María del Pilar Luna Erreguerena (1944 – 15 March 2020) was a Mexican underwater archaeologist, pioneer in the field of archaeology, who founded the Division of Underwater Archaeology of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). She was awarded her undergraduate degree by the National School of Anthropology and History and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), from which she then obtained her master's degree in Anthropological Sciences.
After 1980 she was the head of the Underwater Archeology Area of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) of Mexico. She was a member, among other associations, of the Consultative Council of Cultural Heritage Underwater of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as well as member emeritus of the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology Society for Historical Archaeology and International Grant Advisor for the National Geographic Society. She was the first Latin American woman and only the second underwater archaeologist to receive the J. C. Harrington Medal and is considered the pioneer of aquatic archaeology in Mexico.
Early life
María del Pilar Luna Erreguerena was born in 1944 in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Her father had immigrated to Mexico from Sahagún of the Tierra de Campos district of Spain and worked his way up to owning a jewelry store. Luna was the youngest of five children. When she was six, her family moved to Mexico City and by the age of eight, she had completed lifeguard training with the Red Cross.
Career
Luna began her career working as a secretary in the family business and then worked as a teacher in a sport center. She spent twelve years teaching disabled children how to swim. At the age of 27, while still working as a swimming instructor, she decided to return to school. Originally an anthropology major, Luna, who was taking classes at the National Institute of Anthropology and History () took a class on general archaeology given by the National Museum of Anthropology. In a lecture about the Abu Simbel temples, re-discovered during the construction of the Aswan Dam, she began to question the fate of Mexico's underwater legacy. Searching for information, Luna discovered the book, Archaeology Under Water, by George F. Bass and decided she wanted to become an aquatic archaeologist. Then near the end of her studies, Luna, who had gone to a cave to study some chultuns near Acapulco, contracted histoplasmosis. Her recovery was a slow process, which took more than a year.
When, due to the histoplasmosis, she was barred from underwater activities, Luna began working at the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan, where the disk of Coyolxauhqui had just been found. She was approached by Manuel Gandara, head of the National Institute of Anthropology and History () to organize a course on undersea archaeology. She contacted Bass to help with lectures and curricula and he agreed to come with one of his students, Donald H. Keith. As part of the course, students excavated at Media Luna, a spring in San Luis Potosí, discovering 20,000-year-old mammoth skulls. At the end of the course, Bass asked her to accompany him on a dive to explore the Turkish Mediterranean. Receiving clearance from her doctor, Luna agreed to the trip, which included dives on a boat from the Byzantine period and a Greek boat dating to the Christian era.
In 1978, immediately upon her return from Turkey, Luna got a message from Keith, who was working at the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in Texas. He alerted her that sports divers had located some guns in the Gulf of Mexico. The tip led to the recovery of two cannon and a bronze plate that were dated to 1552 and later, were housed in the Museo de San José el Alto, in Campeche. Shortly thereafter, Luna first heard of the shipwreck Nuestra Señora del Juncal, when Burt Webber, a diver and treasure hunter who had made other finds in the Caribbean, applied for a permit to recover relics. After an 18-month battle, Mexico refused to offer permits to commercial enterprises, and in February 1980, Luna founded the Division of Underwater Archaeology () under the direction of INAH. She is considered the founder of underwater archaeology in Latin America.