The Life Within

By Stephen D. Houston,

Book cover of The Life Within: Classic Maya and the Matter of Permanence

Book 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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Life Within as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The ancient Maya viewed many things that we would consider inert as animate: objects had agency, even personality. As a result, I often tell my students that the artifacts they hold were once alive. Unfortunately, I rarely have time to tell them just how they came to live—or how they died (sometimes violently). This fascinating book explores not only animism but also the ways in which artisans literally brought objects to life. Read this book and then go to an exhibit on the ancient Maya; then try to decide which things in the exhibit are still (technically) alive. The exercise…

From James' list on ancient Maya religion.

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I Am Taurus By Stephen Palmer,

The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.

Each of the sections is written from…

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Interested in materialism, animism, and Mayan history and civilization?

Materialism 56 books
Animism 10 books