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Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests
Intellectual Interchange between the Northern Maya Lowlands and Highland Mexico in the Late Postclassic Period
Gabrielle Vail
Harvard University Press, 2010
Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests examines evidence for cultural interchange among the intellectual powerbrokers in Postclassic Mesoamerica, specifically those centered in the northern Maya lowlands and the central Mexican highlands. Contributors to the volume’s thirteen chapters bring an interdisciplinary perspective to understanding the interactions that led to shared content in hieroglyphic codices and mural art. The authors address similarities in artifacts, architectural styles, and building alignments—often produced in regions separated by hundreds of miles—based on their analyses of iconographic, archaeological, linguistic, and epigraphic material. The volume includes a wealth of new data and interpretive frameworks in this comprehensive discussion of a critical time period in the Mesoamerican past.
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front cover of Dictionary Of The Maya Language
Dictionary Of The Maya Language
As Spoken in Hocaba Yucatan
Victoria Bricker
University of Utah Press, 1998

The Maya language of Yucatan is known as Yucate by linguists, but its speakers refer to it as May. Dialiectical differences are minimal across the peninsula, and the more than 750,000 speakers of Maya can be understood wherever they go. Moreover, it is not only a living language but is of great use to epigraphers working on ancient Maya glyphs.

This dictionary is the culmination of fourteen years’ labor centering on the town and dialect of Hocaba. Whereas other dictionaries of may use Latin paradigms, this is the first to provide a comprehensive, systematic listing of the stems that can be derived from each root and that give Maya its distinctive character. The entries cover the full range of Maya speech, from simple expressions and idioms to compound stems. Maya sample sentences provide a window into the richness of everyday communication, with its mixture of wit, epithets, insults, riddles, aphorisms, and exchanges of information, including a wonderful assortment of metaphorical expressions like "peccary’s eyelashes" for a type of bean, "the end of the road" for marriage, and a verb meaning "to draw breath with puckered mouth after eating chili." Among the cultural domains encompassed by the dictionary are agriculture, architecture, astronomy, culinary practices and recipes, education, folklore, games, humor, medical prescriptions, ritual, toys, and weaving, many of which have roots in the Precolumbian past. In addition to the dictionary entries, this work also contains a short grammar, a botanical index, and bibliography.

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front cover of A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan
A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan
1557-2000
Victoria R. Bricker
University of Utah Press, 2018
Victoria Bricker’s painstaking work is based on almost one thousand provenienced notarial documents and letters written by native speakers of Yucatec Maya from colonial times to the modern day. Because the documents are dated and also specify the town where they were written, Bricker was able to determine when and where grammatical changes first appeared in the language and the trajectory of their movement across the Yucatan peninsula. This exemplary grammar of Yucatec Maya includes examples and careful explanations of the phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures of the language. Bricker’s research is distinguished in its treatment of seemingly aberrant spellings of Maya words as clues to the way they were actually pronounced at different times in the past. Her chapters include topics seldom covered, such as deictic particles, affects, and reduplication. Of special interest is a poetic form of reduplication composed of couplets (or triplets) found in documents from each of the centuries, indicating the continuity of this genre from the Colonial to the Modern version of this language.
 
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front cover of The Indian Christ, the Indian King
The Indian Christ, the Indian King
The Historical Substrate of Maya Myth and Ritual
By Victoria Reifler Bricker
University of Texas Press, 1981

Victoria Bricker shows that "history" sometimes rests on mythological foundations and that "myth" can contain valid historical information. Her book, which is a highly original critique of postconquest historiography about the Maya, challenges major assumptions about the relationship between myth and history implicit in structuralist interpretations. The focus of the book is ethnic conflict, a theme that pervades Maya folklore and is also well documented historically.

The book begins with the Spanish conquest of the Maya. In chapters on the postconquest history of the Maya, five ethnic conflicts are treated in depth: the Cancuc revolt of 1712, the Quisteil uprising of 1761, the Totonicapan rebellion of 1820, the Caste War of Yucatan (1847-1901), and the Chamulan uprising in 1869. Analytical chapters consider the relationship between historical events and modern folklore about ethnic conflict. Bricker demonstrates that myths and rituals emphasize structure at the expense of temporal and geographical provenience, treating events separated by centuries or thousands of miles as equivalent and interchangeable.

