HARTMAN : ARCHEOLOGICAL RESEARCHES ON THE PACIFIC COAST OF COSTA RICA 13 
It was while breaking ground here that the pioneer settlers discovered the ancient 
burial-ground, which afterwards made the place famous in these parts. In the 
beginning little attention was paid to the burials. Only occasionally, when a 
metate was needed for some house, digging was resorted to in order to obtain one 
of the ancient stones. However, after the discovery of a golden ornament in the 
burial-ground interest was aroused, and Padre José Maria Velasco, who then lived 
in Nicoya, entered as a partner with Antonio Carillo in the work of excavating on 
a larger scale. Padre Velasco’s interest for the antiquities of the peninsula had 
been aroused by the late Bishop B. Thiel, who on his journeys and visits always 
procured material for the collection he formed and afterwards devised to the Catholic 
Seminary in San José. 
After the first collection made by Velasco had been placed in the museum in 
San José, the excavations were resumed by Velasco on a still larger scale, and a 
collection of about twenty-six hundred specimens was made and shipped to the 
Atlanta Cotton Exposition. This collection was afterwards deposited in the Com- 
mercial Museum in Philadelphia, and by the Director, Dr. W. P. Wilson, loaned 
to the Free Museum of Science and Art of the University of Pennsylvania, where 
it still was at the time of its purchase by the Carnegie Museum. 
On my first visit to Nicoya in the year 1896 I desired to make arrangements 
with Velasco for securing permission to excavate at Las Guacas, but at that time no 
satisfactory agreement could be made. I visited the burial-ground, however, and 
carried on excavations at various ancient sites in the neighborhood. 
Upon my return to Costa Rica for the Carnegie Museum I first of all secured 
from Velasco the collection, deposited in Philadelphia,’ and also another collection 
7As to the importance of this collection from an archeological standpoint, I am happy to quote the following 
authorities : 
Professor Frank Hamilton Cushing wrote before the collection had been acquired by the Carnegie Museum ‘‘ This 
collection is intrinsically valuable, consisting as it does of jade, jadeite, fine terra-cotta, shell, and gold . . . There is 
no single collection of aboriginal American art works in stone, in any museum here, or, so far as I am informed, abroad, 
that can compare with this one as to the number of examples it contains of superbly carved, polished, and finished 
specimens, that are at the same time of the highest artistic beauty, even from our standpoint. So true is this, that I 
venture to say that no lapidary would undertake to duplicate the stone series alone for less than four times the price 
that is charged for this entire treasury of ancient American gems. . 
‘But above all the collection is unique among American collections of its kind, thus far gathered, in scientific 
importance of a very definite sort. It abounds in types illustrating not only the origin of many forms of weapon, 
symbol, and decoration, but also of the part myth and religious concept play in the modification conventionally, of 
all these things.’’ 
‘¢ Were I a man of large means, I would unhesitatingly buy the collection, if only for the sake of having it to study 
and publish, illustrated, to the world . . .”’ 
Professor Max Uhle wrote: ‘‘I examined the Velasco Collection of Costa Rican antiquities with lively pleasure, 
as I consider it a most important basis for a representative collection of Central American antiquities . . . This collec- 
