Bodies of Maize, Eaters of Grain: Comparing material worlds, metaphor and the agency of art in the Preclassic Maya and Mycenaean early civilisations by Marcus Jan Bajema

Bodies of Maize, Eaters of Grain: Comparing material worlds, metaphor and the agency of art in the Preclassic Maya and Mycenaean early civilisations by Marcus Jan Bajema

Bodies of Maize, Eaters of Grain provides a comparative study of the earliest urban civilisations of the Maya lowlands and the Greek mainland. It builds upon earlier comparative studies by Gordon Childe, Robert Adams and Bruce Trigger, extending their work into new directions. Specifically, the focus lies on the art styles of the Late Preclassic lowland Maya and Mycenaean Greece. The approach used here seeks to combine more traditional iconographic approaches with more recent models on metaphor and the social agency of things. Comparing Maya and Mycenaean art styles through the three aspects of metaphor, semiotics and praxis, their differences and similarities are made clear. The book shows art to have played a more active role in the development of the earliest urban civilisations, rather than passively reflecting economic and political trends. In that way, the social role of art provides a key to understanding the relations between the different factors in the development of the two societies, as they played out at different temporal and geographical scales. To understand this, the notion of distinct Maya and Mycenaean ‘material worlds’, involving both materials and ideas, is proposed, with consequences for models about the earliest urban civilisations in general.

Marcus Bajema defended his PhD on which this book is based at Leiden University in November 2015. He currently resides in the Netherlands and pursues research as an independent scholar.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781784916916
ISBN 10	1784916919
Title	Bodies of Maize, Eaters of Grain: Comparing material worlds, metaphor and the agency of art in the Preclassic Maya and Mycenaean early civilisations
Author	Marcus Jan Bajema
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Archaeopress
Year published	2017-09-30
Number of pages	360
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable