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for New World archaeology, and in general it does fit. Most archaeological research in Ecuador has been conducted by Americans during several periods, representing the tendencies used as period indicators by Willey and Phillips. In a 1982 article entitled “100 Years of Ecuadorian Archaeology,” Donald Collier divided Ecuadorean archaeological research into four periods: the pioneer period, 1878–1899; the developmental period, 1900–1934; the transitional period, 1935–1952; and the florescent period, 1953–1980. Collier’s article is chronological in intent and in some ways quantitative-qualitative, and it is useful for showing the increase in archaeological research in Ecuador up to 1980. It does not, however, consider the trends in archaeological research that have dominated Ecuadorean archaeology, and because it was published in the early 1980s, it missed the the recent period in which archaeology in Ecuador attained some degree of maturity.
Archaeological research in Ecuador can be best classified in the following manner. Following is my own thematic version of its development.
The initial reports of archaeological monuments in Ecuador appeared in the chronicles of the Spanish priest and soldiers accompanying Pizarro, in the chronicles of the sixteenth century, and in the Visitas of the seventeenth century. (Detailed descriptions by naturalists and geographers, who put together the first archaeological collections, came later.) The precursors of Ecuadorean archaeology had appeared. Concomitant with this, the looting of tombs for gold and archaeological materials began with the Spanish conquistadores, settlers, and colonial officials. The first Ecuadorean archaeological and ethnographical materials began to appear in European museums in the 1850s.
This period is best defined by the classification in a museum in Dresden—by young linguist Max Uhle—of the archaeological materials collected by Alfons Steuble and Willhelm Reiss in Ecuador in the 1880s. During this time some local historians (such as Monsignor González Suárez) and foreign residents (such as the linguist Otto von Buchwald) also began to classify their archaeological finds in Ecuador. The collections made by George Dorsey and Marshall Saville in coastal Ecuador for the Field Columbian Museum and for the Museum of the American Indian (George Heye Foundation) were classified and published in the first decade of the twentieth century. About the same time, Paul Rivet and R. Vernau began their Ecuadorean research for the French Academy, and Uhle, who was already acquainted with the Ecuadorean materials collected by Steuble and Reiss in the previous period, arrived in Ecuador from Peru at the invitation of Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño. The two men began a fruitful, twenty-five-year research association that contributed to the development of the first systematic chronology for Ecuadorean archaeology, and together with Carlos Manuel Larrea they carried Ecuadorean archaeology into the culture-historical period.
As Ecuadorean archaeology progressed, grave looters in the southern Ecuadorean Andes began unearthing veritable treasure hoards, which were, for the most part, melted down to be sold as gold from the mines in the area. Saville managed to save a small part of one of the Sigsig/Gualaceo treasures, acquiring it for the Museum of the American Indian from Don Nicol’s Ribadeneyra of Guayaquil.
Following the momentum of Max Uhle and Jacinto Jijón’s archaeological investigations, others individuals, such as G.H.S. Bushnell, Roaul D’Harcourt, and Paul Bergsøe, began conducting research in coastal Ecuador. Two young history and geography teachers, Carlos Zevallos Menéndez and Francisco Huerta Rendón, followed suit, taking their senior students on archaeological field trips. At the beginning of World War II, Bushnell left Ecuador to fight for England, and U.S. anthropologists from the Andean Institute went to Ecuador to do archaeological work and help with the anti-Nazi war effort. Donald Collier and John V. Murra excavated in Cerro Narrío
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