In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl: Zelia Nuttall and the Search for Mexico’s Ancient Civilizations

by Merilee Grindle

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Anthropology, Archaeology, Indigenous, American History

400 pages, Hardcover

Published November 7, 2023

Reviews

[M.J. Pankey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely remarkable biography of Zelia Nuttall, a pioneer for the anthropology discipline, and a trailblazer for Mesoamerican studies during a time when anthropology as an academic discipline didn't officially exist and women were excluded from academic spaces. This is an inspiring history that should be added to women's history studies for sure. Well researched and absolutely fascinating! Highly recommend for those looking for a historical female figure to learn more about.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a sinologist, it's not easy to abandon my beloved subject matter for untrodden lands, but a recent exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore (where I am a 'mature' volunteer docent) on the Manila Galleon Trade meant having to explore new territory--in this case, Meso-America, the Spanish in the New World, and the early Spanish colonization of the Philippines. And now bitten (by Alvaro Enrigue's outstanding and unforgettable You Dreamed of Empires), I have now fallen under the spell of having discovered a new world.

Merilee Grindle's biography of one of the first amateur historians and archaeologists of Meso-America proved to be a good early reader as Zelia Nuttall was one of the path breakers. As such, it's a good introduction to how the study of Meso-American history and culture became an accepted area of academic study, despite her never truly being accepted within its hallowed halls. She was, like many women of her time, an 'amateur' -- a self-taught but learned enthusiast who nevertheless contributed meaningfully to the field. Grindle tells it all -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- of Zelia's life, marriage, family, research, work, and writing. Her contributions were many and often ground-breaking. Her early description of the "Island of Sacrificios" is one of the most revealing and useful I've found to date (she didn't mince words about the bones and skulls found). As a result, she had her supporters and her enemies.

The full title "Zelia Nuttall and the Search for Mexico's Ancient Civilisations" reveals the two story lines that run throughout its 300 pages, so dependent on your interests, readers may find themselves more absorbed in some chapters than others, which is the reason for the four (not five) stars, but on the other hand, neither story would have been complete without its counterpart. As all women working in academic fields discover, there is no balance; it's a see-saw. And for those 'amateurs' without the academic credentials (which Zelia lacked, as did so many talented women of the age--the mid to late 1800s), a hard lonely road.

I hope women's history courses will include Zelia's story in their syllabi, and aspiring historical archaeologists of both genders come to know her name and legacy.

[History Today]

‘If Mexicans will make stupid laws and try to prevent archaeology in the North from growing, then these rules will be broken’, wrote the American archaeologist Alfred Tozzer from the Yucatán Peninsula in 1904. ‘It is almost a duty to take everything one can from the country.’ Such were the attitudes of the European and North American pioneers of archaeology and anthropology. Their era was the age of empire – empires emanating from Europe – and they easily reconciled their dedication to the study of ancient societies with the conviction that such societies were innately inferior to their own. As Merilee Grindle puts it, this was a time when ‘elites asserted their rights to take possession of the past’.

It was also ‘a time when Zelia Nuttall was famous’, something which is no longer true. Born in 1857, Nuttall was a native Californian whose father was Irish and grandmother Mexican. She played crucial roles in the dawning development of anthropology, specifically the study of ancient Mexican cultures such as that of the Aztecs. She wrote well over 100 papers and articles during the final two decades of the 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th. The British Library’s Codex Nuttall, an ancient Mexican manuscript, is named after her. Before 1903 she was based in San Francisco but travelled extensively and lived in various European cities. After that, until her death in 1933, she lived in Coyoacán, just outside Mexico City, aside from seven years when the Mexican Revolution forced her into temporary exile in England and San Francisco.

Grindle does not allow discursions into Nuttall’s scholarly interests to slow down the strong narrative pace of her book. It reminded me of William Boyd’s novels: we follow from birth to death a flawed but ultimately heroic central protagonist. Specialised knowledge of a particular profession provides captivating details as our protagonist navigates the events and personalities of world history, in this case the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893), the Great San Francisco Earthquake (1906) and the Mexican Revolution (1910-17).

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Matthew Restall is Sparks Professor of History at Penn State University and author of When Montezuma Met Cortés (Ecco, 2018) and The Maya (Oxford University Press, 2020).

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh my God this effing book. It purports to be a biography of Zelia Nutall and her research into ancient Central American cultures. And about 30% of it is. But the other 70% is micro histories of every person she ever came into contact with (and their relatives), including minutiae of all the bureaucratic and political frustrations they experienced. (And then completely rehashing Zelia's own little side quest into Francis Drake by giving us his biography as well.) It feels like the author didn't think they had enough material on Zelia to fill an entire book. I would disagree. While none of the excessive historical context was completely unrelated to her story, every single bit of it needed to be paraphrased from 10 pages to 10 sentences. I feel like this book fell into the common trap of recent popular science writing in which the author thinks they need to prove to everyone that they've done their research. And for some reason, Harvard University Press editors aren't capable of helping to cull the overwriting? It felt like it took me 3 months to read this book, which is really disappointing. I only kept on with it because the sporadic sections actually about Zelia Nuttall prove she is really interesting and a total badass. Instead of getting her biography, I got a history of anthropological infighting during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It reeks of freshly minted PhD expanding their dissertation and trying to meet certain page count, but this author appears to be a late career academic and should know better by now.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

The woman who decoded the Aztec calendar. I had no idea! This was the first time I had heard of Zelia Nutall. She truly was an extraordinary woman lost to time and history. In a time when women were not really allowed to study certain fields, Zelia was an anthropologist before there was an official degree for it. She truly was a woman ahead of her time. Because she did not have a degree she was viewed by many later in life in a negative way. She didn't have a degree because the field of anthropology wasn't there yet so she was an independent learner. Her work though should not be dismissed. She discovered much about ancient Mexican civilization and made discoveries that often go uncredited to her. Degree or not, she was an anthropologist in every sense of the word. Wish I had learned about her growing up. All I learned about were typical white men. Here was a person of color, a woman, who changed the game completely even if time forgot about her. I'm glad to have learned her story now.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The additional title to "In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl" is "Zelia Nuttall & the Search for Mexico's Ancient Civilizations". For me, I was more interested in the information and history about Mexico than I was about Zelia. For being a woman in the late 19th and early 20th centuries being successful in the new field of Anthropology is a huge achievement. But, I wasn't really awfully fond of her. She seemed to me to be a most privileged individual who did outstanding work, but she seemed to be a difficult person. Perhaps, she had to be to be as a pace-setter in a new field, being a women in that period.

I loved learning all about ancient Mexico and the not so ancient political period of the time about which this book was written. It helps me understand what Mexico is going through currently which is so sad that any progress made does not go forward.

I enjoyed the pictures in the book and would have enjoyed more of the relics that Ms. Nuttall discovered.

[Alicia Tapia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Admirable historical research and a joy to read. I enjoyed more about Zelia’s life and anthropological findings and less about the aristocratic drama but it all tells the story of what she had to endure to do what she did as a woman at that point in time— I admire her tenacity, it’s inspirational. Glad this book can honor her legacy.

[Mariela Cortés López · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great perspective of a very unknown scientist. All the narrative about the scientific life and the importance of mentorship feels familiar as a scientist. But also a good reflection about the status of science culture and the world on the time of Ms. Nuttall.

[Mhd]

[lengthy excerpt in Smithsonian was good]

[Cwelshhans · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited by the subject matter, but found it dry.

[Shoshana Stubin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting and meticulously researched