ABSTRACT
Wendell C. Bennett was one of the North American archaeologists who did the most work in the central and southern Andes, mainly through auspices of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The same receptivity to North American capitalism continued with the government of Oscar Benavides between 1933 and 1939. Given this historical context and the robust relationship between the governments of Peru and the United States, particularly during World War II, it is not surprising that numerous North American researchers arrived in Peru in the 1940s. This neoevolutionist archaeology did preserve some elements of the earlier cultural historical approach, which would have consequences for the academic formation of both the North American archaeologists and for Peruvian archaeology. From the Peruvian perspective, this transition would occur at the end of 1961, the year that John Rowe published an article critical of the cultural evolutionism used by his North American colleagues.
