in Cañar Province, and Wendell Bennett conducted research around Cuenca and southern Azuay Province. As World War II came to a close, Hans Dietrich Disselhoff, a former German administrator in occupied Denmark, carried out archaeological research in Manantial de Guangala.

Meanwhile, gold-rich sites continued to be looted, and archaeological gold was melted and formed into ingots. Looters began to keep some of the ceramic and other artifacts, which they sold to a new breed of collectors—those who became interested in local culture-history. A Swiss businessman, Max Konantz, began his collection by buying from looters in the Cuenca area. Local landowners and farmers also started to collect archaeological artifacts.

1950–1965: The Historical Classificatory Period—The Advent of C-14

Bushnell published his coastal chronology in The Archaeology of the Santa Elena Peninsula in South West Ecuador (1951), and Collier and Murra published theirs for the cultures of the southern Ecuadorean Andes. However, because stratified materials were not always superimposed, Bushnell, like Jijón y Caamaño before him, inverted part of his sequence. However, Willard Libby’s discovery of C-14 dating was soon conceived as the panacea that would cure all ailments in archaeological chronologies. Establishing a workable chronology was problematic prior to the application of radiometric (C-14) dating. Both Bushnell’s coastal chronology and Collier and Murra’s chronology of the Southern Ecuadorian Andes experienced difficulties.

With the advent of C-14 the emphasis on excavating archaeological deposits by their “natural stratigraphy” declined, and simpler means of excavation—artificial stratigraphy, for instance, by metric levels—became widespread, providing more secure archaeological sequences. A Guayaquil businessman turned archaeologist, Emilio Estrada, began to build a new chronology for the Ecuadorean coast. Estrada was later joined by Clifford Evans and Betty J. Meggers from the Smithsonian Institution, and together they built the basic chronology for Ecuador. It still stands today, with some addenda and modifications made by others. The single most important modification has been Betsy Hill’s 1972–1974 refinement of the Valdivia from four to eight phases, and the more recent eleven-phase refinement by Marcos and Obelic in 1998. During this period the most significant contribution to the knowledge of the archaeology of the Ecuadorian coast derived from the excavations at San Pablo by Carlos Zevallos and Olaf Holm. Although they published only a preliminary report, their excellent excavation permitted a more comprehensive view of Valdivia society. Zevallos later published an article that correctly postulated the agricultural base for the development of Valdivia society.

Meggers and Evans introduced type frequency seriation into Ecuador. This was a laboratory-analysis method developed by James A. Ford for his excavations in the lower Mississippi, which went hand in hand with the excavation of arbitrary levels. The publication of information on Zevallos and Holm’s excavations at San Pablo may well have convinced many archaeologists of the limitations of metric stratigraphy and type frequency seriation (see Classification; Dating).

Estrada convinced other aficionados to take part in the archaeological research in coastal Ecuador. Richard Zeller, prompted by Estrada, began a long love affair with Guangala sites in the Jabita River basin, north of the Santa Elena Peninsula. Olaf Holm, cooperating at first with Zevallos at San Pablo, moved to Joa in southern Manabí Province to study evidences of copper metallurgy, and in the eastern lowlands Estrada, Meggers, and Evans began supporting Fr. PedroI. Porras’s archaeological research.

During this period archaeologists in Ecuador, following Konantz, began to supplement their excavations with collections, acquiring fortuitous finds from farmers as well as artifacts from merchants who bought from looters, known as guaqueros. Zevallos built the gold museum for the Casa de la Cultura de Guayaquil by such acquisitions; the ceramic and other artifacts came from archaeological excavations he and his associates conducted. Estrada supplemented the collection of the Victor Emilio Estrada Museum, buying both whole