Ebooks de historia, página 50 de 2156

Machu Picchu, recently voted one of the New Wonders of the World, is one of the worlds most famous archaeological sites, yet it remains a mystery. Even the most basic questions are still unanswered: What was its meaning and why was it built in such a difficult location? Renowned explorer Johan Reinhard attempts to answer such elusive questions from the perspectives of sacred landscape and archaeoastronomy. Using information gathered from historical, archaeological, and ethnographical sources, Reinhard demonstrates how the site is situated in the center of sacred mountains and associated with a sacred river, which is in turn symbolically linked with the suns passage. Taken together, these features meant that Machu Picchu formed a cosmological, hydrological, and sacred geological center for a vast region.

As the center for the religious cult of Quetzalcoatl, Cholula played a prominent role in shaping events of central Mexicos Postclassic period. Yet confusion over historical events in Cholula itself have limited its place in recent archaeological considerations of Mesoamerica. Since ceramic sequences are the backbone of archaeological chronologies, this confusion ultimately relates to problems in previous attempts to order archaeological time with ceramics. This book provides an innovative new classification of Cholula ceramics, based on artifact assemblages from primary depositional contexts recovered from the UA-1 excavations. A detailed and well-illustrated description of ceramic types is provided to construct a new classification system. These types are then seriated using collections from house floors and trash middens to suggest a new sequence spanning the Tlachihualtepetl (700-1200 CE) and Cholollan (1200-1550 CE) periods. The polychrome ceramics of Cholula have been described as among the most beautiful of Mesoamerica, employing vibrant colors to represent complex religious iconography of the Mixteca-Puebla stylistic tradition. By defining type and subtype variations in the polychrome ceramics, a foundation is created for a refined chronology as well as for recognizing intra-societal variability.

The Northern Andes is a pivotal region for understanding many of the social, economic, political, and ideological changes that pre-Columbian cultures experienced. Topics inc. recent investigations on human colonisation of the region, origins of sedentism and food production, rise of chiefdoms, and importance of symbolism and iconography.

Tucked away in the Newberry Library of Chicago is an anonymous manuscript entitled Schermkunst ("Art of Swordsmanship"), whose brief text and exquisite watercolours details fencing with the single sword, rapier and dagger, rapier and buckler, halberd, and full pike. Beyond its artistic charms, however, this little book of 1595 is one of the oldest known martial arts treatises from the Low Countries and gives us a glimpse into the Art of Defense as it was practiced at a particularly volatile time in Netherlands history. Rebellion against Philip II of Spain led to independence of the Calvinist Northern provinces from Catholic Spain, and in the same year, the spice trade expedition Cornelis de Houtman set into motion events culminating in the formation of the Dutch East India Company, and a golden age of Dutch history that spanned the 17th century. This cultural and political foment is represented in the similarities between the methodology in Schermkunst and the rich traditions of England, Germany and Italy, and the inclusion of several sword and shield techniques combat representing that quintessential bogey-man of Renaissance Europe: the Ottoman Turks. Translated and contextualized by respected Dutch swordsman and fencing researcher, Reinier van Noort, The Art of Swordplay is sure to please martial artist and military historian alike.

The Incas carried out some of the most dramatic ceremonies known to us from ancient times. Groups of people walked hundreds of miles across arid and mountainous terrain to perform them on mountains over 6,096 m (20,000 feet) high. The most important offerings made during these pilgrimages involved human sacrifices (capacochas). Although Spanish chroniclers wrote about these offerings and the state sponsored processions of which they were a part, their accounts were based on second-hand sources, and the only direct evidence we have of the capacocha sacrifices comes to us from archaeological excavations. Some of the most thoroughly documented of these were undertaken on high mountain summits, where the material evidence has been exceptionally well preserved. In this study we describe the results of research undertaken on Mount Llullaillaco (6,739 m/22,109 feet), which has the worlds highest archaeological site. The types of ruins and artifact assemblages recovered are described and analyzed. By comparing the archaeological evidence with the chroniclers accounts and with findings from other mountaintop sites, common patterns are demonstrated; while at the same time previously little known elements contribute to our understanding of key aspects of Inca religion. This study illustrates the importance of archaeological sites being placed within the broader context of physical and sacred features of the natural landscape.

