OBSERVATIONS OF THE SUN, moon, planets, and stars played a central
role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary
Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book
reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the
astronomical information encoded in Precolumbian Maya art and
confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples.
Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya
beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on
naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to
Precolumbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through
time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves
into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the
major astronomical gods identified with the sun, moon, naked-eye
planets, and constellations and their associated glyphs,
astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices (painted books), and
changes in the imagery of the heavens over time.
This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of
information about the specific astronomical events and cycles
recorded in Maya art and architecture. The first major study to
focus on the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya
culture, this book will be essential reading for students and
scholars of Precolumbian art history and anthropology,
archaeoastronomy, ethnography, and comparative mythology.
Susan Milbrath is Curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology
at the Florida Museum of Natural History and Affiliate Professor of
Anthropology at the University of Florida. A former student of
Esther Pasztory, she did postdoctoral work with Michael Coe and
Anthony F. Aveni and served asguest curator of "Star Gods of the
Ancient Americas", a traveling exhibit that opened at the American
Museum of Natural History and toured nationally between 1982 and
1984.
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