Leonardo López Luján

Leonardo Náuhmitl López Luján (born in Mexico City, 31 March 1964) is an archaeologist and one of the leading researchers of pre-Hispanic Central Mexican societies and the history of archaeology in Mexico. He is director of the Templo Mayor Project in Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and son of renowned historian Alfredo López Austin.^[1]

Education and Professional Life

López Luján received his bachelor’s degree in archaeology from Mexico’s National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), which he attended from 1983 to 1987 as a student of Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, who directed his thesis on the Offerings of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan (1990). In 1992 he pursued doctoral studies at the University of Paris X-Nanterre as a student of Jean-Claude Gardin, Michel Graulich, and Alain Schnapp. His dissertation, “Anthropologie religieuse du Templo Mayor, Mexico: La Maison des Aigles” (The Religious Anthropology of the Templo Mayor, Mexico: The House of Eagles), presented in 1998 under the direction of Pierre Becquelin, obtained the highest honors.^[2]

During his academic career he has been a visiting research fellow at Princeton University (1995), the Musée de l’Homme in Paris (2002), Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks (2006), and the Institut d'Études Avancées from Paris (2013-2014),^[3] and a visiting professor at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (2000), the University of Rome–La Sapienza (2004 and 2016), the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris (2011), and Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala (2011).^[4]

In INAH, he has been a full-time research professor at the Templo Mayor Museum since 1988 and part-time teaching professor at the National School of Conservation, Restoration, and Museography (ENCRYM) since 2000.^[5]

From 2003 to 2005 he was president of the Mexican Society of Anthropology and from 1999 to 2017 member of the administration council of the Société des Américanistes. He is currently a Level III Researcher in Mexico’s National System of Researchers (SNI) and member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences,^[6] and the Mexican Academy of History.^[7]

In 2013 López Luján was elected as a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) and as an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (Hon FSA), recognizing his contributions to the field of Mesoamerican research.^[8][9]

Research, Fieldwork and Museum exhibitions

His research has focused primarily on the religion, politics, and art of pre-Hispanic societies in Central Mexico. His scholarship has contributed to our knowledge of indigenous strategies of recovering the distant past, the coded language of buried offerings, the functions and symbolism of sacred architecture, the uses and meanings of Mexica sculpture, the application of materials science to the study of pre-Hispanic art and artifacts, iconoclastic activities in times of crisis, mother goddess cults, and sacrificial practices, among others areas. He has also ventured into the history of Mexican archaeology, achieving significant advances in the study of its origins in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

López Luján began working in archeological, anthropological, and historical projects when he was eight years old. He has participated in various scientific teams in the Mexican federal entities of Campeche, Chiapas, Distrito Federal, Guanajuato, Estado de México, Morelos, and Quintana Roo, and in Ecuador.^[2]

The year 1980 was especially significant in his career, for he began working at INAH’s Templo Mayor Project in the first (1978–1982) and second (1987) seasons of excavations in Tenochtitlan’s sacred precinct under the direction of Eduardo Matos Moctezuma. Eleven years later, in 1991, he became the director of the project and currently occupies this position. In this way, he has led the fourth (1991–1992), fifth (1994–1997), sixth (2004–2006), seventh (2007–2014), and eighth (2014–) archaeological field seasons.^[10]

As part of his research at the archaeological site of Teotihuacan, he co-directed with William L. Fash and Linda Manzanilla the Xalla Palace excavation project and also worked with Saburo Sugiyama and Rubén Cabrera on the Pyramid of the Moon Project.^[11]

His own projects have been funded by INAH, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Texas at Austin, Princeton University, and Harvard University.^[12]

With renowned colleagues he has curated major exhibitions, including "The Aztec World" at the Field Museum in Chicago,^[13] "Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler" at the British Museum in London,^[14] "El capitán Dupaix y su álbum arqueológico de 1794" (Captain Dupaix and his 1794 archaeological album) at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City,^[15] as well as "Camino al Mictlan" (The Way to the Land of the Dead), "La Casa de las Águilas" (The House of Eagles), "Sacrificios de consagración en la Pirámide de la Luna" (Consecration Sacrifices at the Pyramid of the Moon), and "Humo aromático para los dioses" (Aromatic Smoke for the Gods) at the Templo Mayor Museum.^[16]