Chicago on the Nile relates the colorful story of the University of Chicagos Epigraphic Survey expedition to Egypt, from its conception in 1924 by the first American Egyptologist, James Henry Breasted, through its development over the course of a century to become the major scientific and social presence it is todaynot just in Egypt but throughout the world. Initially envisioned as a small group of scientists devoted to documenting the ancient historical inscriptions and reliefs on the walls of the temple of Medinet Habu in Luxor, the Epigraphic Surveys work grew to encompass many of the most important sites in Egypt, including Karnak, Luxor Temple, the tomb of Kheruef, Saqqara, Abydos, and the Beit el-Wali temple in Nubia. The story places this work within the larger contexts of Egyptian and international politics, the vicissitudes of the world financial situation, and academic policies. Drawing on hundreds of letters and photos, most of them previously unpublished, the book explores why the Epigraphic Survey chose specific sites for its work, the often grand expectations for its projects and publication program, and the ultimate results. The history of Chicago House, the Surveys headquarters and residence, is described in detail and offers many amusing anecdotes of social life there over the past century. As such, Chicago on the Nile provides a whos who of Egyptologists and archaeologists who worked for and interacted with the Survey to save the endangered texts and reliefs on the ancient monuments of the Nile Valley.

When we imagine ancient political life, we think of powerful rulers and awe-inspiring monuments, not grassroots movements. But if the cacophony of our modern political discourse can teach us anything, it is that negotiating power and legitimacy is an ongoing conversation, not a monologue. Pomp, Circumstance, and the Performance of Politics investigates moments and spaces in the premodern world where audiences had the opportunity to weigh in on the messages their leaders were sending. How did ordinary people experience and contribute to their political realities, and what strategies did rulers use to gain support? Bringing together scholars working in a wide variety of disciplines and time periods, from prehispanic Mesoamerica and Early Historic India to the Assyrian Empire and papal Rome, this book takes a bottom-up approach to evaluating the risks and rewards of acting "politically correct"or incorrectin the ancient world.

The so called Fertile Crescent was home of some founder crops important in early agriculture: einkorn, emmer, barley, flax, chick pea, pea, lentil, and bitter vetch. However, research on the proportions and ubiquity of cultivated, measured, delivered, processed and consumed food crops shows a dramatic dominance of the cultivation of barley. Thus, one could assume that there was no significant interspecific but only intraspecific crop diversity and that Mesopotamian agriculture was a kind of a barley monoculture. In contrast, the plenty of cuneiform terms for cereal-like and legume-like plants might indicate some kind of biodiversity. Indeed, some cuneiform scientists specializing in crop plants and vegetables consider that some of the Sumerian e compounds, as well as their Akkadian equivalents, might be identified with millets, with some kinds of pulses such as bitter vetch and cowpea, or with some kind of tuber plants. Against this background, this study undertakes research on some Sumero-Akkadian taxa: In the first part of this study I evaluate some terms which several specialists propose to be millet or sorghum varieties: eetub (e-etub) = arsuppu, emu (e-mu(3/5)) = eguu, ezahgebar (e-ne-ge-bar), egunu (e-gu-nu, e-gunu3) = egunu, e-ka, e-ka sig-ga = arsikku, e-ud-e-de3 = duhnu. In this context, the question that has to be asked is if it is possible that millets were cultivated in Babylonia as early as the late third millennium BC. To address this issue, the contribution of the Bronze Age Gulf trade in exchange for domesticated crops, including African and Asian millets, will be examined. Finally, the study discusses why, despite their excellent heat and drought tolerances, none of the millet species in arid Babylonia could displace the winter sown main crops. The second part addresses the question of whether the recently proposed identification of the Akkadian crop (se/uqayytu with Cyperus esculentus, a plant that has been demonstrated to have been present in ancient Egypt but not in Mesopotamia, is supported by the cuneiform evidence. I undertake some more detailed ecotrophological research on the use of qayytu as an intermediate in the production of beer and foodstuff. In this context, I also study some other semi-baked and fermented intermediates.

