Walking Tours of Archaeological Sites

Calakmul is an ancient Mayan archaeological site, located in state of Campeche, Mexico, thirty kilometers north of the Guatemala border. Calakmul is also 38 km north of El Mirador, a rival state during the Late Classic period (~600-950 AD). New findings at Calakmul gave me a great opportunity to discuss this fascinating archaeological site.

The ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur was excavated by C. Leonard Woolley between 1922 and 1934. Much of his focus was on the Royal Cemetery, particularly those excavations in the early Dynastic period between ca. 2600 and 2450 BC. The photo essay of the site called Tell al-Muqayyar uses historic photos provided by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to illustrate Woolley's excavations.

From about AD 300-550, the ancient city of Teotihuacán in Mexico had its heyday had a population somewhere between about 125,000—200,000 people. Only a bit of its massive city ruins have been excavated: but even so 3 million visitors come to see it each year. In this walking tour, archaeologist Dick Diehl tells us a bit about the city and its famous Sun and Moon Pyramids.

A photographic introduction to the four main buildings on the Giza Plateau: Khufu's Pyramid, Khafre's Pyramid, Menkares' Pyramid, and the Sphinx.

The archaeological site of Chankillo of Peru includes an astronomical observatory, built between 2000 and 2350 years ago, but not recognized in modern times until 2007. The site is one of many recently recognized astronomical observatories of the ancient past.

Photographer Aschwin Prein provides a walking tour of the ancient Greek classical site of Olympia, the original location of the Olympic Games. Excavations at the site were the direct impetus for the reinstitution of the games, 1700 years after the games were banned.

A walking tour of the terracotta army of the Qin Dynasty emperor of China who united China in 221 BC, Emperor Shihuangdi.

The House of the Faun was the largest and most expensive residence in ancient Pompeii, and today it is the most visited of all the houses in the famous ruins of Pompeii, Italy.

The residential palace of the Inca king Pachacuti has drawn tourists from all over the world because of its lovely impossible location at the edge of the world. Gina Carey was at Machu Picchu during the Summer of 2004, and shares her photographs with us.

The archaeological site of Sannai Maruyama isn't much to look at, but fortunately the Japanese government and archaeologists have rebuilt facsimiles of the buildings that were constructed there some 5,000 years ago.