Moctezuma’s Mexico Then and Now: Ancient Empire, Race Mixture, and Finding LatinX

William Fash worked on archaeological digs in Arizona and in Central Mexico while obtaining his BA in anthropology from the University of Illinois (1976). In his first year in graduate school at Harvard University he joined Gordon R. Willey's archaeological project in Copán, Honduras, Central America in 1977. He has been working at Copán ever since, devoting his efforts to illuminating all aspects of ancient Maya lifeways and culture history at one of its most renowned ancient cities. He co-created the Copán Mosaics Project in 1985 and subsequently spearheaded efforts to conceive, design, and construct the Sculpture Museum in Copán which showcases the magnificent cultural heritage from this site. He was awarded the Order of José Cecilio del Valle by the President of Honduras in 1994 and selected to succeed his mentor, Gordon Willey, as Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and History at Harvard University in that same year. He served as Chair of Harvard's Department of Anthropology from 1998-2004, and as Howells Director of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 2004-2011. From 2000-2003, he conducted archaeological excavations at the Xalla Compound in Teotihuacan, Mexico, with his colleagues Leonardo López Luján and Linda Manzanilla. In March 2017, he was elected as a corresponding fellow of the Academia Mexicana de la Historia. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of six books. He and his wife Barbara Fash were awarded the Hoja de Laurel de Oro (2008) and an Extraordinary Recognition by the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia (IHAH) of Honduras (2013), and the Order of the Mat by the Popol Vuh Museum and the Universidad Francisco Marroquín of Guatemala City (2015). From 2015-2020 Fash served as Co-Director of the Plaza of the Columns Complex Project in Teotihuacan, Mexico. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC.