April 11, 2026 Professor John M. D. Pohl, California State University, Los Angeles: “Lyobaa-Mitla: Recent Discoveries at the Zapotec City of the Dead.”
The archaeological remains of Lyobaa-Mitla located in Oaxaca, Mexico have been a subject of extraordinary fascination to Mexican, American and European archaeologists since the early nineteenth century and remain a popular tourist attraction today. However, despite its reputation, Mitla remains shrouded in considerable mystery not the least of which are early Dominican reports of a labyrinthian underworld where noble penitents sought counsul from the royal dead. Applying a spectrum of geophysical technologies, an international team of scientists has recently identified a vast system of subterranean features that not only confirm these reports but now enable us to understand how Mitla functioned as a Zapotec Vatican that centralized the political ideology of the confederacies of city-states – the Children of Quetzalcoatl as they called themselves – that dominated southern Mexico between 1300-1521 and continued to thrive well into the colonial period.
John M.D. Pohl is an archaeologist who specializes in the ancient art and writing of the Zapotec, Mixtec and Nahua civilizations of southern Mexico. He is noted for bringing the ancient past to life using a wide variety of innovative skills while teaching with the departments of Anthropology, Art History, and Chicana(o) Studies at Cal State LA. His background in archaeology, art history, and media production have taken him from feature film and television production to museum exhibition development with the Getty Villa Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Princeton University Museum of Art, and the Museum of the Cherokee People among other institutions. He has published numerous books and articles including Exploring Mesoamerica andThe Legend of Lord Eight Deer, both with Oxford University Press. Together with Michael Mathiowetz, he is co-editor of the recent volume: Reassessing the Aztatlán World for University of Utah Press.
