Tiwanaku has long been the subject of study and curiosity of many researchers. Numerous descriptions were made by the Spanish chroniclers who told of these large ruins as early as 1549 when Pedro Cieza de Leon described Tiwanaku’s monumental stone structures in his
Cronica del Peru. Spanish interest in Tiwanaku was also stimulated by the Incas’ appropriation of the site in their creation myth. But little was written or reported during the next century, except in the occasional travel journal. An explanation for this silence in scholarly writing is given by Albarracin-Jordan (1996: 14) who suggests that the social tension and indigenous uprisings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries against the Bolivian feudal system intensified repulsion and hatred against Indians by the ruling white class of this country, and consequently demoted their cultural achievements and expressions.
A change in attitude towards these ruins took place during the Wars of Independence from Spanish rule, when Tiwanaku and the pre-Columbian past were espoused by young independents as icons of the new nation. This notion is confirmed by the fact that in 1825, Jose Antonio de Sucre—Bolivia’s second president and liberator—ordered the Gateway of the Sun at Tiwanaku to be dug out of the ground and raised as symbolic of the rising of the new nation (Ponce 1981). These nationalist sentiments were short-lived, as Bolivian republican intellectuals were later influenced by scientific racism in support of ideas on the innate criminality and inferiority of the indigenous Andeans. Writings of Bolivian scholars at this time portray Tiwanaku as either a symbol of a past that needed to be wiped out in order to move on to a more enlightened era, or as representative of a civilization forgotten by its indigenous descendants (Albo and Barnadas 1990).
Recognizably archaeological work did not begin at the site until 1863-1865 when American Ephraim George Squier visited Tiwanaku during his “travel and exploration in the land of the Incas.” Squier explored and investigated the monumental ruins, writing a description of the site, drawing a site plan, and illustrating the condition of the ruins in a series of plates. He called Tiwanaku “the American Stonehenge”. The German geologist Alphons Stubel worked at Tiwanaku in 1876-1877, during which time he photographed the ruins, drew panoramic sketches, and created a map of the site based on careful measurements. He later collaborated with Max Uhle on writing the first detailed description and interpretation of the site, Die Ruinenstatte von Tiahuanaco (Stubel and Uhle 1892). This book both defined the Tiahuanaco (as the site name was formerly spelled) pottery style and established the pre-Inca date of the site. But Uhle had not yet been to Bolivia. That trip came in 1894 (see discussion of Uhle’s research at Tiahuanaco in Rowe 1954). The work of the Germans was followed by a French multi disciplinary team, led by Count G. de Crequi-Montfort, that carried out a study of “Andean man,” including excavations at Tiwanaku (Crequi-Montfort 1906). Beginning around 1912 Arthur (Arturo) Posnansky, a Vienna-born Bolivian, became the key figure at the site, particularly in the production of Tiahuanaco as a national and, indeed, international phenomenon, for Posnansky interpreted Tiahuanaco as the “cradle of American man” (Stanish 2002: 171-172; see Posnansky 1945 and see below).
World History
