Swiss-American anthropologist, historian, and archaeologist who was among the first to study the American Indian cultures of the southwestern United States, Mexico, and Peru-Bolivia. His works, particularly those relating to the Southwest and Peru-Bolivia, are still of considerable value.

Between 1873 and 1879, as an enthusiastic disciple of the American ethnologist Lewis Henry Morgan (Morgan, Lewis Henry), Bandelier tried to prove, in support of Morgan's evolutionary theories, that Aztec sociopolitical structure had been kin-based, democratic, and substantially similar to that of the Iroquois Indians of North America. These findings, published in three monographs, are now chiefly of historical interest.

In the period following 1880 Bandelier undertook archaeological, ethnographic, and documentary studies in the Southwest and Mexico. Works resulting from these efforts included Final Report of Investigations Among the Indians of the Southwestern United States . . . (1890–92) and a fictionalized Pueblo ethnography, The Delight Makers (1890). The most important work based on his studies in Peru and Bolivia (1892–1903) was The Islands of Titicaca and Koati (1910). Following his return to the United States, Bandelier held museum and teaching posts in New York City and Washington, D.C., before departing for Spain (1913) to continue documentary investigations on the Pueblo Indians. The Bandelier National Monument, containing prehistoric homes of the later Pueblo period, was established near Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1916.