Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/52

 THE CALCHAQUI: AN ARCHEOLOGICAL PROBLEM

The titles given below name but a small fraction of the articles and works which have appeared in the last decade on the ancient tribes of the Calchaqui and the archeology of the area they inhabited.

This fervor of investigation is fully justified by the importance of the questions to be settled. They rank among the first in the palethnology of the South American continent. Nowhere else east of the Andes are found remains of a culture rivaling that of Peru, and rising distinctly into that of the Age of Metals.

What relations did this culture bear to that of the Aymara and Quichua? Was is the child or the parent of the latter? Or does it reveal an independent center of civilization? What were the ethnic and linguistic affiliations of the people who occupied that area at the time of the conquest, and were they the authors of that culture?

These are the inquiries which for years have been engaging the attention of the leading antiquaries in Argentina, and it is my intention at present very briefly to state the conclusions to which they have arrived.

A few descriptive words will not be amiss. The ancient province of Tucumán, of the once viceroyalty of Buenos Aires, lay at