Feeding the Mountains: Sacred Landscapes,Mountain Worship,and Sacrifice in the Maya and Inca Worlds

Three texts reviewed here address the linkages between religion and mountainous landscapes in the Maya and Inca realms. Bassie-Sweet provides a thorough analysis of the Maya mythologies of creation and situates its players and concepts within the real world. Besom thoughtfully tackles the place of mountains and child sacrifice within the Andes with a focus on the late prehispanic Inca. Reinhard and Constanza offer a detailed and richly illustrated case study of state-sponsored child sacrifice on a mountaintop in the south of the Inca Empire. Taken together, these somewhat disparate books produce several fascinating parallels in the sacred geographies of mountains and the offerings made to them.     

Sacred Geography,Antiquarianism and Visual Erudition: Benito Arias Montano and the Maps in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible

The final volume of the Polyglot Bible, edited by Benito Arias Montano and printed in Antwerp by Christophe Plantin, was published in 1571–1572. Forming part of the Bible's Apparatus, the volume contains a number of essays, illustrations and maps by Montano relating to questions raised by the biblical text. Montano's maps were a product of his philological training in Oriental languages and exegesis, his profound interest in antiquarianism and geography and his practice of visualizing and tabulating knowledge. He designed his maps both as study aids and as devotional‐meditative devices. Moreover, the maps reflect his wider philosophical outlook, according to which Holy Scripture contains the foundations of all natural philosophy. Montano's case encourages us to re‐examine early modern Geographia sacra in the light of the broader scholarly trends of the period.     

Maya archaeology and the political and cultural identity of contemporary Maya in Guatemala

La colonización dejó en una posición desigual a las personas de ascendencia Maya comparada con las personas ladinas en los aspectos sociales, políticos, y culturales en Guatemala. Esta experiencia no es diferente de la de otras naciones indígenas en América Latina. Los personas Maya, así como otras naciones indígenas, tienen una historia de resistencia que ha continuado desarrollándose a medida que cada generación crea nuevas estrategias para superar su posición de desventaja. La arqueología puede ser usada para escribir una historia que provee beneficios esenciales o atribuye estereotipos perjudiciales a las comunidades Maya. Los/as arqueólogos/as que trabajan en Guatemala tienen el compromiso de ser más éticos/as con las comunidades en las que trabajan, particularmente en el campo de la interpretación y creación de teorías sobre la historia maya. Los Maya han sido afectados por los estudios realizados en arqueología y tienen und derecho inherente de forjar su propia identidad a través de la historia.

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Résumé Comparée aux hispanophones, la colonisation a laissé les Mayas dans une position inégale dans les domaines économiques, sociaux, politiques et culturels au Guatemala. Cette expérience n'est pas différente de celle des autres autochtones en Amérique latine. Comme ces autres groupes, les Mayas ont une histoire de résistance qui a poursuivi son développement alors que chaque génération a créé de nouvelles stratégies pour surpasser sa position désavantageuse. L'archéologie peut être utilisée pour écrire l'histoire procurant des bénéfices essentiels ou des stéréotypes négatifs des communautés mayas. Les archéologues qui pratiquent au Guatemala sont appelés à être plus éthiques à l'égard des descendants des communautés avec qui ils travaillent, en particulier dans le domaine de l'interprétation et de la création de théories au sujet de l'histoire maya. Les Mayas sont affectés par les connaissances produites en archéologie et ont le droit inhérent de forger leur propre identité à travers leur histoire.

     

在神圣和凡俗之间--关于日本地藏菩萨信仰的文化思考

信仰往往与特定的仪式联系在一起,而“仪式,通常被界定为象征性的、表演性的、由文化传统所规定的一整套行为方式。它可以是神圣的也可以是凡俗的活动,这类活动经常被功能性地解释为在特定群体或文化中沟通(人与神之间,人与人之间)、过渡(社会类别的、地域的、生命周期的)、强化秩序及整合社会的方式。”     

Anthropology and Ethnohistory of the Maya

Anthropological, linguistic, historical, and archeological research on the Maya proceeds today amidst public contestation, for political and economic reasons, of the identity of Maya people and the nature of Maya culture. Neo-liberal multiculturalism, struggles over dwindling land and forest resources, the intensification of international tourism, and the growth of pan-Maya movements repeatedly raise the question of who and what is authentically Maya. Our scholarship, while motivated by quite different concerns and interests, unavoidably touches on similar issues in its exploration of the forms and meanings of Maya expression, belief, and ritual from ancient times to the present.     

