Miguel León-Portilla and Archaeology (original) (raw)
2020, Ancient Mesoamerica
After a long hospital stay, Mexican historian and philosopher Miguel León-Portilla passed away on October 1, 2019, at the age of 93. His prodigious work is known throughout the world because classics such as La filosofía náhuatl (León-Portilla 1956), Visión de los vencidos (León-Portilla 1959), Los antiguos mexicanos a través de sus crónicas y cantares (León-Portilla 1961), Las literaturas precolombinas de México (León-Portilla 1964), Trece poetas del mundo azteca (León-Portilla 1967), and Teatro náhuatl (León-Portilla 1974a), among others, have been published and republished dozens of times in a multitude of languages. Professor William R. Fowler kindly asked me to write an obituary for Ancient Mesoamerica and suggested that I focus my text on the contributions that Dr. León-Portilla made in my field, that is, archaeology. To this end I have decided to offer the readers of this journal an English translation of a brief discourse I presented on February 22, 2016 (Figure 1), in the c...
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