The capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan, was, in its era, one of the largest cities in the world. Built on an island in the middle of a shallow lake, its population numbered perhaps 150,000, ...with another 350,000 people in the urban network clustered around the lake shores. In 1521, at the height of Tenochtitlan's power, which extended over much of Central Mexico, Hernando Cortés and his followers conquered the city. Cortés boasted to King Charles V of Spain that Tenochtitlan was "destroyed and razed to the ground." But was it?Drawing on period representations of the city in sculptures, texts, and maps, The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City builds a convincing case that this global capital remained, through the sixteenth century, very much an Amerindian city. Barbara E. Mundy foregrounds the role the city's indigenous peoples, the Nahua, played in shaping Mexico City through the construction of permanent architecture and engagement in ceremonial actions. She demonstrates that the Aztec ruling elites, who retained power even after the conquest, were instrumental in building and then rebuilding the city. Mundy shows how the Nahua entered into mutually advantageous alliances with the Franciscans to maintain the city's sacred nodes. She also focuses on the practical and symbolic role of the city's extraordinary waterworks—the product of a massive ecological manipulation begun in the fifteenth century—to reveal how the Nahua struggled to maintain control of water resources in early Mexico City.
Every day Roman urbanites took to the street for myriad tasks, from hawking vegetables and worshipping local deities to simply loitering and socializing. Hartnett takes readers into this thicket of ...activity as he repopulates Roman streets with their full range of sensations, participants, and events that stretched far beyond simple movement. As everyone from slave to senator met in this communal space, city dwellers found unparalleled opportunities for self-aggrandizing display and the negotiation of social and political tensions. Hartnett charts how Romans preened and paraded in the street, and how they exploited the street's collective space to lob insults and respond to personal rebukes. Combining textual evidence, comparative historical material, and contemporary urban theory with architectural and art historical analysis, The Roman Street offers a social and cultural history of urban spaces that restores them to their rightful place as primary venues for social performance in the ancient world.
The Spectacular City, Mexico, and Colonial Hispanic Literary Culture tracks the three spectacular forces of New World literary culture—cities, festivals, and wonder—from the sixteenth to the ...seventeenth century, from the Old World to the New, and from Mexico to Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. It treats a multitude of imperialist and anti-imperialist texts in depth, including poetry, drama, protofiction, historiography, and journalism. While several of the landmark authors studied, including Hernán Cortés and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, are familiar, others have received remarkably little critical attention. Similarly, in spotlighting creole writers, Merrim reveals an intertextual tradition in Mexico that spans two centuries. Because the spectacular city reaches its peak in the seventeenth century, Merrim’s book also theorizes and details the spirited work of the New World Baroque. The result is the rich examination of a trajectory that leads from the Renaissance ordered city to the energetic revolts of the spectacular city and the New World Baroque.
Ebla and its Landscape Matthiae, Paolo; Marchetti, Nicoló
2013, 20160616, 2016-06-16
eBook
The discovery of 17,000 tablets at the mid-third millennium BC site of Ebla in Syria has revolutionized the study of the ancient Near East. This is the first major English-language volume describing ...the multidisciplinary archaeological research at Ebla. Using an innovative regional landscape approach, the 29 contributions to this expansive volume examine Ebla in its regional context through lenses of archaeological, textual, archaeobiological, archaeometric, geomorphological, and remote sensing analysis. In doing so, they are able to provide us with a detailed picture of the constituent elements and trajectories of early state development at Ebla, essential to those studying the ancient Near East and to other archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and linguists. This work was made possible by an IDEAS grant from the European Research Council.
The fifth volume in the Institute of Classical Archaeology’s series on rural settlements in the countryside (chora) of Metaponto presents the excavation of a Greek farmhouse, illuminating the ...lifeways of fourth-century BC farmers of modest means.
MEXICO MEGACITY Pick, James B; Butler, Edgar W
01/1997
eBook
Geographic information systems & spatial analysis are drawn on to describe, analyze, & compare the growth, change, & spatial patterns of different districts & areas of Mexico City, based on data on ...economics, population, & housing gathered for the US-Mexico Database Project from public documents. Particular attention is paid to patterns of urbanization, marriage, fertility, health & mortality rates, migration, environmental & housing concerns, social characteristics, & the relationship between the labor force & corporate structure. Mexico City is divided into 35 distinct spatial clusters that fall into four broad metropolitan areas: an urban core, an inner ring, an expansion zone, & poverty regions. The urban core, the central business district of the city, is surrounded by an inner ring of several zones: zones of maturity, generally of good, but older residences; & zones in situ, which started out with modest housing, but have moved through accretion toward maturity. An expansion zone & poverty regions compose the outer rings of the city. The 1978 national urban economic development plan -- which had as its goal the redistribution of population away from Mexico City, Monterey, & Guadalajara by concentrating industries in different priority zones -- is briefly assessed; its implementation requires adequate evaluation & feedback mechanisms for future adjustment. The plan must also recognize the emerging trend toward more participatory democracy at the local level. A preface accompanies 13 Chpts. 68 Tables, 62 Figures, 148 Maps, 1 Appendix. D.M. Smith
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