Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folkore Award 2003Malanggan are among the most treasured possessions in the Pacific, yet they continue to confound anthropologists. Central to funerals in New Ireland, these 'death' figures are intended to decompose as symbolic representations of the dead. Wrapped in images that are conceived of as 'skins', they are both visually complex and intriguing. This book is the first to interpret these mysterious agents of resemblance and connection as having a cognitive rather than a linguistic basis.Found in nearly every ethnographic museum in the world, Malanggan collections have been left virtually untouched. This original study begins by tracing the history of the collections and moves on to consider the role these artefacts play in sacrifice, ritual and exchange. What is the relationship between Malanggan and memory? How can Malanggan be understood as a life force as well as a vehicle for thought? In an analysis of the cognitive aspects of Malanggan, Kuchler offers a highly original conceptualization of the centrality of the knot as a mode of being, thinking and binding in the Pacific."Malanggan: Art, Memory and Sacrifice "is a groundbreaking study. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork and collection research, it provides an incisive new take on one of the Pacific's classic puzzles, as well as a wealth of new information and resources for anthropologists, collectors and curators alike.

In this study of Northwest Coast art, Jonathan Meuli has not only outlined a history of ideas associated with Northwest Coast art objects from pre-Contact time to the present day, but has also examined the ways in which the physical location and contexts in which the objects are produced has helped to determine their meanings. Locating his linear historical narrative within a wider exploration of ethnographic art ideas, which emphasizes links across cultures, Meuli examines the differing attitudes towards Northwest Coast material culture, particularly as these are embodied in oral mythic narratives, collection methods and architectural constructions.

The first comprehensive overview of an important genre of American art, Souls Grown Deep explores the visual-arts genius of the black South. This first work in a multivolume study introduces 40 African-American self-taught artists, who, without significant formal training, often employ the most unpretentious and unlikely materials. Like blues and jazz artists, they create powerful statements amplifying the call for freedom and vision.

This is a state-by-state guide for collectors and general folk art enthusiasts to learn about the types of masked dances still carried out in Mexico's Indian and mestizo communities today. Close to one-hundred colour photographs of authenticated masks from the collection of the Museum of International Folk Art are presented, including finely carved pieces from the 19th century to simple face coverings made in the past ten years. The masked ceremonies are brought to life with documentary photographs showing masqueraders acting out their roles.

This book provides an overview of the uses of turquoise in native arts of the Southwest, beginning with the earliest people who mined and processed the stone for use in jewellery, on decorative objects, and as a powerful element in ceremony. In the past, as now, turquoise was valued for its color and beauty but also for its symbolic nature: sky, water, health, protection, abundance. The book traces historical and contemporary jewellery made by Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, and Santo Domingo artisans, and the continuously inventive ways the stone has been worked.

A Painted Ridge is a book about the San (Bushmen) practice of rock painting. In it, David Witelson explores a suite of spatially close San rock painting sites in the Maclear District of South Africa's Eastern Cape Province. As a suite, the sites are remarkable because, despite their proximity to each other, they share patterns of similarity and simultaneous difference. They are a microcosm that reflects, in a broad sense, a trend found at other painted sites in South Africa. Rather than attempting to explain these patterns chiefly in terms of chronological breaks or cultural discontinuities, this book seeks to understand patterns of similarity and difference primarily in terms of the performative nature of San image-making. In doing so, the bygone and almost unrecorded practice of San rock art is considered relative to ethnographically well-documented and observed forms of San expressive culture. The approach in the book draws on concepts and terminology from the discipline of performance studies to characterise the San practice of image-making as well as to coordinate otherwise disparate ideas about that practice. It is a study that aims to explicate the nuances of what David Lewis-Williams called the 'production and consumption' of San rock art.

Volume 27 in the Civilization of the American Indian Series Maria: The Potter of San Ildefonso is the story of Maria Martinez and her husband, Julian, who revived the ancient Pueblo craft of pottery-making and stimulated interest in Southwestern Pueblo pottery among both white people and Indians. Maria Montoya Martinez, or Marie, as she sometimes signs her pottery, is a woman who has become in her own lifetime a legend. She lives in the pueblo of San Ildefonso, near Santa Fe, New Mexico, and although her life has been, as closely as she could make it, the normal life of a woman of her culture, her unusual qualities have set her apart and gained her fame throughout the world. Through her mastery of pottery-making, Maria brought economic gain to her family and her village. However, distressing problems accompanied success and fame. Liquor ultimately wrecked Julian. There was dissension within the pueblo. And there was the succession of admiring white people who invaded her home and interrupted her work. Not least, in Maria view, was the departure of her own children from many Pueblo customs. Inextricably woven into the story of Maria is the story of the pottery of the Southwestern Pueblos, a native craft that has become a national art interest, including the development of the unique black-on-black ware by Julian, the first of which is reproduced among the illustrations. Margaret Lefranc's many accurate drawings of actual pieces of pottery provide an almost complete documentary history of the craft and show some of the finest examples of Maria's art. Her skilled pen has also interpreted faithfully the spirit of Maria, the Pueblo Indians, and the pottery. "Miss Marriott's literary style is superb. She has caught the beautiful, measured pace of Indian talk and, without seeming to make any conscious effort, has written Maria's story with simplicity and understanding as if Marie herself were living her life before you."-Will Davidson in the Chicago Sunday Tribune. ." . . a unique American biography and a unique story of the birth of an art."-Lewis Gannett in the New York Herald Tribune.

Weaving designs of the Southwest.

Moon Hunter is an injured wolf and outcast in his pack like his friends. Lost in the Valley of Drury, Moon Hunter cannot find food or his friends and the dark mist of Drury is caving in on him until a guiding light appears out of the woods around him. Here he meets a friend named Grasshopper and from there Moon Hunter learns of his purpose in life and finds all the food from earth, water, air, and sun he needs to start a new life with a family of friends like him. With imagination, absolution is not unknown anymore to Moon Hunter and the pack of wolves in this colorful tale of serendipity proportions.

Illustrated with 150 enchanting paintings and historical photographs, some from as early as 1922, the author describes the history and motivation behind some of the most exceptional children's books published in the U.S. These picture book readers, originally developed for use in Indian schools during the New Deal, represent the first Native-centred texts used in Bureau of Indian Affairs curriculum. They were written by lauded writers, ethnologists and linguists, and illustrated with the stunning work of emerging and prominent Native American artists.

This comprehensive work takes a broad view of what rock art entails, covering the history of rock art research and the discovery of many new sites. The author illustrates the different symbols and motifs that are found throughout the British Isles, and shows where they occur in landscapes and monuments. It is a book that captures the excitement of discovery and examines the various theories about the origin, use and meaning of rock art. Stan Beckensall also explains the problems of accurate conservation, recording, and display.

Ranging from the islands of the Bering Sea to Alaska's interior forests, "Alaska Native Art" celebrates the rich art of Alaska's Native peoples, both setting their work in the context of historical traditions and demonstrating the vibrant role it continues to play in contemporary Alaskan culture. "Alaska Native Art" showcases a staggering array of types of art - from beadwork to ivory carving, basketry to skin sewing - from Aleutian Islander, Pacific Eskimo, Tlingit, Athabaskan, Yup'ik, and Inupiaq artists, as well as full-color photographs of artists at work. Lavishly produced, and featuring a fascinating study by author Susan W. Fair of the concept of tradition in the modern world, it is a tribute to the incredible vision of Alaska's Native artists.

