Ignacio Bernal was born on February 13, 1910 in Paris France. His mother was the
daughter of Luis Garcia Pimental and the legendary Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta
was her grandfather, so Ignacio Bernal came to his love of anthropology and
history very naturally. He went to the Colegio Franco-Ingles in Mexico City and
Loyola College in Montreal. He became fluent in French and English plus his
native Spanish. He studied law from 1932-1943. Then he tried various aspects of
business from 1935-1940. Bernal did not discover the field of archaeology until
he returned to school in 1941 to study history, while still searching for a
career choice he could enjoy. It was then that he met and worked under Alfonso Caso
and worked on excavating and reconstructing
Bernal entered the Escuela Nacional de Antropologia in 1943 and in 1947, received his diploma as orqueologo and his Master's degree in 1949. In 1950, at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, he earned his doctoral degree. Ignacio became a professional archaeologist at the age of 40. He was already married to Sofia Verea and together they would have four children- Concepcion, Rafeala, Ignacio and Carlos.
Bernal worked four field seasons during 1946-1953 at Monte Alban. While working there, he defined the early ceramic phases at the site. Based partly on stratigraphic sounding in Monte Alban's North Platform, his Master's thesis provided the original definitive description of Monte Alban IIIa. Bernal moved to other Oasacan sites and used a combination of ethnohistory with archaeology to answer anthropological questions about the development of Zapotec and Mextec Indian culture. Coixtlahuaca was a sixteenth century Mixtec center for which Aztec chronicles provide ethnohistoric data. Bernal worked there in 1948. The documents described Tamazula pan, a chocho-speaking valley as having been under the dominion of Coixtlahuaca. Bernal excavated there in 1952 and his excavations provided the first long stratigraphic sequence for the Mixteca Alta. Bernal established a pattern of working back from the known (sixteenth century documents) to the unknown (prehistory) at Coixtlahuaca and Tamazula pan.
Hostile factions of townspeople kept Bernal for beginning research at Zaachila, the Post classic Zapotec capital in 1952. So in 1953, he worked at Macuilxochitl and at Cuilapan de Guerrero in 1954, Noriega in 1956, 1957 at San Luis Beltran, and at Mitla in 1961. His work contributed much to the understanding of the Post classic Valley of Oaxaca. The excavation of Yagul, a mesa-top ceremonial center in the eastern valley was on of his most important projects. Bernal worked with John Paddock, Lorenzo Gamio and Charles Wicke from 1954-1962 to expose at Yagul a Post-classic ceremonial center that contrasted architecturally with the earlier Monte Alban center.
Bernal was in Paris in 1955-1956
as a cultural attaché to the Mexican embassy and also served as a Mexican
delegate to UNESCO. He was director at Teotihuacan for the mulitmillion-peso
excavation and restoration there in 1962-1964.
Bernal was the director of
Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology, and he presided over the XXXV International
Congress of Americanists where several of his papers
were presented, and he has written many books and articles. The National
Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City is considered to be one of the
greatest museums of the world. The museum was started in 1744 at the Royal and
Bernal served as sub-director of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia during 1958-1968 and was the director from 1968-1971. He was president of the Society for American Archaeology from 1968-1969. During this time he as also a chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Mexico City College(1951-19590 and a professor at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico(1948-1976). The archaeological site survey and inventory of carved stone monuments in the Valley of Oaxaca were two of his favorite long term projects. He returned there whenever he had the time and funds to do so. Bernal finally was able, with the help of Lorenzo Gamio, to publish several volumes of carved stones that complimented Cass's classic 1928 work, Las estelas zapotecas. Bernal discovered Dainzu, the site that was to become his last excavation, while doing research for new carved stones in the Valley of Oaxaca. In 1966, Bernal and Gamio found one of an extensive series of Late Formative carved stones, many of which depicted ball players. Bernal uncovered a very important civic-ceremonial center that had been occupied from the Middle Formative until the Spanish Conquest.
Monte Alban was
the center of the
In 1977, Bernal retired as director of the Museo Nacional so he could concentrate on the writing of his backlog of data. He produced 16 more publications and the final report on Dainzu, while in his seventies. Along with his degree from UNAM, he had received honorary degrees from Berkeley, St. Mary's, Cambridge, and the University of the Americas. He was awarded the Legion d' Honneur by France in 1964 and the Royal Order of Victoria from Britain in 1975, along with several other honors from Italy, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands and Senegal. In 1971, he was awarded the Lucy Wharton Drexel Medal and in 1986, the Kidder Medal. In 1980, he was elected a foreign fellow of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He had at least 267 publications and many of them remain classics in Mesoamerican archaeology.
Ignacio Bernal was one of the world's leading authorities on ancient Oaxaca and one of the giants of Mexican archaeology. He died at the age of 81 on January 24, 1992. Some of his publications:
El mundo olmeca (1968)
Historia de la arqueologia en Mexico (1979)
A History of Mexican Archaeology: The Vanished Civilizations of Middle America (1980)
Tenochtitlan en una isla (1984)
Paddock, John. Ancient
Ragghianti, Carlo Ludovico.
American Antiquity. Kent V. Flannery, 1994.
Written By: Christina Berberich
Edited By: Lillian Dolentz, 2008