The culture area concept as developed by Wissler has had only limited applicability to archaeology, since it depends too much on specific elements or traits, is too heavily weighted by subsistence, is not sharply enough defined, is too inclusive, and is too static in time. Although Wissler divided the New World into a number of archaeological culture areas, these have not been very meaningful, since they lump gross elements with total disregard for time, which results more in confusion than in significant classification.

Since the beginnings of scientific archaeology in Peru investigators have employed the concept of the “horizon” or “horizon style” in attempting to reconstruct the major outlines of Central Andean prehistory. This formulation of the horizon is an abstraction based upon the recurrence of specific features of style or manufacture in prehistoric artifacts, ‘mainly pottery, from one region to another so that the phenomena become pan-Peruvian in scope and coordinate our knowledge of the past in a broad temporal and spatial scheme. This integration is made possible when the same stylistic or technical complex of traits is found in the respective culture sequences of geographically widely separated regions, and by this means the two or more sequences are brought together and equated in time. The constructs of horizons have been useful synthesizing elements in the understanding of Peruvian archaeology on the level of time-space systematics. As yet, however, there has been little consideration of their functional significance in the prehistoric native societies of which they were a part. This present exploratory analysis ventures to define and characterize as cultural forces on the level of social interaction what heretofore have been viewed chiefly as historical phenomena.

Studies of physical remains in aboriginal Peru have lagged behind those concerned with archaeology, and barely enough is known of Peruvian racial history to permit a synthesis at this time. Difficulties are three-fold: first, few physical anthropologists with a proper sense of problem have worked there; second, archaeologically documented skeletal series from Peru are not plentiful; and third, cranial deformation, while culturally of vital interest, tends to mask racial characters. Furthermore, sweeping generalizations from meager evidence by Imbelloni and others have persuaded the uncritical that the racial problems of the aboriginal Peru-Bolivian area have been largely solved. Actually, physical anthropology in Peru as compared to the archaeology is just entering the Uhle stage of rigorous scientific method. Now is the time, therefore, to reappraise our knowledge and to outline future research.

Since distance and field work obligations will unfortunately prevent my attendance at the Viking Fund-Institute of Andean Research meeting on Peruvian prehistory, I would like my colleagues to accept a few written notes on one of the subjects that will probably be discussed: the problem of basic highland culture. I am not sure that I understand why the problem was posed in terms of the highlands alone. My impression of the Peruvian archaeological picture is that the differences between highland sub-areas and coastal sub-areas is hardly greater than what one finds between adjacent highland sub-areas. Even in geographical terms the differences between highland sub-areas are very great. The problem is still an Andean one.

This is a tentative résumé of the work done on the preceramic horizons in Chicama and Virú valleys as a part of the Virú Valley Project of 1946. Before summarizing the results of excavations in the old midden deposits, mention should be made of the recent physiographic changes in the Virú Valley. These have a definite connection with the prehistory.

The drainage of the south arm of the valley starts at an elevation of slightly over 4000 meters with the two highest forks on the flanks of a 4200 meter peak. This section is today completely ice free, but as the general level for glacial moraines in this part of Peru runs between 3200 and 3400 meters, with one moraine in the Callejon de Huaylas down to 1800 meters, it is obvious that the physiography of the valley was once influenced by water either discharged directly from glaciers or draining from a greater area of condensation.

The Peruvian records indicate that the guano islands (Fig. 14) yielded, between 1826 and 1875, several thousand artifacts of pre-Conquest origin. These are probably only a fraction of the archaeological material actually discovered during the commercial destruction of guano caps. Most of it has been lost; several hundred specimens in the museums of Europe and America still retain some record of their origin; and a small group of pieces, with which this paper is principally concerned, are known to have been discovered under stratified and depth-recorded conditions.

While I have become less, rather than more, certain of the possibility of correlating traditional dynasty lists with archaeological periods since American Antiquity published my paper on the subject, the possibility is still worth exploring in an area where we have so few absolute dates to go on. In this connection, I would like to call the attention of the meeting to a document on Chimu history which, to my shame, I ran across only recently, though it was first published in 1936.

The document in question is a fragment of the first chapter of an anonymous history of Trujillo, written in that city in 1604. The manuscript was found in Lima by Father Vargas Ugarte and published in the Revista Histórica. A translation is submitted which should be of considerable interest.

The following account of ancient remains in northern Peru is the result of a reconnaissance during May, 1941 from Cabo Blanco southward to Piura. The surface collections from various archaeological sites, now in the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, have not yet been repaired and will be published subsequently. The present report, however, includes material from local collections, which tells the basic story.

