Buried Beneath Us: Discovering the Ancient Cities of the Americas by Anthony F. Aveni

Buried Beneath Us: Discovering the Ancient Cities of the Americas Reviews

• 
  Kathleen

  A prominent archaeoastronomer describes 4 ancient American cities-- Cahokia (Missouri), Tenochtítlan and Copàn (Mexico), and Cuzco (Peru)and their civilizations for young readers. The narrative is organized by big questions: how did they grow? what was daily life like? how did religion hold the culture together? and what lessons can we learn from their history? The effect,enhanced by a book design that doesn't offer any indication when the text focus turns to a different city, is confusing. It's hard to distinguish the different cultures (and there are some striking differences) and, even for the big questions, there are few general answers. The choice to illustrate with blocky gray-scale drawings is unfortunate. Lacking in detail, or even even the attractiveness that makes readers look more closely, they seem to have been designed more to break up the text than to add information. This book - on a subject I care about - is a big disappointment.
• 
  Angie

  This book takes a look at the cities of four American cultures: Cahokia, Inca, Aztec, and Maya. The author goes over what cities are, how they developed, what life was like and the religions of these cultures. I really wanted to like this book more than I did. The author gives us a lot of good information, but unfortunately the organization of the book makes it very difficult to distinguish when the city changes. I think it might have better served the reader to perhaps do a chapter on each culture and its cities instead of breaking the chapters up like they were. I also thought the illustrations were horrible. There are no actual pictures of the ruins of these cities or their artifacts instead all the illustrations are a horrible gray block type that is a bit too abstract for the audience to appreciate. This is a fascinating subject that wasn't served well by this book.
• 
  Natalie

  This book was so dull to read. Clearly the author has little experience writing for children. The illustrations were great, but color would have made them even more intriguing. Perhaps a book on each city would have been easier to read. I'm not sure who the audience was; it was written in a very academic voice, but the illustrated cover suggested children (but I know very few children who would want to read this).
• 
  Ray Zimmerman

  Anthony Aveni is a distinguished professor of Astronomy, Anthropology, and Native American Studies at Colgate University. This short book is very readable and the illustrations by Katherine Roy add to the reader's enjoyment.
  The author relates the stroy of four pre-columbian cities, Cuzco, Copan, Tenochtitlan, and Cahokia. He tells how the grew and how they decayed. He ends with a few lessons we could learn from their history.
• 
  Sandy D.

  I was disappointed in this book after being excited by the cover, a glance at the illustrations, and the subject. A comparison of prehistoric cities in the New World - Cahokia (near St. Louis), and Mayan, Aztec, and Incan cities, with some explanation of what makes a city and how it comes to be is a wonderful and long overdue topic for a kid's book.
  
  Unfortunately, "Buried Beneath Us" is rather confusing (as other reviewers note, the text jumps from one city & ancient culture to another very quickly), and I think that the blocks of text are too long for the target audience. The vocabulary is difficult for younger kids and a bit dry, too (e.g. "The foundations of religious worship probably go back to Paleolithic times. Humans have always depended on the proliferation of other species..." (pg. 49).
  
  Religion is given priority both for origins and its role in the day-to-day life of these civilizations, but the other elements that contributed to the emergence, function, and growth of prehistoric cities (hereditary political power, warfare, agriculture, population growth, specialization, etc.) are given short shrift.
  
  I was willing to go along with this perspective and style (if not overlook it entirely) for the sake of the narrative, but a couple of basic errors about Cahokia stopped me in my tracks.
  
  First of all, Cahokia was not "built on bluff overlooking the Mississippi River" (p. 14). As any visit or a look at a description of the site shows, Cahokia was constructed on the floodplain, in an area known as the American Bottom (a geographic name that rivals Lake Titicaca in its snicker-potential for kids).
  
  Futhermore, we do not know that "Cahokia's biggest holiday of the year happened in mid-July", nor that this was called "the Busk Festival" (p. 28). Aveni is careful to separate speculation about prehistoric religion from established archaeological fact elsewhere (as in the evidence for human sacrifice at Cahokia), so this statement attributing Cahokian ceremony to the historic Cherokee was surprising.
  
  One sentence mentioning "smallpox and other diseases to which the natives were not immune" (p. 75) is overshadowed by lengthy descriptions of political unrest and Spanish alliances with Aztec and Incan neighbors, which may lead kids to believe that Tenochtitlan and Cuzco fell (like Cahokia and the Mayan cities) as part of a natural process or as a result of the Spanish invasion, instead of a result of deadly epidemics that may have killed 9 out of 10 people in these areas.
  
  So yeah. Disappointing. But maybe some snippets of text or illustration will inspire some kids to examine what's "Buried Beneath Us" further.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Barbara

  It might surprise some young readers to realize that cities aren't a modern concept. In fact, there were many early cities in North and Central America long before white settlers arrived on the continents. The author describes the characteristics of cities as well as describing the daily lives of city residents and the importance of religion before explaining what caused these cities to fail. I became a bit confused about exactly which cities--Cahokia, Tenochtitlan, Cuzco, Copan or some other city--were being discussed at various points. A simple heading or some sort of clear organization could have cleared that up for me. While the author provides quite a few interesting points to ponder here, the book seemed to jump around too much to keep me engaged. Although the illustrations are interesting, I wish there had been more of them in this book.
• 
  Sharon

  This is an example of a book I really wanted to savor, but it was just not satisfying. For me, the arrangement of text and illustrations were confusing, as well as the illustrations themselves. For this reason, I included all age groups as a possible audience, since I am primarily viewing through the eyes of a younger person.
• 
  Sarah

  The information is good but WHY in the world did they choose BLACK AND WHITE illustrations? I was so eager to get into this book based on the cover, and it was a huge let down to see only B&W watercolors (and not very detailed ones) throughout. Disappointed I bought this one. I hope the teachers like the information at least.
• 
  Edward Sullivan

  Interesting subject but a poorly organized, confusing narrative.
• 
  Jill Cd

  The book had a lot of potential but was just too choppy for me.
• 
  Loren

  
  http://yarsocalif.blogspot.com/2014/0...
• 
  PottWab Regional Library

  A
• 
  Jen Traub

  Compared to other books on a similar topic, this text fell short.
  Organized into main questions revolving around ancient cities (what is a city? How does religion impact cities?), the author includes four main cultures in each section (Mayan, Inca, Aztec, cahokia). The text doesn’t give clear indication when the culture is shifting, leading to confusion for the reader (especially younger ones!).
  This text also seemed to be poorly researched. The author stated all Americans entered America through the Bering Strait, an idea that has long since been disproven. There are many other examples as well.
  The text features were not impressive- I’m sure they were designed for engagement, but they were black and white drawings... they would have been engaging in color or with actual photos or diagrams of information. These features didn’t help my understanding at all.
  
  All in all, choose a different text.