Archaeologists use X-rays to distinguish iron from different periods of America's colonial past

Archaeologists use X-rays to distinguish iron from different periods of America's colonial past

On a dark night in late May 1543, a group of men snuck through the Native American town of Guachoya and stopped at the gated wall, where a body had recently been buried. Working quietly, they disinterred the body and carried it to a nearby river, where they wrapped it in shawls filled with sand and dropped it in the water. Thus ended the brief and brutal history of Hernando de Soto, a Spanish soldier who helped conquer Nicaragua, overthrow the I…