A Late Postclassic (ca. AD 1350–1521) Border Shrine at the Site of Tayasal, Petén, Guatemala

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-69
Author(s):  
Christina T. Halperin ◽  
Zachary X. Hruby

Shrines were a regular component of ceremonial architecture in the public plazas of Postclassic Maya centers. Small shrines and natural landmarks such as caves and outcrops at the borders of settlements or in wilderness locations also served, and in some cases continue to serve, as important ritual loci for Maya peoples. These more peripheral locales were not only critical access points to the supernatural, but also served to delineate places. Because these border features, which represent only a given moment in a constantly shifting social and political landscape, are sometimes unmodified or are inconspicuous, they are relatively ephemeral and difficult to identify in the archaeological record. This paper documents a Late Postclassic shrine paired with a natural feature, a small hill, from the site of Tayasal in Petén, Guatemala. We argue that it served as a border shrine. Paired with the small hill, the two embodied a liminal frontier, not only between earthly and spiritual realms but also between settled and unsettled space.

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 632-638
Author(s):  
Stephanie A Bryson

This reflexive essay examines the adoption of an intentional ‘ethic of care’ by social work administrators in a large social work school located in the Pacific Northwest. An ethic of care foregrounds networks of human interdependence that collapse the public/private divide. Moreover, rooted in the political theory of recognition, a care ethic responds to crisis by attending to individuals’ uniqueness and ‘whole particularity.’ Foremost, it rejects indifference. Through the personal recollections of one academic administrator, the impact of rejecting indifference in spring term 2020 is described. The essay concludes by linking the rejection of indifference to the national political landscape.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395171769075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Schrock ◽  
Gwen Shaffer

Government officials claim open data can improve internal and external communication and collaboration. These promises hinge on “data intermediaries”: extra-institutional actors that obtain, use, and translate data for the public. However, we know little about why these individuals might regard open data as a site of civic participation. In response, we draw on Ilana Gershon to conceptualize culturally situated and socially constructed perspectives on data, or “data ideologies.” This study employs mixed methodologies to examine why members of the public hold particular data ideologies and how they vary. In late 2015 the authors engaged the public through a commission in a diverse city of approximately 500,000. Qualitative data was collected from three public focus groups with residents. Simultaneously, we obtained quantitative data from surveys. Participants’ data ideologies varied based on how they perceived data to be useful for collaboration, tasks, and translations. Bucking the “geek” stereotype, only a minority of those surveyed (20%) were professional software developers or engineers. Although only a nascent movement, we argue open data intermediaries have important roles to play in a new political landscape.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (Supp01) ◽  
pp. 2140005
Author(s):  
L. Sai Ramesh ◽  
S. Shyam Sundar ◽  
K. Selvakumar ◽  
S. Sabena

Usage of the internet is increasing in the daily life of humans due to the need for speedy task completion for their daily services. Most of the living time is spent in some indoor environment which provides WiFi which is the basic need of internet connectivity using Wireless Access Points (WAP). Nowadays, most of the devices are IoT-based ones, which connect with the outer world through the access points in the existing environment. The wearable IoT devices may be misplaced somewhere and we need a specific scenario which helps to identify the misplaced mobile devices based on access points where they are connected by their unique identity such as MAC address. Most of the time, unrestricted WiFi access provided in the public environment is used by the end-user. In that scenario, the tracking of misplaced mobile devices is creating an issue when the WiFi is in switch-off mode. This paper proposes a technique for tracking a mobile device by using a location-aware approach with KNN and intelligent rules by tracking the channel accessed by the user to find the misplaced path by examining the device connected WAP positions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 252
Author(s):  
Philip Cass

Review of: Politics and the Media, edited by Babak Bahador, Geoff Kemp, Kate McMillan and Chris Rudd. Auckland: Pearson, 2013. ISBN 978144255826A generaton after the capitalist roaders took over the New Zealand Labour Party, the country’s political landscape is bleak. As described in this new book, it is one in which no political party is interested in any ideology except staying in power, no party will do anything that might offend a focus group, PR hacks control policy, political party membership has all but disappeared, the public is almost totally disengaged and most of the media has neither the time, the skill nor the inclination to cover politics.


