Planting the Bones: Hunting Ceremonialism at Contemporary and Nineteenth-Century Shrines in the Guatemalan Highlands

Linda A. Brown

doi:10.2307/30042808

Planting the Bones: Hunting Ceremonialism at Contemporary and Nineteenth-Century Shrines in the Guatemalan Highlands

Latin American Antiquity ◽

10.2307/30042808 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 16 (2) ◽

pp. 131-146 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Linda A. Brown

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Life History ◽

Unique Feature ◽

Skeletal Remains ◽

Classic Period ◽

Ritual Practice ◽

Archaeological Record ◽

Historical Time ◽

Animal Remains ◽

History Of

AbstractFrom the Classic period to the present, scholars have documented the widespread Maya belief in a supernatural guardian of the animals who must be appeased in hunting rituals. Despite this resilience, features and deposits entering the archaeological record as a result of hunting ceremonies remain largely unknown. I describe several contemporary and nineteenth-century shrines used for hunting rites in the Maya highlands of Guatemala. These sites contain a unique feature, a ritual fauna cache, which consists of animal remains secondarily deposited during hunting ceremonies. The formation of these caches is informed by two beliefs with historical time depth: (1) the belief in a guardian of animals and (2) the symbolic conflation of bone and regeneration. The unique life history of remains in hunting-related ritual fauna caches suggests a hypothesis for puzzling deposits of mammal remains recovered archaeologically in lowland Maya caves. These may have functioned in hunting rites designed to placate the animal guardian and ensure the regeneration of the species via ceremonies that incorporated the secondary discard of skeletal remains. A review of the ethnographic literature from the Lenca, Huichol, Nahua, Tlapanec, and Mixe areas reveals similar hunting rites indicating a broader Mesoamerican ritual practice.

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(William T. Stearn Prize 2009) “The mighty cassowary”: the discovery and demise of the King Island emu

Archives of Natural History ◽

10.3366/e0260954109001661 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 37 (1) ◽

pp. 74-90 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

S. Pfennigwerth

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Life History ◽

Human Error ◽

Early Nineteenth Century ◽

Record Keeping ◽

In The Wild ◽

History Of ◽

Visual Record ◽

Century Science ◽

Printing Techniques

Nicolas Baudin's 1800–1804 voyage was the only scientific expedition to collect specimens of the dwarf emu (Dromaius ater) endemic to King Island, Bass Strait, Australia. The expedition's naturalist, François Péron, documented the only detailed, contemporaneous description of the life history of the bird, and the artist Charles-Alexandre Lesueur made the only visual record of a living specimen. Hunted to extinction by 1805, the King Island emu remains relatively unfamiliar. It is ironic that a bird collected as part of one of the most ambitious ordering enterprises in early nineteenth-century science – a quest for intellectual empire – has been more or less forgotten. This paper discusses how human error, assumption, imagination and circumstance hampered recognition and understanding of the King Island emu. Poor record-keeping led to the confusion of this species with other taxa, including the Australian emu and a dwarf species restricted to Kangaroo Island, contributing to the epistemological loss of the species. The expedition's agenda was equally influential in the perception and documentation of the species, with consequences for its conservation in the wild. The paper also argues that as a symbolic rather than a scientific record, Lesueur's illustration fostered inaccuracies in later descriptions of the King Island emu, especially when the image was taken out of context, subjected to the vagaries of nineteenth-century printing techniques and reproduced in more recent ornithological literature. Rather than increasing knowledge about this species, the Baudin expedition and its literature contributed, albeit unwittingly, to the King Island emu's textual and literal extinction.

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MINIATURE IN EVERYTHING BUT MEANING: A CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF MINIATURE VESSELS AT HOMOL'OVI I

American Antiquity ◽

10.1017/aaq.2018.79 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 84 (1) ◽

pp. 107-126 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Samantha G. Fladd ◽

Claire S. Barker

Keyword(s):

