Tello, Julio César (1880–1947)

Julio César Tello (b. 11 April 1880; d. 3 June 1947), Peruvian who played a central role in initiating the scientific study of Andean prehistory and establishing the institutional framework for protecting and conserving the Peruvian archaeological patrimony. A native Quechua speaker from Huarochirí, in the highlands east of Lima, Tello brought to his research an indigenous perspective and a passionate commitment to uncovering and elucidating the accomplishments of Andean cultures before the Spanish conquest.

Tello studied science and medicine at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and wrote his doctoral dissertation on the antiquity of syphilis in Peru. With support from the Peruvian government he subsequently attended Harvard, where he studied archaeology and anthropology at the Peabody Museum and completed a master's degree in anthropology. Tello then studied at London University before returning to Peru as that nation's first professional archaeologist. He immediately became the director of archaeology at the Museo Histórico Nacional and launched a series of expeditions that made him world famous.

By 1924 Tello had been appointed director of both archaeological museums in Lima while introducing the teaching of archaeology and anthropology into the Peruvian university system. During a remarkable career that spanned four decades, Tello founded anthropological journals, including Chaski, Inca, and Wira-kocha, as well as Peru's principal archaeological museum, the Museo Nacional de Antropología y Arqueología.

Concurrent with these academic activities, Tello carried on a political career dedicated to the defense of Peru's indigenous population. In 1917 he was elected as Haurochirí's representative to Congress, where he served for the next eleven years.

Tello's explorations and discoveries covered much of the Peruvian coast and highlands. He identified the Chavín civilization as the matrix out of which later Peruvian cultures developed, and he considered the highland site of Chavín de Huántar as its center. Many of Tello's most important investigations—including those at Paracas on the south coast; Ancón on the central coast; Cerro Sechín, Moxeke, and Cerro Blanco (Nepeña) on the north-central coast; and Kuntur Wasi and Cumbemayo in the northern highlands—demonstrated the existence, temporal priority, and panregional extent of what is now known as the Chavín horizon. By establishing that highland Chavín civilization preceded the better-known coastal cultures such as Moche and Nasea, Tello was able to demonstrate the autochthonous character of Andean civilization and disprove Max Uhle's hypothesis of Mesoamerican and Asian origins of Peruvian high culture. Tello's contention that the roots of Andean civilization lay in still earlier developments within the tropical forest, bolstered by his research at the site of Kotosh, also proved to be influential. His contributions to later Peruvian prehistory include his excavations of the Inca occupation at Pachacamac. Tello's theoretical orientation differed significantly from the approach advocated by his North American colleagues, and in many respects his publications anticipated the ecological and structuralist approaches that became popular many decades later in U.S. and European archaeology.

Tello's publications include "Wira-Kocha," in Inka, 1, no. 1 (1923): 94-320, and 1, no. 3 (1923): 583-606; "Discovery of the Chavín Culture in Peru," in American Antiquity, 9, no. 1 (1942): 35-66; Origen y desarrollo de las civilizaciones prehistóricas andinas (1942); Arqueología del Valle de Casma (1956); Paracas, 2 vols. (1959–1979); Chavín, cultura matriz de la civilización andina (1960); Páginas escogidas (1967).

See alsoAnthropology; Archaeology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A good source of biographical and bibliographical information is S. K. Lothrop, "Julio C. Tello, 1880–1947," in American Antiquity, 14 (July 1948): 50-56.

Additional Bibliography

Amat Olazabal, Hernán, and Luis Guzmán Palomino. Julio C. Tello: Forjador del Perú autentico. Lima: Centro de Estudios Históric-Militares del Perú, 1997.

Jaguande D'Anjoy, Alfonso. El sabio Julio C. Tello. Lima: A. Jagaunde D'Anjoy, 2001.

                                    Richard L. Burger