Max Uhle was a German archaeologist born on March 25, 1856, in Dresden, Germany. At the age of 13, Max Uhle entered the Koniglich Siichsische Fiirsten-und Landesschule, St. Afra bei Meissen. In 1875, he graduated from this school and began attending the University of Leipzig. That same year, he performed his military service.
In 1876 he attended a year at the University of Göttingen. However, in 1877 he returned to the University of Leipzig, where he remained until obtaining his doctorate in linguistics (1880).
In 1881, he began working at the Royal Museum of Zoology, Anthropology, and Archaeology in Dresden, where he remained for seven years. During this time, he focused his work on anthropology.
During Uhle's time at the Dresden Museum, the first descriptive work on an excavation in the Andean region of Peru was published. This work, titled "The Ancón Necropolis in Peru," would influence Max Uhle's career.
In 1888, Uhle decided to dedicate himself to Andean anthropology. He resigned from the Dresden Museum and moved to the Museum Für Völkerkunde in Berlin.
Transfer to Berlin
The museum's director, Adolf Bastian, visited the Andes and published three volumes about his experience. Similarly, Wilhelm Reiss (co-author of "The Ancon Necropolis in Peru") was a member of this museum. This is why the Berlin Museum was one of the most attractive alternatives for a student interested in Peru.
Uhle remained at the Berlin Museum for four years. During this time, he participated in the International Congress of Americanists. At this congress, he presented a book and an essay. The book was a study of archaeological specimens found in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru. The essay was a dissertation on the Chibcha languages.
He published other books of great importance, such as “Kultur und Industrie südamenikanischer Völker” and “Die Ruinenstätte von Tihuanaco”.
Traveling in Argentina and Bolivia
Finally, in 1892, he received the opportunity to travel to South America to conduct fieldwork. On his first trip, he went to Argentina and Bolivia.
He explored archaeological sites in the provinces of Catamarca and La Rioja in Argentina. In Bolivia, he explored the mummies of Quebrada de Talina and Tupiza.
However, his greatest interest in this country was not the archaeological remains, but the population, which caught his attention because it was aboriginal in customs and language.
After three years of expeditions sponsored by the Berlin Museum, Adolf Bastian submitted Uhle's work to the University of Pennsylvania (United States). Thus, in 1895, Max Uhle began working for the American institute.
Jobs in Peru
In 1896, he left Bolivia and began working in Peru. There, he participated in the excavations at Ancon and Pachacamac. In 1897, he traveled to Philadelphia to write a report on the discoveries at Pachacamac.
In Philadelphia, he met Charlotte Dorothee Grosse, who translated Uhle's reports from German into English. In 1899, the University of Pennsylvania transferred sponsorship of Uhle's expeditions to the University of California.
That same year, he traveled to Peru. He studied the ethnography of several sites and participated in several excavations at Cerro Blanco, Huaca del Sol, and Huaca de la Luna. Among his most important achievements was the discovery of a Chimu cemetery at Huaca de la Luna.
In 1901, he returned to the United States. In 1903, he received the title of professor of Peruvian archaeology. On June 10 of that year, Max Uhle and Charlotte Grosse were married.
In November 1903, Uhle embarked on a three-year expedition to Peru (sponsored by the University of California). During this expedition, he visited Cuzco, Cacha, Puno, and Arequipa.
In 1905, he returned to Lima, where he received an offer from the Peruvian government to take over the National Archaeological Museum of Peru. Uhle accepted the offer and remained at the museum until 1912.
From 1912 to 1915, she worked at the Museum of Ethnology and Anthropology in Chile. In 1919, Charlotte Uhle died in Argentina.
After his wife's death, Max Uhle worked in Ecuador for several years. In 1933, he returned to Germany, where he lived on a pension provided by the German government and his work at the Ibero-American Institute and the University of Berlin.
In 1939 he returned to Peru, where he had to remain until 1942 due to World War II. He died on May 11, 1944 in Loben.
Contributions by Max Uhle
Max Uhle made several contributions to the study of South American aboriginal societies. These contributions were made in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics.
