Spotlights
Archaeologist of the Month: Julio Tello
Julio César Tello, also known as the "Father of Peruvian Archaeology," was a prominent Peruvian archaeologist and an influential figure in the study of pre-Columbian cultures in Peru. His groundbreaking work laid the foundation for our understanding of ancient Peruvian civilizations and made significant contributions to the field of archaeology.
Tello was born on April 11, 1880, in Huarochirí, a region in the Andean highlands of Peru. He was of Indigenous descent, belonging to the Quechua people. Despite the many economic, financial, and cultural challenges that Indigenous people faced in Peru at this time, he was able to continue pursuing an education because his family noticed how bright he was at a young age. In 1893, he was given financial assistance from an aunt to attend a secondary school in Lima, which aided him greatly.
Tello encountered many hardships. While he went to high school, his father died, which put Tello under immense financial strain. He picked up many odd jobs to make ends meet, and when he was later told that his aunt died and there was no money for him to go to school, a chance connection offered him a job at the Biblioteca Nacional. That chance encounter was with Ricardo Palma, an accomplished Peruvian scholar and author.
His next pursuit was a degree in medicine, which he received from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM), the leading university in Peru. While completing his medical degree, Tello was also pursuing knowledge about archaeological pursuits, an interest spurred on through his time working at the Biblioteca Nacional. He then went to Harvard on a fellowship where he earned a master's degree in anthropology in 1911. He further expanded his knowledge through courses in anthropology and archaeology in Paris, Berlin, and London on a study abroad program.
When Tello returned to Peru in 1913, he was highly trained in anthropological and archaeological techniques. He wanted to discover the culture of his ancestors and of other Indigenous Andean peoples so he could preserve and understand the ancient history of his nation. His foreign education and strong convictions about pre-Columbian Indigenous Andean culture created rifts between him and his scholarly peers, but he persevered.
One of Tello’s most well-known achievements was his discovery and subsequent fieldwork at Chavín de Huántar, an archaeological site in Peru. He began his work at this site in the 1910s and continued his research and excavation of the area through the 1920s. He discovered that it was a religious center, and he also encountered the rich and complex Chavín culture. The Chavín people used various carving and stonework techniques to create obelisks and totems with distinct designs and masterful depictions of both the realistic and the fantastical. The people at Chavín were skilled in creating stone carvings, figurines, ceramic pottery, and more. Tello believed that this culture was indigenous to the Chavín people and it was later found that he was right: the culture and site both pre-dated the Inca empire.
Later, he became the director of the National Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Lima, Peru in 1939. His goal with his directorship was to house the artifacts and history of Indigenous Peruvian peoples to further educate people about the past of his nation. He also established a university archaeology museum at his alma mater, UNMSM. Additionally, he was involved in developing multiple archaeology programs at universities in Lima, Peru.
However, Tello’s greatest achievement, and the theme that ties most of his work together, is the concept that pre-Columbian Andean culture was indigenous to the ancient Andean peoples. Others at that time assumed that any culture found in ancient Peru would be from the influence of other prominent cultures at the time, like those from Mesopotamia or Asia. Another prominent scholar of the time, Uhle, theorized that the Chavín culture came from Central America. Tello fought hard to have the Chavín culture recognized as an important Indigenous culture, and not something unoriginal to the ancient Indigenous Andean peoples.
Tello was no stranger to hard work and unfair odds, starting from a humble and disadvantaged beginning to becoming the pioneering force of Peruvian and Andean archaeology. His efforts to preserve the cultural legacy of his nation and to show the world the importance of the pre-Columbian Andean people is still felt today.
Works Cited
Burger, Richard L. The Life and Writings of Julio C. Tello: America’s First Indigenous Archaeologist. University of Iowa Press, 2009.
Fagan, Brian, and Richard Burger. The Great Archaeologists, Thames & Hudson, London, NY, 2014, pp. 199–201.
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