"Here are writing systems that are visual to their very core, free from the march of linguistic sounds. In showing us how to read such writing, these authors lead us across the boundaries of archaeology, linguistics, ethnology, history, and art history, and treat us to novel experiments along the way. Anyone who enjoys challenges to ordinary modes of textual interpretation ... Read moreand ordinary ideas about the nature of writing itself is in for quite a treat."—Dennis Tedlock, State University of New York, Buffalo "This is an exceptionally comprehensive and informative work on Pre-Columbian and early colonial recording systems in Mesoamerica and the Andes. The various contributions focus on a range of hieroglyphic, logographic, and mnemonic recording systems, and there are also excellent discussions of the effects of the introduction of European writing on native recording systems. The articles touching on this latter topic all make clear the complexity of links, and the subtle interplay of changes, between record-keeping and ideology. An important and challenging book."—Gary Urton, Colgate University Show Less