His work in Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Ecuador had a major impact on the development and practice of archaeology in South America.
First works
Max Uhle's first significant works were those he presented at the 1888 International Congress of Americanists.
During this period, he published a book and an essay. The book contained dissertations on archaeological remains from the Berlin Museum collection, found in Mexico, Peru, and Colombia.
The essay, in turn, was a study of the Chibcha languages and their classification. In this essay, Uhle applied the Indo-European method to the study of American aboriginal languages.
This represented a breakthrough, as it had never been done before. This study formed the basis for the classification of the Chibcha family, despite its linguistic errors.
Between 1889 and 1890, Uhle published "Kultur und Industrie südamenikanischer Völker." This work is a two-volume study.
These collections analyze archaeological and ethnographic collections from South America. This publication remains important today, as it shed light on the culture of South American indigenous peoples.
In 1892, Uhle published "Die Ruinenstätte von Tihuanaco" (The Ruins of Tihuanaco). In this text, he described, interpreted, and analyzed the data provided by Alphons Stübel on the excavation of Tihuanaco (Bolivia).
Thanks to this book, it was possible to establish that the Tihuanaco style predated the Inca civilization. Thus, a foundation was laid for establishing the chronology of archaeological remains in South America.
Collections bequeathed by Max Uhle
As mentioned in his biography, Uhle participated in expeditions to South America from 1892 onward. On each of these expeditions, he collected objects of historical and cultural significance.
These objects were sent to the institutes that sponsored Uhle. Thus, thanks to Uhle's expeditions, there are collections of South American objects in the Berlin Museum, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California.
During his expedition to Pachacamac, he recovered approximately 9.000 artifacts of Nazca origin , dating back 3000 years. These included textiles, vessels, wooden objects, leather goods, bones, and feathers.
Jobs in linguistics
In 1895, Uhle studied the Aymara language (spoken by certain aboriginal groups in Bolivia). He collected enough data on Aymara grammar to write a book.
However, he published only one table of verb conjugations: “Conjugation of the Aymara verb muñana, to love” (1902).
Studies on Arica
Between 1918 and 1919, he published several texts on the Aborigines of Arica. The first was "Aboriginal Arica," published in the Historical Review of Peru.
The second was “The Aborigines of Arica and the American Man,” published in the Chilean Journal of History and Geography.
Another relevant work in this area was "The Archaeology of Arica and Tacna." This was published in the Bulletin of the Ecuadorian Society for American Historical Studies.
In 1922, he wrote "Ethnic Foundations and Archaeology of Arica and Tacna." This was based on his 1918 and 1919 texts, but with some modifications.
Studies on Peruvian archaeology, anthropology and culture
He devoted much of his work to the study of Peruvian culture. Many of his texts revolve around this topic. In 1900, he published an article entitled "The Ancient Peruvian Civilization," which is Uhle's text that has been reprinted the most times.
"The Sphere of Influence of the Land of the Incas" in 1909, which discussed the legacy of the Inca Empire. That same year, he published "Types of Civilization in Peru."
“The Principles of Civilization in the Peruvian Highlands” was published in 1920.
However, his most notable work was "Pachacamac" (not only in terms of his studies in Peru, but throughout his career). This report was published in 1903 and included the data Uhle had collected on his expeditions since 1896.
In his text, he explained the data in a way that could be useful even to people who didn't have access to the archaeological collections that supported the theory. This publication marked a milestone in the history of Andean archaeology.
References
- Max Uhle Retrieved August 22, 2017, from worldheritagesite.org
- The Archaeology of Ancient Peru and the Work of Max Uhle. Retrieved August 22, 2017, from escolarship.org
- Max Uhle Retrieved August 22, 2017, from wikipedia.org
- Max Uhle Retrieved August 22, 2017, from wikidata.org
- Happy 150th Birthday Max Uhle (1856-1944). Retrieved August 22, 2017, from penn.museum
- Max Uhle Retrieved on August 22, 2017, from scielo.org
- Max Uhle, 1856–1944. Retrieved August 22, 2017, from digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu