Ancient Stone Sculptures
in The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs
January 2017; p ublished online December 2016 .
Article. Subjects: Archaeology by Region; History of Art. 2845 words.
This chapter discusses the Mexica monumental sculptures uncovered in downtown Mexico City during the late eighteenth century, including the Coatlicue and Tlaltecuhtli sculptures, and the...
Animate Shadows of Bears and Giants
in The Oxford Handbook of Light in Archaeology
P ublished online September 2017 .
Article. Subjects: Archaeology of North America; History of Art; Archaeology. 8415 words.
This chapter explores the performance of light and shadows in two ancestral Pueblo rock art sites in southeast Utah. These sites possess anthropomorphic rock faces and modified features to...
Art in the Aztec Empire
in The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology
September 2012; p ublished online November 2012 .
Article. Subjects: Archaeology; Archaeology by Region; History of Art. 4264 words.
Archaeological remains testify to the spread of goods and ideas over broad areas of Mesoamerica at different times throughout its prehispanic history. However, most material expansions are...
Art of the Classic Period
in The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology
September 2012; p ublished online November 2012 .
Article. Subjects: Archaeology; Archaeology by Region; History of Art. 3991 words.
The Mesoamerican Classic period (ca. 250–900 ad ) is characterized by the expansion of urban elite artistic cultures across the region. The basic characteristics of Classic-period elite...
Aztec Art after the Conquest and in Museums Abroad
in The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs
January 2017; p ublished online December 2016 .
Article. Subjects: Archaeology by Region; History of Art; Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences. 6175 words.
Following the Spanish Conquest, responses to Aztec art were varied. While architecture and many sacred sculptures were demolished and their material remains recycled into new construction,...
Aztec Art, Time, and Cosmovisión
in The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs
January 2017; p ublished online December 2016 .
Article. Subjects: Archaeology by Region; History of Art. 3362 words.
Aztec religion and the Central Mexican divinatory calendar were intrinsically linked. Focusing on the Aztec conception of art and artists, this chapter presents an overview of how art Aztec...
Aztec Lapidaries
in The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs
January 2017; p ublished online December 2016 .
Article. Subjects: Archaeology by Region; History of Art. 3486 words.
Objects of Aztec lapidary work carry great visual impact in contrast to their relatively scarce actual numbers. A combination of historical documents and modern locational techniques has...
Aztec Pictography and Painted Histories
in The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs
January 2017; p ublished online December 2016 .
Article. Subjects: Archaeology by Region; History of Art. 4603 words.
The Aztecs recorded knowledge and wrote down the historical events of their past in painted books, now called codices, in which historical information was encoded in a pictographic writing...
Bodies Revealed
in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art
P ublished online March 2017 .
Article. Subjects: Archaeology by Region; History of Art; Archaeology. 10582 words.
This chapter examines X-ray art in western Arnhem Land in northern Australia, considering how relatively contemporary artists used it to enrich the meaning of their work. After discussing...
The Built Environment
in The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology
October 2017; p ublished online September 2017 .
Article. Subjects: Archaeology of North America; History of Art. 10058 words.
The most intensively studied societies within Southwest archaeology—the Ancestral “Pueblos”—have been defined by their architecture. Stark village ruins of stone and adobe, some perched...
