Royal Inca Tunic: A Biography of an Ancient Andean Masterpiece
May 2, 2024 | Andrew Hamilton will share the results of his study of the All T’oqapu Inka Tunic and offer a new understanding of Dumbarton Oaks’ most famous Pre-Columbian object.
Elegant in Life, Ambiguous in Death: A High-Status Mummy from Northern Coastal Peru
December 7, 2023 | John Verano shares latest insights on the identity and status of the Lady of Cao from the Moche site of El Brujo
Spatial Grammars: Meaning in the Two-Dimensional Field of the Painted Books of Aztec Mexico
September 28, 2023 | Elizabeth Hill Boone explores the interface of art and writing through the use of space in Mexican codices.
Letters from the Ancients of Water (Huarochirí, Peru)
Frank Salomon shows that the ontological world described in the 17th-century Huarochirí manuscript lives on in descendent Andean communities of our day.
Rulers from the West: Teotihuacan in Maya History and Politics
David Stuart discusses recent advances in understanding the complex relationship between the Classic period center of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico and the Maya region through image and text.
Heads, Skulls, and Sacred Racks
Shifts in Sacrificial Practices, Body Processing, and Exhibition Beyond the Maya Collapse. Vera Tiesler discusses new insights on the massification of ritualized violence leading up to and beyond the Maya collapse.
Water, Copper, Wak’as, and Empire: Late Prehispanic Political Ecology in the High-Altitude Atacama Desert
Frances Hayashida discusses how access to water and copper helps us understand local organization in the Atacama Desert under Inka rule and requires us to rethink purely economic explanations for imperial incorporation and actions.
When Cortés Met Malinche, and Montezuma Met Cortés: Alternative Facts and Disturbing Truths
Matthew Restall offers new theories and perspectives on the Spanish-Aztec encounter, arguing that it is time to upend the traditional tale of the so-called Conquest.
Keys to the Empire: Wari Religion and Politics in City and Country
Pre-Columbian Studies Public Lecture, Anita G. Cook
Looking Ahead to the Past: An Ethnographer’s Perspective on Archaeology in the Andes
Pre-Columbian Studies Public Lecture, Catherine Allen, George Washington University
Imaginary Aztec: Three Views of Mesoamerica’s Central Places
Pre-Columbian Studies Public Lecture, Davíd Carrasco, Harvard University
Everything That Shines Is Gold . . . but Does It Matter? The Conceptual Relevance of Amazonian Archaeology
Pre-Columbian Public Lecture | Eduardo Neves, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Mirrored Reflections: Spanish Iconoclasm in the New World and Its Reverberations in the Old
Director’s Office Public Lecture | Thomas B. F. Cummins, Harvard University
Interpreting Pre-Hispanic Peru through Its Textiles
Pre-Columbian Studies Public Lecture | Ann Pollard Rowe, The Textile Museum
A Crack in the Mirror: Desires for Pre-Columbian and American-Made Colonial Art, Then and Now
Pre-Columbian Studies Public Lecture | Thomas B. F. Cummins, Harvard University
The Mayo Chinchipe-Marañón Culture: Pandora's Box in the Upper Amazon
December 4, 2014 | Pre-Columbian Public Lecture, Francisco Valdez
Bringing the Pre-Columbian World to Life: The Scholar’s Role in Entertainment Media
February 6, 2014 | Pre-Columbian Studies Public Lecture, John Pohl, UCLA
To Write or Knot: Recent Advances in the Study of Andean Knotted Cord Records
Thursday, December 5, 2013 | Pre-Columbian Studies Public Lecture by Gary Urton, Harvard University
Wrinkle Face and Iguana: Companions to a Moche Epic
Thursday, May 16 | Pre-Columbian Studies Public Lecture, Christopher Donnan, University of California—Los Angeles
Sacrificial Blood, Death and Rebirth in Pre-Columbian Mural Painting
Pre-Columbian Public Lecture
Special Lecture Series: Hidden Landscapes of the Past: Uncovering the Ancient World through LiDAR
In this interdisciplinary summer lecture series, speakers look at how different applications of LiDAR have changed our understanding of ancient landscapes.
Secrets in the Soil
Eduardo Neves delivers public lecture in Pre-Columbian Studies