- Department of Art & Art History
University of Texas at Austin
2301 San Jacinto Blvd. D1300
Austin, Texas 78712-1421 - 512-471-5850
Julia Guernsey
The University of Texas at Austin, Art and Art History, Faculty Member
In this book, I examine the relationship between human figuration, fragmentation, bodily divisibility, personhood, and community in ancient Mesoamerica.
Urbanization is a phenomenon that brings into focus a range of topics of broad interest to scholars. It is one of the central, enduring interests of anthropological archaeology. Because urbanization is a transformational process, it... more
Urbanization is a phenomenon that brings into focus a range of topics of broad interest to scholars. It is one of the central, enduring interests of anthropological archaeology. Because urbanization is a transformational process, it changes the relationships between social and cultural variables such as demography, economy, politics, and ideology. As one of a handful of cases in the ancient world where cities developed independently, Mesoamerica should play a major role in the global, comparative analysis of first-generation cities and urbanism in general. Yet most research focuses on later manifestations of urbanism in Mesoamerica, thereby perpetuating the fallacy that Mesoamerican cities developed relatively late in comparison to urban centers in the rest of the world. This volume presents new data, case studies, and models for approaching the subject of early Mesoamerican cities. It demonstrates how the study of urbanism in Mesoamerica, and all ancient civilizations, is entering a new and dynamic phase of scholarship.
Ancient America Special Publication Number One
Julia Guernsey and Kent Reilly, editors
Boundary End Archaeology Research Center
2006
Julia Guernsey and Kent Reilly, editors
Boundary End Archaeology Research Center
2006
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This paper takes Izapa Stela 21, with its vivid portrayal of captive sacrifice, as the point of departure for an analysis of the ways in which acts of aggression were portrayed in Late Formative monuments from a region that includes the... more
This paper takes Izapa Stela 21, with its vivid portrayal of captive sacrifice, as the point of departure for an analysis of the ways in which acts of aggression were portrayed in Late Formative monuments from a region that includes the Pacific slope and adjacent highlands of Mexico and Guatemala. It considers the social significance of themes of captive sacrifice and violence, and their role within a larger iconographic system designed to accommodate the mutually reinforcing ideas of ideology and coercive power. While clearly laden with implications of political control, subjugation, deference, and fealty, the imagery also alludes to agricultural fertility, the arrival of rain, and broader notions of social order.
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Images on Late Preclassic (300 B.C.–A.D. 250) monuments from Izapa, Chiapas, Mexico, featuring canoe scenes, maize deities, and water gods, have long been interpreted as representing mythic passages. While significant, such... more
Images on Late Preclassic (300 B.C.–A.D. 250) monuments from Izapa, Chiapas, Mexico, featuring canoe scenes, maize deities, and water gods, have long been interpreted as representing mythic passages. While significant, such interpretations neglect other aspects of the scenes, including environmental and socioeconomic concerns that revolve around rain, subsistence, and water transport. By contextualizing these images and linking them to recent archaeological investigations that illuminate aspects of the Late Preclassic economy of Izapa, I argue that the scenes strategically situated economic activities— maize agriculture, the trade and transport of goods in canoes, even salt production—within a mythic framework. The images constitute an artistic program that entwined mythic tales, industries of salt production, and traditions of water navigation and that phrased them as part of a system of social order during a period of incipient state formation.
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Beside one of the earliest Preclassic pyramids in Guatemala the authors discovered a large basin fashioned in clay and shaped like a quatrefoil. The use of the quatrefoil theme on other carvings reveals its association with water and its... more
Beside one of the earliest Preclassic pyramids in Guatemala the authors discovered a large basin fashioned in clay and shaped like a quatrefoil. The use of the quatrefoil theme on other carvings reveals its association with water and its symbolic role as the mouth of an underworld. Excavations in an adjacent mound exposed an affluent community, rich in figurines. This juxtaposition of monuments and residence at La Blanca shows a society of 900-600 BC in which ritual and the secular power were well integrated.