Awards and Fellowships

• The Salvador Novo Fellowship from the College of Mexico and the Mexican Writers Center (1985).^[17]
• The Diario de México/CONACYT Medal for best student in Mexico (1991).
• Eugene M. Kayden Humanities Book Award from the University of Colorado at Boulder (1991).
• The Mexican Committee of Historical Sciences Prize for best article (1992, 1996, and 2007).
• Choice Outstanding Academic Book (1994).
• The Alfonso Caso Award from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (1998 and 2016, and honorable mention in 1991).
• The Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2000).^[18]
• Social Sciences Research Award from the Mexican Academy of Sciences (2000).
• Dumbarton Oaks Research Fellowship, Harvard University (2005-2006).^[19]
• Keynote Address at Convocation at the 2009 Annual Conference of the College Art Association (the only Latin American to receive this distinction in the association’s history).^[20]
• Senior Fellow, Pre-Columbian Studies, Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University (2012-2014).
• Research Fellowship, Institute for Advanced Studies of Paris (2013-2014).^[21]
• Shanghai Archaeology Forum Research Award 2015, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (his Great Temple Project is considered one of the ten best archaeological programs of the world in 2013-2015).^[22]
• Medal of Merit, Festival del Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México (2016).^[23]
• Distinguished Lectures at Harvard, Stanford,^[24] Berkeley, Brown, the University of Missouri, Wellesley College,^[25] Dumbarton Oaks, the British Museum,^[26] the Musée du quai Branly,^[27] the De Young Museum, the San Antonio Museum of Art,^[28] The Library of Congress,^[29] and the Gran Teatro Nacional del Perú.^[30]

Published Works

Books

• La recuperación mexica del pasado teotihuacano, 1989.
• Nómadas y sedentarios: el pasado prehispánico de Zacatecas, 1989.
• The Offerings of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, 1993, 1994, 2005.
• Xochicalco y Tula, with Robert H. Cobean and Guadalupe Mastache, 1995, 1996.
• Mito y realidad de Zuyuá, with Alfredo López Austin, 1999.
• Viaje al mercado de México, 2000, 2013.
• Mexico's Indigenous Past, with Alfredo López Austin, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2012, 2014.
• Aztèques. La collection de sculptures du Musée du quai Branly, with Marie-France Fauvet-Berthelot, 2005.
• La Casa de las Águilas, 2 vols., 2006.
• Tenochtitlan, with Judy Levin, 2006.
• Breaking Through Mexico's Past, with Davíd Carrasco and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, 2007, 2007.
• Escultura monumental mexica, with Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, 2009, 2012.
• Monte Sagrado/Templo Mayor: el cerro y la pirámide en la tradición religiosa mesoamericana, with Alfredo López Austin, 2009, 2012.
• Tlaltecuhtli, 2010.
• El capitán Guillermo Dupaix y su álbum arqueológico de 1794, 2015.

Edited Volumes and Catalogs

• Atlas histórico de Mesoamérica, with Linda Manzanilla, 1989.
• Historia antigua de México, 4 vols., with Linda Manzanilla, 1994–1995, 2000–2001, 2014.
• Camino al Mictlan, with Vida Mercado, 1997.
• La Casa de las Águilas: reconstrucción de un pasado, with Luis Barba, 2000.
• Gli Aztechi tra passato e presente, with Alessandro Lupo and Luisa Migliorati, 2006.
• Sacrificios de consagración en la Pirámide de la Luna, with Saburo Sugiyama, 2006.
• Arqueología e historia del Centro de México. Homenaje a Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, with Davíd Carrasco and Lourdes Cué, 2006.
• Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler, with Colin McEwan, 2009, 2010.
• The Art of Urbanism: How Mesoamerican Kingdoms Represented Themselves in Architecture and Imagery, with William L. Fash, 2009, 2012.
• El sacrificio humano en la tradición religiosa mesoamericana, with Guilhem Olivier, 2010.
• Humo aromático para los dioses: una ofrenda de sahumadores al pie del Templo Mayor de Tenochtitlan, 2012, 2014.

Notes

References

• Leonardo López Luján, Curriculum vitae

External links

• Leonardo López Luján, Mesoweb on-line publications
• Works by Leonardo López Luján in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Leonardo López Luján, "The Great Temple Project"
• Templo Mayor Museum, official site (Spanish)
• A.R. Williams, "Pyramid of Death", National Geographic Magazine, October 2006
• Stefan Lovgren, "Aztec Temple found in Mexico City", National Geographic News, October 5, 2006
• Johanna Tuckman, "Aztec Temple Found in Mexico City", American Archaeology, Summer 2008
• Robert Draper, "Greatest Aztec", National Geographic Magazine, November 2010