Moseley took up amateur archaeology and he made many trips to Peru, and to a lesser extent Ecuador and northern Chile, purchasing and digging up pre-Columbian antiquities. The distinction between archaeology and treasure hunting or grave-robbing was not always clear, and some of his activities may not be approved today. Even so, he made some significant finds and several of the mummies he found were placed in Peruvian museums by professional archaeologists. After Nazca Lines were first discovered by the Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe in 1927, Moseley was the first to suggest that there were intriguing Fortean phenomena in Fate Magazine, in October 1955, suggesting a mysterious origin, long before they interested alternative writers such as Erich von Däniken (1968), Henri Stierlin (1983) and Gerald Hawkins (1990). These South American trips indirectly led to his flying saucer involvement, when he agreed to collaborate on a book with Ken Krippene.