each of the ten elements of Mycenaean early civilisation.

Table 4.1: Categories of the material forms of Mycenaean art.

Table 4.2: Depictions of griffins with blue wings in Aegean-style wall-paintings.

Table 5.1: Material, iconographic, and linguistic metaphoric ‘connectors’ in Mycenaean art. Generated by AI.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

9781784916923

1784916927

OCLC:

1388499907