Links to web sources on Cultures and Civilizations |
This list is quite long, so here are links to the topics: Cultural History (general) l The Americas l South Asia (India, Pakistan) l East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia) l Europe l Australasia l Pacific Islands l Africa l Near/Middle East l Miscellaneous (stuff that doesn't fit into other categories--like volcanoes and culture) Portals to the World from the Library of Congress. A list of countries with links to further information, including cultural. Exploring Ancient World Cultures from the University of Evansville. Some of these are linked elsewhere to specific cultural traditions. Ancient Civilizations is a Flash-based site for school children from the British Museum, designed to introduce topics such as writing, technology, cities, and architecture within a comparative framework. The section on writing can help students understand how writing arises, and why a system like cuneiform can be used to write any language. See the main page of the British Museum site for more options. World Civilizations: An Internet Classroom and Anthology from Washington State University. Again, some of these pages are linked elsewhere, but this is the home site. World Image Database from California State University is an extraordinary site with images on about every conceivable topic. History of Western Architecture: images from the ancient world through the Baroque, with a separate section on Architecture of the World. My Myth, Mythology, and Mythography course pages contain resources on ancient China, England, Scandinavia, India, Greece, and the Near East. See both the resource links and the page on texts and readings. If any of you are as concerned as I am with the growing ignorance of geography evident in the American population as a whole, take a look at this new Annenberg Media series, The Power of Place: Geography for the 21st Century. There are 26 different programs on a wide variety of issues--cultural, political, economic, religious, etc.--and the videos can be watched online with free registration. Another Annenberg production, Exploring the World of Music, offers programs on various elements of music and how they are used in different areas of the world. Of particular thematic interest to this class is the program (about 30 minutes) on Music and Memory. Still another series, A World of Art: Works in Progress, explores the work of various contemporary artists and different media througout the world. As with the two series mentioned above, on-demand access to these half-hour videos is free with a simple registration procedure. We will be studying the ancestral Puebloan peoples of the American Southwesth (Anasazi), and the Maya in class; all other indigenous cultures in the Americas are, however, fair game. Map of Pre-contact cultural areas Mystery of the First Americans from a PBS/Nova film which "documents the discovery and ensuing controversy over the Kennewick Man, a well-preserved, 9,000-year-old human skeleton found in Washington State in 1996." First Americans is a nicely-designed page for grade-schoolers, which makes it a good place to start if you're interested in Native American culture but don't know anything about it. Don't use it as a major source, however; you'll need more scholarly works for college-level projects. A recent (November 2003) National Geographic article, "Did the First Americans Arrive by Land or Sea?" poses some interesting questions, and shows how new information can alter our interpretations of the past. Library and Archives of Canada: HUGE number of links on Canadian history & society Civilizations in America (World Civilizations) El Museo del Barrio in New York covers the indigenous peoples of pre-Columbian Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean. Costa Rica History and Culture: a brief history, but no pictures. Similar treatments of other countries can be found at the parent site, Latin America Geographia Heritage of Power: Ancient Sculpture from West Mexico (Metropolitan Museum of Art) Sources of Indian Traditions (Prof. Frances Pritchett, Columbia University) Exploring Ancient World Cultures: India Harappa.com is devoted to the ancient history of South Asia, particularly the Indus River valley Ancient India: Harappa and the Indus Civilization (World Civilizations) Internet Indian History Sourcebook Ancient India (British Museum): This collection of pages "focuses on the growth of civilization around the Indus Valley. Users can explore the ancient Indus Valley city of Mohenjo-Daro and look at some of the artefacts found by archaeologists from this excavation." Mughal India covers the period of Islamic explansion into India and the rise of the Mughal empire. East Asia (under heavy construction) Exploring Ancient World Cultures: China Internet East Asian History Sourcebook Chinese Cultural Studies Websites Asian Historical Architecture (over 8500 photos of 539 sites in seventeen countries) Japanese Architecture in Kyoto International Dunhuang Project. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, this site focuses on "A cross-national collaboration with 100,000 images of artifacts, manuscripts, and paintings from the trade routes of the Silk Road." Ancient Civilizations: Early Imperial China (British Museum). Despite being designed primarily for school-age children, this site is nicely organized and provides a good overview of the periods covered. The Southeast Asia section of Archaeolink contains numerous links to specific countries in the region. The National Memory Heritage Service of Korea maintains a beautiful and informative site that focuses on archival history, the Hangeul writing system, and Korean texts. The Flash-based site explains many of its features in English, and is well worth visiting. Wikipedia's entry on the History of Korea seems fairly complete and authoritative; don't stop here, but it's a place to begin. Scandinavia: The Nibelungenlied (trans. Georg Henry Needler) Low Countries: The Linear Pottery Culture in the Netherlands (with information on flint-knapping) British Isles: Irish/Celtic Links from storyteller Richard Marsh See also: topic links on the Aegean, Myth, Domestic Life for European cultures covered in the course. Australia: Australian Aborigine Culture provides an introduction to the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, with a couple of links to art images. Links to a variety of Myths and Legends of