This article traces a century of efforts to create a National Museum in Guatemala City. Political instability and natural disasters thwarted these efforts, which nevertheless, formed a significant chapter in the country’s museum history. The contents of the laws and decrees that ordered the formation of museums provide indications about their political context and aims, while travelers’ reports and museum publications provide a hint at the collections and exhibitions of the first and second national museums, which functioned at the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País (1866-1881) and the Palacio de La Reforma (1898-1917). In addition to local politics, the country’s participation in international expositions, and foreign involvement in archaeological research and collecting played a role in museum formation and demise. Special attention is given to the laws and initiatives of the 1920’s, which led to the opening of a National Museum in 1930, with a critique of previous work on this critical period of Guatemalan museum history.

Daily life in a Mayan kingdom was a complex, multi-faceted -- and often times difficult -- way of life.  Their geographic area encompassed a portion of Mesoamerica, from Southeastern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula down into Northern Central America.  Mayan territory included Pacific coastline, mountainous highlands, and forested lowlands.  Scholars today believe the total area covered approximately 125,000 square miles.  Each area had its own unique challenges, from the fertile Pacific side, with warm, tropical conditions, to the highlands, with cooler, more temperate-like zones.  Volcanoes, rivers, mountains and forests fill Mayan Mesoamerica, each with its own sub-zone and micro climate.  Unlike North American tribal societies, where large animals were followed seasonally, the food sources of the Maya -- fish, small animals, deer, and birds -- remained mostly stationary, permitting earlier members of Mayan society to establish deep roots in particular locales.

A lo largo de milenios, venerables «filósofo-artistas» emplazaron un rumbo civilizatorio en la Mesoamérica prehispánica mediante un plausible andamiaje intelectual. El trajín de este pensamiento se puede sondear, en parte, enfocando un epítome que identificamos como «Corporeidad». Al develar ésta y otras intelecciones indígenas, gracias al cotejo con antiguos sistemas “no influenciados por los griegos”, el presente ensayo incita a justipreciar la compostura de un planteamiento cimero que, en tanto legado autóctono, bien puede resultar mucho más amigable de lo que pudiera sospecharse en nuestro «tiempo-espacio» vigente.

Esta obra nos acerca a la civilización maya a través de una revisión detallada de las piezas de la colección del Museo Amparo. En ella, los autores expanden sus conocimientos del arte y la historia maya en una obra significativa para el entendimiento del arte prehispánico.
Lo que este nuevo estudio revela es la profundidad y amplitud de la colección de piezas mayas del Museo Amparo; que va mucho más allá del merecidamente famoso respaldo de trono. Es una colección a partir de la cual los perspicaces autores Ana García Barrios y Erik Velásquez García, relatan la historia del arte maya en el período Clásico tardío, centrando su atención tanto en las cortes como en los ciclos de vida de los personajes de las grandes dinastías rivales que llevaron a las ciudades-estado
mayas a participar en lo que fue, esencialmente, una guerra interminable durante el siglo VIII, en la cual entró en juego una gran energía artística.
El creciente carácter bélico de una gran parte del arte maya del siglo VIII es una historia bien representada en esta colección, con particular énfasis en la figura de los cautivos. Por desgracia, el éxito artístico no fue garantía de la pervivencia de la sociedad, ya que conforme la guerra permeó cada ciudad maya, es posible que también permitiera que su innovación artística se ampliara, sobre todo al reubicar cautivos hábiles y diestros de una corte a otra.
Este libro es el preludio al colapso maya del siglo IX, que puso fin a la manufactura de obras como las que se presentan en esta colección
del Museo Amparo.

