The ballgame was a sport with a ritual offering and was played in Mesoamerican regions. It is usually played in a court built around sloped stairs where audience usually watched the game. The game usually consisted of two teams where the goal of the game was to get rubber ball across the small hole made on the wall. Although it might seem like a game only for enjoyment, ancient history evidence have shown otherwise. The goal of this gathering in the ballcourt held many more secrets one of which included religious offering to please the God. In the article, ‘Playing with Power’, John Gerard Fox brings up astonish activities taking place before and after the game. His research shows how ballgame is a source of control and ideology for Mesoamerican people. First, In Mesoamerican period ballcourts and any other type of public architecture center were a place where a social difference was seen. It was considered a forced gathering where communities were gathered to participate in labor and rituals. These gathering further increased social and religious meaning in Mesoamerican people. Moreover, ballcourt was also a place for religious offering dedicated to pleasing the Gods. Through offering Mesoamerican people dedicated ballcourt to be sacred. Ballcourt was also a place …show more content…
where central authorities were made. The control was shown by the force attendance in the ballcourt. Furthermore, offering shows the ideology of making God happy by calling it a religious ritual. If I were to excavate a new Maya site and I come across a ballcourt, I expect to find a ground hidden under underground with broken sloped stairs.
I expect the stairs to be made out of stones and I also expect to find a broken the structure where rubber ball was once passed through. The two most important artifacts I expect to find are the material with which the offering was made and bowls used for feasting. I also, expect to find them broken into pieces. When interpreting the findings, I would use relative dating to date them based on surrounding material. I would also compare it to other artifacts found previously by other archaeologists. Through this, I will be able to see a pattern if there is
one. Ballgame from Mesoamerica has many modern equivalents. For this assignment, I decided to use soccer and basketball to compare it with ballgame from Mesoamerica. To begin, soccer is similar as it requires a ball and a goal in the game. They both have two teams competing against each other and they both also use their certain body part to move the ball across. They both have different goals, where it is much easier to get a goal in soccer than in ballgame. Second, similarly basketball is also very similar to the ballgame and they also have a very similar round shaped hole for the goal. It has two teams competing against each other in hope to get the ball across the hole or net. In conclusion, one could say these games could be originated from the Mesoamerican ballgame. Even though games played today do not have any religious offering it still shows power. In soccer and basketball in this example, the more team wins the more power it has. Socially they are considered to be powerful just like they were in the Mesoamerican ballgame. Even though central authorities are not made in games today, they are still part of it as the game gets founded by the government.
To identify the specific type, functions and time period of the artifacts, various archaeology books, reports, and journal were referred. The interpretation was then conducted by dividing the artifacts into different area on the map and investigating their relationships.
... A few photos of Tenochtitlan and warriors headdresses, clubs and obsidian blades would increase the pleasure 10 fold. Also in places the author tends to divert to other Ameriindian cultures and use their ritual practices as examples. These comparisons can bring the ritual practices of a 500 year extant culture into modern day belief.
It was underneath this fortification that numerous statues of Gudea were discovered, which make up the heart of the Babylonian collection at the Louvre Museum#. Overall the statues had been damaged, some decapitated and others broken in various ways, having been put into the foundation of the new fortification. Also in this section came a mixture of fragments of basic artifacts including various objects made from bronze and stone, of high artistic excellence. Some of these objects have been dated to the earliest Sumerian period enabling historians to trace Babylonian art and it’s history to a date some hundreds years prior. Excavations in the other mound resulted in the uncovering of the remains of various buildings.
“Take Me Out to the Ball Game, but Which One?” by Tim Chabot is an essay that is very effective at comparing and contrasting basketball and baseball during the 1900s. Chabot’s thesis is very clear. He ends his introductory paragraph with the question of whether basketball should take the place of baseball and become the national sport.
Communitas can be considered an important value to the world of sports. However, some people do not understand the concept of communitas. According to Victor Turner (1969), communitas is “an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the very spirit of community,” (New World Encyclopedia). Trujillo’s study of baseball showed what he thought of communitas. In his periodical, Interpreting (the Work and Talk of) Baseball: Perspective on Ball Ballpark Culture, Trujillo (1992) said that ballpark community results in the development of interpersonal relationships at yearly “family reunions,” known as employee orientation (Western Journal Communication). Communitas is thought differently by other writers and scholars. However, they all come to a Turner’s conclusion that it deals with a temporary community that is equal in every way and is there for single purpose.
