Antiquities

North, Central, and South American Antiquities

About A.D. 1200-1400, around the Ohio River and the Mississippi, works of art engraved on shell and embossed in copper sheets [the copper was derived from the region of the Great Lakes] mark the Middle Mississippi culture. These works of art present human figures, gods, and magical birds and a favourite theme is an eagle-man. The figures seem to be alive and active, and they reflect a typically American Indian way of life. Their quality is high.

Over the whole of the eastern United States carved and shaped stones used as whistles, flute-stops etc. are to be found dating from about A.D. 700-1400. The workmanship is superb, and the abstract forms have great beauty. They are not, however, representative of any high culture, but are collectors' pieces because of their intrinsic quality.

In the south-western states a civilization began in the early centuries A.D. At first the remains are mainly basketry, but by the sixth century beautiful pottery was being produced. This pottery of the Anasazi cultures and the nearby Hohokam is a grey ware painted mainly with black abstract linear designs. The Hohokam is normally represented by bowls with interior painting. The Anasazi culture passing through corrugated wares, gradually developed until it became represented by the Pueblo culture [see Ethnographica]. These matt-surfaced grey and black pots were all coiled and decorated freehand. They are widely collected, and modern repoductions are made, though these are usually more formal than the originals.

High cultures reached the Mexican area by about 1000 B.C. The earliest, the Olmec culture, have left fine pottery vessels, hand-coiled and painted with grotesque figures. More important are the Olmec jades, bluish and usually highly polished, with formal incised patterns and often modelled features with incised details. Masks, axe-blades etc. are characteristically decorated with ritual faces that have everted upper lips, suggesting jaguar masks.

In southern Mexico and Guatemala the Olmec, who had ceased their activity by the fifth century B.C., were succeeded by the Maya peoples in about the second century A.D. They made maginficent hand-moulded pottery, painted mostly in orange and red on a buff background. Their low-fired earthenware comprises beakers, bowls and dishes. They have artistic quality and were obviously intended for temple service. The Maya also worked in jade, preferring the green varieties, and produced ear-ornaments, beads of many forms, and pendants with relief sculpture. Some of the jades are inscribed in the Maya syllabary as are carved limestone stelae. Also in limestone are carved heads, and relief plaques of the second to eighth centuries.

In western Mexico the arts of two cultures have become popular. The Tarascos from the fourth to seventh centuries A.D. made amazingly live ceramic figures, mostly in a burnished red ware. They include human figures about 20 inches [50 cm] high, and charming animals, mostly dogs. South of the Tarascos the Zapotec kingdom lasted from the second century B.C. to the fifteenth century A.D. Elaborate pottery incensarios, with figures and masks of the gods in relief are characteristic. They vary from 6 inches [15 cm] to 30 inches [76 cm] in height, and the style changes with the period. Always in red clay, a few of them are coated with stucco, mostly grey, but a few are tinted.

In south-eastern Mexico the Huaxtecs and Totonacs both made pottery figurines, sometimes painted with natural bitumen. They date from the early centuries A.D. and changed style as history proceeded until the Spanish Conquest in 1521. Shell ornaments with incised designs are important from this area. Many larger pottery figurines [up to 2 feet; 61 cm] of considerable beauty were made.

In the Central Mexican highlands many cultures flourished. Teotihuacán [second century B.C. to seventh century A.D.] produced pottery, sometimes painted with designs over a tin coating of lime plaster. There are great numbers of attractive pottery figurines, and decorated spindle whorls from this site. Tula was a center of the Toltec empire from A.D. 650 to 980. Its pottery is poor and the figurines lack inspiration, but in the latter part of this period a ïplumbateÍ ware was produced in southern Mexico and traded through Central America, presumably because its greenish semi-gloss looked rather like jade. Tenochtitlàn [Mexico City] was the center of the Aztec culture [c. 1325-1520]. Attractive but plain domestic pottery is plentiful, and mosaic work, gold ornaments and jade, worked for the Aztecs by their Mixtec neighbours, are to be found. There are also many small stone figures of gods and serpents. They are made of grey lava and a few of creamy limestone.

