Prehistoric Nasca embroidered child's
                                                                       tunic fragment, Peru; 16-19107

           Max Uhle is considered the father of archaeology in South America because of the unparalleled amount of time and research that he has devoted to the development of South American archaeology.  The majority of his contributions to the study of Western South America are the amount of artifacts that he amassed during his three decades of digging in the area.  Since then many of his finds and theories have been used to increase the knowledge of chronology, culture, and people of Western South America during the preceding two millenniums.

            Uhle was born in 1856 in Germany, where he grew up and studied until he went to South America for the first time in 1892.  He began his career as an archaeologist in the field of linguistics.  He received his Ph.D. in 1880 after he wrote his thesis on medieval Chinese grammar.  He spent the next seven years as the director’s assistant at the Anthropologisch-Ethnographisches Museum in Dresden.  Many of his writings emphasized Malaya and New Guinea; however, this is probably due to the nature of the museum’s collection (Rowe 1954).  It was in 1888 that a close friend, Alphons Stubel, who had recently published an article on the history of Peruvian archaeology, influenced Uhle into concentrating his studies on that region.  During the next four years he wrote many publications on South American Archaeology, including one book.  He wrote extensively on the Chibcha language, chronology, and interpretations of sites in Bolivia, Peru, and Chile.  By the time that he first went to South America in 1892 he was already known to be one of the most knowledgeable scholars on lost South American civilizations.

            Beginning in 1892 he began an intense exploration of Argentina, which included sites at Cordoba, Catamarca, Tinogasta, Fiambala, Tucuman, Calchaqui, and Salta.  During this period he wrote about how he was discovering his love for field study and his desire to continue his exploration and improve his excavation methods.  This period of his life had a major impact on his further study because it was then that he discovered his true intellectual desires (Rowe 1954).  His excavations took him to Bolivia, where he made a startling discovery at Tiwanaku; the Bolivian army was using ancient sculptures for rifle practice.  He petitioned the government to stop such action, which they did, but at the same time the Bolivian government called for the end of all excavations in Bolivia.  For the following months Uhle struggled to continue his work in Bolivia.  Before he even left Germany Uhle had written a detailed architectural interpretation of the site that established Tiwanaku as Pre-Inca in date and laid foundations for an Andean chronology, which he later added to throughout his studies of the pottery and textile in the region.  Uhle eventually became so frustrated by the Bolivians mandate against excavations, that he moved his studies to Peru.

            In January of 1896 he began his most prolific and detailed excavation at Pachacamac in Peru.  He spent over a year there and made thousands of discoveries ranging from mummies to exotic pottery.  He also made many discoveries on the cultural diversity of the region and the stratigraphy of Pachacamac, however, much of his work concentrated on the search for more artifacts.  Many of his finds are located in Berlin and Philadelphia, where today archaeologists are using more advanced technology to help them gain a greater knowledge of these civilizations.  One example of this is when one of the mummies was examined through the use of X-ray to examine the contents.  The outside of this mummy was a textile material with a head that was made of wood.  The X-ray showed that the body was in a "deliberate tightly-flexed position," and that the body was preserved by natural means and was not purposely meant to be preserved.  There were other aspects of the X-ray findings that were particularly more interesting.  The X-rays showed that the mummy was about twelve years old when she had died.  Further examination of the skull proved that the plates of the skull were abnormally separated, meaning that she had probably died from tuberculosis meningitis, which causes there to be abnormal separation of intracranial positions.  This raises an interesting question because those that inhabited this region during this period are known to have used four different methods of trephination that had about a 50% success rate of curing the disease.  Uhle found the mummy near prominent political figures of the time, so the girl found was probably from a wealthy family.  This has caused modern archaeologists to wonder why the family did not attempt to salvage the life of the child.  One theory is that this child may have been the victim of child sacrifice (Fleming 1986). This is an example of the type of research that the Uhle finds are allowing modern scientists to do.

            After losing his funding from Germany he went to the University of Pennsylvania where he met Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, a wealthy woman who had a love for Uhle’s work.  She helped to fund Uhle during the next decade and was one of the reasons that allowed him to continue excavating on a grand scale.  He spent nearly two years in the United States until 1899 when he returned to Peru to continue his work.  During the following years he collected approximately 9,200 artifacts spanning 3,000 years of Peruvian pre-history (Mankato State University).  Other than the shear number of pottery, shells, textiles, metals, and mummies that Uhle found, his other main concentration was the dating of the artifacts.  Most of this was based on the designs of the textiles.  His dating was most successful (Collier 1955) with the artifacts that he found in the Mocha Valley, where he established the sequential position of Inca ceramic styles.  This early dating was later advanced by Alfred Kroeber and is one of the key points in understanding the chronology of pre-Inca Peru.  Uhle has made one major mistake during his career even though much of his equipment and technology was far inferior than what it is today (Rowe 1954).  This was in the Chancay Valley in Peru where he dated a set of pottery styles incorrectly and was not corrected until 1942.   Unfortunately, it was at this sight in 1903 in the Chancay Valley that Uhle fell into a ten-foot excavation and sprained his neck severely.  He claimed that it did not slow him down, but there is a profound reduction of the rate in which he continued his work.

