{"title":"Stephen Houston","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"gifted-passage-book-stephen-houston-9780300228960","title":"The Gifted Passage","description":"In this thought-provoking book, preeminent scholar Stephen Houston turns his attention to the crucial role of young males in Classic Maya society, drawing on evidence from art, writing, and material culture. The Gifted Passage establishes that adolescent men in Maya art were the subjects and makers of hieroglyphics, painted ceramics, and murals, in works that helped to shape and reflect masculinity in Maya civilization. The political volatility of the Classic Maya period gave male adolescents valuable status as potential heirs, and many of the most precious surviving ceramics likely celebrated their coming-of-age rituals. The ardent hope was that youths would grow into effective kings and noblemen, capable of leadership in battle and service in royal courts. Aiming to shift mainstream conceptions of the Maya, Houston argues that adolescent men were not simply present in images and texts, but central to both.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49896811168017,"sku":"CIN0300228961VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":52716285296913,"sku":"CIN0300228961LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0300228961.jpg?v=1750844727"},{"product_id":"maya-universe-in-stone-book-stephen-houston-9781606067444","title":"A Maya Universe in Stone","description":"In 1950, Dana Lamb, an explorer of some notoriety, stumbled on a Maya ruin in the tropical forests of northern Guatemala. Lamb failed to record the location of the site he called Laxtunich, turning his find into the mystery at the center of this book. The lintels he discovered there, long since looted, are probably of a set with two others that are among the masterworks of Maya sculpture from the Classic period. Using fieldwork, physical evidence, and Lamb's expedition notes, the authors identify a small area with archaeological sites where the carvings were likely produced.    Remarkably, the vividly colored lintels, replete with dynastic and cosmic information, can be assigned to a carver, Mayuy, who sculpted his name on two of them. To an extent nearly unique in ancient America, Mayuy can be studied over time as his style developed and his artistic ambition grew. An in-depth analysis of Laxtunich Lintel 1 examines how Mayuy grafted celestial, seasonal, and divine identities onto a local magnate and his overlord from the kingdom of Yaxchilan, Mexico. This volume contextualizes the lintels and points the way to their reprovenancing and, as an ultimate aim, repatriation to Guatemala.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49969321574673,"sku":"CIN1606067443G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53081104908561,"sku":"GOR014733463","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1606067443.jpg?v=1751277025"},{"product_id":"plants-that-shaped-our-gardens-obee-book-d-stuart-9780674007901","title":"The Plants That Shaped Our Gardens (Obee)","description":"\u003cp\u003e Inspiration, happy accidents, and outright obsessions have all had their way with gardens--but nothing has done more to shape the modern garden than plants themselves. In a story that ranges from continent to continent and spans four centuries, botanist and gardener David Stuart reveals how the garden as we know it was created not by garden designers but by ordinary gardeners responding to exotic and novel plants that suggested new spaces, places, and means of display. The history begins with two earth-changing events--the establishment of colonies in the Americas and the spread of the Turkish empire. Both brought the first astonishing wave of flowering exotics to gardens across Europe. Stuart relates how, over the following centuries, the influx of new plants inspired a frenzy of hybridization (at first by a new breed of gardener, the florist, later by nurserymen), which in turn led to such features as the familiar herbaceous border, flower bed, and rose garden, as well as the now little-known rockery, shrubbery, and wilderness. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e From the Dutch tulip mania, the eighteenth-century European passion for American gardens, and on to the rhododendron craze of the nineteenth century, Stuart's book traces the shape of the modern garden as it changed with the fashion, returning at last to classic, cottage garden varieties long neglected in favor of the foreign and new. In conclusion, Stuart looks at plant prospecting today--now that the collecting of plants may prove essential to protecting botanical diversity and preserving plant species rapidly disappearing from the wild.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50155007901969,"sku":"CIN0674007905VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50360832688401,"sku":"CIN0674007905G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50971557986577,"sku":"GOR014153193","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0674007905.jpg?v=1750944629"},{"product_id":"life-within-book-stephen-houston-9780300196023","title":"The Life Within","description":"For the Classic Maya, who flourished in and around the Yucatan peninsula in the first millennium AD, artistic materials were endowed with an internal life. Far from being inert substances, jade, flint, obsidian, and wood held a vital essence, agency, and even personality. To work with these materials was to coax their life into full expression and to engage in witty play. Writing, too, could shift from hieroglyphic signs into vibrant glyphs that sprouted torsos, hands, and feet. Appearing to sing, grapple, and feed, they effectively blurred the distinction between text and image. \t  \tIn this first full study of the nature of Maya materials and animism, renowned Mayanist scholar Stephen Houston provides startling insights into a Pre-Columbian worldview that dramatically contrasts with western perspectives. Illustrated with more than one hundred photographs, images, and drawings, this beautifully written book reveals the Maya quest for transcendence in the face of inevitable death and decay.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50296742904081,"sku":"CIN0300196024G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51330032369937,"sku":"CIN0300196024VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52393526329617,"sku":"GOR014514805","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0300196024.jpg?v=1750876523"},{"product_id":"shape-of-script-book-stephen-houston-9781934691427","title":"The Shape of Script","description":"Stephen D. Houston has spent decades studying the nature of writing systems, which “are so very basic as nodes of connection among many aspects of human experience,” such as language, communication, identity, technology, and the recording of memory. “One of the misconceptions about writing is that a particular system of script comes into existence, remains the same, and then ‘dies,’” said Houston.