Philip Ainsworth Means

Means made five extended trips to Peru where he studied the Incas of the Cuzco area and supervised excavations.

[3][2] Means published many books, including Ancient Civilization of the Andes (1931), which became the standard textbook on Incan history and culture.

[1][2][4] This eight-month-long trip under the direction of Hiram Bingham sparked his interest in the Inca Empire of the Cuzco region.

[1][2] He was an honorary collaborator in archeology with the United States National Museum (now the Smithsonian Institution) from 1916 to 1919 and supervised expeditions in Piura in 1918 and 1919.

[2] Means became the organizer and director of the National Museum of Archeology in Lima in 1920; however, he left this position in 1921 and returned to the United States when the Peruvian government failed to provide adequate funding.

[6] For the most part, he wrote these two books in the United States, conducting research at the Harvard and Yale libraries.

The arguments for Viking construction were based primarily on architectural details, and Means decided to tackle the issue from a scholarly angle.

Although his book was well-researched and attempted to be unbiased, Means argued against a colonial origin for the tower and his pro-Norse stance is evident.

[7] After World War II, the Peabody Museum formed a committee to conduct an archaeological excavation of the tower.

Harvard graduate student William S. Godfrey Jr., a direct descendant of Governor Arnold, worked on the project and concluded that the tower had no Norse history and was built around 1650, making it one of the oldest standing buildings in North America.

[7] The site's 17th-century artifacts included clay pipe fragments, gun flints, pottery, glass, and nails.