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Manager, Department of ReligionDate: April 6, 1999
Mexican Archeologists to Present Findings at Princeton Conference
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Archeologists and anthropologists working in Mexico will attend a conference at Princeton University April 9 and 10 and will announce their discovery of important artifacts in ancient cities and pyramids.
In one presentation, archeologist Ruben Cabrera will discuss a human tomb and religious offerings he discovered inside the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan, the Abode of the Gods, a pre-Aztec imperial capital. A second talk, by Leonardo Lopez Lujan, will focus on a rare, 1500-year-old vase discovered in the Great Aztec Temple in Mexico City. Although both discoveries have been reported previously, these are the first presentations about them in the English-speaking world.
The conference, called "Re-Imagining Mesoamerica: Archive, Community and Interpretation," will celebrate the 15th anniversary of the University's Moses Mesoamerican Archive. The Archive, cofounded by Davíd Carrasco, a Princeton professor of religion, is a collaboration of researchers who have been involved in interpreting Aztec and Mayan artifacts. The Archive has worked closely with the Mexican archeologists and has provided them support, in the form of both funding and interpretive analysis.
The Archive has two main functions: 1) it holds 12,000 transparencies of the Great Aztec Temple and other excavations, ceremonial pyramids and temples; and 2) has a working group of fifteen of the world's leading interpreters of Aztec and Mayan religion and history. This group meets at Princeton every year or so to summarize new research and theoretical models. In the upcoming conference, scholars from this group will review their last 15 years of work and report on recent discoveries.