The Presley Norton Museum is dedicated to the pre-Columbian archaeology of coastal Ecuador, with a particular focus on the Valdivia culture — one of the oldest known pottery-making cultures in the Americas, active along the coast of Ecuador from roughly 3500 BCE. The museum takes its name from the Ecuadorian archaeologist who spent decades excavating Valdivia sites.
The collection focuses on what makes coastal Ecuadorian prehistory distinctive: the very early development of ceramics, the long trading networks that linked Ecuador with Mesoamerica, and the sophistication of the cultures that inhabited this coast for thousands of years before Spanish contact. Smaller and more specialised than the MAAC, the Norton Museum is worth a visit for anyone genuinely interested in pre-Columbian South America.