Australian Aborigines. A nifty page on Flint Knapping (in case you want to learn to make authentic stone tools). Information on traditional aboriginal foods: Living off the Fat of the Land. Digeswedoo is a commercial page that sells art by contemporary aboriginal artists--and makers of didjeridoos--where you can see a variety of paintings and find information on the origins of aboriginal art. For those interested in the translation process, here is a page with twelve versions of The Seven Sisters, about the constellation Pleides. I love this page on the cultural use of insects by Aborigines. Picture Australia: a site I just found wth 770,00 images from 28 different cultural agencies in Australia. New Zealand: Look first at maori.org.nz, a clearinghouse for cultural information. Maori Arts New Zealand deals with both indiginous and contemporary Maori art and culture. Here is a page on Ta Moko, the sacred Maori art of tattooing. And here's a brief history of the Maori people in the History New Zealand page. Easter Island: Moai Figures (Met) Secrets of Lost Empires: Easter Island and Secrets of Lost Empires II (PBS Nova). Rongorongo (undeciphered Easter Island script). Hawaiian Islands The Bishop Museum in Honolulu features exhibits on the cultural and natural history of Polynesia. Alternative Hawaii, a Hawaiian ecotourism site, lists cultural organizations on all of the islands. A Cultural History of Three Traditional Hawaiian Sites on the West Coast of Hawai'i Island provides an exhaustive archaeological study of the prehistory of the Big Island. Click on the underlined topics for the narrative. A Hawaii Volcanoes National Park page provides a brief cultural history of the islands. The Hawai`i Cultural Foundation pages include information on many aspects of culture; hula has its own page. Other parts of Polynesia Tongans: Unbroken Traditions, a page on the history of Tongans in Hawaii, from Islander Magazine. The Cook Islands is a nice page devoted to the art and culture of a group of islands about halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii. Wayfinders, A Pacific Odyssey: a PBS film that covers the history of Polynesian travel around the Pacific, long before "white" folk were adventurous enough to set out. There are extensive sections on the website that describe the archaeological, historical, and cultural background of Pacific island culture. Many of us tend to speak of Africa as if it were a single country rather than a continent made up of many countries. I've divided this section by region instead of countries, however, because national boundaries often have little to do with cultural affinities. At the end is a list of general resources. A good place to start is at the W. E. B. Dubois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Look under Research Projects for a variety of topics of cultural interest. North/Northwest The People and Culture of Mali Sacred Sites of Morocco; African Art: Aesthetics and Meaning is an electronic exhibition of West African art. My absolute favorite examples of human ingenuity expressed in architecture are the Mud Mosques of Mali, featured on this page (515 of them!) from ArchNet Digital Library. Memory of African Culture focuses on oral and musical traditions in Senegal, and their influence on other cultures, such as Brazil. Central: Kingdoms of the Savannah: The Luba and Lunda Empires (Met) African Rock Art in the Central Zone (Met) A Writing System of the Edo People of Nigeria (a really cool chromatographic writing method). South: Traditional Shona Mbira music page African Art in the Southern Zone (Met) African Culture South of the Sahara (Stanford University; this is a list of links) General Memory of African Culture provides information about a group devoted to African music as a device for preserving cultural memory. Art and Life in Africa Project (University of Iowa) Issues in African History from the Art and Life in Africa project (a general overview of problems in African history), and a chart of Peoples Resources for information on specific tribes from all over the continent. The home page of Wonders of the African World, the PBS film featuring Henry Louis Gates, Jr.. The African Studies Center at Penn has a Countries Page with links to specific resources. Metropolitan Museum of Art Special Topics Page: African Art Art and Oracle: Spirit Voices of Africa (Met) Genesis: Ideas of Origin in African Sculpture (Met) Out of Africa (images of art works from various ethnic regions) Recipes by Country and Region (African food) Internet African History Sourcebook BBC's page on The Story of Africa is organized by topic, many of which deal with aspects of the humanities. The Met's exhibit on Africa, Continent of Origins provides a helpful overview of human evolution and its relationship with creativity. African Timelines provides a good overview of African history, including the period of African empires. This list will eventually be divided up into specific ethnic sections, because (as in Africa) cultural traditions are not always related to national boundaries. For now, this is all I have, but see the topic links on Egypt and the Ancient Near East for more information on ancient cultures in the region. Azerbaijan: Articles from Azerbaijan International Magazine including information on the Silk Road, cultural history of the region, and culinary arts. Miscellaneous (stuff that doesn't fit into other categories) Many of you probably think I have some weird fixation on volcanoes. But the truth is that volcanoes, while devastating to those who had to endure the eruptions, are magnificent sources of archaeological information. We would know much less about domestic life in the ancient world if it weren't for two major eruptions: that of Mt. Vesuvius in southern Italy (C. E. 79), which destroyed and preserved the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the explosion of the entire volcanic island of Thera (Santorini) in the Aegean (c. 1628 B.C. E.). For those interested in the history of ancient Mesoamerica, the site of Cerén has been similarly preserved. To see what can be done with this topic in this class, see Lesa Snyder's Pompeii Project from the Summer Quarter 2000. Archaeology and Volcanism, by Stephen L. Harris; the article is part of the companion site for the Academic Press book, The Encyclopedia of Volcanoes. PBS's Nova series has a good website to accompany it's program on the Deadly Shadow of Vesuvius. |