Erika Robles Cortés Receives Honorable Mention in INAH Awards for Archaeological Research

The Department of Anthropology at Harvard University is pleased to share that PhD student Erika Lucero Robles Cortés has received an Honorable Mention in the INAH Awards, in the category of Master’s Thesis in Archaeology for the Alfonso Caso/Beatriz Braniff Award.

The INAH Awards, organized annually for more than forty years by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, INAH), are among the most prestigious national recognitions for research in archaeology, anthropology, bioarchaeology, conservation, and other disciplines related to the study of Mexico’s rich cultural heritage.

Robles Cortés earned this distinction for her master’s thesis, “Una propuesta metodológica para la identificación de huesos cremados previamente hervidos. Estudio de caso en el Templo Mayor de Tenochtitlan” (A methodological proposal for the identification of previously boiled cremated bones: Case study in the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan). Her research analyzes bone remains that were thermally treated—both boiled and cremated—at the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán, offering an innovative methodological approach to identifying such remains in archaeological contexts.

She completed her Master’s degree in Mesoamerican Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) before joining Harvard’s Department of Anthropology.