In the sixteenth-century Atlantic world, nature and culture swirled in people's minds to produce fantastic images. In the South of France, a cloister's painted wooden panels greeted parishioners with vivid depictions of unicorns, dragons, and centaurs, while Mayans in the Yucatan created openings to buildings that resembled a fierce animal's jaws, known to archaeologists as serpent-column portals. In Nature and Culture in the Early Modern Atlantic, historian Peter C. Mancall reveals how Europeans and Native Americans thought about a natural world undergoing rapid change in the century following the historic voyages of Christopher Columbus. Through innovative use of oral history and folklore maintained for centuries by Native Americans, as well as original use of spectacular manuscript atlases, paintings that depict on-the-spot European representations of nature, and texts that circulated imperfectly across the ocean, he reveals how the encounter between the old world and the new changed the fate of millions of individuals. This inspired work of Atlantic, European, and American history begins with medieval concepts of nature and ends in an age when the printed book became the primary avenue for the dissemination of scientific information. Throughout the sixteenth century, the borders between the natural world and the supernatural were more porous than modern readers might realize. Native Americans and Europeans alike thought about monsters, spirits, and insects in considerable depth. In Mancall's vivid narrative, the modern world emerged as a result of the myriad encounters between peoples who inhabited the Atlantic basin in this period. The centuries that followed can be comprehended only by exploring how culture in its many forms-stories, paintings, books-shaped human understanding of the natural world.

Painstakingly constructed by hand of plant fiber and precious feathers from endemic birds of Hawai'i, feather cloaks and capes provided spiritual protection to Hawaiian chiefs for centuries while proclaiming their royal status. Few of the artworks known as n? hulu ali'i, or royal feathers, survive today except in museums and private collections. Through photographs and scholarly essays, Royal Hawaiian Featherwork highlights approximately seventy-five rare examples of the finest featherwork extant: capes and cloaks ('ahu'ula), royal staffs (k?hili), feather lei (lei hulu manu), helmets (mahiole), feathered god images (akua hulu manu), and related paintings and works on paper. With their brilliant coloring and abstract compositions of crescents, triangles, circles, quadrilaterals, and lines, the artworks are both beautiful and rich in cultural significance. This lavishly illustrated volume also serves as the catalogue to accompany the first exhibition of Hawaiian featherwork to be staged on the U.S. continent, scheduled for a six-month run starting in August 2015 at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The book and exhibition provide an overdue opportunity for the public to discover the central role these artworks played in the culture and history of the Hawaiian Islands, to explore their unparalleled technical craftsmanship, and to discover an aesthetic tradition unique to the Hawaiian archipelago.

The art of sub-Saharan Africa reveals the marvelous achievements of tribal artists--their names unknown--over thousands of years. Their aesthetic ideal finds form in wood, bone, fabric, bronze and iron. This illustrated study of traditional African art includes pieces from Western Sudan, the Congolese Basin, the Guinea coast, Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo and East and South Africa. Each piece is characterized by its own traditions and artistic forms. The earliest pieces date from the beginning of the first millennium, the most recent form the early 20th century. Unique and rare examples are documented, many virtually unknown.

In Art for an Undivided Earth Jessica L. Horton reveals how the spatial philosophies underlying the American Indian Movement (AIM) were refigured by a generation of artists searching for new places to stand. Upending the assumption that Jimmie Durham, James Luna, Kay WalkingStick, Robert Houle, and others were primarily concerned with identity politics, she joins them in remapping the coordinates of a widely shared yet deeply contested modernity that is defined in great part by the colonization of the Americas. She follows their installations, performances, and paintings across the ocean and back in time, as they retrace the paths of Native diplomats, scholars, performers, and objects in Europe after 1492. Along the way, Horton intervenes in a range of theories about global modernisms, Native American sovereignty, racial difference, archival logic, artistic itinerancy, and new materialisms. Writing in creative dialogue with contemporary artists, she builds a picture of a spatially, temporally, and materially interconnected world-an undivided earth.

