pots and other artifacts from guaqueros from Manabí. Although this method allowed researchers to supplement museum exhibitions with looted material validated by the archaeological data, it also set a trend that, with time, was exacerbated and became disproportionate, ultimately increasing the looting of archaeological sites.

1965–1974: Questioning Type Frequency Seriation

With the appearance in 1965 of the smithsonian institution’s publication The Formative Period of Ecuador: Valdivia and Machalilla Phases, by Meggers, Evans, and Estrada, some archaeologists (Donald Collier, Jon Müller, Donald Lathrap, and Henning Bischof, among others) began to question the Jomôn origin for Valdivia, as well as the excavation method used and especially type frequency seriation.

Edward P. Lanning and his students from Columbia University began a research project in the Santa Elena Peninsula, contributing to the refinement of all cultural phases proposed by Estrada and in Meggers’s Ecuador. Lanning’s efforts were also directed at rescuing the excellent data published by Bushnell (1951). Zevallos cooperated with Lanning, and after that point he and his students began to use the stylistic seriation developed by John Rowe in his studies in the Ica Valley in Peru.

Toward the end of this period a florescent epoch for Ecuadorean archaeology commenced. José Alcina Franch and his students at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid began a series of research campaigns in Ecuador that would continue into the next period. Alcina made many contributions to the archaeology of Esmeraldas Province and the Inca site of Ingapirca in Cañar. At Cochasquí, north of Quito, a team from the University of Bonn, under the direction of Udo Oberem, restudied the site that had been excavated by Uhle in the 1920s. Karen Stothert, under the direction of Edward Lanning, began her research at the Vegas preceramic site, and Jorge G. Marcos located the Valdivia site of Real Alto and was pursuing his doctorate at the University of Illinois.

Guillermo Pérez Chiriboga—then president of the Central Bank of Ecuador—decided to create a gold museum at the bank when he realized that much of the gold bullion it bought had been archaeological gold. In some of the ingots he was able to see vestiges of the artifacts that had been melted down to form the bars. In creating the gold museum he intended to save archaeological gold from destruction, and he soon decided to broaden the scope of the museum to include all archaeological artifacts. Going beyond the initial concept, the Central Bank created the Museum for the Archaeology of Ecuador.

The museum fund was built on the acquisition of the Konantz Collection and a few other, smaller private collections. As it grew, its directors began to procure exceptional archaeological pieces from some guaqueros, and in time the negative effect of increased looting became apparent.

1974–1978: The Beginning of Explanatory Archaeology in Ecuador

In August 1974 an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and other specialists from the University of Illinois—led by Donald W. Lathrap and his student Jorge Marcos—arrived in the Santa Elena Peninsula to begin research at Real Alto, the site that Marcos had discovered. This investigation marked the beginning of explanatory archaeology in Ecuador. Up to that time archaeologists had been content to describe their finds or to construct hypotheses based on routes and ways of diffusion. They also postulated possible social organization based only on their site finds and on prejudices about the level of society reached by the ancestors of the present native population in the area. Another form of prejudice was evident in regard to the environment. A heavily deforested area during the second half of the twentieth century was considered by many archaeologists as a model for the ancient environs of the Santa Elena Peninsula. At Real Alto environmental reconstruction, area excavation, biological and forensic studies of skeletal material, geologic studies of the Tablazo formation, quantification and use patterns in milling stones, and ceramic modal and functional analysis represented a shift in the right direction. The excavation of the Cotocollao site in Quito by Peterson and Villalba, which