In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl

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 great 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 misidentified in European archives and was skilled at making sense of their pictographic histories. Her work on the terra-cotta heads of Teotihuacan captured the attention of Frederick Putnam, who offered her a job at Harvard’s Peabody Museum.

Divorced and juggling motherhood and career, Zelia chose to follow her own star, publishing her discoveries and collecting artifacts for American museums to make ends meet. From her beloved Casa Alvarado in Coyoacan, she became a vital bridge between Mexican and American anthropologists, connecting them against the backdrop of war and revolution until a newly professionalized generation trained in universities overshadowed her remarkable achievements.

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 but became, in the end, an artifact in her own museum.

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.