An unexpected result of Bricker's research is the finding that many seemingly aboriginal elements in Maya folklore are actually of postconquest origin, and she shows that it is possible to determine precisely when and, more important, why they become part of myth and ritual. Furthermore, she finds that the patterning of the accretion of events in folklore over time provides clues to the function, or meaning, of myth and ritual for the Maya.

Bricker has made use of many unpublished documents in Spanish, English, and Maya, as well as standard synthetic historical works. The appendices contain extensive samples of the oral traditions that are explained by her analysis.

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front cover of Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas
Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas
By Victoria Reifler Bricker
University of Texas Press, 1973

Zinacantan, Chamula, and Chenalhó are neighboring Mayan communities situated in highland Chiapas, Mexico, near the city of San Cristóbal Las Casas. The inhabitants of the three communities speak dialects of the Tzotzil language. Five religious fiestas, celebrated by these communities in honor of their saints, provide the data for Victoria Bricker's comparative study of ritual humor.

In Chenalhó and Chamula performances of ritual humor are concentrated in the five-day period of a single fiesta, while in Zanacantan similar performances are distributed over threee fiestas. In these fiesta settings, performers in distinctive costumes make obscene and sacreligious remarks in the context of religious ritual. These performances are defined as ritual humor because they occur only in ritual settings.

Bricker's study constitutes a controlled cross-cultural comparison of ceremonial or ritual humor in its social and cultural setting. Much new information is provided in verbatim texts, recorded during actual fiesta performances. The study reveals that, although the three communities share a common pool of ritual symbols, they elaborate them differently in ritual humor. The study analyzes the symbolic expression of values, social organization, and interethnic relations.

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front cover of Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 1
Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 1
Archaeology
Victoria Reifler Bricker, general editor; Jeremy A. Sabloff, volume editor
University of Texas Press, 1982

The sixteen-volume Handbook of Middle American Indians, completed in 1976, has been acclaimed the world over as the most valuable resource ever produced for those involved in the study of Mesoamerica. When it was determined in 1978 that the Handbook should be updated periodically, Victoria Reifler Bricker, well-known cultural anthropologist, was selected to be series editor.

This first volume of the Supplement is devoted to the dramatic changes that have taken place in the field of archaeology. The volume editor, Jeremy A. Sabloff, has gathered together detailed reports from the directors of many of the most significant archaeological projects of the mid-twentieth century in Mesoamerica, along with discussions of three topics of general interest (the rise of sedentary life, the evolution of complex culture, and the rise of cities).

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front cover of Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 2
Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 2
Linguistics
Victoria Reifler Bricker, general editor
University of Texas Press, 1984

The sixteen-volume Handbook of Middle American Indians, completed in 1976, has been acclaimed the world over as the single most valuable resource ever produced for those involved in the study of Mesoamerica. When it was determined in 1978 that the Handbook should be updated periodically, well-known cultural anthropologist Victoria Reifler Bricker was selected to be general editor.

This second volume of the Supplement is devoted to Mesoamerican languages. It differs in both scope and content from its forerunner, Volume 5 of the Handbook of Middle American Indians: Linguistics, which presents a general survey of Middle American linguistics and descriptions of Classical Nahuatl, Yucatec, Quiche, Popoluca, Zapotec, Mazatec, Pame, and Chontal de Oaxaca.

The aim of the present volume is to provide detailed sketches of five additional languages: Mixe, Chichimeco Jonaz, Choltí, Tarascan, and Huastec. All the grammatical sketches deal with the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the languages treated; most cover discourse as well. Taken together, these new essays represent a substantial enrichment of the earlier Handbook volume on linguistics. Alone, the Supplement stands as an invaluable reference guide for all who are interested in learning about these important and heretofore poorly treated languages of Middle America.