Maya and their animals

Hamblin, Nancy L. Animal Use by the Cozumel Maya. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984. vii + 206 pp. including references and index. $23.00 cloth.     

Bioarchaeology and the Skeletons of the Pre-Columbian Maya

This review explores the past two decades of research on ancient Maya skeletons. The focus is on how this work has contributed to our understanding of health, diet, social change, inequality, migration and mobility, war, violence, and ritual practice, with special attention given to recent methodological developments and debates in the bioarchaeology of the Maya. This review essay highlights the most recent findings in the bioarchaeology of the Maya and how those results were achieved. The essay concludes with suggestions for future research and highlights areas of potential collaboration that have been underutilized to address broader anthropological questions.     

Textiles and the Making of Sacred Space

This paper develops a perspective on fabric and its use in religious settings, working from a comparative survey of critical literature arising, primarily, from anthropological writings on cloth and clothing in conjunction with insights gained from ethnographic research among Eastern Orthodox Christians. While the character of Orthodox Christianity and the broad nature of comparative religion shape how the argument is presented, the primary focus of the paper is not on the religious contexts, but rather the particular items of fabric in use, and, more generally, the exact qualities of fabric that allow for its use in such diverse contexts. Rather than taking an argument of historical specificity, the paper is grounded in a material culture approach to fabric, suggesting that a cross-cultural appraisal of fabric that spans different historical periods allows critical insight into the modes of operation within human experience. The central argument of the paper is that, because of the material qualities inherent in fabric, it can be used in such a manner as to make present the sacred.     

The Geography of Population and the Geography of Services

In discussing a methodology for a geography of services, a new branch of Soviet geographic research, the authors propose geographically meaningful classifications of services, the use of value and labor-input indicators, the problem of a typology of service regions, and other aspects of research in this new discipline. The geography of services is found to be closely related to population geography because of the correlation between the distribution of services and the distribution of population.     

村落中的"神"与"像"——山东民间臆造神信仰的现存形态及其社会意义

引言村落,是民众春种秋收,生息繁衍的聚居空间。村落中的信仰、禁忌、崇拜是民众思想意识形态的真实体现。走进山东的村落,我们会深切地感受到历史积淀形成的古老信仰、禁忌、崇拜,隐性地存在于人们的思想观念中;又以对“神”的敬祀供奉形式,显性地呈现在人们的日常生活、婚丧嫁娶、生老病死、节日庆典等活动中。“神”作为人们想象幻化出的事物灵魂主宰,是没有具体形象的,而在对神的敬祀供奉活动中,人们又需要一个表示对某种事物神灵敬祀的具体可见的崇拜对象,于是人们将抽象的“神”赋予了具体的形象。这便产生了大量作为神的象征、神的化…     

从民间杂神到三皇五帝--论盘古庙重建过程中附祀神的转变

包括庙会在内的传统民间社会文化形式悄然复兴,是上世纪80年代以来中国社会文化领域一个引人注目的现象,此前已经有不少学者从不同的角度进行研究。然而,这种“传统的复兴”是否是民间传统的简单恢复?笔者在对豫南盘古山的盘古庙会的调查中注意到,80年代以来重建的盘古庙,其附祀神的设置与1949年以前的盘古庙相比有一定改变,其中尤为引人注目的是盘古大殿中附祀神的变化,     

Maya heritage: entangled and transformed

This article discusses two aspects of heritage – entanglement and transformation – that became clear during a recent cultural heritage project in Yucatan, Mexico. Regarding entanglement, heritage becomes relevant only when coupled with other concerns, ranging from politics to livelihood to personal biographies. An unpredictable array of entanglements came into being during the project and these entanglements elevated the impact and visibility of local heritage to an unanticipated degree. Transformation refers to the claim that heritage is not frozen in the past. Instead, it is in motion and subject to change. The transformations of heritage discussed in this paper are examined from the perspective of a mobilities paradigm and understood, in part, as resulting from the experience of performing heritage for outsiders for the first time. In so far as the heritage project precipitated changes in identity, this paper explores what is meant by Maya identity and argues that it is a fluid construct that can be both anchored in the past and negotiated in the present. This perspective makes sense of an event in which contemporary people anchored their identity in a spectacular 1000-year-old ruin, but falls short of explaining the uneven recognition of smaller ruins.