The Austrian-born anthropologist and historian Eric Wolf once complained that for a long time the field of Mesoamerican archaeology was in the hands of “shardists” and “pyramidiots” whose archaeological horizons were limited to dating and classifying pieces of pottery or restoring pyramids for tourism.

The other day I was discussing good and bad hotels with two of my very well-traveled students of English. “Tell me about your worst experience,” I challenged them.

Somehow the word reached the small community of cave explorers here in Jalisco: There’s an archaeologist in Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacán trying to figure out how to accurately map a cave, and she needs help.

In 1894, a man living near the famed ruins of Teotihuácan, 50 kilometers from modern Mexico City, discovered a small, pre-Hispanic house whose walls were covered with beautifully colored murals.

A few days ago my friend Mario Guerrero phoned me and mentioned some archaeological ruins indicated on an INEGI (Statistics and Geography Institute) topographical map.

Regular readers of my columns will by now surely know of “The Magic Circle,” the name I have coined for an easily reachable area around Guadalajara – including Jalisco, Colima and Aguascalientes, plus parts of other Mexican states – that contains all five of Mexico’s ecosystems.