Dr Leonardo López Luján FBA

The politics, religion, and art of Pre-Columbian urban societies in Central Mexico; the history and development of Mesoamerican archaeology

Elected 2013

Fellow type
Corresponding Fellow
Year elected
2013
Sections
Archaeology

Leonardo López Luján is a Mexican archaeologist and director of the Templo Mayor Project of Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). He holds a bachelor's degree in archaeology from Mexico's Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia and a doctorate from the Université de Paris X-Nanterre. Throughout his academic life, he has served as a visiting professor at the Sorbonne, the Università di Roma, the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, and the Universidad Francisco Marroquín of Guatemala. He has been also a guest researcher at Princeton University, the Musée du quai Branly, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, and the Institut d'études avancées de Paris. Since 1988, he has been a senior researcher at INAH in Mexico City. In recent years he has been elected member of the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias (AMC), the Academia Mexicana de la Historia, the British Academy, and the Society of Antiquaries of London for his contributions in Mesoamerican studies. He was given the Social Sciences Award by the AMC, and the Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2015 he received the Shanghai Archaeology Forum Award as the director of one of the ten best archaeological research programs in the world in the last three years.

Current post

Senior researcher and Director of the Proyecto Templo Mayor, Museo del Templo Mayor, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia

Past appointments

Other Foreign Institutions Resident

1970 -

Publications

El capitán Guillermo Dupaix y su álbum arqueológico de 1794, INAH 2015

Escultura monumental mexica, (with Eduardo Matos Moctezuma), Fondo de Cultura Económica 2009 and 2012 (available also in English)

Monte Sagrado-Templo Mayor: el cerro y la pirámide en la tradición religiosa mesoamericana, (with Alfredo López Austin), UNAM/INAH 2009 and 2011

La Casa de las Águilas, Fondo de Cultura Económica/INAH/Harvard University 2006 and 2012

The Offerings of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, University of New Mexico Press 1994 and 2005 (available also in Spanish)

Mexico’s indigenous past, (with Alfredo López Austin), University of Oklahoma Press 2001 and 2005 (available also in Spanish, French, and Italian)

Aztèques. La collection de sculptures du Musée du quai Branly, (with Marie-France Fauvet-Berthelot), Musée du quai Branly 2005

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