IN villages and towns across Spain and its former New World colonies, local performers stage mock battles between Spanish Christians and Moors or Aztecs that range from brief sword dances to massive street theatre lasting several days. The performances officially celebrate the triumph of Spanish Catholicism over its enemies. Such an explanation does not, however, account for the tradition's persistence for more than five hundred years nor for its widespread diffusion.

In this perceptive book, Max Harris seeks to understand the "puzzling and enduring passion" of both Mexicans and Spaniards for festivals of moros y cristianos. He begins by tracing the performances' roots in medieval Spain and showing how they came to be superimposed on the mock battles that had been part of pre-contact Aztec calendar rituals. Then, using James Scott's distinction between "public transcripts" and "hidden transcripts", he reveals how, in the hands of folk and indigenous performers, these spectacles of conquest became prophecies of the eventual reconquest of Mexico by the defeated Aztec peoples. Finally, he documents the early arrival of native American performance practices in Europe and the shift of moros y cristianos from court to folk tradition in Spain. Even today, as lively descriptions of current festivals make plain, mock battles between Aztecs, Moors, and Christians remain a remarkably sophisticated vehicle for the communal expression of dissent.

In this landmark work on the Anasazi tribes of the Southwest, naturalist Craig Childs dives head on into the mysteries of this vanished people.

The various tribes that made up the Anasazi people converged on Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) during the 11th century to create a civilization hailed as "the Las Vegas of its day," a flourishing cultural center that attracted pilgrims from far and wide, and a vital crossroads of the prehistoric world. By the 13th century, however, Chaco's vibrant community had disappeared without a trace.

Was it drought? Pestilence? War? Forced migration, mass murder or suicide? Conflicting theories have abounded for years, capturing the North American imagination for eons.
Join Craig Childs as he draws on the latest scholarly research, as well as a lifetime of exploration in the forbidden landscapes of the American Southwest, to shed new light on this compelling mystery. He takes us from Chaco Canyon to the highlands of Mesa Verde, to the Mongollon Rim; to a contemporary Zuni community where tribal elders maintain silence about the fate of their Lost Others; and to the largely unexplored foothills of the Sierra Madre in Mexico, where abundant remnants of Anasazi culture lie yet to be uncovered.

Mayan literature is among the oldest in the world, spanning an astonishing two millennia from deep pre-Columbian antiquity to the present day. Here, for the first time, is a fully illustrated survey, from the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions to the works of later writers using the Roman alphabet. Dennis Tedlock - ethnographer, linguist, poet, and award-winning author - draws on decades of living and working among the Maya to assemble this groundbreaking book, which is the first to treat ancient Mayan texts as literature. Tedlock considers the texts chronologically. He establishes that women were among the ancient writers and challenges the idea that Mayan rulers claimed the status of gods. "2000 Years of Mayan Literature" expands our understanding and appreciation not only of Mayan literature but of indigenous American literature in its entirety.

At an excavation of the Great Aztec Temple in Mexico City, amid carvings of skulls and a dismembered warrior goddess, David Carrasco stood before a container filled with the decorated bones of infants and children. It was the site of a massive human sacrifice, and for Carrasco the center of fiercely provocative questions: If ritual violence against humans was a profound necessity for the Aztecs in their capital city, is it central to the construction of social order and the authority of city states? Is civilization built on violence?
In City of Sacrifice, Carrasco chronicles the fascinating story of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, investigating Aztec religious practices and demonstrating that religious violence was integral to urbanization; the city itself was a temple to the gods. That Mexico City, the largest city on earth, was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan, is a point Carrasco poignantly considers in his comparison of urban life from antiquity to modernity.
Majestic in scope, City of Sacrifice illuminates not only the rich history of a major Meso american city but also the inseparability of two passionate human impulses: urbanization and religious engagement. It has much to tell us about many familiar events in our own time, from suicide bombings in Tel Aviv to rape and murder in the Balkans.

At its peak, the Inca empire was the largest on Earth. Yet in the year 1532, it was conquered by fewer than 200 Spanish adventurers. How could this happen? Approaching the answer clue by clue, scholar William Sullivan decodes the myths of the Incas to reveal an astoundingly precise record of astronomical events. The Incas accepted their fate as written in the stars. Illus.

Of all the great seafaring vessels of the Age of Discovery, not one has been recovered or even - given the lack of detailed contemporary descriptions - accurately represented. Then, in the mid-1990s, a sunken ship was found in a small, shallow gulf off the coast of Panama. Chronicling both dramatic history and present-day archaeological adventures, Klaus Brinkbaumer and Clemens Hoges reveal this artefact to be not only the oldest shipwreck ever recovered in the Western Hemisphere but also very likely the remains of the Vizcaina, one of the ships Christopher Columbus took on his last trip to the New World. "The Voyage of the Vizcaina" gives us an exciting tale of exploration and discovery, and the startling truths behind Columbus' final attempt to reach the East by going west.

David Stuart debunks myths about the Mayan calendar & the end of the world, showing how this achievement of timekeeping & worldview was a genuine triumph for an ancient civilization.

The discovery of the Indies, wrote Francisco Lopez de Gomara in 1552, was "the greatest event since the creation of the world, excepting the Incarnation and Death of Him who created it". Five centuries have not diminished either the overwhelming importance or the strangeness of the early encounter between Europeans and American peoples. This collection of essays, encompassing history, literary criticism, art history and anthropology, offers a fresh approach to the momentous encounter.