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front cover of Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 3
Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 3
Literatures
Victoria R. Bricker, general editor
Munro S. Edmonson, volume editor
University of Texas Press, 1985

The sixteen-volume Handbook of Middle American Indians, completed in 1976, has been acclaimed the world over as the single most valuable resource ever produced for those involved in the study of Mesoamerica. When it was determined in 1978 that the Handbook should be updated periodically, Victoria Reifler Bricker, well-known cultural anthropologist, was elected to be general editor.

This third volume of the Supplement is devoted to the aboriginal literatures of Mesoamerica, a topic receiving little attention in the original Handbook. According to the general editor, "This volume does more than supplement and update the coverage of Middle American Indian literatures in the Handbook. It breaks new ground by defining the parameters of a new interdisciplinary field in Middle American Indian studies."

The aim of the present volume is to consider literature from five Middle American Indian languages: Nahuatl, Yucatecan Maya, Quiche, Tzotzil, and Chorti. The first three literatures are well documented for both the Classical and Modern variants of their languages and are obvious candidates for inclusion in this volume. The literatures of Tzotzil and Chorti, on the other hand, are oral, and heretofore little has been written of their genres and styles.

Taken together, these essays represent a substantial contribution to the Handbook series, with the volume editor's introduction placing in geographic perspective the five literatures chosen as representative of the Middle American literary tradition.

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front cover of Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 4
Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 4
Ethnohistory
Victoria R. Bricker, general editor
Ronald Spores, volume editor
University of Texas Press, 1986

The sixteen-volume Handbook of Middle American Indians, completed in 1976, has been acclaimed the world over as the single most valuable resource ever produced for those involved in the study of Mesoamerica. When it was determined in 1978 that the Handbook should be updated periodically, Victoria Reifler Bricker, well-known cultural anthropologist, was elected to be general editor.

This fourth volume of the Supplement is devoted to colonial ethnohistory. Four of the eleven chapters review research and ethnohistorical resources for Guatemala, South Yucatan, North Yucatan, and Oaxaca, areas that received less attention than the central Mexican area in the original Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources (HMAI vols. 12-15).

Six substantive and problem-oriented studies cover the use of colonial texts in the study of pre-colonial Mayan languages; political and economic organization in the valleys of Mexico, Puebla-Tlaxcala, and Morelos; urban-rural relations in the Basin of Mexico; kinship and social organization in colonial Tenochtitlan; tlamemes and transport in colonial central Mexico; and land tenure and titles in central Mexico as reflected in colonial codices.

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front cover of Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 5
Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 5
Epigraphy
Edited by Victoria Reifler Bricker
University of Texas Press, 1991

In 1981, under the editorship of Victoria Bricker, UT Press began to issue supplemental volumes to the classic sixteen-volume work Handbook of Middle American Indians. These supplements are intended to update scholarship in various areas and to cover topics of current interest that may not have been included in the original Handbook.

This volume is designed to recognize the important role that epigraphy has come to play in Middle American scholarship and to document significant achievements in three areas: dynastic history, phonetic decipherment, and calendrics. The book covers four of the major pre-Columbian scripts in the region (Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec, and Maya) and one that is relatively unknown (Tlapanec).

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front cover of Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 6
Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 6
Ethnology
Victoria Reifler Bricker, general editor; John D. Monaghan, volume editor, with the assistance of Barbara W. Edmonson
University of Texas Press, 2000

In 1981, UT Press began to issue supplemental volumes to the classic sixteen-volume work, Handbook of Middle American Indians. These supplements are intended to update scholarship in various areas and to cover topics of current interest. Supplements devoted to Archaeology, Linguistics, Literatures, Ethnohistory, and Epigraphy have appeared to date.

In this Ethnology supplement, anthropologists who have carried out long-term fieldwork among indigenous people review the ethnographic literature in the various regions of Middle America and discuss the theoretical and methodological orientations that have framed the work of areal scholars over the last several decades. They examine how research agendas have developed in relationship to broader interests in the field and the ways in which the anthropology of the region has responded to the sociopolitical and economic policies of Mexico and Guatemala. Most importantly, they focus on the changing conditions of life of the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. This volume thus offers a comprehensive picture of both the indigenous populations and developments in the anthropology of the region over the last thirty years.

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