Distinguished Lecture in Latin American Archaeology: "Archaeology in Downtown Mexico City: Unearthing the Sacred Precinct of Tenochtitlan"

Leonardo López Luján is an archaeologist, full researcher and director of the Templo Mayor Project of Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) in Mexico City. He specializes in the politics, religion, and art of Pre-Columbian urban societies in Central Mexico and in the history of archaeology. Throughout his academic life, he has served as a visiting professor at the Université de Paris Sorbonne, the Sapienza-Università di Roma, the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, and the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala. He has been a guest researcher at Princeton University, the Musée du quai Branly, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, and the Institut d’études avancées in Paris.

He is a member of the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, the Academia Mexicana de la Historia, and El Colegio Nacional, as well as a correspondent member of the British Academy, the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Real Academia de la Historia (Spain), and the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (France). He holds a bachelor’s degree in archaeology from Mexico’s Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia and a doctorate also in archaeology from the Université de Paris Nanterre. He has authored or co-authored twenty-one books and essays, including The Offerings of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan (winner of the Kayden Humanities Award), Mexico’s Indigenous Past (with Alfredo López Austin), La Casa de las Águilas (winner of the Alfonso Caso Prize), and Escultura monumental mexica (with Eduardo Matos Moctezuma).

Among his twenty-two edited or co-edited volumes are Gli Aztechi tra passato e presente (with Alessandro Lupo and Luisa Migliorati) and The Art of Urbanism (with William L. Fash). He received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Shanghai Forum Archaeology Award as the director of one of the ten best archaeological research programs in the world in 2013-2015.

CO-SPONSORS
Harn Museum of Art
Harn Eminent Scholar Chair in Art History (HESCAH)
Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere
Department of Anthropology