Lords of Sipán
Nadia Durrani, former editor of CWA During my time as editor of CWA, I visited some of the world’s most exciting sites. Of these, perhaps the most extraordinary was that of the Lords of Sipán (CWA 35)....
View ArticleInca Gold at Pacopampa
Archaeologists investigating the Late Formative Period temple complex at Pacopampa (featured in CWA 75) discovered Inca offerings deposited more than 1,000 years after the site was abandoned. The find...
View Article48 Hours in Mexico City: what to do and where to go
Home to over 21 million people, Mexico City is a glorious, sprawling, beautiful, and endlessly captivating capital. As the city with the largest number of museums in the world, it is packed with...
View ArticleBogotá’s Gold Rush
Modern Colombia boasts a treasure trove of ancient sites, including the mountain city of Ciudad Perdida (see CWA 53), the megalithic sculptures at San Agustín, and the burial chambers of Tierradentro....
View ArticleQuito
Discovering the pinnacle of Ecuador Ecuador’s capital of Quito, high in the Andes mountains, is one of the world’s most breathtaking cities, as Tim Tatton-Brown explains. Situated in the High Andes of...
View ArticleNEWS: Clues of Maya Collapse
Archaeologists have developed a highly-refined chronology for the two major Maya collapses using the largest set of radiocarbon dates ever obtained from a single site. The circumstances behind the...
View ArticleLapa do Santo: Decapitation and ritual in ‘the Saint’s rock shelter’
Inside Lapa do Santo, excavations are revealing the complex burial practices of an early Archaic community. André Strauss tells CWA about the grisly finds. Body mutilation, decapitation, defleshing,...
View ArticleTravel: The Yucatán
Richard Hodges visits sites in the shadow of Chichén Itzá. Hotels, at their best, resemble oases in a desert. Mayaland – nestling in the shadow of Chichén Itzá, one of the New World’s Seven Wonders –...
View ArticleCircles of mystery: Strange ancient earthworks in Brazil’s Amazonian rainforest
Hundreds of enigmatic earthworks lay hidden for millennia beneath what was thought to be virgin rainforest. Who built them, and why? In searching for answers, Jennifer Watling discovered how ancient...
View ArticlePalace of the Maya Time Lords
Discovering two royal tombs at El Perú-Waka’ Excavations at the Maya city of Waka’ in Guatemala revealed a stone gallery buried within the palace acropolis. Inside its rooms were relics that told the...
View ArticleTravel: Mérida
Seeking out Maya masterpieces in Yucatán Head off the beaten track in Mexico and you might be rewarded with some magnificent Maya archaeology, as Tom St John Gray reveals. The Spanish have built a city...
View ArticlePachacamac
When the Spanish conquistador Hernando Pizarro arrived at Pachacamac, Peru, in January 1533, he had before him one of the jewels of the Inca Empire. ‘We arrived,’ he wrote, ‘in this city thathat seems...
View ArticleThe Palpa figures
Survey near the town of Palpa, Peru, has revealed a wealth of geoglyphs. Are they older than their celebrated neighbours at Nasca? And were they aimed at a very different audience? The post The Palpa...
View ArticleMapping the Maya
The deeds of royal dynasties presiding over Maya city-states in northern Guatemala can still be followed on ornate inscriptions raised in their name. But just how large were their dominions? Tom...
View ArticleReturn to Huaca El Pueblo
Discovering Peruvian pyramid tombs Recent excavations at Huaca El Pueblo, a mud-brick pyramid erected by the Moche, have revealed three remarkable burials dating to the 4th century AD. As well as...
View ArticleTambo Viejo
Excavating remarkable Inca rituals After the Acari Valley was absorbed by the Inca Empire, Tambo Viejo was founded to oversee its inhabitants. This imperial imposition seemingly resembled many others...
View ArticleMining for ochre in ancient Mexico
Divers exploring the now-submerged caves of Quintana Roo in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula have uncovered evidence for red ochre mining between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the oldest known example of the...
View ArticlePre-Hispanic flood-management in the Pampa de Mocan
For thousands of years, areas along the north coast of Peru have been subject to huge flooding as a result of El Niño, a periodic warming in the atmosphere of the Pacific Ocean, which causes torrential...
View ArticleA feline find
A geoglyph has been discovered on a hillside in the Nazca desert of Peru during the emergency project ‘Cleaning, Conservation and Restoration of the Geoglyphs of the Mirador Natural, Nazca’....
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