Columbian epoch as well as the early colonial times. Both periods are presented together because even though we have abundant of the colonial examples to the pre-Columbian epoch. The second part of the article presents a comparison of Mayan human temporal, social or geographical distance separating them. modus operandi 1 universitarios en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Maya archaeology has an intimate relationship with cultural anthropology. One could say that they are dependent on each other. Archaeologists use anthropological analogies from contemporary groups in the Maya area to explain their data and anthropologists sometime emphasize the originality of some social expressions as either modern, colonial or pre-Hispanic. Nowadays we have a third actor who criticizes both archaeology and anthropology. This is the Maya movement in Guatemala, led by indigenous scholars, who want to see a more ethical approach to the study of both the past and contemporary ethnic groups. In this text, I shall consider how ethnicity and culture are viewed in Maya archaeology and in this movement and see how they are both the result of a politicised, cultural thinking. The concept of material culture has a central position here, since it is believed to reflect past human culture and ethnicity.

This movement is like the negation of a discourse established by the other dominating party. As such, it is dependent on the former. When a new discourse is being constructed, it resists the dominating discourse or other opposing powers. When such constructed histories in their turn become the official histories of ethnic movements, they tend to be defined by the very same colonialism that they oppose. They use the same units of analysis, idioms and structures. The group is formed around this discourse and the result is what Fischer writes: “In many ways the pan-Maya movement is a textbook example of an imaged [sic] community” (Fischer 2001:7).

However, this is a result of a need to be heard. The movement has had to adopt a Western discourse. Archaeologists or other scholars from the “Third World” have had to work with concepts that were developed during the colonial era. It is thus difficult to redefine the past.

What the Maya movement really needs is a complete break with “culture” thinking as this is a main theme in Mayanist archaeological thought. Therefore I shall explore the concepts of culture, ethnicity and continuity and see if they are relevant to our understanding of past identities.

This publication, a slight revision of my MA thesis from 1967, is the first published report showing the modern Maya use of palygorskite (then called attapulgite), a clay mineral used by the ancient Maya to make Maya Blue, an unusual pigment that is resistant to weathering and retains it rich blue color over time. Most of the report is devoted to demonstrating that the potters of Ticul used palygorskite in their temper, and that they  recognized its unusual properties. The report suggests that nearby Sacalum and perhaps Ticul were sources of the pigment used to obtain palygorskite for Maya Blue since those communities are so close to Mayapan where the pigment was widely used. (In this report, II thought that Maya Blue was made locally and traded widely, but I no longer believe that this is the case.)

On Wednesday, Dec. 21, nations in the Northern Hemisphere will mark the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year. For thousands of years people have marked this event with rituals and celebrations to signal the rebirth of the sun and its victory over darkness.

At hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of missions stretching from northern California to Peru, the winter solstice sun triggers an extraordinarily rare and fascinating event – something that I discovered by accident and first documented in one California church nearly 20 years ago.  See article at On Wednesday, Dec. 21, nations in the Northern Hemisphere will mark the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year. For thousands of years people have marked this event with rituals and celebrations to signal the rebirth of the sun and its victory over darkness. See link to online magazine at https://theconversation.com/a-sacred-light-in-the-darkness-winter-solstice-illuminations-at-spanish-missions-70250

In 2007 I conducted fieldwork among the present-day Maya People of the Yucatan Peninsula in South Mexico. For six month I stayed in Loldzonot 1 , a small village of about 1.500 inhabitants in the district of Chemax. The purpose of this fieldwork was to investigate the notion of so called wáay-beings. In Yucatec Maya Society, the wáay is believed to be a person, who posesses the ability to transform himself into an animal at will.

En este artículo se sostiene que el nombre original del Nevado de Toluca es Chicnauhtécatl, el autor lo sustenta presentado un estudio etnohistórico y arqueológico. Chicnauhtécatl, es un vocablo náhuatl que se traduce al español como "Señor Nueve", lo cual lo asocia a complejos simbolismo mesoamericanos.

One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. This article is an excerpt of pages 98-99 from the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson with a numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depicting the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Mural photograph: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

Los murales de Teotihuacan constituyen un lenguaje plástico cuyo contenido genera multiples lecturas, muchas de ellas aún no descifradas para nosotros. La pintura de la ciudad describe acontecimientos, relatos, pasajes históricos o hechos míticos. Escenas y diseños encuentran sus claves profundas en la combinación de colores, el tipo de emblema y el espacio donde se encuentran situados.