Research Interests: Archaeology, Water, Mesoamerican Archaeology, American Culture, Sculpture, and 8 moreAntiquity, Maya, Society, Excavation, PYRAMID, Well, Basin, and Pyramide
"The archaeological site of Chichén Itzá, one of the best known ancient Maya cities, is located in the northern section of the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico. Chichén Itzá has figured prominently in both past and present discussions on... more
"The archaeological site of Chichén Itzá, one of the best known ancient Maya cities, is located in the northern section of the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico. Chichén Itzá has figured prominently in both past and present discussions on the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods in the northern Maya lowlands. Based on archaeological information and information derived from ethnohistorical sources, this city can be dated to a period from circa A.D. 700 to circa A.D. 1250, with its apogee placed between about A.D. 800 to A.D. 1050. The past and present discussions were directed specifically towards the origin of the inhabitants of the city, the arrival of K'uk'ulkán (“Feathered Serpent”), the origin of non-Mayan (“Toltec”) architecture and sculptural programmes at the site, and the model of its political organization. The center of Chichén Itzá is dominated by a raised platform, which harbours buildings now known as El Castillo (The Castle), the Great Ballcourt, and the Temple of the Warriors. These buildings contain various non-Mayan architectural and sculptural traits. Buildings south of the centre, erected in a regional Maya style, contain a large number of inscribed monuments (mostly lintels) carrying long hieroglyphic texts, which provide Chichén Itzá with the largest corpus of surviving inscriptions in the northern Maya lowlands. Chichén Itzá figures prominently in a wide range of ethnohistorical sources from the Colonial period, such as the “Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán” by Fray Diego de Landa and the “Relaciones Geográficas” by various authors, all in Spanish, and the so-called “Books of Chilam Balam” of Chumayel, Maní, and Tizimín, all in Yucatec Maya. In this study the author discusses the southern Maya lowland origin of the inhabitants of Chichén Itzá, the arrival of K'uk'ulkán and the introduction of so-called Toltec architecture and iconography, the identification of both gods and human beings in the inscriptions, and the political organization at Chichén Itzá. He presents extensive and detailed analyses of architectural and sculptural programmes, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and the Yucatec Maya “chronicles” from the Books of Chilam Balam."
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... extra-ordinarily useful, as they integrate the previously proposed construction sequences presented by Merle Green Robertson and George Andrews with ... easily penetrated) space of the East Court ??? first envisioned during the reign... more
... extra-ordinarily useful, as they integrate the previously proposed construction sequences presented by Merle Green Robertson and George Andrews with ... easily penetrated) space of the East Court ??? first envisioned during the reign of K'inich Janab' Pakal I ??? accommodated ...
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This paper introduces the articles that comprise this Special Issue on Izapa. First, we review early reporting and assessments of Izapa's monuments as well as archaeological investigations undertaken at the site during the twentieth... more
This paper introduces the articles that comprise this Special Issue on Izapa. First, we review early reporting and assessments of Izapa's monuments as well as archaeological investigations undertaken at the site during the twentieth century. Next, we describe more recent developments in interpretation and new archeological excavations and survey data collected during the past two decades. The papers in this Special Issue present new information that contribute to our evolving understanding of Izapa during the millennium that stretches from the Middle Formative period through the Middle Classic period (700 b.c.–a.d. 600). They serve as a status report on our understanding of the still largely enigmatic ancient kingdom, its regional structure, and connections to contemporaneous Isthmian sites.
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2010. Introduction to The Place of Stone Monuments:: Context, Use, and Meaning in Mesoamerica's Preclassic Transition, eds. Julia Guernsey, John E. Clark, and Barbara Arroyo. Dumbarton Oaks.
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2010. Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 57/58 (spring/autumn ): 75-96.
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In The Southern Maya in the Late Preclassic: The Rise and Fall of an Early Mesoamerican Civilization, eds. Michael Love and Jonathan Kaplan. University Press of Colorado. 2011.