Max Uhle

Max Uhle was a German archaeologist whose work in Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia at the turn of the 20th century had a significant impact on the practice of South American archaeology. Born in Dresden and trained as a philologist, he took his doctorate at the University of Leipzig in 1880, and in 1892 published, with B. von Grumbkow, the first in-depth scientific account of Tiwanaku. From 1896 he excavated Pachacamac and Mochica and Chimu sites, recovering about 9,000 artifacts, and built a chronology from their styles that Alfred Kroeber later advanced and that remains key to the dating of pre-Inca Peru. In 1917 he was the first to describe the Chinchorro mummies scientifically.