Architecture and Design of Latin America and the Caribbean

Provides an overview of the aesthetics, meanings, functions, and techniques of Mesoamerican architecture, and then surveys the historical development of the builder's art in each of the region's cultural areas.

Surveys the artistic achievements of the high pre-Columbian civilizations―Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Toltec, Aztec―as well as those of their less-well-known contemporaries, including pyramids and palaces, jades, brightly colored paintings, and more.

Highlights the aesthetics and supreme craftsmanship of the peoples of the ancient Americas, stretching from northern Mexico to Chile, in pictorial Mayan pottery, luxury Andean textiles, gold objects from Panama and Colombia, and more.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, this book highlights art from the southwestern United States, Mesoamerica, Central America, and the Andes.

Luxury arts in Mesoamerica, Central America, and South America, including objects made by Moche, Inca, Maya, Mexica, and other artists.

Highlights a wide range of objects from Mexico and Central and South America, including works created by Olmec, Maya, Mixtec, Aztec, and Inca artists.

Features art and decorative arts, with geographic coverage ranging from the tip of South America to the Arctic.

Photographs of the landscape, architecture, ceremonies, tableaux, and peoples of indigenous communities in Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

A profusely illustrated survey of South American mythology.

Adela Breton traveled extensively in Mexico between 1890 and 1910, She created a pictorial account of the Mexican countryside in the 1890s as well as detailed color records of murals at the ruins of Chichén Itzá and other aspects of the Pre-Columbian past. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Explores the history of the plaza in Mexican cities, from the Mesoamerican concept of space and types of open spaces through Spanish colonial towns to the present day. Color photographs and plans. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

By examining the stunning stone buildings and dynamic spaces of the royal estate of Chinchero, Nair brings to light the rich complexity of Inca architecture. What emerges are the subtle, often sophisticated ways in which the Inca manipulated space and architecture in order to impose their authority, identity, and agenda. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Color photographs of art, decorative arts, and architecture. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Uses domestic architecture to explore two major topics in the prehistory of the south-central Andes: the development of different forms of complementary relationships between highland and lowland peoples and the definition of the ethnic affiliations of these peoples. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Spanning cultures as diverse as the Aztec, Plains Indians, Hopi, Mississippian, and Southwest Pueblo, Enduring Motives brings to light new insights on ancient religious beliefs, practices, methods, and techniques. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Around 1542, descendants of the Aztec rulers of Mexico created accounts of the pre-Hispanic history of the city of Tetzcoco, Mexico, one of the imperial capitals of the Aztec Empire. This book offers analysis and historical context to argue that colonial economic, political, and social concerns affected both the content of the Tetzcocan pictorial histories and their archaizing pictorial form. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Examines the ways artists, architects, filmmakers, photographers, and other producers of visual culture in Mexico, the United States, Europe, and beyond have mined Mayan history and imagery. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Explores the meanings and practices of Maya pilgrimage, and compares it to similar behavior at ritual landscapes around the world. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Traces modern Mayan attitudes toward ritually charged objects and imagery back to the Classic Maya. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

His reflections on the Maya culture emphasize survival and adaptation, while images of ancient sites, the churches of the Franciscan mission period, and the ruined haciendas of the henequen period serve as physical reminders of the enduring ways in which the Maya have shaped the landscape of Yucatán over millennia. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Blue Creek is recognized as a unique site offering the full range of undisturbed architectural construction to reveal the mosaic that was the ancient city. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Includes color photographs and black-and-white line drawings. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Considers the ways in which the Inca concept of history informed their narratives, rituals, and architecture. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Includes line drawings of themes, motives and images found in Aztec and Mixtec art and literature. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Covers such topics as their worldview and ritual life, ceremonial architecture and murals, art and craft, supernatural beings, government and warfare, and burial and the afterlife. She demonstrates that the Moche expressed, with symbolic language in metal and clay, what cultures in other parts of the world presented in writing. Available through ProQuest Ebook Central (login required).

Full text available for free through the publisher (open access).