Focus on Archaeology

Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a city of many faces. Among them is the brash neighborhood called La Boca, with the tourist-filled, colorful promenade El Caminito; the upscale section called Recoleta, centered on the mausoleum-laden cemetery where Evita Perón lies buried in a much-visited tomb; the Palermo neighborhood, with its many parks, restaurants and tall apartment buildings, and the old neighborhood of San Telmo, a mix of picturesque dilapidated houses and those now in the process of...

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Patio and residence of Alta Gracia estancia, near Córdoba, Argentina. Photos by Julie Skurdenis

(Second of two parts)

The Jesuits arrived in the New World in the late 16th century. In the newly founded city of Córdoba in north-central Argentina, they were granted a manzana, or land parcel, in 1599, where they built a complex that eventually included a church, a university, a residence for Jesuit priests and a collegium, or secondary school. To finance the complex, the Jesuits established large estancias, or ranches, in the countryside surrounding Córdoba.

These estancias...

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Córdoba, Spain, is well known among travelers, famous as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the home of sites dating from the days of its Moorish past (8th to 13th centuries). This is Old World Córdoba. Less well known to travelers is New World Córdoba, Argentina’s second-largest city (population 1.4 million). 

Situated in the north-central part of the country, 420 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s Córdoba also has UNESCO World Heritage designated sites....

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Henequen reigned as king in what is now the Mexican state of Yucatán, on the Yucatán Peninsula, for much of the 19th century. It was called “green gold” and made plantation owners wealthy, enabling them to own vast estates in the countryside and to build opulent mansions in Mérida, some of which can still be seen along one of the city’s major boulevards, Paseo de Montejo.

The earliest Spanish settlers built haciendas where they farmed and raised cattle, using the...

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Green-blue water. White-sand beaches. Posh hotels. Gourmet dining. Vibrant nightlife. This is what most visitors to Cancún travel there for. Few know that this sybaritic tourist mecca on Mexico’s northwest Yucatán coast was also once home to the Maya, as was the rest of the Yucatán Peninsula. 

Many visitors seek out the Yucatán’s best-known archaeological sites at Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Tulum, this last site about 80 miles south of Cancún, little guessing that there...

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The Etruscans dominated a wide swath of Italy from approximately the eighth century to the fifth century BC. Their territory stretched from the Arno River south to the Tiber, although the boundaries were not rigid and meandered well beyond this area of north-central Italy. 

The Etruscans had edged out the indigenous peoples of the areas they occupied until they, themselves, finally were conquered by a stronger neighbor to the south: Rome.

At the height of Etruscan power,...

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Spanish conquistadores, led by Francisco de Córdoba and, two years later, by Hernán Cortés, arrived in Mexico’s Yucatán in 1517. Following them came Catholic Spanish missionaries, particularly Franciscan friars, who made it their mission to convert the natives to Christianity. 

Not long after their arrival, these Franciscans began to build missions, monastic complexes that included not only housing for themselves but churches for the newly converted.

The religious...

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The palace in Kabah.
Exploring ruins of three Puuc Mayan cities — Kabah, Labná and Sayil — on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula