A01=Sandra Rozental
Archeology
Author_Sandra Rozental
Category=GLZ
Category=JBSL
Category=JBSL11
climate
collections
conservation
ecology
engineering
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
extractivism
fragments
geology
gold
Heritage
Mexican Patrimony
Monuments
Museum Collections
Patrimony
renewal
Repatriation
Replicas
Reproductions
Restitution
San Miguel Coatlinchan
state theft
Territory
treasure
Product details
- ISBN 9781478033127
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 27 Jan 2026
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Where and to whom do ancient things belong? What happens when they are stolen—not by a colonial power, but by a national museum claiming them as state patrimony? What kinds of healing and restitution can follow? In The Absent Stone, Sandra Rozental tells the story of the Piedra de los Tecomates, the largest stone monument in the Americas, popularly identified as the pre-Hispanic rain deity Tlaloc. In 1964, the Mexican state called in the military to forcefully relocate this 167-ton carving from the town of Coatlinchan to Mexico City’s National Anthropology Museum. Using in-depth historical and ethnographic research, Rozental traces how the stone’s absence continues to affect and unsettle Coatlinchan and its residents decades later, revealing the tensions between patrimony, nationalism, territory, memory, and materiality in Mexico. Questioning the premise that historical artifacts belong in museums under state-sanctioned care, The Absent Stone pushes contemporary critical scholarship on monuments and museum collections beyond the language of law, heritage, and cultural property, demonstrating how ancient things remain bound to the people and places they come from even after they are removed and displayed elsewhere.
Sandra Rozental is an anthropologist and Research Professor at the Centro de Estudios Históricos, El Colegio de México.