Author(s):  
Jacob S. Hacker

Abstract Given the close division of power in D.C., how might health reformers pursue their bolder aims? In particular, how might they pursue the robust public option that is a centerpiece of Joe Biden’s reform proposal? This ambitious plan, which would allow all Americans to enroll in subsidized public health insurance, is not in the cards right now. However, I argue for conceiving of it as an inspiring vision that can structure immediate initiatives designed to make its achievement more feasible. First, I explain just how far-reaching the mainstream vision of the public option now is. Second, I describe a self-reinforcing path to that endpoint that involves what I call “building power through policy”—using the openings that are likely to exist in the near term to reshape the political landscape for the long term. This path has three key steps: (1) pursuing immediate improvements in the ACA that are tangible and traceable yet do not work against the eventual creation of a public option; (2) building the necessary policy foundations for a public option, while encouraging progressive states to experiment with state public plan models; and (3) seeding and strengthening movements to press for more fundamental reform.


Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan

This chapter examines how young right-wing extremists in Berlin articulate their relations to immigrants and ethnic alterity and how they negotiate layers of otherness in order to trace, in their own voices, their rendering of dominant imaginations of the social and political landscape. It explains how the rise of ethnicity and of a corresponding notion of culture as standard markers of difference has gone hand in hand with the public celebration of diversity, its active interpellation, and new modes of visualization that it has acquired in Berlin. It also shows how the resonances between ethnic otherness, urban landscape, and political contrasts come into sharp focus around food, noting that political subjectivity unfolds between the Wurst (sausage) as proper German nutrition and the Döner (kebab) as the seductive sensuality of otherness.


2004 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur A. Joyce ◽  
Andrew G. Workinger ◽  
Byron Hamann ◽  
Peter Kroefges ◽  
Maxine Oland ◽  
...  

AbstractThis article balances current understandings of the political landscape of Postclassic Mesoamerica through a conjunctive analysis of the archaeology and ethnohistory of the Mixtec Empire of Tututepec in the lower Río Verde region of Oaxaca. Tututepec has long been known from ethnohistoric sources as a powerful Late Postclassic imperial center. Until recently, however, little has been known of the archaeology of the site. We discuss the founding, extent, chronology, and aspects of the internal organization and external relations of Tututepec based on the results of a regional survey, excavations, and a reanalysis of ethnohistoric documents. Tututepec was founded early in the Late Postclassic period when the region was vulnerable to conquest due to political fragmentation and unrest. Indigenous historical data from three Mixtec codices narrate the founding of Tututepec as part of the heroic history of Lord 8 Deer “Jaguar Claw.” According to these texts, Lord 8 Deer founded Tututepec through a creative combination of traditional Mixtec foundation rites and a strategic alliance with a highland group linked to the Tolteca-Chichimeca. Archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence indicate that Tututepec continued to expand through the Late Postclassic, growing to 21.85 km2, and at its peak was the capital of an empire extending over 25,000 km2.


Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Admirand

Our public square is in need of much refurbishment, if not reconstruction. Access for many seems barred by various ideological platforms and walls. Some are deemed too much of this, another too much of that: liberal, religious, anti-Trump, anti-Brexit, pro-life, anti-gay—whatever the label or brand—and some access points are opened, others closed. Gatekeepers are many, deeming who really counts, who really represents. The public square, of course, should be big, bustling, semi-chaotic “places”, rife with ideas, questions, passion, and curiosity, yet measured by standards of decorum, listening, and mutual respect. Most importantly, it should be characterized by a robust (or spunky) humility, aware of its strengths and its weaknesses. It is fair to say that in 2019, our public square could use a little uplift. While certainly not a miracle cure, nor the only possible salves, interfaith dialogue, religious pluralism, liberation theology, and secular humanism have much in their favor to nuance, challenge, and yes, purify our present polarized, and so sometimes catatonic public square. After a brief overview first explaining the title, along with what is meant in this paper by the secular and humility, it will then be argued how interfaith dialogue, religious pluralism, liberation theology, and secular humanism can liberate and purify our public square discourse—namely by practicing and promoting a robust humility.


2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Jordan

AbstractSince Acosta's work in the 1940s, relief carvings of serpents entwined with partially skeletonized personages on the coatepantli at Tula have frequently been identified as images of the Nahua Venus deity, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli. Comparing these Toltec sculptures with this deity's iconography in Late Postclassic to Colonial period manuscripts, however, provides no support for this identification. Based on the northern Mesoamerican cultural connections of the Toltecs, the author suggests parallels between the coatepantli reliefs and the public display of ancestral and sacrificial human remains at Chalchihuites sites. Identification of the coatepantli figures as venerated ancestors from an ancestral cult is also supported by iconographic and archaeological evidence from Tula. Parallels to the coatepantli images in depictions of both living elites and ancestors juxtaposed with serpents from other Mesoamerican art traditions bolster this interpretation. On the basis of the evidence, the author hypothesizes that the skeletonized figures at Tula symbolize deceased kings and honored warriors rather than conquered foes.


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