PREFACE 
The papers comprising this volume had their inception in a con- 
versation between several archeologists in a Vienna coffee house in 
August of 1960. We had been attending sessions of the 34th Inter- 
national Congress of Americanists, and had independently come to 
the same conclusion, namely, that the international forum provided 
by the Congress was being wasted by the presentation of papers deal- 
ing principally with local archeological problems of limited interest 
to anthropologists and nonspecialists. We agreed that it would be ap- 
propriate to organize for the following Congress to be held in Mexico 
City a session devoted to interpretative regional summaries of Latin 
American prehistory. 
Preparations for the session began during the winter of 1960-61 
with the selection of participants. A schedule of deadlines was estab- 
lished that would lead to the submission of final papers to the organiz- 
ing committee 6 weeks prior to the date of the Congress. Detailed in- 
structions were circulated in order to produce as much uniformity as 
possible in the organization and content of the papers. In addition to 
a manuscript, each participant was requested to supply the detailed 
information included in the Appendix. 
The goal of the symposium was to provide interpretative sum- 
maries of Latin American aboriginal cultural development rather than 
factual descriptions of archeological sequences. The participants were 
requested to keep data to a minimum and to present reconstructions 
that seem feasible, although they cannot always be completely dem- 
onstrated at the existing state of our knowledge. Each author is a 
specialist in the area he describes, being familiar not only with pub- 
lished sources but with sites and fieldwork that is not yet completely 
studied and published. His reconstruction draws upon this back- 
ground and weaves together the facts that seem to form a pattern of 
cultural development through time and space. It should not be as- 
sumed that the authors take credit for all the interpretations they pro- 
pose; they have followed instructions in providing a synthesis of 
what they believe to be the most acceptable conclusions about their 
area. Limitations placed on length of the papers do not allow dis- 
cussion of alternative interpretations or contradictory evidence. Ref- 
erences include literature cited and in some cases additional material 
of background interest, but do not pretend to be complete bibliog- 
raphies for the area. The well-informed reader will be aware of the 
