A la Sombra de Quetzalcoatl / In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl: Zelia Nuttall and the Search for Mexico's Ancient Civilizations - by Merilee Grindle

Book Synopsis

"«¡Qué mujer! Y qué vida tan fabulosa. Zelia Nuttall era increíblemente inteligente, decidida, una madre soltera en un mundo de hombres, una gran erudita y una pensadora original. Merilee Grindle ha investigado a fondo y ha descubierto su fascinante historia.» -Andrea Wulf ¿De dónde provienen las sociedades humanas? El afán por responder a esta pregunta cobró una nueva urgencia en el siglo XIX, cuando una generación de arqueólogos comenzó a buscar más allá de la Biblia los orígenes de diferentes culturas y civilizaciones. Nacida en San Francisco durante la fiebre del oro e hija de una madre mexicana, Zelia Nuttal se dedicó al estudio de la cultura mexica, deseosa de utilizar las herramientas de la emergente antropología para demostrar que el México moderno se había alzado sobre las ruinas de civilizaciones antiguas. Orgullosa y disciplinada, Zelia Nuttall fue la primera persona en descifrar con precisión la Piedra del Sol o Calendario Azteca. También fue una investigadora intrépida, que encontró textos prehispánicos perdidos en archivos europeos, hizo trabajo de campo en Teotihuacan y coleccionó piezas para museos estadounidenses. Desde su querida Casa Alvarado en Coyoacán, se convirtió en un puente vital entre antropólogos a ambos lados de la frontera. A la sombra de Quetzalcóatl es la primera biografía de esta mujer fuera de serie, una pionera que contribuyó tanto al desarrollo de la antropología como a la comprensión del México antiguo."

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year

The gripping story of a pioneering anthropologist whose exploration of Aztec cosmology, rediscovery of ancient texts, and passion for collecting helped shape our understanding of pre-Columbian Mexico.

Where do human societies come from? The drive to answer this question took on a new urgency in the nineteenth century, when a generation of archaeologists began to look beyond the bible for the origins of different cultures and civilizations. A child of the San Francisco Gold Rush whose mother was born in Mexico City, Zelia Nuttall threw herself into the study of Aztec customs and cosmology, eager to use the tools of the emerging science of anthropology to prove that modern Mexico was built over the ruins of ancient civilizations.

Proud, disciplined, as prickly as she was independent, Zelia Nuttall was the first person to accurately decode the Aztec calendar stone. An intrepid researcher, she found pre-Columbian texts lost in European archives and was skilled at making sense of their pictographic histories. Her work on the terra-cotta heads of Teotihuacán captured the attention of Frederic Putnam, who offered her a job at Harvard's Peabody Museum.

Divorced and juggling motherhood and career, Nuttall chose to follow her own star, publishing her discoveries and collecting artifacts for US museums to make ends meet. From her beloved Casa Alvarado in Coyoacán, she became a vital bridge between Mexican and US anthropologists, connecting them against the backdrop of war and revolution.

The first biography of Zelia Nuttall, In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl captures the appeal and contradictions that riddled the life of this trailblazing woman, who contributed so much to the new field of anthropology until a newly professionalized generation overshadowed her remarkable achievements and she became, in the end, an artifact in her own museum.

"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

"Zelia Nuttall comes alive in all her fascinating contradictions in Merilee Grindle's capable hands...[This] biography challenges our modern smugness and reminds us that our roots as scholars are more complex than we often acknowledge."―Camilla Townsend, author of Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs