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David Freidel

Autore di Una foresta di re

7+ opere 1,057 membri 8 recensioni

Sull'Autore

Comprende i nomi: David Friedel, David A. Freidel

Opere di David Freidel

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Etichette

Informazioni generali

Data di nascita
1946-07-11
Sesso
male
Nazionalità
USA
Istruzione
Harvard University (PhD)
Attività lavorative
archaeologist
author
Organizzazioni
Washington University in St. Louis

Utenti

Recensioni

The recent interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs has given us the first written history of the New World as is existed before the European invasion. Now, two central figures in the massive effort to decode the glyphs, Linda Shele and David Freidel, make this history available for the first time in all its detail.
Hailed as "a Rosetta Stone of Maya civilization", A Forest of Kings is "a must for interested readers", seys Evon Vogt, professor of anthropology at Harvard University.
 
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Daniel464 | 5 altre recensioni | Sep 26, 2021 |
I picked this up even though I learned from the index that Xunantunich, one of the only Mayan sites I've visited, was mentioned only once in a throwaway line. Of course, Mayan history is interesting enough to be read about by more than academics and tourists. 'A Forest of Kings' is a deceptively fat book, its last 150 pages are appendices and endnotes, and the main text is full of illustrations which makes it a much easier read than you might think. The authors are certainly academics, but they've made a really great effort to reduce technical details to a minimum and put the bulk of their evidence into the aforementioned appendices and footnotes.

I think they did too good of a job there. Every chapter has at least one or two vignettes of hypothetical situations drawn from the archaeological and linguistic record which makes for interesting reading but they are the product of so much well-imagined guesswork that I can't suppress my skepticism even after I've flipped to the back to read the notes for that page.

The book is out of date, with almost all of the chapters referencing ongoing excavations and translation of findings, but the picture they present seemed fair-minded and, prose embellishments aside, firmly based on the evidence available to them and many of the illustrations are side-by-side simple translations of Mayan writing into English.

Reading this I understood why my professors had not assigned much reading on the history of the Maya, focusing on ecological impact instead, because there is, quite simply, a lot of one-sided historical data. With much of it, it is almost impossible to find a middle ground. There is this ~400 page treatment, and statements such as: "various small monarchic city-states exist in a state of near-constant warfare for 1000 years." A gross over-simplification, but if you want to get beyond that you're going to need to sit down and read 'A Forest of Kings', or a book of similar length.
… (altro)
 
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ManWithAnAgenda | 5 altre recensioni | Feb 18, 2019 |
The untold Story of the Ancient Maya
 
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jhawn | 5 altre recensioni | Jul 31, 2017 |
Excellent source material for my rolegaming campaign. Well organized, clear and lucid prose, and free of the woo that has so tragically infected Central American studies.
 
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tarliman.joppos | 5 altre recensioni | Aug 20, 2013 |

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Statistiche

Opere
7
Opere correlate
4
Utenti
1,057
Popolarità
#24,366
Voto
3.9
Recensioni
8
ISBN
17
Lingue
5

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