“This notion radically and wrongly dehistoricizes systems of writing. We now know that scripts exist as fluid sets of practices, shifting over long periods of time and in response to changing historical circumstances, conditions of learning, and arenas of patronage and use.” For this advanced seminar “The Shape of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change,” 10 specialists convened to address “the question of what happens between the origins of a writing system and the time of eventual ‘script death,’ or extinction.” Although scholars are close to conceptualizing the way scripts emerge and pass into obsolescence, they are still far from explaining how scripts maintain themselves over time or how and why they change when they do. “This is unfortunate: writing is one of the central cultural productions in human history, yet its many modulations and shifts seem largely to be taken for granted, without need for explanation. Writing is a pivotal intermediary in many human transactions. But it needs to be brought back into the fold of anthropology, not as a marginal specialty but as an indispensable tool by which knowledge is transmitted.” The seminar, conceived as a capstone to a 10-year project to resuscitate and renovate the study of past writing systems within anthropology, brought together experts in script traditions including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Latin writing and Mediterranean alphabets, cuneiform, South Asian scripts, ancient Roman script, and premodern Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, and Mesoamerican writing systems. Using cross-cultural comparisons, the participants sought to understand the forces that influence the courses of writing systems. Houston emphasized the importance of examining context:“What is the physical, temporal, social, and cultural setting for the way the message of writing is accessed? That is where history enters the picture, within a place of contingency, challenge, and opportunity.” Among the questions driving the discussions were the following: What processes affected formal changes in scripts? What agents or actors were involved in such shifts, either actively or passively? How was literacy achieved, then futhered or restricted? How did aesthetics and the use of script shape each other? What influence did technologies have on script forms? How was writing “gendered” or “aged” or “classed”?And what are the linkages between images and script? Of particular interest was the issue of generational transfer. “This brings us to matters on the cutting edge of anthropology:What is the role of being a child, or an adolescent? What do we learn? When and why do we learn it? This is what’s involved in making sure that script survives more than that initial act of innovation, so that it’s used again and again, across generations,” Houston said.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50402995798289,"sku":"CIN1934691429G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50630742311185,"sku":"NGR9781934691427","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1934691429.jpg?v=1763119929"},{"product_id":"royal-courts-of-the-ancient-maya-book-stephen-houston-9780813338804","title":"Royal Courts Of The Ancient Maya","description":"The two volumes of  Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya  provide current archaeological perspectives on Maya courts conceived as vital, functioning social groups composed of lords, courtiers, scribes, priests, and entertainers, among many others. In addition to archaeological data on the architecture and other spatial attributes of courts, the studies in the two volumes bring to bear on the topic the most recent evidence from inscriptions, vase paintings, murals and friezes, and ethnohistoric records in order to flesh out a portrait of the actors and roles that made up Maya courts through time and across space. The attributes of courts are explored in the Maya highlands and lowlands, from the origins of early kingship through the Classic period to the Postclassic and Terminal epochs. Pertinent comparisons are also drawn from the Aztecs and other ancient and contemporary societies.  Volume 1: Theory, Comparison, and Synthesis  establishes a carefully considered framework for approaching the study of courts and their functions throughout the world of the ancient Maya.  Volume 2: Data and Case Studies  provides authoritatively current data and insights from key Maya sites, including Copán, Tikal, Caracol, Bonampak, and Calakmul.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51137495302417,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51137498710289,"sku":"NIN9780813338804","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52130169585937,"sku":"NLS9780813338804","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813338808.jpg?v=1750745400"},{"product_id":"royal-courts-of-the-ancient-maya-book-stephen-houston-9780813336404","title":"Royal Courts Of The Ancient Maya","description":"This book provides theory, comparison, and synthesis to establish a carefully considered framework for approaching the study of courts and their functions throughout the world of the ancient Maya. 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Vital Signs explains how this graphic system worked, shedding new light on its design, intent, and authorship.  One of the few peoples of the ancient world with hieroglyphic writing, the Maya developed an innovative form of visual representation in which written signs, known as “glyphs,” took their shape from pictures. In this groundbreaking book, archaeologist and anthropologist Stephen Houston shows how recent decipherments of this system unveil a world where sacred kings and dynastic courts affirmed the truths that upheld their authority and underpinned the cosmos. He explores how scribes and sculptors created vibrant, sometimes humorous glyphs and images saturated with esoteric messages. Houston covers a host of topics along the way, such as how Maya artists conveyed sound, movement, size, and scale, thus expressing their deepest beliefs about transient things and meaningful space.  Drawing on more than four decades of research by a leading scholar of Maya civilization, Vital Signs reveals larger human histories of how the eyes could be coaxed to hear and static forms brought to life in the visual culture of the Maya.  Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52632518263057,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52632518328593,"sku":"NGR9780691285153","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780691285153.jpg?v=1775213991"},{"product_id":"decipherment-of-ancient-maya-writing-book-stephen-houston-9780806132044","title":"The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing","description":"The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing is an important story of intellectual discovery and a tale of code breaking comparable to the interpreting of Egyptian hieroglyphs and the decoding of cuneiform. Using classic articles taken from publications unavailable to most readers, accounts by Spaniards who witnessed the writing of the glyphs and research by twentieth-century scholars--from Tatiana Proskouriakoff to Michael Coe--this book provides a history of the interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs. Introductory essays offer the historical context and describe the personalities and theories of the many authors who contributed to the understanding of these ancient glyphs.More than two hundred line drawings illustrate the text and serve as an introduction to decipherment. This landmark work in Maya studies is the first book to examine the centuries of thought behind the decoding of Maya hieroglyphs.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52665497125137,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52665498239249,"sku":"NLS9780806132044","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780806132044.jpg?v=1767354379"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-stephen-houston.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}