12 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 56 



these, there were collected about thirty long bones with more or less 

 marked inflammatory alterations, which may be syphilitic, but the 

 diagnosis cannot be made with certainty. A very large majority of 

 the many thousands of long bones collected or examined showed no 

 lesions whatever. With two uncertain exceptions no single skull 

 out of the 3400 brought away, and the many additional ones that 

 were looked over, presented a case of ulceration or a lesion which 

 could be with confidence attributed to syphilis. 



In the Chicama cemeteries, and to some lesser extent in those of 

 Pachacamac, there was a marked rarity of fractures of the bones. 

 The setting of the fractures was generally defective, indicating little 

 if any surgical knowledge of these conditions. On the other hand, 

 wounds of the skull, especially at Pachacamac, were very numerous. 



Of trephining no postive example was discovered in the valley of 

 Chicama and but one at Pachacamac ; but there are several skulls 

 in which it is impossible to say whether they present a partially 

 healed wound from a club or a scar from trephining. It may also 

 be that some specimens of trephining have been taken by the peons 

 and brought to the local collectors ; but numerous cemeteries were 

 examined to which this could not apply. 



From an archeological point of view the exploration brought out 

 with special force the fact that the scientific value of such Peruvian 

 collections of pottery and other antiquities as have been or are 

 being made by the untrained local collectors, is very small. It was 

 seen throughout that the peons gather indiscriminately what is 

 salable and dispose of it now to this buyer and now to another 

 according to the amount offered. These buyers make the collections 

 for profit and though some of them are of fair and even professional 

 education, they possess and care for no real archeological knowledge, 

 and generally do not attempt in the least any type or even locality 

 identification. In consequence, every large collection that has been 

 sold from Peru by such collectors, represents a heterogeneous mass 

 of articles proceeding from different epochs and even different 

 peoples, and what it can amount to scientifically, under such cir- 

 cumstances, can easily be imagined. If ancient Peru is to be known 

 properly, it will be necessary, as in Egypt, to re-dig the plundered 

 cemeteries, establish the relations between the articles buried and 

 the type and period of the people, and to collect and note every 

 object the graves offer, not merely such as have commercial value. 

 Perhaps on the basis of such work it will then become possible to 

 properly classify the existing Peruvian archeological collections in 

 our institutions. 



