This book analyzes the construction of specialized knowledge about the past and its objects, carried out by intellectuals-collectors in the Andean region between 1892 and 1915. During these years, antiques—in particular, indigenous ones—were valued vestiges in multiple contexts: diplomatic transactions, the Hispanic belief system, the discourse of transatlantic archeology, intellectual sociabilities, and national museums. This research addresses different local experiences and their global connections, which began in 1892 with the commemoration of the “discovery” of America and reached into the first decades of the twentieth century, with the foundation of academies, societies, and institutes of history. The critical study of these musealization processes and their public projections, in a cross perspective, allow us to understand the complex scenario in which national representations are created, as well as different meanings attributed to objects that were exhibited, presented as a gift, traded or collected.