Waxing and Waning

Zelia Maria Magdalena Nuttall was famous in her time, well-known as an archaeologist, an Americanist, an antiquarian, an ethnologist, a folklorist and “a lady scientist”; she was a woman “making it” in a man’s world from the 1880s to the 1930s.  Deeply engaged in research about ancient civilizations in Mexico, she led a remarkable life as a pioneer in the evolution of anthropology as a field of study.  In a scientific environment riveted by the theories of Charles Darwin, she and others sought to bring careful observation, measurement, comparison and the accumulation of evidence to bear on a field that had long been captive to fanciful theories about the origins of human civilizations across the world.

Zelia Nutall at 61, from In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl: Ross Parmenter Papers, the Latin American Library at Tulane

As an anthropologist, Nuttall was lauded for groundbreaking research related to the Aztec Calendar Stone, the meaning of Mexico’s ancient art and artifacts, and pre-Columbian beliefs about the cosmos and the gods who inhabited the sky, the earth and the underworld. She traveled widely in the late 19th century, searching out long-forgotten artifacts that had been stored away for centuries in libraries and museums in Europe, transported there from the time of the conquest. In the first three decades of the 20th century, as she continued her independent work, she lived a privileged life as a chatelaine of an elegant home in Mexico and as a mentor to anthropologists from near and far who were drawn to study the country’s fabled past.

She was exceptional among a generation of U.S. researchers for her contributions to Mexico’s national institutions as they sought to uncover, study and preserve ancient temples, artwork, landscapes and texts. She influenced the management of the National Museum, the Inspectorate of Monuments, and activities undertaken by the education ministry, and ensured that Mexico’s first professional archaeologist, Manuel Gamio, had opportunities to develop his genius and advance his career. She also contributed to amassing treasures of the Aztecs and other civilizations in ambitious museums and universities in the United States—not always with the knowledge or consent of Mexican authorities. As with many anthropologists of her time, she believed national borders were a hindrance to the progress of science and discovery.

As I followed her path through surviving letters and other material for my book, In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl: Zelia Nuttall and the Search for Mexico’s Ancient Past, I was struck by the latitude she had, as a woman, to make a name for herself in a field that was dominated by men. I also found that she was not alone as a woman who sought to advance scientific anthropology. In Mexico, Isabel Ramírez excavated and organized information about the pre-Columbian world. Adela Breton painted remarkable likenesses of imperiled murals found in ancient temples in the Yucatán and the Valley of Mexico, while Alice Dixon Le Plongeon and Anne Maudslay contributed to a growing body of Maya research. Alice Cunningham Fletcher, who studied the Indigenous cultures in Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Idaho, was among the most prominent anthropologists of her time, while Erminnie Smith, Elsie Clews Parsons, and Matilda Cox Stevenson were widely honored for their work in preserving Native American traditions and institutions. Sara Yorke Stevenson made important contributions to Egyptology during this same era. Even while they were not permitted to vote and were expected to conform to a range of restrictive mores related to dress, behavior, marriage and participation in society, Zelia Nuttall and her sisters in this new science tested the boundaries of what was acceptable behavior for women at the time.

Frank Boas, Alfred Tozzer and Zelia Nutall (left to right) in Xochimilco, 1910, from In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl: Peabody Museum, Harvard

Opportunities for these women waxed during an era when a new field was in development, not yet a discipline, not yet institutionalized as a profession. At the time, few barriers to entry deterred those who had an appetite for scholarship. No formal courses of study were required, and no educational credentials were needed to participate in unlocking secrets of the past, to undertake excavations, to re-discover and interpret long-forgotten artifacts or to seek and accept funding from philanthropists and organizations. They did not need to belong to or represent any institution; they worked as independent scholars. Most, like Nuttall, held no degree in any branch of the sciences and learned of ancient civilizations and research techniques through travel, reading, and the support of mentors and patrons. Their social, political, and economic rights were restricted, but they managed to find a place to make contributions to a burgeoning field of research.

It helped, of course, to be well-off enough to commit to a life of independence, to be advised by a well-regarded mentor, and to attract the attention of wealthy patrons to pursue an independent life of adventure and discovery; these conditions were far beyond possibilities for most women of the time. But for those who had commitment, aptitude, and access to supportive networks, a generation of self-taught and self-motivated women found room to make important contributions to a new scientific endeavor. Like others of her time, Nuttall benefited from favorable contacts in her social sphere, the mentorship of one of the “fathers” of modern anthropology, Harvard’s Frederic Ward Putnam, her “godfather in Science,” and from the friendly support of philanthropist Phoebe Apperson Hearst.

In the early days of this new field, aficionados were brought together periodically in a web of loose-knit associations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Congress of Americanists, the American Anthropological Association and the American Ethnological Society. In Mexico, organizations such as the Sociedad Científica “Antonio Alzate” and the Sociedad Mexicana de Geografía provided a space for scholars to meet, discuss and compare notes. Women held leadership positions and served on important committees in some of these organizations.

When they were not invited into these associations, they created their own. Notably, “ten intellectual women of Washington,” barred from one scholarly organization because of their gender, came together to found the Women’s Anthropological Association of America in 1885. This organization encouraged Zelia Nuttall and her colleagues to meet until “the time when science shall regard only the work, not the worker.” Periodic international fairs, such as the World’s Columbian Exposition, assembled in Chicago in 1893 and host to over 27 million visitors, provided another meeting place for those pursuing anthropology with a scientific lens. A paper Nuttall presented on the Aztec calendar at the International Congress of Anthropologists at this fair was reported widely and provided her with a reputation as a leader in the evolving discipline.

Building on the activities of these early networks, museums subsequently helped provide more stable venues for the academic advancement of scientific anthropology.  Institutions in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Cambridge, Massachusetts, were the first of these important sites. As locations for the collection, display and study of antiquities, the presence of such museums spread rapidly throughout the United States in the Gilded Age compulsion to demonstrate cultural achievement and to ensure that cities and their elites were recognized for their largesse and refinement. Imperialist expansion and curiosity about evolution and “exotic” cultures also fueled massive transfers of artifacts of the past to museums in the United States and Europe, studied by researchers and available to the growing middle classes for cultural edification. When such museums were associated with universities, they tended to have fiercely independent administrations, led by entrepreneurial directors and funded by wealthy philanthropists. They were driven to accumulate treasures from ancient civilizations around the world.

Women played important roles in these institutions as researchers, administrators, and patrons; Zelia Nuttall was critically important in the history of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Anthropology—where she served as “assistant in Mexican archaeology” for 47 years—the University of Pennsylvania Museum, and the anthropology museum at the University of California, in addition to contributions she made to the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the National Museum in Mexico—where she was an honorary professor. Women philanthropists such as Phoebe Apperson Hearst and Sara Stevenson supported collections, excavations and research through their contributions to museums and to individuals like Nuttall. The loose nature of associational membership and the independence of museum organizations often enabled women to participate despite continued societal constraints on them.

For Nuttall’s generation, these early years of opportunity began to wane as the scholarly leadership of associations and museums was displaced by the incorporation of departments of anthropology into universities. Harvard University led the way with the creation of the first U.S. department of anthropology in 1890, followed by a similar establishment at Columbia University in 1902, and a plethora of others in the 1910s and after. The leaders of these new departments cast hungry eyes on the relatively independent university-affiliated museums and sought to bring them under their purview. More importantly, departments established criteria for admission to their scholarly ranks and devised a canon of topics that needed to be mastered by anyone claiming the title of anthropologist.

Delegates to the 1910 meeting of the International Congress of Americanists in Mexico City tour Teotihuacán, from In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl: Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Mexico City

Briefly, between the 1920s and 1940s, the field of scientific anthropology evolved into a university-based profession with its own paradigms, standards, and methods, its advances uniquely available to those who were admitted to the corridors of ivied institutions. Credentials attesting to university training became the basis on which the activities of anthropology would increasingly go forward. In addition, the funding of anthropological studies, whether of ancient artifacts, contemporary civilizations or student fellowships, was increasingly funneled through departmental and university structures, available primarily to those who demonstrated agreed-upon credentials for undertaking research. Associational activities also fell to the domination of those who held prescribed credentials and university affiliations.

Exclusionary rules and norms adopted by these new hubs of scholarship were an important step toward the institutionalization and professionalization of the discipline. But for women who were drawn to study ancient and contemporary civilizations, the adoption of new policies constricted access to research activities and support and narrowed their ability to claim legitimacy within the profession. Especially in terms of graduate education, barriers to entry became more restrictive and the intrepid energy of the earlier generation, typified by Zelia Nuttall and her sister pioneers, was not enough for ready admission into the field. The doors were closing and, even though anthropology later demonstrated greater accommodation to women as scholars in comparison with many other disciplines, the kind of independent research activity characterized by the pioneer generation was no longer a viable means to a career. Independent researchers found it increasingly difficult to find a place to call a scholarly home. Professionalization and institutionalization, when accompanied by exclusionary policies and norms, did not work in their favor, although the legitimacy and accountability of the discipline was nevertheless advanced.

Nuttall’s story, and those of many of her contemporaries, is a cautionary tale about the fragility of advances in equity in contemporary Latin America and the United States. Equalities, rights and opportunities are not static characteristics of societies or political regimes, nor do they necessarily follow a progressive path; rather, they wax and wane, ebb and flow in accordance with policies and norms adopted by institutions of governance in public and private sectors. Currently, there is disturbing evidence of their waning in a number of countries where social and political power favor exclusion. No clearer evidence of this exists than the reversal of decades of advancement in reproductive rights in the United States and their precariousness in many Latin American countries. Similarly, income inequality, which declined generally in Latin America in the 1990s, stagnated or was reversed in more recent decades, victims of changing policies affecting the accumulation of wealth. Hard-fought equalities in civil rights likewise faced new barriers in authoritarian advances in the United States and Latin American countries.

Opportunities fought for and achieved are no guarantee that they will remain available or advance. Women have made impressive strides toward equality in many countries—Claudia Steinbaum in Mexico is a current example—but rules and norms can be altered in negative ways as well as toward greater equality. When equalities wax, there is always the threat that they may also wane. It is the role of civil society organizations, judicial institutions, political parties, the media, professional associations and others to ensure that rights and opportunities gained are not lost to future generations, a humbling and necessary responsibility for those who champion a more just and equitable world.