XIX.—On an ancient Mexican Head-piece, coated with Mosaic

Abstract

It is comparatively seldom that relics of antiquity from the American continent are laid before the Society. There is one good reason for this, in the impossibility, in most cases, of assigning any date to American antiquities. We may be able, from internal evidence, to show that an object was made after the discovery of the continent, and in that case it belongs to the beginning of modern times. If, on the other hand, there is reason for placing it before the time of Columbus, there is little to say beyond the bare statement of that fact. In the absence of intelligible history, it is difficult to see how we are to pass beyond this stage. Among the more civilised peoples, such as the Mexicans and Peruvians, it is easy enough to distinguish and classify the artistic productions of the several great tribes, but to discriminate between the buildings or sculptures of, for instance, the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries is another matter, and one as to which there would probably be as many opinions as men.