published the proceedings of national congresses held so far, and the national and international congresses held in Viña del Mar a year after the congress in San Pedro Atacama indicate that the scholars from this museum, headed by Jorge Silva, Julio Montané, and Virgilio Schiappacasse, among others, have attained genuine prestige.

It was not by chance that the International Congress of Arica took place in the northern part of Chile, for it was precisely in this region that the modern inter-Andean style of “doing” archaeology had caught on, a style promoted by newsletters and informal meetings held by colleagues such as P. Dauelsberg, L.G. Lumbreras, C. Ponce, G. Vescelius, J. Montané, and L. Núñez. Since the beginning of the 1960s the most important archaeological collections have been located in the northern part of the country. The regional universities took charge of this process, building up an enormous register that in San Pedro Atacama alone would extent to half a million archaeological items. Participants of the Arica congress included Percy Dauelsberg, Guillermo Focacci, Luis Alvarez, Carlos Munizaga, Gret Mostny, Jorge Iribarren, Jean Christian Spani, Gustavo Le Paige, and Lautaro Núñez, along with scholars from neighboring countries, Luis Guillermo Lumbreras and Carlos Ponce, Julio Montané, Mario Orellana, Hans Niemeyer, Virgilio Schiappacasse, and Jorge Silva. As a whole, these groups shared common aspirations, which after the San Pedro de Atacama congress, constituted a point of reference uniting past with new generations formed at the universities.

During the 1960s, the beginning of a more systematic and professional Chilean archaeology was firmly established. The younger generation of university-educated archaeologists such as G. Ampuero, M. Rivera, P. Núñez, O. Silva, F. Bate, O. Ortíz, J. Palma, E. Durán, and S. Quevedo presented their first work at a congress held in Viña del Mar in 1964. Around this time Zulema Seguel, a French prehistorian, arrived in Concepción and began to teach prehistory and encourage research in it.

Although the schools of anthropology were in Santiago and Concepción, archaeological and museographic research spread across the country, toward the south, under the tutelage of Mateo Martinic and Dillmann Bullock, whose museum in Angol was established through the support of the latter’s missionary activities. Toward the north as far as Arica, Antofagasta, and San Pedro de Atacama, the work of Dauelsberg and his associates, and by Gustavo Le Paige and his young colleagues constituted the first examples of systematic research. Since 1957, researchers such as Percy Dauelsberg, Luis Alvarez, and Guillermo Focacci, along Gustavo Le Paige and Lautaro Núñez, have lived in the northern part of the country where they conducted their first field projects. Not knowing the significance of diffusionism or relativism, this generation of scholars endeavored to obtain relevant data from collections and mentors as well as the details of archaeological methods and techniques. This was the last stage before the professionalization of the discipline.

For the youth of the 1960s, the only possible means of achieving a professional career was through the University of Chile in Santiago. It was, however, in the History Department of the Pedagogical Institute of Macul where the efforts of G. Mostny, M. Orellana, and B. Berdischewsky were first realized in 1962 in the form of an archaeology course designed for history teachers who would spread across the countryside and play an important role in archaeology. The enthusiastic participation of students from the University of Chile ensured the immediate success of this first educational program, which had graduates such as Gonzalo Ampuero, Julia Monleon, Osvaldo Silva, Mario Rivera, Victoria Castro, Carlos Thomas, Eliana Durán, Silvia Quevedo, Omar Ortíz, Luis Briones, Patricio Núñez, Carlos Orrejola, and Julie Palma. From the start, the connection to history led to the perception of archaeology as a kind of “ancient” history in which the sources that led to a hypothesis were subject to a rigorous internal critique. The universal perception of the developments of past societies was envisioned, and there was a sincere concern to confer a temporal, spatial, and contextual meaning to the prehistoric cultural diversity of the country.

The time had come to synthesize population data according to time, space, and culture. The