The papers published here are dedicated to the memory of Ellen N. Davis, one of the most valued and beloved Aegean scholars of her generation. All of the articles are in some way inspired or influenced by Davis own contributions to the field. In the area of metalwork, several papers investigate interconnections within and around the Aegean during the Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Ages (Betancourt, Ferrence, and Muhly, Weingarten, Kopcke), while others examine metal ware in its social context (Wiener). Papers on wall painting range from studies of pigments and optical illusions (Vlachopoulos), to representations of water (Shank). Anthropomorphic representations, or their absence, of goddesses or priestesses (Jones), rulers (Palaima), or initiates (Koehl) are also studied here with new eyes and fresh insights.

British Library MS Harley 2253 is one of the most important literary works to survive from the English medieval era. In rarity, quality, and abundance, its secular love lyrics comprise an unrivaled collection. Intermingled with them are contemporary political songs as well as delicate lyrics designed to inspire religious devotion.

Described by Lewis Binford in his new foreword as a "solid foundation on which to build a vital and growing historical archaeology," Stanley Souths famous book on historical archaeology includes a new introduction by the author that discusses how the book came to be written and the evolution of the field. Widely regarded as one of the most influential books in historical archaeology, the book was originally published by Academic Press in 1977.

This volumethe companion book to the special exhibition Back to School in Babylonia of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicagoexplores education in the Old Babylonian period through the lens of House F in Nippur, excavated jointly by the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1950s and widely believed to have been a scribal school. The books twenty essays offer a state-of-the-art synthesis of research on the history of House F and the educational curriculum documented on the many tablets discovered there, while the catalogs five chapters present the 126 objects included in the exhibition, the vast majority of them cuneiform tablets.

Warrior, mighty builder, and statesman, over the course of his 67-year-long reign (1279-1212 BCE), Ramesses II achieved more than any other pharaoh in the three millennia of ancient Egyptian civilization. Drawing on the latest research, Peter Brand reveals Ramesses the Great as a gifted politician, canny elder statesman, and tenacious warrior. With restless energy, he fully restored the office of Pharaoh to unquestioned levels of prestige and authority, thereby bringing stability to Egypt. He ended almost seven decades of warfare between Egypt and the Hittite Empire by signing the earliest international peace treaty in recorded history. In his later years, even as he outlived many of his own children and grandchildren, Ramesses II became a living god and finally, an immortal legend. With authoritative knowledge and colorful details Brand paints a compelling portrait of this legendary Pharaoh who ruled over Imperial Egypt during its Golden Age.

In the late 1400s in eastern England, a scribe was in the process of compiling a large dramatic manuscript of over two hundred vellum folios. The manuscript contains components of an independent Mary Play, parts one and two of an independent Passion Play and an independent Assumption of Mary Play, as well as ten play subjects that appear in no other English cycles - the killing of Lamech in the Noah Play, the Root of Jesse, the story of Joachim and Anne, the Presentation of Mary in the Temple, the Parliament of Heaven, the Trial of Mary and Joseph, the scene of Mary and the cherry tree in the Nativity Play, the Death of Herod, the scene of Veronicas handkerchief in the Procession to Calvary, and the appearance of the risen Christ to the Virgin Mary in her Assumption Play. This edition acknowledges the N-Town compiler who took plays from various contexts and integrated them into an existing cycle of plays, thus treating the manuscript as if it were a superstructure whose parts could be replaced, renovated, and supplemented without altering the fundamental coherence of the overarching design.

Titles have always been conferred on persons both to identify their functions in society and to assign honorary status. In Egypt even more than in Mesopotamia, function-related and honorary titles were so valued that officials and functionaries of varying stations collected the titles accrued in their lifetime and preserved them in a titulary, the ancient equivalent of a resume. Israelites serving at the royal courts in Jerusalem and Samaria or in local administrations also held title, but the sources suggest far fewer of them than their neighbors. Nili Fox analyzes the titles and roles of civil officials and functionaries in Israel and Judah during the monarchy, including key ministers of the central government, regional administrators, and palace attendants. The nineteen titles fall into three categories: status-related titles, function-related titles, and miscellaneous designations that could be held by a variety of officials. Fox sets these Israelite and Judahite titles in their ancient context through extensive study of Egyptian, Akkadian, and Ugaritic records. She also draws upon the corpus of Hebrew epigraphic material, which allows her to explore economic components of state organization such as royal land grants, supply networks, and systems of accounting, which would be impossible to understand on the basis of the Hebrew Bible alone. Fox also treats the widely debated issue of whether Israelite state organization was influenced by foreign models and, if so, how much. The evidence of non-Hebrew sources offers little concrete material to substantiate theories that Israel modeled its government after a foreign prototype, and Fox offers a more finessed approach. Many features of Israelite administration are best explained as basic elements of any monarchic structure in the ancient Near East that developed to satisfy the needs of an evolving local system. Other seemingly foreign features have a long tradition in Canaan and probably were naturally assimilated. Fox recognizes the interconnections between the cultures in the region but emphasizes the need to closely examine the Israelite system with internal evidence.

