In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl

Zelia Nuttall and the Search for Mexico’s Ancient Civilizations
The first biography of Zelia Nuttall (1857–1933), a pioneering Mexican-American anthropologist whose work on Aztec cosmology and mastery of ancient codices helped shape our understanding of pre-Columbian Mexico. Grindle captures the appeal and contradictions of this trailblazing woman, who brought a new rigor to the study of ancient civilizations.

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.

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