The region of which we write embraces two river valleys: Parinas and Chira (Fig. 44). The Parinas, according to a classification published by Kroeber, is a third-class river which reaches the sea a few miles north of the oil port of Talara. When I saw it, there was considerable flow of water, but automobiles could cross in places.

One of the most archaeologically significant characteristics of highland Andean cultures is the stone-sculpturing tradition. Most of the reports that have been published to date deal with the more spectacular sites of Tiahuanaco in the south highlands and Chavín de Huántar in the north highlands, but little has appeared to indicate the widespread existence of stone sculpture throughout the Peruvian highlands and the centers where the tradition is particularly strong. It is the purpose of this paper to summarize the stone sculpture in the Callejón de Huaylas area and to indicate its relationship to the accepted archaeological horizons in the north highlands.

Several attempts have been made in the past to recognize in prehistoric Ecuador the influence of various Peruvian horizon styles. These Peruvian influences, if real, are of considerable chronological and historical importance. It is my purpose to examine and assess them by considering three groups of Ecuadorean materials, namely, ceramics, gold, and gilded copper from Azuay, and carved stone from Manabí.

In order to interpret fully the meaning of Peruvian resemblances in Ecuador, it is necessary to know the relative chronological position of the Ecuadorean materials showing these resemblances. Unfortunately, despite the advantage of a widely distributed Inca horizon style in Ecuador, which serves to identify the terminal phases of regional archaeological sequences, there is no satisfactory chronological system for the country as a whole, nor for any one of its regions.

This paper presents the gist of informal remarks made at the Conference on Peruvian Prehistory, with some added comment pertaining to Bennett's views on the revision of the south Titicaca basin sequence. Full documentation, and the illustrative material indispensable for such comparative studies will be presented in the final report on excavations at Pucara.

Since Pucara is the only site in the northern Titicaca basin at which excavation on even a moderate scale has been attempted, its relationship to Tiahuanaco and other sites in Bolivia and southern Puno are of obvious interest, especially since the bulk of the Pucara materials represents a culture obviously sharing many of the ideas expressed in Tiahuanaco art. This being the case, the question then arises as to whether the “Classic” phase of Pucara precedes the Tiahuanaco periods, is contemporaneous with one or all of them as a regional manifestation in the northern basin, or is a later development in the southern basin tradition.

Acareful review of field notes and collections from Tiahuanaco, Chiripa, and Pariti and comparison with the preliminary reports by Kidder on Pucara and M. Tschopik on the north Titicaca basin suggest a change in the position of Chiripa in the Bolivian sequences previously reported. The evidence for this change is briefly reviewed.

The Chiripa mound has four major levels: (1) top soil, from 0 to .50 meters; (2) post-house level, from .50 to 2.0 meters; (3) house level, from 2.0 to 3.0 meters; (4) pre-house and premound levels, from 3.0 to 5.0 meters. The house and pre-house levels, (3) and (4), contain unmixed Chiripa materials. The post-house levels, (1) and (2), show a continuation of Chiripa materials plus an intrusive Decadent Tiahuanaco, represented by burials, sherds, a semi-subter-ranean temple, and a facing wall.

It is the purpose of the present paper to discuss, as briefly as possible, the manner in which major Peruvian cultural periods or epochs have been determined to the present and to suggest certain modifications as the result of recent objective, refuse-heap, stratigraphic studies, particularly those in the Virú Valley of Peru. It must be obvious to all students in the Peruvian field that our present terminology for major cultural epochs in prehistoric Peru is inconsistent and unsatisfactory. That this is due in considerable part to the recent great increases in stratigraphic knowledge makes such a re-evaluation even more necessary. Assuming, with Kroeber, “That the foundations of scientific archaeology in Peru were laid by Max Uhle,” and that, “the only general scheme of interpretation … not founded essentially on Uhle's” is that of Julio Tello, we will, very briefly, discuss these two major theoretical approaches.

To understand better the nature of the American Indian civilizations they must be viewed as a whole. To do this it is necessary, as Dr. Steward indicated in his paper, to establish adequate bases for the comparison of general trends in cultural development, leaving out for the time being the frequently confusing individual traits and peculiarities of style.

Such a point of departure requires a re-evaluation of our knowledge of the Meso-American cultural sequence, but to do this there is the obvious difficulty that the available information is as yet quite inadequate. From the beginning of the modern period of research in this area the efforts of most investigators were attracted almost exclusively to the ceremonial aspects of Meso-American civilization and their artistic expressions. Perhaps inevitable because of the dazzling splendor of the ruined buildings and ritualistic art, this resulted, nevertheless, in an overbalance of our knowledge in that direction.