Life History ◽

Contextual Analysis ◽

Learning Theories ◽

Ritual Practice ◽

Northern Arizona ◽

History Of ◽

Ceramic Vessels ◽

And Performance ◽

Ritual Spaces ◽

Two Alternatives

The most common explanations for the appearance of miniatures in the archaeological record are drawn from practice theory. Two alternatives stem from learning theories, while a third is based in ritual practice and performance. First, miniatures may represent early attempts at craft production by children or novice adults. Second, they could serve as children's toys used for enculturation purposes. Third, miniatures may be produced for use in rituals or as offerings. These explanations are not mutually exclusive; all may be part of the life history of a single artifact. Previous archaeological and ethnographic work on miniature ceramic vessels in the Southwest has variously supported all three prominent explanations. In this article, we examine the miniature vessel assemblage from Homol'ovi I, a prehispanic pueblo in northern Arizona, through a synthetic analysis of craft mastery, use, and deposition. While various life history trajectories are indicated, the miniature vessels at this ancestral Hopi village appear in similar depositional contexts. Specifically, these objects serve as important components in the preparation or closure practices of ritual spaces throughout the pueblo.

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Under the Sign of Saturn: The Labyrinth of Moral Choices in Francoist Spain

The Making and Unmaking of Francoist Kitsch Cinema ◽

10.3366/edinburgh/9780748699247.003.0009 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Alejandro Yarza

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Foreign Language ◽

Newborn Baby ◽

Historical Time ◽

Political Repression ◽

History Of ◽

Moral Choices ◽

Over Time

Linking the figure of the labyrinth, often associated with the history of Spain, to the famous Goya painting of Saturn Devouring his Son, this chapter examines the foreign language Oscar nominee, El laberinto del fauno (Pan´s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, 2006). It argues that the film aims to undermine Francoist kitsch notion of melancholic temporality. Goya´s painting is often read as an allegory of the brutal repression of Spanish Liberalism by Fernando VII during the second and third decades of the nineteenth-century. As in the painting, which references Cronus, the Greek God of time, in the movie, Francoist political repression is also associated with the obsession with time of Captain Vidal, the film’s fascist villain. The notion of a ‘lost’ historical time devouring itself is linked in the film to the notion of labyrinth as a historical loop and mystical space with Captain Vidal, as the Minotaur lurking at its center, devours its victims over time, much like Cronus, Ferdinand VII, or Franco himself. The film symbolically ends this repressive cycle by rescuing Captain’s Vidal newborn baby from his fascist grip.

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Christian Ethics and Natural Law

Religious Studies ◽

10.1017/s0034412500002900 ◽

1967 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 301-311

Author(s):

John R. Carnes

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Life History ◽

Great Risk ◽

Natural Law ◽

Christian Ethics ◽

Philosophical Theory ◽

Moral Philosopher ◽

History Of

The life history of certain philosophical and theological terms and concepts constitutes in itself an interesting matter for consideration and reflection. None is more interesting than that of natural law. Many studies have traced the development of natural law philosophy from its early precursors among the Pre-Socratics through Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics, St Thomas, and the early British empiricists; have noted its demise in the nineteenth century, largely as a result of the criticism of Hume; and have observed its renaissance in the twentieth century. Despite this undeniable revival of interest in the theory (if, indeed it can be called a theory, given the wide diversity of philosophers who have identified themselves with it) in the present century, a moral philosopher uses the term only at great risk, for no philosophical theory has been so vigorously attacked and so thoroughly ‘refuted’ as natural law.

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The history of rheumatoid arthritis

Oxford Textbook of Rheumatoid Arthritis ◽

10.1093/med/9780198831433.003.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 3-12

Author(s):

David L. Scott

Keyword(s):

Rheumatoid Arthritis ◽

Nineteenth Century ◽

North America ◽

Skeletal Remains ◽

Key Points ◽

History Of ◽

Made In

The name for rheumatoid arthritis was provided by Alfred Baring Garrod in the late 1850s. Before this period there are descriptions of patients who seem to have had the disease which appeared from the late 1700s onwards, with more descriptions appearing after 1800. Analysis of portraits from the Flemish school of painters have suggested some of these showed features indicative of rheumatoid arthritis. However, the interpretation of the findings in these paintings is highly subjective. There is also some evidence from palaeopathological studies that skeletal remains from several thousand years ago in North America showed features suggestive of rheumatoid arthritis. As with the interpretation of art, this is a relatively subjective field and the findings remain controversial. The key points made in this chapter are that rheumatoid arthritis was definitely present in the nineteenth century and may have been present before them. Whether it is a modern disease or has a long history remains speculative.

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