ON SOME SPURIOUS MEXICAN ANTIQUITIES AND THEIR 

 RELATION TO ANCIENT ART. 



By William II. Holmes. 



In order to place arch.Tology in America upon an entirely safe basils, 

 there sliould be a most searching scrutiny of the art materials upon 

 which the work is based. It has been rather too customary in the past 

 to lump archa'ologic materials together without much attemi>t at dis- 

 crimination. Pure indigenous art-has not been carefully distinguished 

 from mixed art, ancient from modern art, and real from fraudulent art. 

 To be sure, distinctions are not always easily drawn, and it is not at all 

 snr[»rising that on some pages of our i^ioneer work we lind many in- 

 congruous elements intermingled and employed to illnstrate indigenous 

 culture. In many parts of Spanish America the conditions are exceed- 

 ingly mixed, as three hundred years of miscegenation have passed by 

 almost unobserved by science, and in the districts settled by the French 

 and the English, the confusion, if not so great, is hardly less perplexing. 



In undertaking a discussion of this subject we need to distinguisii at 

 least four classes of archfcologic materials: First, native art, the out- 

 growth of aboriginal effort and adapted to aboriginal ends; it may be 

 either i)re Columbian or post-Columbian. Second, mixed art, in which 

 native ami foreign elements are combined in the legitimate practice of 

 art; such art results from the close association or actual intermixture 

 of distinct races, and being perfectly normal, and illustrating an oft- 

 repeated phase of the development of culture, it repays careful study. 

 Third, exotic art, examples of whicli become associated with the native 

 art through trade or other accidents of contact, and which, owing to our 

 lack of knowledge, are liable to be taken for native work, thus leading 

 to error. Fourth, a most pernicious group of products executed purely 

 for commercial ]>urposes, which are imitations more or less perfect of 

 interesting or valued classes of art products. They are made by Euro- 

 l»eans for trade with the natives, by the natives for trade with the 

 whites, or either by Europeans or luitives for the purpose of deceiv- 

 ing collectors. They are absolutely without value to science, and if not 

 carefully distinguished from genuine work are capable of doing great 

 injury. I^assing by for the present the abnndant materials of the three 

 first-mentioned classes, I shall in this paper present some remarkable 

 examples of the fourth class encountered in my studies of ancient Mex- 

 ican art. 



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