Chichén Itzá—a World Heritage Site—is the most important archaeological record of the fusion between Maya and the so-called Toltec civilizations in the Yucatan Peninsula. The site’s monuments, dating to the tenth–fifteenth centuries, showcase both Maya and foreign architectural elements and have been the subject of multiple investigations and interpretations. In this lecture, María Teresa Uriarte Castañeda will discuss the columns and bas-relief sculptures from the Temple of Warriors which depict deities, warriors, feathered (and other) serpents, interacting with celestial bodies, including the Sun, the Moon, and Venus. Uriarte’s analysis will highlight how this iconography reflects the political, social, and religious unrest of the Late Classic period in Mesoamerica (600–900 AD) and the new worldviews that developed during this period.

Speaker: María Teresa Uriarte Castañeda, Researcher, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)