Historical Dictionary of Mesoamerica

Walter R. T. Witschey · Clifford T. Brown

12/2011 · Scarecrow Press

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Mesoamerica is one of six major areas of the world where humans independently changed their culture from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle into settled communities, cities, and civilization. In addition to China (twice), the Indus Valley, the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia, Egypt, and Peru, Mesoamerica was home to exciting and irreversible changes in human culture called the “Neolithic Revolution.” The changes included domestication of plants and animals, leading to agriculture, husbandry, and eventually sedentary village life. These developments set the stage for the growth of cities, social stratification, craft specialization, warfare, writing, mathematics, and astronomy, or what we call the rise of civilization. These changes forever transformed humankind.

The Historical Dictionary of Mesoamerica covers the history of Mesoamerica through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 900 cross-referenced dictionary entries covering the major peoples, places, ideas, and events related to Mesoamerica. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Mesoamerica.

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Walter R. T. Witschey is a professor of anthropology and science education at Longwood University. For the past decade, he has been a Research Fellow of the Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, and chaired the Virginia Governor’s Environmental Education Commission from 2000-04. Along with Clifford Brown, he is a co-principal investigator of the Electronic Atlas of Ancient Maya Sites, which provides raw data for settlement pattern studies, site location data, mapping services, and datasets for Google Earth displays.

Clifford T. Brown is associate professor on the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at Florida Atlantic University. He has supervised the excavation of Temple 30 on the Acropolis of Copán, Honduras, under the distinguished E. Wyllys Andrews V. He has directed archaeological excavations at Mayapán, the Late Postclassic capital city of northern Yucatán, and he has worked on archaeological research projects in Yucatán and Nicaragua. Along with Walter Witschey, he is a co-principal investigator of the Electronic Atlas of Ancient Maya Sites.