During Mexico's first century of independence, European and
American explorers rediscovered its pre-Hispanic past. Finding the
jungle-covered ruins of lost cities and artifacts inscribed with
unintelligible hieroglyphs--and having no idea of the age,
authorship, or purpose of these antiquities--amateur
archaeologists, artists, photographers, and religious writers set
about claiming Mexico's pre-Hispanic patrimony as a rightful part
of the United States' cultural heritage.
In this insightful work, Tripp Evans explores why
nineteenth-century Americans felt entitled to appropriate Mexico's
cultural heritage as the United States' own. He focuses in
particular on five well-known figures--American writer and amateur
archaeologist John Lloyd Stephens, British architect Frederick
Catherwood, Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints, and the French emigre photographers Desire
Charnay and Augustus Le Plongeon. Setting these figures in
historical and cultural context, Evans uncovers their varying
motives, including the Manifest Destiny-inspired desire to create a
national museum of American antiquities in New York City, the
attempt to identify the ancient Maya as part of the Lost Tribes of
Israel (and so substantiate the Book of Mormon), and the hope of
proving that ancient Mesoamerica was the cradle of North American
and even Northern European civilization. Fascinating stories in
themselves, these accounts of the first explorers also add an
important new chapter to the early history of Mesoamerican
archaeology.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!