The Museo Arqueológico provides an excellent overview of Bolivia’s various indigenous cultures. The collection is split into three sections: the archaeological collection, the ethnographic collection and the paleontological collection. There’s good information in Spanish and an English-speaking guide is available for 1:30pm and 4pm tours Monday to Friday.
The archaeological section deals primarily with indigenous culture from the Cochabamba region. Look out for the exhibits on the Tiwanaku; their shamans used to snort lines of hallucinogenic powder through elegant bone tubes. The ethnographic collection provides material from Amazonian and Chaco cultures including examples of nonalphabetized writing, which is from the 18th century and was used to bring Christianity to the illiterate indigenous peoples. The paleontological collection deals with fossilized remains of the various creatures that once prowled the countryside.
