320 Philip Ainsworth Means, 



and Bolivia, with a view first to finding out the distribution of 

 each and every element, and ultimately to arriving at some safe 

 and permanently tenable opinion as to the cultural ancestry of 

 each of the cultures that have flourished in the several regions. 



The writer also believes that it is time for a serious attempt 

 to be made to construct for the various cultures of pre-Columbian 

 Peruvian art a chronology, supplied with approximate dates, simi- 

 lar to the one already established for ttie Maya area. In order to 

 arrive at any permanently valuable opinion as to the cultural 

 position and cultural ancestry of these Peruvian art-types, it 

 will be necessary first to know, at least approximately, when and 

 how long they flourished. For many years it has been the 

 fashion for South American archaeologists to look askance at all 

 efforts to construct a chronology. The recent researches of 

 Dr. Uhle, of the late Sir Clements Markham, of Sr. Arturo 

 Posnansky, of the late Dr. Gonzalez de la Rosa and of others 

 have, however, afforded material that seems to justify a formal 

 undertaking of the construction of a date-chronology for the 

 various Peruvian cultures. The author has already made a 

 tentative effort in this direction,^ and the reception it has met 

 with has encouraged him to pursue the matter further. It is 

 inevitable that discussion of this important matter should finally 

 result in the establishment of a reasonably correct date-chronol- 

 ogy. Accordingly, in the hope of bringing that desideratum of 

 Peruvian archaeology nearer, he has ventured to insert at the 

 end of this study a tentative date-chronology of the various art- 

 periods or cultures of early Peru. 



The author is greatly indebted to many people for the aid, 

 of various sorts, that they have given him during the preparation 

 of this paper. Chief among these are the following: Dr. Roland 

 B. Dixon, of Harvard University; Dr. Alfred M. Tozzer, of 

 Harvard University; Dr. George F. Eaton, of Yale University; 

 Professor George Grant MacCurdy, of Yale University; Dr. 

 Herbert J. Spinden, of the American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory; Mr. Charles W. Mead, of the American Museum of 

 Natural History ; Professor Marshall H. Saville, of the Museum 

 of the American Indian ; Mr. Sylvanus Griswold Morley, of the 

 Carnegie Institution; Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, of the United States 



^ Means, 1917. 



