Book Description

Excerpt from A Short Guide to the American Antiquities in the British Museum: With 12 Plates and 48 Illustrations The present guide deals only with those examples of native American industry and art which may be separated, as antiquities, from the work of modern tribes. The greater part has been obtained from excavations; of others, such as the Mexican mosaics, the history has been known for some centuries. But the great antiquity of many of the objects in the room is by no means certain. Some of them, for instance the stone arrow-points of the Plains Indians, though recovered by excavation, may well be no more ancient than the similar arrow-points used by the Indians of fifty or a hundred years ago. It is therefore rather on practical than on scientific grounds that the American collections are divided into two portions. The collection is remarkable chiefly for the unrivalled series of Mexican mosaics, for the wood-carvings from the Macabi Islands, and for the highly artistic Peruvian pottery from the Chicama valley. The Trustees are indebted to the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute for the loan of the following blocks: Figs. 31, 32, 43, 44, 47. Pl. X, Pl. XI, and Pl. XII. This brief guide has been prepared by Mr. T. A. Joyce, Assistant in the Department. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.