In 1896, British archaeological artist Adela Breton visited a newly excavated shaft tomb in Jalisco, thought to be 1,500 years old. 

Archaeologist Ericka Blanco, director of the Centro Interpretativo Guachimontones Phil Weigand (CIG), told me a year ago that many foreign visitors – out of the 150,000 in total annually – ask for a booklet to take back to their home countries.

Etzatlán is a busy town located 66 kilometers west of Guadalajara. It’s a fine place to visit after touring the nearby Guachimontones archaeological ruins. The town’s historian, Carlos Parra, recently invited me to see a fascinating mining museum he has set up inside the recently renovated train station, now transformed into a cultural center.

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.