German geographer Karl Sapper visited the ruins in 1896 and published a brief description of the ruins together with a site map two years later in a 6-page pamphlet by the "Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie" of Leyden in the Netherlands, entitled "Die Ruinen von Mixco, Guatemala". It was Sapper who labelled each of the archaeological groups and their attendant structures. American archaeologist A. Ledyard Smith visited the ruins in 1949 and wrote a chapter about the site in his "Archaeological Reconnaissance in Central America", published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1955. Archeological excavations were carried out from 1954 through 1967 by the Musée de l'Homme of Paris under the direction of archaeologist Henri Lehmann, who certainly believed that he was excavating the Pocomam capital as described in Colonial records.