Contemporary with Raimondi, E. George Squier arrived in Peru in 1863 as cultural attaché to the U.S. embassy there. Squier, an archaeologist and the former publisher of a newspaper, was known in North America for his publications on mounds of the eastern United States, and his duties at the embassy were apparently very light, as he found time to travel widely throughout much of Peru. He visited many of the archaeological sites along the coast of Peru, including Chan Chan and Pachacamac, but his most extended journey took him from the far southern coast of Peru up to the Altiplano surrounding Lake Titicaca, north to Cuzco, and then back to Lima. His 1877 account of his journeys, Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas, is richly illustrated with detailed drawings of the many sites he visited and descriptive narratives of his observations.

The first systematic excavations in Peru were carried out in the 1870s by two German geologists, W. Reiss and A. Stübel, who salvaged the destructive activities of grave robbers (huaqueros in Peru) at the site of Ancón just north of Lima. During his stay in Peru, Stübel traveled to Bolivia and visited Tiahuanaco and recorded the architecture and stone sculptures there. Back in Germany, max uhle, eventually to be regarded by many as “the father of Peruvian archaeology,” studied Stübel’s notes and established that the Tiahuanaco style not only preceded the Inca conquest of the Altiplano, as Cieza had proposed, but was also older than the kingdoms that the Incas conquered.

Uhle arrived in Peru in the 1890s and began his prolific career. His early work focused on archaeological sites near Lima, notably the site of Pachacamac. This huge urban center, whose Inca temples had been an early target of Spanish vandalism, was known as the most important Inca center on the coast. Uhle’s 1896 excavations at Pachacamac revealed earlier periods of construction and occupation, and in defining a ceramic chronology for the site Uhle recognized ceramics that bore Tiahuanaco-style design elements. Through further analysis he was able to define a four-phase chronology: pre-Tiahuanaco, Tiahuanaco, post-Tiahuanaco, and Inca. The Inca and Tiahuanaco styles, he argued, reflected broadly distributed horizon styles in the central Andes. Uhle’s chronology constitutes the basic framework of the chronology still used today in Peru.

Beginning in 1900, much of Uhle’s research in Peru was financed by the University of California as well as some other institutions in the United States. With such support he excavated in the moche Valley, principally at the Huaca de La Luna site; on the south coast near Ica; and on the central coast at Ancón and in the area surrounding Lima. In each region he defined ceramic styles and used these to build chronological sequences, most of which have stood the test of time. Uhle’s connection with Berkeley brought him into contact with American anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, who became fascinated with the ceramic assemblages that Uhle deposited in the museum at Berkeley. The elaborate art styles from coastal Peru, organized chronologically, gave Kroeber an excellent basis for examining some of his ideas about the development of art and civilization. This interest eventually took Kroeber to Peru, where he became involved in field research on both the south and north coasts.

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Gold Chimu mask from Peru

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Although Uhle is often referred to as “the father of Peruvian archaeology,” many archaeologists, especially those of Peruvian birth, would