In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl

Zelia Nuttall and the Search for Mexico's Ancient Civilizations
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-0-674-30154-2
Verlag: Harvard University Press

Buch, Englisch, 400 Seiten, Format (B × H): 147 mm x 221 mm, Gewicht: 612 g

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year “Grindle’s passionate book, including extensive research in Mexico, will ensure that [Zelia Nuttall] is never forgotten.” —British Museum Magazine “[A] beautifully crafted biography.” —Foreign Affairs “What a woman! And what a fabulous life to unearth. Zelia Nuttall was incredibly smart, determined, a divorced single mother in a man’s world, a great scholar, and an original thinker—yet today she’s completely forgotten. Merilee Grindle has dug deep into the archives and uncovered her fascinating story.” —Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature The question of human origins took on a new urgency in the nineteenth century, as scholars began to look beyond the Bible to understand how different cultures and civilizations emerged. Zelia Nuttall was among the most accomplished of these scholars. A child of the San Francisco Gold Rush, Nuttall also had roots in Mexico City, where her mother was born. As a young woman, she threw herself into the study of Aztec customs and cosmology, eager to use the emerging sciences of archaeology and anthropology to prove that modern Mexico was built over the ruins of ancients. Proud, prickly, and independent, Nuttall made the first accurate decoding of the Aztec calendar stone. She found pre-Columbian texts lost in European archives and made sense of their pictographic histories. Her work on the terra-cotta heads of Teotihuacán vaulted her into the highest echelons of her discipline. She was also a single mother who made ends meet by collecting artifacts for US museums. Such trade in sacred artifacts is today rightfully under scrutiny, but in her time, Nuttall was recognized as a vital bridge between Mexican and US anthropologists. The first biography of Zelia Nuttall, In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl captures the contributions and contradictions of a trailblazing woman and her intellectual milieu.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Grindle, Merilee

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Kunstsammlung, Museen, Ausstellungen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Grindle, Merilee
Merilee Grindle is the Edward S. Mason Professor of International Development, Emerita, at Harvard University and the former director of its David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. She served as president of the Latin American Studies Association and has written or contributed to over a dozen scholarly books.