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The New Archaeology and the Ancient Maya (Scientific American Library)
The New Archaeology and the Ancient Maya - Scientific American Library Author:Jeremy A. Sabloff From clues as obscure as broken pottery, faded murals, and chips of flint, archaeologists attempt to reconstruct the lifeways and history of ancient civilizations. Until recently-with only rudimentary methods available to interpret such objects-archaeologists formed their theories largely by unconsciously projecting romantic notions onto past cu... more »ltures. In the last thirty years, however, archaeology has experienced a revolution in outlook and technique. As a new generation of archaeologists has become more interested in the "whys" and "hows" of culture change, their discoveries-aided by the use of high-tech instruments, chemical analyses, and new sampling strategies-have revised many of the notions held by the earlier generation.
In The New Archaeology and the Ancient Maya, Jeremy Sabloff recounts this exciting transformation, showing how changes in the practice of archaeology have given birth to a new science that is changing our understanding of past civilizations.
Using the ancient Maya as a case study, he first describes how the traditional model of this civilization arose, and then demonstrates how new kinds of fieldwork and recent intellectual shifts have given birth to a radically different view of the Maya. Sabloff surveys varied archaeological procedures-excavating ruins, mapping ancient cities, and analyzing ceramics and other objects-and shows how these data can yield information about the economic, political, and social structure of a society. By following the lowland Maya civilization from before the time of Christ to the Spanish Conquest, Sabloff provides clues to its changing structure over nearly two millennia.
The New Archaeology and the Ancient Maya features stunning illustrations and photographs of Maya artifacts and ruins, as well as pictures of archaeologists at work in the fields and reconstructions of ancient Maya structures and cities. Yet it is more than just a history of Maya studies. Rather, it uses this colorful ancient civilization to illustrate the modern archaeological science of long-term cultural study, showing how archaeologists have expanded their discipline from an enterprise of impressionistic accounts and lists of dates into one that tries to rigorously explain why cultures change.« less