In oxygen-free sediment preserved beneath the ocean floor near Belize, archaeologists have discovered the remnants of salt kitchens built by ancient Maya people to boil brine for use in food and preservation. As reported in a paper titled “Briquetage and Brine: Living and Working at the Classic Maya Salt Works of Ek Way Nal, Belize” published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica, Louisiana State University ...
So many of us live in cities, and are so removed from nature. I grew up in Athens, Ohio, surrounded by woods. Behind our house were three forested ridges separated by streams; my entire childhood was spent playing in those woods and on those hills. I called the middle one the “lizard’s back” because it started up from the creek bed, like a tail. It ...
The most haunting thing about Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest is how ordinary it appears. On the central “Oval Lawn” in New York City’s well-trafficked Madison Square Park, the celebrated architect and sculptor has installed a stand of forty-nine bare cedar trees, resembling a dying woodland. The tall, toothpick-like conifers, pruned of branches at human height and entirely devoid of leaves, are meant to serve ...
Painted children’s handprints discovered in a cave on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico may provide insight into Maya coming-of-age rituals. According to a report by Reuters, the ancient handprints are thought to be over 1,200 years old. The find is located in the Puuc region on the northern Yucatan Peninsula, close to the ancient Maya power centers of Uxmal and Chichen Itza. The cave ...
Art Is Everything, a new novel by art critic and law professor Yxta Maya Murray, follows the life of Amanda Ruiz, a queer Chicana performance artist who writes essays about her life and art, over the course of about a decade. When the novel opens, Amanda is on the cusp of fame, at work on a mobile opera named Texit and an NEA-funded autocritical ...
