Architecture And Urbanization Of Colonial Central America Selected Primary Documentary And Literary Sources

Volume I is a compendium of data from the former Reino de Guatemala prior to independence from Spain. Documentation from archives in Seville, Madrid & Central America. Markman provides a derrotero, a navigational chart, with "sailing instructions" to the scholar searching for elusive information. Text includes data difficult to access. Observance of "America 500." Bibliography & index. In English & Spanish. "This is without a doubt a true work of art. It is crafted to perfection, almost as precisely as if executed with the same rule & compass as were used to draw the plans of the Spanish towns. The information encourages Central American research." - Francisco de Solano, Centro de Estudios Historicos, Madrid. "I consider Professor Markman's new work of the utmost importance for all the scholars of the history of art in Latin America...This work will join those of Hanke, Whitaker, & Bolton." - Jose Antonio Calderon Quijano, Escuela de Estudios Hispano- Americanos, Sevilla. "This is a very important research work...one of the more valuable...contributions to the Quincentenial." - Antonio Bonet Correa, Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid. The second of a two-volume work on the topic provides a helpful index to the scholar searching for elusive information on architecture & urbanization of colonial Central America. In many instances, Markman's illustrations provide the only visual evidence extant of colonial buildings & townscapes in Reino de Guatemala. ISBN 0- 87918-080-3. Order from Arizona State University-Center for Latin American Studies, Box 872401, Tempe, AZ 85287-2401; 602-965-5127.

The first century of Spanish colonization in Latin America witnessed the birth of cities that, while secondary to great metropolitan centers such as Mexico City and Lima, became important hubs for regional commerce. Santiago de Guatemala, the colonial capital of Central America, was one of these. A multiethnic and multicultural city from its beginning, Santiago grew into a vigorous trading center for agrarian goods such as cacao and cattle hides. With the wealth this commerce generated, Spaniards, natives, and African slaves built a city that any European of the period would have found familiar. This book provides a more complete picture of society, culture, and economy in sixteenth-century Santiago de Guatemala than has ever before been drawn. Robinson Herrera uses previously unstudied primary sources, including testaments, promissory notes, and work contracts, to recreate the lives and economic activities of the non-elite sectors of society, including natives, African slaves, economically marginal Europeans, and people of mixed descent. His focus on these groups sheds light on the functioning of the economy at the lower levels and reveals how people of different ethnic groups formed alliances to create a vibrant local and regional economy based on credit. This portrait of Santiago also increases our understanding of how secondary Spanish American cities contributed vitally to the growth of the colonies.

The conquest of the New World would hardly have been possible if the invading Spaniards had not allied themselves with the indigenous population. This book takes into account the role of native peoples as active agents in the Conquest through a review of new sources and more careful analysis of known but under-studied materials that demonstrate the overwhelming importance of native allies in both conquest and colonial control. In Indian Conquistadors, leading scholars offer the most comprehensive look to date at native participation in the conquest of Mesoamerica. The contributors examine pictorial, archaeological, and documentary evidence spanning three centuries, including little-known eyewitness accounts from both Spanish and native documents, paintings (lienzos) and maps (mapas) from the colonial period, and a new assessment of imperialism in the region before the Spanish arrival. This new research shows that the Tlaxcalans, the most famous allies of the Spanish, were far from alone. Not only did native lords throughout Mesoamerica supply arms, troops, and tactical guidance, but tens of thousands of warriors—Nahuas, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Mayas, and others—spread throughout the region to participate with the Spanish in a common cause. By offering a more balanced account of this dramatic period, this book calls into question traditional narratives that emphasize indigenous peoples’ roles as auxiliaries rather than as conquistadors in their own right. Enhanced with twelve maps and more than forty illustrations, Indian Conquistadors opens a vital new line of research and challenges our understanding of this important era.

This book explores routes of interaction and exchange in the Southern Maya Area, a zone that had both short- and long-distance trade and whose natural resources were exploited by merchants and rulers, colonists and entrepreneurs during Olmec, Teotihuacan, Maya, Aztec, colonial and modern times. The book presents the research of both archaeologists and art historians to identify routes of interconnection, to demonstrate the strategic importance of settlements and ritual locations, and to assess the significance of modes and mediums of exchange. The contributors employ innovative approaches, making use of state-of-the art technologies to reproduce and analyze the archaeological landscape (e.g. LiDAR, GIS, and least-cost path analysis) and to source and characterize archaeological materials (e.g. neutron activation analysis (NAA), X-ray fluorescence analysis [XRF] and strontium analysis). The book combines these innovative approaches with earlier data sources and past analyses to develop a new, synthetic analysis of interaction. Routes, Interaction and Exchange in the Southern Maya Area will appeal to professional academics, students, and interested lay readers from a broad range of social science fields including anthropology, archaeology, geography, economics, history, and art history and is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate courses in Mesoamerican archaeology.

1,500 A-Z entries cover all aspects of architecture, from architects, building types, and movements and styles to materials, aspects of design, and definitions. The Companion offers complete coverage of architecture from around the world, giving equal weight to architecture in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America as to the more familiar examples from Western Europe and the United States, and of both modern and vernacular architecture. It covers all periods, from the beginnings of architecture in ancient Egypt to the present day, and yet is strongly rooted in an approach to architecture that looks at its social, technical, and practical aspects, beyond an art-historical perspective. --from publisher description.