Free Lecture Event – Online & In Person
Location: Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA
Chichén Itzá—a World Heritage Site—is the most important archaeological record of the fusion between Maya and the so-called Toltec civilizations in the Yucatan Peninsula. The site’s monuments, dating to the tenth–fifteenth centuries, showcase both Maya and foreign architectural elements and have been the subject of multiple investigations and interpretations. In this lecture, María Teresa Uriarte Castañeda will discuss the columns and bas-relief sculptures from the Temple of Warriors which depict deities, warriors, feathered (and other) serpents, interacting with celestial bodies, including the Sun, the Moon, and Venus. Uriarte’s analysis will highlight how this iconography reflects the political, social, and religious unrest of the Late Classic period in Mesoamerica (600–900 AD) and the new worldviews that developed during this period.
Speaker: María Teresa Uriarte Castañeda, Researcher, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
Advance registration is recommended.
Free event parking at the 52 Oxford Street Garage. Presented by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture in collaboration with the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the Harvard University Mexican Association of Students, and the UNAM-Boston Center for Mexican Studies.
About the Speaker
Dr. María Teresa Uriarte is a researcher and docent at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She has written and edited 29 books, and many chapters and articles on Pre-Columbian art, architecture, and archaeology. At the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) she has served as Director of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas; Coordinator of the Academic Councils of Humanities and the Arts; Board Member; and Coordinator of Cultural Affairs. She is the recipient of UNAM’s prestigious awards, such as the Premio Universidad Nacional in 2017 and the medal Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in 2020. She currently serves as Chair of the Senior Fellows at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University.
About the Tatiana Proskouriakoff Award Lecture Series
A nationally respected scholar, Tatiana Proskourikoff came to the Peabody Museum in 1958 as an expert in Maya art, architecture, and hieroglyphic writing. Her research became the foundation for the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics, and her studies of Maya art are considered classics among archaeologists.
The Proskouriakoff Award was established by a gift from Landon T. Clay to recognize the artistic achievements of non-European cultures of the New World along with outstanding contributions in the field of New World Indian Studies.
