on the relationship between the known native populations and the recovered archaeological artifacts. Archaeology was regarded as part of the natural sciences, but two different influences affected it: the first and most common was the naturalist influence, as expressed in the works of Moreno and Burmeister (which in turn influenced Lista, Roth, and Pico), and the second was the evolutionary influence, as seen in the work of the Ameghino brothers and Ambrosetti. Between these two perspectives were the works of people such as S. Lafone Quevedo, Zeballos, Rusconi, Montes, and Vignati. Patagonia, the Argentine northwest, and the Pampas were the regions most explored during the nineteenth century, primarily by researchers who lived in Buenos Aires and La Plata. There were few local researchers in other cities, with the exception of A. Quiroga in Catamarca.

The last thirty years of the nineteenth century were important for the development of Argentine archaeology because they established the regionalization of future work. During these years travelers, naturalists, and explorers were able to conduct research because leaders of the Generación de 1880 were establishing and maintaining territories and boundaries to support their political and economic interests. In Patagonia, for instance, Argentina disputed the frontier with chile, which necessitated constant territorial reconnaissance; inhabited by hunter-gatherers, Patagonia was regarded as a land of savagery. In the northwest region, the Argentine government was trying to establish certain industries, including the sugar industry, and it needed the cooperation of local workers; the social structures of the northwest, given the Inca influence and the significant and large Creole population there, were easy to incorporate into the Argentine economy. (The difference between these two regions—a very real one from both anthropological and archaeological points of view—became the basis of the stereotype that has been perpetuated over time.) The Pampas—the land of gauchos and estancias (large rural holdings)—was far away from frontier problems and Creole populations, and it, too, was easily incorporated into the Argentine economy. These three regions would be the subjects of major archaeological investigations in the twentieth century.

The First Half of the Twentieth Century

The first decades of the twentieth century were significant because of the number of foreign researchers at work in Argentina’s northwest region, among them R. Lehmann Nitsche, Boman, and E. Nordensköld. The Museo de La Plata held the most important archaeological collections, including one from F.P. Moreno. In 1911 the Instituto Geográfico Argentino, which had supplied more funds for archaeological projects than any other institution, disappeared, and the Sociedad Científica Argentina began to support archaeological investigations. The University of Buenos Aires and the University of La Plata also started to fund archaeological research and expeditions, the most important of which were those of UBA’s Museo Etnográfico and ULP’s Museo de Ciencias Naturales specifically in the northwest region. In addition, significant private support for archaeology came from individuals, such as B. Muñiz Barreto. During these years Argentina began to participate in and be recognized by the rest of the scientific world, and it hosted two international congresses of Americanists, one in 1910 at Buenos Aires and the other in 1932 at La Plata. At both congresses significant discussions were devoted to the archaeology of Patagonia and the northwest.

Even as archaeological investigations of the Pampas comparatively decreased, more archaeological expeditions headed to the northwest region than to any other area of Argentina in the first decades of the twentieth century—including those by Ambrosetti (see photo, page 108), Weiser, Lehmann Nitsche, max uhle, and Gerling. Meanwhile, the first chronological frameworks for Argentine archaeology began to appear: for the northwest by Ulhe, Boman, and Ambrosetti; for Patagonia by junius bird; and for the Pampas by the Ameghino brothers. Archaeology was still only taught in single courses at the Universities of Buenos Aires and La Plata, and the naturalist influence on archaeology slowly waned, with historical and ethnohistorical explanations becoming more popular. In the 1930s Imbelloni was the first archaeologist to