A recent article by Teodoro Hampe Martinez (1998) sheds new light on the origins of archaeology in Peru. Hampe has a continuing research interest in the origins of historical institutions in Peru. One of the institutions that he has spent some time documenting is the Museo de Historia Nacional, and especially its the archaeologist who served as its first director, Max Uhle. or more properly Friedrich Max Uhle (1856- 1944).

Hampe Maninez's most recent work includes materials not only from the archives in Peru. but materials extracted from the unpublished diaries of Uhle kept in the archives of the lbero-Amerikanisches Institut/Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, which Hampe visited in June of 1990 and December of 1994. Uhle transferred the bulk of his personal papers, including 170 diaries, over 2,000 photographs, and much of his personal correspondence, to this institute in 1933, three years after its founding in 1930.

Hampe has been collecting information from the unpublished sources relating to Uhle's work in Peru from 1896 through 1912, although the current paper focuses mainly upon the period of Uhle's tenure at the Museo de Historia Nacional, which is covered in Uhle's diaries #76 through #93 at the Berlin archives. Hampe Martinez's studies in this paper have materially added to the earlier works by Rowe (1954) and Linares Malaga (1964) on Uhle.