Zelia Nuttall

Who was Zelia Nuttall?

Zelia Maria Magdalena Nuttall was an American archaeologist and anthropologist, born at San Francisco, who specialised in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican manuscripts and the pre-Aztec culture in Mexico. She traced the Mixtec codex now called the Codex Zouche-Nuttall and wrote the introduction to its first facsimile publication, 1902.

She was educated in France, Germany, and Italy, and at Bedford College, London. She first came into prominence on the publication of her work on the "Terra Cotta Heads of Teotihuacan" in the American Journal of Archaeology. The following year she became an honorary special assistant of the Peabody Museum, and in 1908 was named honorary professor of the National Museum of Mexico.