Synopses & Reviews
Illustrations remain one of the fundamental tools of archaeology, a means by which we share information and build ideas. Often treated as if they were neutral representations, archaeological illustrations are the convergence of science and the imagination. This volume, a collection of fourteen essays addressing the visual presentation of the Pre-Columbian past from the fifteenth century to the present day, explores and contextualizes the visual culture of archaeological illustration, addressing the intellectual history of the field and the relationship of archaeological illustration to other scientific disciplines and the fine arts. One of the principal questions raised by this volume is how do archaeological illustrations, which organize complex sets of information, shape the construction of knowledge? These visual and conceptual constructions warrant closer scrutiny: they matter, they shape our thinking. Archaeological illustrations are a mediation of vision and ideas, and the chapters in this volume consider how visual languages are created and how they become institutionalized. Past Presented: Archaeological Illustration and the Ancient Americas is about the ways in which representations illuminate the concerns and possibilities of a specific time and place and how these representations, in turn, shaped the field of archaeology.
Synopsis
Archaeological illustrations are often treated as neutral representations. This volume considers them instead as products of time and place that actively shape the construction of knowledge. Taking the visual presentation of the Pre-Columbian past from the fifteenth century to today, these essays explore the culture of archaeological illustration.
Synopsis
2014 Association for Latin American Art Book Award
About the Author
Joanne Pillsbury is Andrall E. Pearson Curator in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Barbara W. Fash is Director of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.Stephen D. Houston is Dupee Family Professor of Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology at Brown University.Scott R. Hutson is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky.Bryan R. Just is Peter Jay Sharp, Class of 1952, Curator and Lecturer in the Art of the Ancient Americas at the Princeton University Art Museum.Leonardo López Luján is Senior Professor and Researcher of Archaeology at the Museo del Templo Mayor, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.John W. Rick is Associate Professor and former Chair of Anthropological Sciences at Stanford University.Alain Schnapp is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.Adam T. Sellen is Professor of Mesoamerican Studies at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mérida, Yucatán.Luis Felipe Villacorta Ostolaza received his
licenciado in archaeology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and is a Master of Arts candidate in history at the University of Guelph.Khristaan D. Villela is Research Professor of Art History at the University of New Mexico.Jason Weems is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of California, Riverside.
University of California, Riverside