*s 



HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



ax, which in turn was perforated for the purpose, was in vogue. It 

 is an interesting fact that while the aborigines of the New World were 

 more or less adept in the art of drilling stone and other materials, 

 they have left practically no perforated axes proper. 



In the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh there is a life-size stone 

 statue in standing posture from Mercedes, Costa Rica, in whose up- 

 lifted right hand is an ax; in the left, a human head. The ax is repre- 

 sented as set in a handle through which the poll projects. The same 

 idea is likewise expressed in a much smaller seated stone figure from 

 Cartago, Costa Rica, also in the Carnegie Museum; for in the right 



hand again is a hafted ax, and in the 

 left a human head. The ax however 

 is of a different type: double-bladed, 

 one opposite the other, and both with 

 serrated margins exactly like axes in 

 the same museum (cat. no. 2439- 

 3038) from the stone-cist graves of 

 the ancient Giietares, Costa Rica. 

 Another example of the double-bladed 

 ax, probably of the same type, 

 although the marginal serrations are 

 not indicated, is held in the left hand 

 and behind the back of a small stone 

 statue, in whose right hand is a human 

 head. This statue, found by Prof. 

 C. V. Hartman at Orosi, near Car- 

 tago, is now in the Royal Ethno- 

 graphical Museum at Stockholm. All 

 three of these statues tell the same 

 story of human sacrifice, either in war 

 or as a rite. The same idea is no doubt 

 expressed in the helmeted bronze fig- 

 urine from Cupra Marittima, Picenum, Italy, holding in the right 

 hand a sacrificial bowl and in the left a hafted ax. In a stone slab 

 recently found at Peten, Guatemala, the figure of a man holds a hafted 

 ax in his hand. 



The celt-shaped effigy amulets often carved out of semi-precious 

 stones, from Chiriqui (fig. 9), Costa Rica, and Mexico, afford addi- 

 tional evidence of the cult of the ax in ancient America. Large num- 

 bers of these from Las Guacas, Costa Rica, representing human, bird, 

 and mixed attributes, have been reproduced by Professor Hartman. * 



1 Memoirs Carnegie Museum, vol. in, no. I, Pittsburgh, 1907. 



Fig. 9. — Ornithomorphic celt-shaped amu- 

 let of jade; Province of Chiriqui, Pana- 

 ma. }%. (Yale University Museum.) 



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