well-preserved coastal and interior contexts of the north displayed collections that demanded considerable taxonomic efforts, which emphasized primarily subsistence data rather than symbolic or ideological considerations. Within this empiricist framework, ethnohistoric approaches were kept to a minimum and rendered undesirable. This was the situation that prevailed until the 1970s, when J. Murra and J. Hidalgo presented their innovative proposals at the Congress of Archaeology and the Multidisciplinary Congress on Andean Man, respectively, and their proposals were accepted.

It was also a period of continuous contact and collaboration with North American archaeologists and scientists, contact that helped resolve concrete issues and allowed for models to be tested outside the academic milieu. More recently, other North American agencies, such as the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institution, have funded research by local investigators utilizing North American standards that have furthered archaeological advancement. In general terms, the outcome of the collaboration with North American scientific missions that began in the 1930s has been a positive one, mainly because of a shared responsibility for projects that distanced itself from any form of scientific imperialism.

This renewed environment, the theoretical-methodological proposals of the new archaeology, descriptivism, structuralism, and historic materialism began an enriching process of academic debate. However, this efflorescence was short lived. An “antiseptic” form of archaeology characterized the period between 1973 and 1990, corresponding to the military regime’s political dominance. In the milieu of academic cutbacks and persecution, archaeologists, although scientifically valid, were for obvious reasons cautious in their theoretical and ideological opinions.

In 1973, Chile reinstated a socialist regime and there was a more open environment in which academic freedom was encouraged and the theoretical underpinnings of historical materialism and Marxism were intensely debated. During the period of time immediately before the subsequent military coup, a certain theoretical intolerance, derived from political tensions, was felt. Nevertheless, during the Congress on Andean Man, J. Murra and T. Lynch presented their groundbreaking thesis on verticality and the seasonal round, which remains the guide, even now, to the principal explanatory approaches to mobility and change in the Andes. These approaches are an example of how different theoretical stances coexisted in a plural academic environment before it was suppressed during the years of the military regime.

On the Latin American stage, the so-called social archaeology thesis succeeded in systemizing Childe’s precursory ideas and historic materialism. A meeting in Teotihuacán in 1976 resulted in the Latin Americanization of this proposal at a time when the use and abuse of the modes of production were generating the first confusing signals of the materialist discourse. Nevertheless, failure to recognize the importance of these endeavors is as untenable as denying the contribution of the Soviet school to the understanding and reconstruction of daily life based on the detailed knowledge of labor processes. The latter, understood as observed practices involving specific techniques (that would leave particular wear patterns), has correctly directed us to an understanding of cultural change as an expression of internal developments during the course of the social system.

Under the military regime most schools of archaeology were closed down, and only the one located at the University of Chile remained open under the direction of Mario Orellana and Carlos Munizaga. Academia was obviously hampered by the military regime despite the fact that during the first decade after the military coup North American processual archaeology reached the country. Models of postprocessual archaeology were superimposed onto North American ecosystemic models and assisted in a theoretical upgrading during the years of academic repression in Chile.

During the military dictatorship, the principal European, North American, and Latin American currents were known at the University of Chile through the limited literature that reached the country. In this manner, different anthropological trends were disseminated, first