Analyzing and understanding the Aztec view of the cosmos is critical to extracting meaning from their texts, symbols, and belief system.  The entire Aztec world view is constructed from that foundation, with myriad variations and overlapping concepts.  The fullness and intricacy of Mexica spirituality linked the world of heaven to the success (or failure) of mankind; it could "web the space between the mundane and the supramundane, lacing the world of ritual to the world of the everyday, and each to the sacred."  Religious symbolism, published to the population of the Central Valley of Mexico through art, literature, and ceremony, was an attempt to unify the people behind the central authority.

Auteur ; Uf Archéologie du genre 5 ; Titre ; 6 Archéologie du genre Uf ; Estelle Praet ; Uf Archéologie du genre 145 Une préhistoire du sein en Mésoamérique : entre fertilité, vie domestique et maternité Estelle Praet 2010) et dans une moindre mesure par la présence de seins. Différencier les dieux des déesses pose également question en Mésoamérique puisque le nom teotl (dieu en nahuatl 2 ) ne possède pas de préfixe genré (Sigal, 2010). Cette association univoque entre iconographie et sexe biologique est menacée par l'existence d'une fluidité de genre des divinités aztèques telles que Cihuacoatl, associée à la fertilité et à la guerre, et Tlazolteotl, symbolisant l'excès sexuel dans les sphères masculine et féminine et représenté à la fois avec une jupe et avec un symbole phallique tel qu'un serpent ou un pagne (Sigal, 2010).

The Grolier Codex is discussed in the context of the archaeoastronomy of the ancient Americas on pages 98-99 of the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson. One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. A numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depictes the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Other photos: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

The casting of maize seeds is a tool used by contemporary daykeepers in the Ayöök (Mixe) area of Oaxaca, Mexico, which along with the prognostications and prescriptions of the 260-day calendar, helps to cure illnesses and afflictions. This divinatory practice was also employed by precolonial tonalpouhque, who were experts of reading the tonalamatl, the pictographic manuscripts with calendrical, ritual and oracular content, such as the now called Borgia Group codices. In this article maize divination will be described and analyzed, arguing that maize divination results in images that can be read in a similar way to these codices. The reading of maize is approached here by employing the concepts of signs and symbols as described by Carl Jung and the notions of chronotope and dialogical narratives by Mikhail Bakhtin. The Jungian understanding of divinatory practices as a means of gaining consciousness of oneself is also applied to argue in favor of the therapeutic capacity of reading maize, as it offers relief and triggers action.

Maya caves are exclusively ritual spaces, so all artifacts within them are part of a ritual assemblage. Because of their social importance, caves were magnets for ancient activities and thus produce the largest ritual assemblages recovered. Therefore, caves are the single best context to study ancient Maya religion and have enabled cave archaeologists to pioneer a new approach to defi ning ritual assemblages. Most Maya cave artifacts are identical to socalled utilitarian objects excavated in surface contexts. Thus, discrete ritual and utilitarian assemblages do not exist. Special-use objects made specifi cally for ritual that form the core of traditionally identifi ed ritual assemblages constitute a minor component of cave assemblages, suggesting that most ritual activity in surface contexts goes unrecognized. Because there are only subtle differences between ritual and utilitarian assemblages, the analysis of cave assemblages can inform the fi eld about ways of recognizing ritual.

Una mujer de Maxcanú Yucatán se transforma ritualmente en hombre para poder ejercer como j-men. Este artículo narra su proceso de iluminación chamánica. Por otro lado cuestiona las aproximaciones de los investigadores con las personas y la relación que establecen con estas.

