Talk:Human trophy taking in Mesoamerica

Article name change

I moved this article to a title more in keeping with wikipedia's naming conventions, and also one that implies a pan-Mesoamerican scope. I realise that the KU anthro assignment is Maya-specific, but since this article draft has material about the practice in non-Maya contexts (eg Teo), and since we currently lack a Mesoamerica-level one, I thought it best to move it here. The KU anthro text can still concentrate on the Maya angle, other sections can be expanded & added given the potential to expand the coverage to other Mesoam cultures. If the Maya section gets too large then it cld be separated into a new article, but it's easier to do it that way than put together a Meso-level article from others. --cjllw ʘ TALK 09:28, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Copyediting

I have given the article a brushup to comply better with the wikipedia manual of style. It now has a lead and an image. Some of the language is very dense and/or uninformative. For example a sentence as "An underlying tone of these sacrificial practices may be the factors of sociopolitical importance and how they coincide with Maya warfare." doesn't really convey any meaning at all. Also beware of Weasel words a sentence such as "However, it is still in debate by some scholars as to if the iconographic images of human sacrifice and trophy taking are re-enactments of actual events or simply fantasy." lets the question about who these scholars are hang in the air. To my knowledge no mesoamericanists doubt that human sacrifice was practiced by almost all civilizations of Mesoamerica - if some do then it is surely important to know who they are, what their arguments are and what is the general consensus among scholars (which is of course that it did happen and on a fairly grand scale). Also a wording such as "there will always be sceptics" is both weasly and out of style for an encyclopedia. A better argument to say that "the vast record of archaeological and iconographic evidence clearly indicates that human trophy taking was practised among the Maya as well as in the rest of Mesoamerica". A very good start of an article, please go on improving it - if you could get some material from outside of the maya area that would serve to make it even better (although i realise that this is outside of the scope of your required readings)·Maunus·ƛ· 14:30, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I've made a number of corrections to the language here. Overall, I think the article takes the right approach. However, there is much more that can be included here in the way of examples. The stucco mural at Tonina, Chiapas, for example, has very explicit representations of trophy head display. It would be nice to see a list of these grow over time. Hoopes (talk) 22:21, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• “To my knowledge no mesoamericanists doubt that human sacrifice was practiced by almost all civilizations of Mesoamerica”

The book that I have just used to add some info for this article, authored by 28 scholars and published a couple of years ago by both the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, supports that statement.

Cesar Tort 19:30, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

References

The references to this article need to be cleaned up. When citing a work in an edited volume, you should include it under the name of the author of the chapter, with the full chapter title, followed by "In" and the full citation of the book (with page numbers of the chapter). The Chacon & Dye book is quite good, but individual chapters should be cited. Hoopes (talk) 22:21, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

There is an excellent Teotihuacan Web Page created by Saburo Sugiyama that has been online for a long time. A link to this should be provided in the references. Hoopes (talk) 22:21, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Image

It would be nice if this image of the Oaxaca figure I just mentioned in the article can be legally uploaded in Wikipedia. The figure is in the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Cesar Tort 18:25, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Old Spanish

The original of the Relación Geográfica of 1580 that I’ve just translated for the article reads: “…y con unas barillas [varillas in modern Spanish] les davan [daban] por todo el cuerpo hasta que se hinchaban, y desollaban los cuerpos y lavaban la carne con agua caliente y la comían, y los pellejos llebaban [llevaban] por los pueblos comarcanos a pedir limosna.”

Cesar Tort 19:19, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

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