In America, it all began in the industrial age, which brought long work weeks and boring jobs. The employees across the nation were in need of a break. Ever since the mid-nineteenth century, white American settlers began to participate in organized sports such as baseball, football, basketball, curling, and bowling. In as early as 1820, a game involving a bat, bases, and a ball was evolving in the
Mesoamerican game which was played by a lot of people including the Mayans. It might have been invented by the ancient Olmec civilization. It was a very important part of the Aztec's way of living, not only because it was entertaining, but also because of political and religious reasons.
There has been evidence of over two hundred human sacrifices in just one general area of Mesoamerica. Not just in an area of a city – but a “building”. Many pyramids, temples, and art forms such as sculptures were made and used just for the purpose of sacrifices and blood-letting rituals. Such violent rituals are shown in art and architecture to show the effect of symbols on the humans of Ancient Mesoamerica. The question that will be uncovered is, how far did the Mesoamericans go? To what extend do symbols effect Mesoamerican art and architecture? These effects could of course lead to the stronger subjects, specifically human sacrifices. The extent of symbols on the architecture and art therefore is reflected as the extent it had on ancient Mesoamericans. It will first be evaluated how Architecture is made to reflect their beliefs on the lives of their gods. Second, how architecture and art can depict symbols will be revealed, and lastly it will be discussed how architecture and art shows the effect of symbols on ancient human lives and interactions. Finding these things will answer the research question by revealing how much effort believers would make to please their symbols, how Mesoamericans believe their gods to be, and how far they would go with tradition or rituals.
THE LIFE CYCLE OF AN ARTIFACT What is an artifact? According to the dictionary, an artifact is “something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, especially an object of archaeological interest” ("The Definition of Artifact"). In archaeology, the word “artifact” defines an object recovered by archaeological attempt, which might have a cultural attention.
Most art and architecture in the Aztec civilization was based on their religion. There are many brightly colored murals and paintings on walls and on bark which depict religious ceremonies, along with large idols of gods. One of the most amazing and famous of the...
Basketball, the sport that has been around for decades. An abundant amount of people play the sport. In my opinion, it’s one of the finest sports invented. The sport itself is mentally and physically challenging. I will be explaining how to play the sport, the history of basketball, and why you should play basketball.
Taladoire speculates that the ball game may have originated in the coastal lowlands along the Pacific Ocean (Taladoire 2001:107-108). Archaeologists discovered the oldest known ball court at the ruins of the city of Paso de la Amada which is around 3,400 years old. According to most, around 300 BCE, Tlachtli was already found throughout most of Mesoamerica. Ceramic ball player figurines have been discovered as ceremonial internments in cities such as San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán (the last site of the Olmec civilization) and areas such as the Valley of Oaxaca.
Everyone wants to get better at something, but some want it more than others. In “How to Transform an Everyday, Ordinary Hoop Court into a Place of Higher Learning and You at the Podium”, the narrator wants to get better at basketball, so he wakes up everyday at 4:30 to go with his dad to his work. Everyday, the narrator would wait 3 hours in his dad’s car until the gym opened, only to sit on the bench and watch the other men play basketball. Finally, one of the best players, Dante, tells the narrator he can play but he’ll get “smoked”. However, the narrator proved him wrong. The narrator learns that if you persevere, work hard, and have confidence, your dreams may come true. In How to Transform an Everyday, Ordinary Hoop Court into a Place
Who knew basketball would evolve into this? It just may be the greatest event in sports history.
Gender, race, and sexuality are socially constructed systems that act as guidelines, or rules, for how people interact with each other. A social construct often appears to be reality. However, when you step back and look at these systems critically, it is easy to see that gender, race, and sexuality do not represent a true reality. An easy example of a social construct is the game of basketball. Our society has created the game of basketball; we have rules for how to play, what to play with, and what to wear. However, if you stop and think about it, you could actually play basketball any way you’d like, but the game is only called basketball when you play by the rules. The rules define the game and give it meaning. The same is true for social