By: Susan Toby Evans (Editor), David L. Webster (Editor)

Hardcover

Click on the Google Preview image above to read some pages of this book!

A rich historical and cultural resource on one of the world's six cradles of civilization.
Mexico and adjacent countries are very much in the news, and the U.S.-Mexican border has become highly porous, with significant exchanges of population and culture. Yet few American have an educated understanding of the cultural roots of our neighbor nation and of the influence of its ancient cultures on the surrounding region.
"Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia" is the first comprehensive one-volume encyclopedia in English devoted to pre-Columbian archaeology of the Mesoamerican (Mexico and Central America) culture area. This region was one of the world's six cradles of early civilization.
In-depth articles on the major cultural areas of ancient Mexico and Central America.
These entries bring the most recent scholarship to an examination of regional environments and their cultural evolution. Special care has been taken to describe an entire cultural area, not just those sites or aspects that are well known or that have been well researched in the past.
Extensive coverage of important sites
The encyclopedia provides a unique panorama, from the familiar and world-renowned archaeological discoveries of Maya and Aztec sites to more recent excavations (such as the Sayil archaeological zone in the Yucat n and Teopantecuanitl n in Guerrero). It devotes entries not only to the showy sites that are famous among tourists and that have been the subjects of archaeological investigation and writing in the past, but also to the lesser-known and more modest locations that reveal other vital cultural clues.
Essays on specific aspects and practices of Mesoamerican culture
The book considers a wide array of specific topics that bring day-to-day life among these ancient peoples to life. Readers will be tempted to browse among entries devoted to everyday life such as eating habits, dress, and issues surrounding ethnicity as well as to less accessible practices such as ancestor veneration and cannibalism. Valuable resource for students, scholars and travelers
With more than 500 articles by the major experts in the field, the "Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia" is a reference book aimed at a wide audience that includes students and scholars seeking information about sites and culture areas of the region. The book is also a excellent source for prospective travelers to the region. With more and more North Americans and Europeans traveling in Mexico and Central America--many of them to visit archaeological sites--the encyclopedia is a valuable resource for learning about these sites and about and customs and traditions of the ancient peoples of the region.
"Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America "contains a number of features that will aid readers and enrich the text. Bibliographies at the end of entries guide the reader to additional sources on a topic. An extensive illustration program-consisting of photographs, geographic maps, maps of important archaeological sites, and a special guide to the pronunciation of ancient terms-allows the reader to see actual sites and cultural artifacts and to place them in a contemporary context. The end of the volume contains an annotated glossary of terms and a comprehensive index.

"An authoritative resource that supercedes the "Encyclopedia of Mesoamerica...as the best encyclopedia currently available on Native American life in present-day countries of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama prior to the arrival of Spanish Conquistadors."
-"American Reference Boks Annual, 2002
"If forced to choose only one reference source on ancient Mesoamerican culture, "Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia provides the best balance of comprehensive coverage and relatively low price."
-"Booklist/RBB, June 2002
"An impressive and extremely useful volume....The contributors are authoritative and overall this is a very useful reference source, which many will wish to use as the first port of call for any query on the archaeology or civilizations of Mexico and Central America."
-Reference Reviews, May 15 2001
"Presenting a wealth of carefully documented information on Mesoamerican archaeology, this outstanding reference work provides an excellent introductory essay and more than 500 detailed entries....[It is] well-written, and thouroughly cross-referenced....The book is particularly valuable for its coverage of cultural groups, regions, and archaeology sites overlooked by rival works. A very useful addition to academic library reference collections."
-"Choice, April 2002
"The overall quality of individual entries is extremely high....An extremely useful volume. Its wide coverage, authoritative entries, up-to-date further readings make it a valuable resource for anyone interested in the archaeology of greater Mesoamerica. The editors are to be lauded for assembling such anambitious - compendium of information on greater Mesoamerica."
-"Latin American Antiquity, 2001

Selected entries:
Aztec Culture
Cannibalism
Ceramics
Chichen Itza
Diet and Nutrition
Foods and Cuisine
Gender Roles
Hydrology
Izapa Style
Maya Deities
Maize
Michoacan
Music and Dance
Otomi Culture
Rock Art
Stela Cult
Tajin Architecture
Tenochtitlan
Tikal
Weaponry
Weaving
Yanhuitlan
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 9780815308874
ISBN-10: 0815308876
Audience: Professional
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 992
Published: 27th November 2000
Dimensions (cm): 27.9 x 21.6  x 4.9
Weight (kg): 0.25