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Title:Encounter with the Plumed Serpent : Drama & Power in the Heart of Mesoamerica
Author:Maarten Jansen
ISBN:0870818686 : 9780870818684
Illustrations:2 b/w photos, 105 line art illus
Format:Hardback
Size:155x230mm
Pages:396
Weight: .696 Kg.
Published:University Press of Colorado - June 2007
List Price: 49.99 Pounds Sterling
Availability:In Print
Subjects:ARCHAEOLOGY: History of specific groups eg ethnic,gender,social: Indigenous peoples: Mexico


The Mixtec, or the people of Ñuu Savi (Nation of the Rain God), one of the major civilizations of ancient Mesoamerica, made their home in the highlands of Oaxaca, where they resisted both Aztec military expansion and the Spanish conquest. In 'Encounter with the Plumed Serpent', two leading scholars present and interpret the sacred histories narrated in the Mixtec codices, the largest surviving collection of pre-Columbian manuscripts in existence. In these screenfold books, ancient painter-historians chronicled the politics of the Mixtec from approximately ad900 to 1521, portraying the royal families, rituals, wars, alliances, and ideology of the times. By analysing and cross-referencing the codices, which have been fragmented and dispersed in far-flung archives, the authors attempt to reconstruct Mixtec history. Their synthesis here builds on long examination of the ancient manuscripts. Adding useful interpretation and commentary, Jansen and Pérez Jiménez synthesise the large body of surviving documents into the first unified narrative of Mixtec sacred history.

The Mat and the Throne; Storytelling and Ritual; Descent of the Plumed Serpent; Founding Mothers; The Rise of Nuu Tnoo; Lord of the Toltecs; Triumph and Tragedy; Flute of the Divine; The Crown of Motecuhzoma; Index.