In Art for an Undivided Earth Jessica L. Horton reveals how the spatial philosophies underlying the American Indian Movement (AIM) were refigured by a generation of artists searching for new places to stand. Upending the assumption that Jimmie Durham, James Luna, Kay WalkingStick, Robert Houle, and others were primarily concerned with identity politics, she joins them in remapping the coordinates of a widely shared yet deeply contested modernity that is defined in great part by the colonization of the Americas. She follows their installations, performances, and paintings across the ocean and back in time, as they retrace the paths of Native diplomats, scholars, performers, and objects in Europe after 1492. Along the way, Horton intervenes in a range of theories about global modernisms, Native American sovereignty, racial difference, archival logic, artistic itinerancy, and new materialisms. Writing in creative dialogue with contemporary artists, she builds a picture of a spatially, temporally, and materially interconnected world-an undivided earth.

The languages of two hemispheres collided when Spain conquered Mexico, and as a result, a dynamic expression of visual and dramatic arts emerged. Mural painting and missionary theater quickly became the media to explain and comprehend the encounter of indigenous peoples with Christ and the crucifixion, as well as with heaven and hell.
In" Foundational Arts" Michael K. Schuessler asserts that the literature of New Spain begins with missionary theater and its intimate relationship to mural painting. In particular, he examines the relationships between texts and visual images that emerged in Mexico at two Augustinian monasteries in Hidalgo, Mexico, during the century following the Spanish Conquest. The forced combination of the ideographical tradition of Nahuatl with Latin-based language alphabets led to a fascinating array of new cultural expressions.
Missionary theater was organized by ingenious friars with the intent to convert and catechize indigenous populations. Often performed in Nahuatl or other local languages, the actors combined Latin-based language texts with visual contexts that corresponded to indigenous ways of knowing: murals, architectural ornamentation, statuary, altars, and other modes of visual representation. By concentrating on the interrelationship between mural painting and missionary theater, "Foundational Arts" explores the artistic and ideological origins of Mexican plastic arts and literature.

Here is a rich selection of original designs carefully adapted from authentic folk art of New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, the Hawaiian Islands, and Australia. It comprises 225 intricate images, derived from masks, wall tapestries, pictorial ornaments, sand paintings, pottery, carvings, wooden musical instruments, temple art, and other artifacts. These copyright-free designs are the perfect resource for bringing an exotic South Seas touch to a wide range of art and craft projects. 225 illus.

Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptural works, as well as indigenous and Spanish sixteenth-century texts, were filled with images of foodstuffs and food processing and consumption. Both gods and humans were depicted feasting, and food and eating clearly played a pervasive, integral role in Aztec rituals. Basic foods were transformed into sacred elements within particular rituals, while food in turn gave meaning to the ritual performance. This pioneering book offers the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Elizabeth Moran asserts that while feasting and consumption are often seen as a secondary aspect of ritual performance, a close examination of images of food rites in Aztec ceremonies demonstrates that the presence-or, in some cases, the absence-of food in the rituals gave them significance. She traces the ritual use of food from the beginning of Aztec mythic history through contact with Europeans, demonstrating how food and ritual activity, the everyday and the sacred, blended in ceremonies that ranged from observances of births, marriages, and deaths to sacrificial offerings of human hearts and blood to feed the gods and maintain the cosmic order. Moran also briefly considers continuities in the use of pre-Hispanic foods in the daily life and ritual practices of contemporary Mexico. Bringing together two domains that have previously been studied in isolation, Sacred Consumption promises to be a foundational work in Mesoamerican studies.

Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptural works, as well as indigenous and Spanish sixteenth-century texts, were filled with images of foodstuffs and food processing and consumption. Both gods and humans were depicted feasting, and food and eating clearly played a pervasive, integral role in Aztec rituals. Basic foods were transformed into sacred elements within particular rituals, while food in turn gave meaning to the ritual performance. This pioneering book offers the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Elizabeth Moran asserts that while feasting and consumption are often seen as a secondary aspect of ritual performance, a close examination of images of food rites in Aztec ceremonies demonstrates that the presence-or, in some cases, the absence-of food in the rituals gave them significance. She traces the ritual use of food from the beginning of Aztec mythic history through contact with Europeans, demonstrating how food and ritual activity, the everyday and the sacred, blended in ceremonies that ranged from observances of births, marriages, and deaths to sacrificial offerings of human hearts and blood to feed the gods and maintain the cosmic order. Moran also briefly considers continuities in the use of pre-Hispanic foods in the daily life and ritual practices of contemporary Mexico. Bringing together two domains that have previously been studied in isolation, Sacred Consumption promises to be a foundational work in Mesoamerican studies.

In Maya theology, everything from humans and crops to gods and the world itself passes through endless cycles of birth, maturation, dissolution, death, and rebirth. Traditional Maya believe that human beings perpetuate this cycle through ritual offerings and ceremonies that have the power to rebirth the world at critical points during the calendar year. The most elaborate ceremonies take place during Semana Santa (Holy Week), the days preceding Easter on the Christian calendar, during which traditionalist Maya replicate many of the most important world-renewing rituals that their ancient ancestors practiced at the end of the calendar year in anticipation of the New Year's rites. Marshaling a wealth of evidence from Pre-Columbian texts, early colonial Spanish writings, and decades of fieldwork with present-day Maya, The Burden of the Ancients presents a masterfully detailed account of world-renewing ceremonies that spans the Pre-Columbian era through the crisis of the Conquest period and the subsequent colonial occupation all the way to the present. Allen J. Christenson focuses on Santiago Atitlan, a Tz'utujil Maya community in highland Guatemala, and offers the first systematic analysis of how the Maya preserved important elements of their ancient world renewal ceremonies by adopting similar elements of Roman Catholic observances and infusing them with traditional Maya meanings. His extensive description of Holy Week in Santiago Atitlan demonstrates that the community's contemporary ritual practices and mythic stories bear a remarkable resemblance to similar cultural entities from its Pre-Columbian past.

Overview of the Aboriginal Art, focusing on the first large-scale exhibition staged by the Fondation Opale (Switzerland). The common thread running right through this work is man's link with the land, the legacy of the ancestors that still echoes in the present. It is no accident that Before Time Began is one of the expressions used by Aboriginal artists in central Australia to refer to the creation of the world, in an oneiric sense. Understanding and following this underlying bond enables the reader to explore the art's narrative content in its association with dreams and the passage of time, elements that inevitably distinguish the temporal dimension in the different societies. But it is also a way of exploring the first stirrings of contemporary art in an Aboriginal context through works made at the beginning of the 1970s in Arnhem Land and in the territory of the Papunya, as well as more recent paintings by artists living in the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara). These last examples in particular highlight the fusion between contemporary art and traditional customs, in which ancestral knowledge is fused with elements drawn from the inevitable march of progress.

The rock art of the Americas was produced at very different times and by different cultures, both by hunter-gatherers, fishermen and by farmers from village or state societies. Each group can be characterised by diverse styles and techniques. The function of rock art depended on religious, political or social concerns that referred to a particular context and time. Peintures et gravures rupestres des Ameriques: Empreintes culturelles et territoriales presents the proceedings from Session XXV-3 of the XVIII UISPP World Congress (4-9 June 2018, Paris, France). Papers address the following questions: How does the study of rock art make it possible to culturally characterize its authors? What does it tell us about the function of sites? How and under what circumstances does it make it possible to delimit a cultural territory? The six articles in this volume provide case studies from Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, French Guiana and Chile.

This beautifully illustrated book showcases 110 objects from the Dallas Museum of Art's world-renowned African collection. In contrast to Western "art for art's sake," tradition-based African art served as an agent of religion, social stability, or social control. Chosen both for their visual appeal and their compelling histories and cultural significance, the works of art are presented under the themes of leadership and status; the cycle of life; decorative arts; and influences (imported and exported). Also included are many fascinating photographs that show the context in which these objects were originally used.