Mesoamerican civilization and the idea of transcendence

Abstract

How do ideas, or ideologies, articulate with other cultural systems? This is a complex question, and archaeologists, in their study of the rise and growth of civilizations, have been hesitant to address it. There are obvious reasons for this hesitancy. Even in those instances where the archaeological record is text-aided it is difficult, and it is still more so where contemporaneous documentary materials are lacking or equivocal, as in Precolumbian America. Then, too, it is my impression that while many archaeologists are willing to grant ideology a role in cultural development they tend to look upon it as causally ‘secondary’. Subsistence, demography, technology, and ecology—perhaps because they are more directly susceptible to archaeological methods and inferences than are idea systems—are more apt to be seen as the seats of ‘prime cause’.

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