            After 1905 he spent most of his time in South America helping to create museums and making lectures at universities.  He also continued to excavate sights, but he did not continue at the old pace, which he had become known for during the preceding decades.  Despite this he made many more discoveries of artifacts and sights in South America.

            In 1924 Uhle made a series of lectures on the methods and aims of archaeology, which are known to be his "only extensive statement of his general views on archaeological problems"  (Rowe 1954:17).  He begins this lecture by stating that archaeology is the search and "study of lost civilizations…for the progress of the civilizations of the present" (Uhle in Rowe 1954:54).  He goes on to explain how archaeology is a form of science that is starting to blossom.  Uhle concentrates on the importance of studying archaeology and where it will eventually lead.  During this period archaeology was going through a phase referred to as "culture history," which is the process of determining the date and place of what took place.  Uhle made significant contributions to this form of archaeology, but he also predicted future advances that were ahead of his time.  Uhle explains in his lecture that "archaeology is also in a close and active relationship with ethnology" (Uhle in Rowe 1954:61).  This shows that Uhle is trying to combine the knowledge of different disciplines, something that did not fully evolve until many years after Uhle delivered these lectures.  Uhle even made some hints during these lectures of trying to look at the relationship between art of lost civilizations and that of modern time.  Although Uhle did not make an effort to attempt such a feat, his assertions in this lecture provided a direction for future archaeologists looking to develop the field.  These lectures mainly concentrated on his finds in the Andean civilizations, and he did not make many concerted efforts to try and theorize more about them.  John Rowe in his biography of Uhle criticizes him for never trying to expand the theoretical problems and accepting a "theory about cultural history early in life and that it did not occur to him to question it later" (Rowe 1954:19).  Uhle did spend much of his life simply finding artifacts and attempting to date them, but it is shown in these lectures that Uhle did make some effort to help guide archaeology in a new direction during the later parts of his career.  It is also notable that Uhle did not publish much of his work.  This may be part of the reason that many of Uhle’s theoretical assertions are not widely known and did not play major roles in the future development of archaeology.

            Max Uhle made significant contributions to archaeology by being the first to make extensive excavations in South America.  He also followed up this work by helping date the finds and thus setting the basic chronology of this area.   Uhle spent almost all of his time concerned with his finds and was not known for his theoretical assertions of his finds.   He did hint during the later parts of his career about the direction of archaeology, to which he was accurate, but he never attempted to help archaeology move in this direction.  His finds have proved to be extremely helpful in modern examinations of ancient Peru, and many of the ruins continue to be excavated during the 20th century.  Uhle’s excavations have become well renowned and he has become known as a master of "culture history."

Bibliography

Collier, Donald
                1954     Cultural chronology and change as reflected in the ceramics of the Viru Valley, Peru. Chicago: Chicago
                             Natural History Museum.

Fleming, Robert
                1986     "The Mummies of Pachacamac:  An exceptional Legacy from Uhle’s 1896 Excavations."  Expedition
                            28:3:39-45.

Kolata, Alan
                1993      The Tiwanaku: Portrait of an Andean Civilization.  Cambridge: Blackwell.

Mankato State University
                1998        "Max Uhle."
                                [http://kroeber.anthro.mankato.msus.edu/bio/uhle.html].

Rowe, John Howland
                1955         Max Uhle, 1856-1944.  Los Angeles:  University of California Press.

Uhle, Max
                1923         "The Aims and Results of Archaeology: Lecture 1, May 9, 1923."  Los Angeles:  University of
                                CaliforniaPress.

Uhle’s Writings

Uhle, Max
                1881         Beitrage zur Grammatik des vorklassischen Chinesisch:  1. Die Partikel wei im Schu-king und Schi-king, mit
                                autographierten Schrifttafeln.  T. O. Weigel, Leipzig.x, 106 pp.; 18pls. Of Chinese text.   (Uhle’s Doctoral
                                Thesis)

Uhle, Max
                1890         Kultur und Industrie sudameridkanischer Volker, nach den im Besitze des Museums fur Volkerkunde zu
                                Leipzig vefindlichen Sammlungen von A. Stubel, W. Reiss und B. Koppel.  2 vols.  Berlin: Verlag von A.
                                Asher & Co.  (First writings on South America)

Uhle, Max and Stubel, Alphons
                1891         Die Ruinenstaette von Tiahuanaco im Hochlande des alten Peru.  Leipzig:  Verlag von Karl W.
                                Hiersemann.  (Established date at Tihuanaco as pre-Inca)
 

Uhle, Max
               1903          Pachacamac.  Report of the William Pepper, M.D., LL.D., Peruvian Expedition of 1896.  Philadelphia:
                                University of Pennsylvania Press.  (One of his only publications on his finds.)

Uhle, Max
                1954        "The Aims and Results of Archaeology: Lecture 1, May 9, 1923."  Los Angeles:  University of California
                                Press.