nature. He also described various private and state-owned collections, and on the basis of these descriptions, he went into the field to search for evidence to verify the existence of ruins. Medina’s reports included graphic records and a good knowledge of foreign references, to the point that he suggested homotaxic relationships (that is, classified as being the same) with Old World prehistory.

According to Medina (1882), who followed the lead of other prehistorians, events of the past had to be known in order to glance at the future of humankind. Medina lived surrounded by friends such as Luis Montt and Rafael Garrido, all collectors of Indian antiquities, in a period when historians like Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna were locating Inca ruins throughout central Chile. Medina recognized the potential of nonmonumental archaeology, advancing some analyses on ceramics, mummified bodies, and fortifications and proposing a classificatory scheme linked to the Bronze Age. Medina, of course, was not unfamiliar with the issue of Inca (“Peruvian”) influence, which he accepted despite its short duration, thus setting the stage for a debate that would take place later.

Medina’s period of influence was important because of the conditions that produced new knowledge concerning ethnography, prehistory, linguistics, and the exploratory nature of the institutions and publications of the Old World. Archaeological finds were recognized as being related to ethnic survivals, including the more “primitive” relics of the southern tip of South America, which justified evolutionary views of the time. Although foreign scholars described their anthropological observations, the local intelligentsia was still at odds with a nationalist state concerned with the forced assimilation of ethnic minorities, even at the expense of their virtual extermination. So while many nationalist Latin American states were promoting “native” studies so as to consolidate their national identity as part of a process of modernization, Chile was preoccupied with formalizing national pride via a search for cultural roots, uncompromised by its contemporary Indian victims.

This period corresponds with the military occupation of the Araucanian regions of south-central Chile even while southern antiquities were arousing the interests of both scholars and collectors. The colonial elite gave way to a progressive liberal oligarchy, and during this period, after the so-called pacification campaign aimed at the “Chileanization” of the southern regions, some scholars went into the field intent on archaeological and ethnographic rescue. The ethnological and/or archaeological perception of the Indian world that prevailed during this time was similar to that of the European attitude toward its ancient and primitive cultures but with a limited historic depth. These Indian groups were incapable of incorporating themselves to the positivist civilizing process.

Two important events mark the conclusion of the processes that were to have an impact on the future of archaeology as a scientific discipline in Chile. In 1878, a novel archaeological exhibition was inaugurated in Santiago, and two years later, the Anthropological Society published a series of books on archaeology and ethnology that led to American antiquities becoming fashionable. Their main promoters were Medina and Phillipi, the latter a naturalist and closer to the discipline of archaeology. But the notion of progress prevalent at that time did not include a humanist view. After all, Darwin himself in 1842 had described the southern American Indians as “savages” and was mainly interested in their teeth in order to verify the extent of their modern humanity. In this context, the material remains of the past pertained mostly to other “savages” who were regarded more as geological fossils than as modern humans.

During this period, archaeology based its principles on two disciplines, the bibliographic-ethnohistoric approach and naturalism, both of which would dominate it until the present day. The latter was substantiated by recognizing the evolutionary processes to which all living organisms are subject, and in this context, the development of the natural sciences would be decisive for the succeeding multidisciplinary analyses.

At the end of the nineteenth century, many “fine-looking” archaeological pieces, recovered by antiquarians without regard to their archaeological context, formed the first private and state-owned collections. Many archaeological