This scholarly study sheds important new light on the politics of Polish Jewry on the eve of its destruction. Drawing from sources in the Polish Jewish and non-Jewish press and from archives in Europe, Israel, and the United States, Emanuel Melzer examines the efforts of Jews in this major center of Jewish life to secure its existence and advance its interests in the late 1930s, when the radicalization of antisemitism became an increasingly prominent theme in the countrys political life. With the death of Pilsudski, the prognosis for the Polish Jews appeared increasingly bleak, as hostile forces sought to abrogate their constitutional rights and force them to leave the country en masse. The enmity they experienced drew in no small measure from the example of Nazi Germany, which did not hesitate to portray the Jews as the common enemy of Germans and Poles alike. In the face of these developments, Polish Jews attempted to wage a coordinated and concerted political battle against the economic persecution, hostile administrative practices, discriminatory legislation, and violent riots that increasingly pervaded their daily lives. Melzer recounts those attempts and analyzes their failure. Of the three primary groups among Polish Jewrythe Zionists, Agudas Yisroel, and the Bundonly the last was capable of carrying on effective opposition to anti-Jewish forces. But it was not prepared to join with nonproletarian Jewish groups in an all-Jewish defense. The Jewish press, too, was not able to forge a unified Jewish organizational framework, tied as it was to the existing political parties and reflecting their attitudes and shortcomings. The only official political voice of Polish Jewry was the small Jewish parliamentary caucus. Although respected by much of the Jewish public, the Sejm and Senat deputies were not recognized as its legitimate spokesmen and usually acted without coordinating their interventions with one another. As a result, the most effective Jewish actions were undertaken on the local levelnotably the self-defense organized during the Przytyk pogrom and the stubborn battle of Jewish students against the ghetto benches. Melzer demonstrates that the vociferous Jewish public debate over questions of policy and the tenacious daily struggles against discrimination had little effect upon Polish Jewrys deteriorating situation. Without charismatic leadership and an organizational framework based on common Jewish destiny and mutual identification, its ability to confront the grave challenges that lay ahead was seriously impaired. With the approach of war, many felt they were trapped with no way out, left to face the Nazi onslaught virtually alone.

Las disposiciones de Derecho conocidas como constituciones imperiales nuevas, esto es, Novelas, emitidas por el emperador Mayoriano entre el 457-460 d.C. han estado siempre presentes en los escritos especializados sobre el Bajo Imperio a proposito de multiples temas, pero normalmente como sucintas referencias al hilo de investigaciones sobre materias legisladas por otros emperadores; no obstante, desde finales del s. XIX d.C., el perfil sui generis de Mayoriano ha suscitado interes propio en algunos articulos especificos y en obras de conjunto, comenzando por la de Cantarelli en 1883. Se destaca sin duda alguna en el estudio de la normativa mayorianea la monografia de Oppedisano, quien desde su formacion como historiador en el año 2013 ofrecio una esplendida vision de conjunto del contexto politico-militar, vida y obra de este Emperador, asi como de su legislacion.En esta investigacion pongo especialmente el foco de atencion en cuatro de las Novelas mayorianeas, publicadas entre los años 458 y 459 d.C., que afectan a la condicion juridica de las mujeres que le son coetaneas; abarcando con ello la descripcion de modelos femeninos que conviven en un mismo espacio temporal y fisico el Imperio romano de Occidente, pero dispares por su extraccion social: Solteras, casadas, viudas, aristocratas y campesinas-colonas.