Synopses & Reviews
Now shrouded in Guatemalan jungle, the ancient Maya city of Piedras Negras flourished between the sixth and ninth centuries, when its rulers erected monumental limestone sculptures carved with hieroglyphic texts and images of themselves and family members, advisers, and captives. In
Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, Megan E. Oandrsquo;Neil offers new ways to understand these stelae, altars, and panels by exploring how ancient Maya people interacted with them.
These monuments, considered sacred, were one of the communityandrsquo;s important forms of cultural and religious expression. Stelae may have held the essence of rulers they commemorated, and the objects remained loci for reverence of those rulers after they died. Using a variety of evidence,Oandrsquo;Neil examines how the forms, compositions, and contexts of the sculptures invited people to engage with them and the figures they embodied looks at these monuments not as inert bearers of images but as palpable presences that existed in real space at specific historical moments. Her analysis brings to the fore the material and affective force of these powerful objects that were seen, touched, and manipulated in the past.
Oandrsquo;Neil investigates the monuments not only at the moment of their creation but also in later years and shows how they changed over time. She argues that the relationships among sculptures of different generations were performed in processions, through which ancient Maya people integrated historical dialogues and ancestral commemoration into the landscape.
With the help of more than 160 illustrations, Oandrsquo;Neil reveals these sculpturesandrsquo; continuing life histories, which in the past century have included their fragmentation and transformation into commodities sold on the international art market. Shedding light on modern-day transposition and display of these ancient monuments, Oandrsquo;Neilandrsquo;s study contributes to ongoing discussions of cultural patrimony.
Review
andldquo;In this fascinating book, Megan Oandrsquo;Neil brings to light the political and ceremonial world of a great Maya kingdom by showing how its inscribed stone monuments were carved, placed, viewed, and read inand#160;space and through time. Far from being beautiful but andlsquo;deadandrsquo; objects in museums, these sculptures, as Oandrsquo;Neil demonstrates, were as full of life and divine force as the rulers they represented. A true tour de force of enlightened scholarship!andrdquo;
Michael D. Coe, author of The Maya and Breaking the Maya Code
Review
andldquo;This is a wonderful book, beautifully conceptualized and charmingly written. It will be an important contribution to the historiography of Guatemala.andrdquo;andmdash;Virginia Garrard-Burnett, author of Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala under General Efraandiacute;n Randiacute;os Montt, 1982andndash;1983and#160;
Synopsis
Now shrouded in Guatemalan jungle, the ancient Maya city of Piedras Negras flourished between the sixth and ninth centuries, when its rulers erected monumental limestone sculptures carved with hieroglyphic texts and images of themselves and family members, advisers, and captives. In
Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, Megan E. Oandrsquo;Neil offers new ways to understand these stelae, altars, and panels by exploring how ancient Maya people interacted with them. With the help of more than 160 illustrations, Oandrsquo;Neil reveals these sculpturesandrsquo; continuing life histories, which in the past century have included their fragmentation and transformation into commodities sold on the international art market.
Synopsis
On the eastern border of Guatemala and Honduras, pilgrims and travelers flock to the Black Christ of Esquipulas, a large statue carved from wood depicting Christ on the cross. The Catholic shrine, built in the late sixteenth century, has become the focal point of admiration and adoration from New Mexico to Panama. Beyond being a site of popular devotion, however, the Black Christ of Esquipulas was also the scene of important debates about citizenship and identity in the Guatemalan nation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.and#160;In The Black Christ of Esquipulas, Douglass Sullivan-Gonzandaacute;lez explores the multifaceted appeal of this famous shrine, its mysterious changes in color over the centuries, and its deeper significance in the spiritual and political lives of Guatemalans. Reconstructed from letters buried within the restricted Catholic Church archive in Guatemala City, the debates surrounding the shrine reflect the shifting categories of race and ethnicity throughout the course of the countryandrsquo;s political trajectory. This andldquo;biographyandrdquo; of the Black Christ of Esquipulas serves as an alternative history of Guatemala and sheds light on some of the most salient themes in Guatemalaandrsquo;s social and political history: state formation, interethnic dynamics, and church-state tensions. Sullivan-Gonzandaacute;lezandrsquo;s study provides a holistic understanding of the relevance of faith and ritual to the social and political history of this influential region.
About the Author
Megan E. Oandrsquo;Neil is Visiting Assistant Professor at the College of William and Mary. She received her B.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University and her M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. She participated in archaeological projects in Belize, Mexico, and Guatemala.