Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2014 -

Palka (anthropology and Latin American and Latino studies, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago) is an authority on Maya prehistory and ethnology and author ofUnconquered Lacandon Maya (CH, May'06, 43-5456) andHistorical Dictionary of Ancient Mesoamerica (CH, Jun'01, 38-2521).  Here, he undertakes a comprehensive assessment of a neglected Mesoamerican phenomenonpilgrimages to sacred locations over two millennia.  In a compelling seven-chapter narrative with 157 monochrome illustrations and a valuable 496-item bibliography, Palka documents Maya spiritual behaviors; economic, political, and material correlates; and sacred places.  Chapters provide context and cross-cultural examples (notably Peruvian).  The author explores landscapes and material culture and community and spiritual interactions with divine places (deities and ancestor spirits) and focuses on ritual caves, ruins, and boulders; islands and water; and mountain shrines, hills, and cliffs.  He explicates social and psychological reasons for pilgrimages and world views.  Not since the proceedings from the Dumbarton Oaks Mesoamerican symposium (Mesoamerican Sites and World Views, ed. by Elizabeth Benson, 1981) and  Karen Bassie-Sweet's more recent monograph, Maya Sacred Geography and the Creator Deities (CH, Nov'09, 47-1496), has there been such a comprehensive, detailed assessment of southern Maya pilgrimage behaviors.  Hence, this important, readable, scholarly volume fills a major void for information on ancestor and ritual behaviors and sacred landscapes.Summing Up: Essential. All academic levels/libraries.

In this short text written by four experts (Barthe, Marisol Palma Behnke, Anne Chapman, and Dominique Legoupil), the books wealth clearly is the phenomenal 220 photographs taken by Martin Gusinde, a German priest who became a famous ethnographer.  With his careful and meticulous work capturing these exquisite images, along with ethnographic information, current readers are able to enjoy the beauty of these societies.  As a collection, the photographs capture incredible details about these cultures that were well on the way to extinction.  The bewitching quality of images taken between 1919 and 1924 brings these extinct cultures alive with marvelous portraits, some with wonderful smiling faces, which are rich in cultural and religious activities with all the valuable ethnographic details and beauty of a landscape and its original people.  The book features a selection of 1,200 images that were recently digitized from Gusindes original negatives and prints housed in the Anthropos Institute in Germany.  The four chapters provide the flesh to these photographs, with background on the history of the region, details of Gusindes fieldwork, and details about the mythological wealth of the Patagonians and how this region became populated, and very sadly depopulated.  A very important work not to be missed.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.