Book Talk with Traci Ardren, "Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World"
About this Event
265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables, FL 33134
https://humanities.as.miami.edu/public-programs/booktalks/index.html
Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World introduces readers to a range of people who lived during the Classic period (200–800 CE) of Maya civilization. Traci Ardren here reconstructs the individual experiences of Maya people across all social arenas and experiences, including less-studied populations, such as elders, children, and non-gender binary people. Putting people, rather than objects, at the heart of her narrative, she examines the daily activities of a small rural household of farmers and artists, hunting and bee-keeping rituals, and the bustling activities of the urban marketplace. Ardren bases her study on up-to-date and diverse sources and approaches, including archaeology, art history, epigraphy, and ethnography. Her volume reveals the stories of ancient Maya people and also shows the relevance of those stories today. Ardren’s engaging monograph Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World offers readers at all levels a view into the amazing accomplishments of a culture that continues to fascinate.
Traci Ardren is an anthropological archaeologist interested in New World prehistoric cultures. Her research focuses on issues of identity and other forms of symbolic representation in the archaeological record, especially the ways in which differences are explained through gender. Traci directs the Matecumbe Chiefdom Project, which looks at the political organization and environmental adaptation of the pre-Hispanic occupants of the Florida Keys. She is also co-director of the Proyecto de Interacción Política del Centro de Yucatán, at the Classic Maya site of Yaxuna, in Yucatan, Mexico where she is investigating how culinary tourism and modern foodways intersect and how ancient road systems allowed for the flow of information and ideas. As Consulting Curator for Mesoamerican Art, Traci has curated a number of exhibits at the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami, including most recently, Kay Pacha: Reciprocity with the Natural World in the Ancient Art of the Andes in 2016. She grew up in and around the Ringling Museum of Art and holds a lifelong fascination with the many ways in which objects convey our wants and needs.
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