Dillehay, Tom D. Monte Verde: A Late Pleistocene Settlement in Chile, 2 vols. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989–1997. Exhaustive treatment of crucially important early man site west of Puerto Montt, one of the continent’s oldest.

McEwan, Colin, Luis A. Borrero, and Alfredo Prieto, eds. Patagonia: Natural History, Prehistory and Ethnography at the Uttermost End of the Earth. Princeton University Press, 1997. First published under the auspices of the British Museum, this is a collection of academic but accessible essays on topics ranging from Patagonia’s natural environment to early human occupation, first encounters between Europeans and indigenes, the origins of the Patagonian “giants,” and even Patagonian travel literature.

Pringle, Heather. The Mummy Congress. New York: Hyperion, 2001. Using a congress of mummy specialists in the northern Chilean city of Arica as its starting point, this book is a lively synthesis of cultural traditions of preserving human bodies, the accidental preservation of bodies under specific environmental conditions, and their significance in the contemporary world—including research ethics. While Pringle’s research and travels take her around the world, there’s a substantial focus on the Atacama and the central Andes.