Shifts in the light: a journey through varied perspectives on animacy and authority in the Americas / Catherine J. Allen. Chiefly jaguar, chiefly tree: mastery and authority in the Upper Xingu / Carlos Fausto -- Soul proprietors: durable ontologies of Maya deep time / Patricia A. McAnany -- Burning sorrow: engaging the animacy of social-ecological life processes in native Amazonian death rituals / Beth A. Conklin -- Descartes, Jesus, and Huitzilopochtli: ontologies / Byron Ellsworth Hamann -- "Metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties": incarnation, incantations, animism, and the powers of Pre-Columbian visual imagery / Thomas B. F. Cummins -- The Lanzon's tale / Mary Weismantel -- Cosmopolitical bodies: living monoliths, vital tectonics, and the production of Tiwanaku / John Wayne Janusek -- On the threshold of the huaca: sanctuaries of sound in the ancient Andean world / Marco Curatola Petrocchi -- Buried alive: buildings, authority, and gradients of being in Northern Yucatan, Mexico / Scott Hutson, Jacob Welch, Shannon Plank, and Barry Kidder -- Animating public buildings in Formative Period Oaxaca: political and ontological implications / Arthur A. Joyce -- The material ambivalence of health and spirituality in colonial northeastern New Spain / Diana DiPaolo Loren -- Southern Quechua ontology / Bruce Mannheim -- Purpose, belief, and political action in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta / Santiago Giraldo -- Shifts in the light: a journey through varied perspectives on animacy and authority in the Americas / Catherine J. Allen.
Summary:
"Sacred Matter: Animacy and Authority in the Americas examines animism in Pre-Columbian America, focusing on how objects and places played central social roles in practices that expressed and sanctified political authority in the Andes, Amazon, and Mesoamerica. Pre-Columbian peoples staked claims to their authority when they animated matter by giving life to grandiose buildings, speaking with deified boulders, and killing valued objects. Likewise, things and places often animated people by demanding labor, care, and nourishment. In these practices of animation, things were cast as active subjects, agents of political change, and representatives of communities. People were positioned according to specific social roles and stations: workers, worshippers, revolutionaries, tribute payers, or authorities. Such practices manifested political visions of social order by defining relationships between people, things, and the environment. Contributors to this volume present a range of perspectives (archaeological, art historical, ethnohistorical, and linguistic) to shed light on how Pre-Columbian social authority was claimed and sanctified in practices of transformation and transubstantiation-that is, practices that birthed, converted, or destroyed certain objects and places, as well as the social and natural order from which these things were said to emerge"-- Provided by publisher.
Series:
Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian symposia and colloquia
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.