El artículo hace una revisión crítica de la manera en la que han sido tratados los objetos arqueológicos en la tradición académica del siglo XX. Asimismo deconstruye cómo han sido planteadas las unidades epistemológicas que se utilizan en la arqueología académica para proponer unidades de estudio que no remitan a la homogeneidad de las prácticas culturales, sino a su diversidad. Así es analizada la cuenca del Caribe: como una unidad diversa en la que la interacción constante entre los pueblos allí asentados en época prehispánica no sólo no generó una unidad cultural homogénea, sino que alentó la diversidad cultural de los participantes. El encuentro con la diferencia y la alteridad de manera constante no fue tarea fácil y para esto los pueblos caribeños generaron múltiples mecanismos de lidia. Uno de ellos es el Juego de Pelota, práctica presente en el área maya, el Oriente de Honduras y las Antillas mayores.

This paper undertakes a thoroughly critical review over the way in which archaeological artifacts have been treated in the Academy during the 20th Century. Moreover, it deconstructs the way epistemological units used on archaeology have been contemplated and proposes new research units that refer not to the homogeneity of cultural practices but to their diversity. The Caribbean Basin will be analyzed from this position; looking at it as a diverse unit in which the continuous interaction between the different people established there during the Prehispanic period did not only generate an homogenic cultural unit but also encouraged cultural diversity between the participants. The constant interaction of these people with difference and otherness was not an easy task and, thus, Caribbean people created many different tools for dealing with them. One of these tools was the Ball Game, which was present in the Maya area, eastern Honduras and the Greater Antilles.

El tiburón conocido en el área maya como ah xok e identificado como Carcharhinus leucas jugó un papel importante en la mitología y cosmovisión de los habitantes de gran parte de la antigua Mesoamérica. El presente artículo pretende buscar el significado de este animal acuático en el área maya desde los tiempos preclásicos hasta los tiempos coloniales y desde la costa del Golfo de México hasta la Selva Lacandona de Chiapas donde todavía podemos encontrar su influencia mitológica. Verificando su origen olmeca y atravesado el mundo maya clásico encontramos al final un mito lacandón en que podemos identificar algunos elementos importantes para completar nuestros conocimientos sobre el papel extraordinario de sus atributos. Sobre la base de los elementos identificados se propone una hipótesis sobre el sol nocturno y el inframundo acuático donde el dios-tiburón originalmente habitó, su evolución en uno de los atributos del dios solar y su transformación final en la mujer-pez de las lagunas lacandonas contemporáneas.

Nota importante: se recomienda revisar la versión original, titulada "Deidades  Mesoamericanas  de  los  Mantenimientos  en  la  Cultura  Bolaños (Norte  de  Jalisco)" pues el texto publicado en el libro fue modificado, alterando sensiblemente los planteamientos originalmente propuestos.
En un texto publicado en el año 2016 por la doctora María Teresa Cabrero García se realiza un estudio breve acerca de figurillas descubiertas en la cultura Bolaños de la región norte de Jalisco. Estas piezas de carácter antropomorfo destacan por su abstracción y simpleza y, además, por la ausencia de elementos visuales que permitan clasificarlas detalladamente. Ante esta situación, Cabrero (2016) repara en otros atributos como los materiales de los que están hechos y señala, además, que su uso fue generalizado entre los distintos niveles sociales, tanto en el Piñón, como en Pochotitán y la Mezquitera (p. 97). No obstante, en sus tablas de distribución se nota que las figurillas elaboradas en roca tienen una distribución preferencial en contextos religiosos (p. 98).
El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar si estas figuras pudieran denotar
el culto específico a una deidad, con base en los mínimos detalles glíficos que presentan y considerando un modelo teórico metodológico ya desarrollado y contrastado para el análisis de la imagen en sociedades prehispánicas mesoamericanas, en el cual son considerados aspectos no solo sociales e históricos, sino en relación con el bricoleur, en los cuales se conjugan muchos aspectos que permiten explicar la diversidad de formas y variantes de
determinados glifos (Márquez 2009, 2012a, 2012b, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2017, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c, 2020).