This authoritative volume has been revised throughout and expanded, with stunning new images and accounts of the major discoveries of recent years. Recent findings have been added to expand our understanding of the Olmecs outside of their heartland, and new research on the legacy of the Maya offers a wider and more cohesive narrative of Mexico's history. New co-author Javier Urcid has added greater coverage of Oaxaca and of Monte Alban, one of the earliest cities in Mesoamerica and the center of the Zapotec civilization, and a fully revised Epilogue discusses the survival of indigenous populations in Mexico from the Conquest up to the present. This longstanding classic now features full-colour photos of the vibrant art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica throughout.

From the early cities in the second millennium BC to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan on the eve of the Spanish conquest, Ancient Mesoamericans created landscapes full of meaning and power in the center of their urban spaces. The sixteenth century description of Tenochtitlan by Bernal Diaz del Castillo and the archaeological remnants of Teotihuacan attest to the power and centrality of these urban configurations in Ancient Mesoamerican history. In Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, Rex Koontz, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, and Annabeth Headrick explore the cultural logic that structured and generated these centers.Through case studies of specific urban spaces and their meanings, the authors examine the general principles by which the Ancient Mesoamericans created meaningful urban space. In a profoundly interdisciplinary exchange involving both archaeologists and art historians, this volume connects the symbolism of those landscapes, the performances that activated this symbolism, and the cultural poetics of these ensembles.

Blood and Beauty brings together a diverse, prestigious group of contributors to debate this charged topic in an open, critical and frank interchange. Authors specializing in the anthropology, archaeology, art history, and linguistics of Mesoamerica and Central America bring new data and interpretive strategies to bear on the nature of institutional violence in these ancient societies. The volume covers a broad time frame, from circa 1200 B.C.E. to the sixteenth century, including recent ethnography. The volume endeavors to contextualize violence and violent acts within the matrix of indigenous thought and culture. Chapter topics reflect that desire, including localized, culturally specific, examinations of warfare, sacrifice, ballgames, boxing, pain, and healing. While there is no overarching theoretical perspective, the contributors are sensitive to current theoretical discourse in the field, including recent perspectives on organized violence and the agency of artworks.

From the early cities in the second millennium BC to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan on the eve of the Spanish conquest, Ancient Mesoamericans created landscapes full of meaning and power in the center of their urban spaces. The sixteenth century description of Tenochtitlan by Bernal Diaz del Castillo and the archaeological remnants of Teotihuacan attest to the power and centrality of these urban configurations in Ancient Mesoamerican history. In "Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica," Rex Koontz, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, and Annabeth Headrick explore the cultural logic that structured and generated these centers.Through case studies of specific urban spaces and their meanings, the authors examine the general principles by which the Ancient Mesoamericans created meaningful urban space. In a profoundly interdisciplinary exchange involving both archaeologists and art historians, this volume connects the symbolism of those landscapes, the performances that activated this symbolism, and the cultural poetics of these ensembles.

Blood and Beauty brings together a diverse, prestigious group of contributors to debate this charged topic in an open, critical and frank interchange. Authors specializing in the anthropology, archaeology, art history, and linguistics of Mesoamerica and Central America bring new data and interpretive strategies to bear on the nature of institutional violence in these ancient societies. The volume covers a broad time frame, from circa 1200 B.C.E. to the sixteenth century, including recent ethnography. The volume endeavors to contextualize violence and violent acts within the matrix of indigenous thought and culture. Chapter topics reflect that desire, including localized, culturally specific, examinations of warfare, sacrifice, ballgames, boxing, pain, and healing. While there is no overarching theoretical perspective, the contributors are sensitive to current theoretical discourse in the field, including recent perspectives on organized violence and the agency of artworks.

The pre-Hispanic Mixtec people of Mexico recorded political and religious history, including the biographies and genealogies of their rulers, in pictograms on hand-painted, screen-fold manuscripts known as codices. Functioning rather like movie production storyboards, the codices served as outlines of oral traditions to stimulate the memories of bards who knew the complete narratives, which were sung, danced, and performed at elite functions. Centuries later we have limited access to those original performances, and all that remains for our codex interpretation is what is painted on the pages-perhaps five to ten percent of their memory-encoded information. Continuing the pioneering interpretation he began in Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan and the Heroes of Ancient Oaxaca, Robert Lloyd Williams offers an authoritative guide to the entire contents of the codex in The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall. Although the reverse document (pages 42-84) has been described in previous literature, the obverse document (pages 1-41) has not been, and it has remained elusive as to narrative. The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall elucidates the three sections of the codex, defines them as to function and content, and provides interpretive and descriptive essays about the Native American history the codex recorded prior to the arrival of Europeans in Mexico and the New World generally. With a full-color reproduction of the entire Codex Zouche-Nuttall and Williams's expert guidance in unlocking its narrative strategies and structures, The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall opens an essential window into the Mixtec social and political cosmos.