Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars - Paperback

by Susan Milbrath (Author)

Observations of the sun, moon, planets, and stars played a central role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the astronomical information encoded in Precolumbian Maya art and confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples.

Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to Precolumbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the major astronomical gods and their associated glyphs, astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices [painted books], and changes in the imagery of the heavens over time. This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of information about the specific astronomical events and cycles recorded in Maya art and architecture. Indeed, it constitutes the first major study of the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya culture.

Back Jacket

OBSERVATIONS OF THE SUN, moon, planets, and stars played a central role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the astronomical information encoded in Precolumbian Maya art and confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples.

Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to Precolumbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the major astronomical gods identified with the sun, moon, naked-eye planets, and constellations and their associated glyphs, astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices (painted books), and changes in the imagery of the heavens over time.

This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of information about the specific astronomical events and cycles recorded in Maya art and architecture. The first major study to focus on the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya culture, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Precolumbian art history and anthropology, archaeoastronomy, ethnography, and comparative mythology.

Susan Milbrath is Curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History and Affiliate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. A former student of Esther Pasztory, she did postdoctoral work with Michael Coe and Anthony F. Aveni and served asguest curator of "Star Gods of the Ancient Americas", a traveling exhibit that opened at the American Museum of Natural History and toured nationally between 1982 and 1984.