Beyond the southern limits of the Mexican and Maya cultures we find several styles in the art of Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama. Fine painted pottery was made, and significantly great quantities of gold and tumbaga [an alloy of gold and other metals, usually copper] were produced. Styles vary locally, but alligators, ocelots and monkeys mix with humans in the plethora of golden pendants, mostly between 2 inches [5 cm] and 4 inches [10 cm] in height. Modern repoductions are made because of the high artistic [p. 45] qualities of the original which date mostly from between the seventh and eleventh centuries A.D.

South of Panama, three cultures in Colombia have produced good pottery and much gold. The Chibcha from around Bogota made rather grim pottery figures of chiefs [the originals of the El Dorado legend], and cast plaques with relief decoration in gold wire which vary from gold to differing forms of tumbaga. From the Cauca River valley come most beautifully finished golden figurines and vessels, all highly burnished and of elegant form. They belong to the Quimbaya, a group of Indian tribes living in villages and producing pottery vessels and figures often decorated by reserve dyeing of the burnished surfaces.

Further south golden pendants, nose-clips, ear-ornaments, etc. come from the Sinþ and cognate tribes. The varieties of design are immense and the workmanship is impeccable. The dating of the Colombian cultures is somewhat uncertain, but between the eighth and twelfth centuries most of the best work was done, though the Chibcha apogee was about 1400.

From the coast of Ecuador comes a great variety of ceramic figurines and vases. Some gold and bronze was also worked. Small pottery figurines dating from about 3000 B.C. from the Valdivia region are the oldest ceramics so far known from the Americas. As time went on, many other tribal cultures developed and their ceramics, which are all hand-moulded, show much greater complexity. The most realistic and well finished were those from the La Tolita region in the north, which date from between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500.

The most complex and the richest of all ancient American cultures was centered in Peru. There was a long succession of civilizations, all rich in works of art in gold, silver, tapestry and ceramics. Earliest was the Chavin culture [c. 1000 B.C.] in the high Andes, but only small stone carvings are available in the market. From the southern part of the Peruvian coast the Cupisnique culture, greatly influenced by Chavin, left a strong pottery in grey clay, some of which was carved with figures of gods, some painted with resin colours. The Cupisnique textiles are rather plain, but in the succeeding Paraccas culture, from about 900 B. C., we have great sheets of textile with all-over embroideries of gods and animals in brilliant colour. The Paraccas culture also produced decorated golden ornaments and rather plain ceramics. This culture is succeeded by the Nasca culture of the last centuries B.C. and early centuries A. D. Pottery vessels have charming designs of birds and flowers, and designs in polychrome slip showing human figures and gods. Globular vessels, beakers and small bowls in a fine red ware were made by hand-modelling. Brilliantly coloured textiles abound, first embroidery and later tapestry weaving. Gold was much used for pendants, and semi-precious stones are used as inlays in gold and strung together as necklets.

The Nasca culture was the last important one in southern Peru. It is overwhelmed by the culture from Tiahuanaco, beside Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. Tiahuanaco art is marked by strongly reticulated patterns both on pottery and in the textiles which included some square caps in a velvet technique. Sometimes textile designs become so formalized as to seem abstract. Small stone carvings reproducing patterns from the large sculptures at Tiahuanaco appear on the market, but many of these are of modern manufacture. Of similar style is the art of Huari culture, far to the north of Tiahuanaco, which spreads from the mountains of Peru over the coastal regions. It is marked by some rather large pottery vessels with polychrome quadrated decoration. These two cultures cover the period from about 500 to 800 A.D. On the northern coast the Huari culture overthrew the earlier Mochica civilization, but did not totally destroy its traditions.

The Mochica, from the second century B.C. to the sixth century A.D., was characterized by well-made pottery, globular vases with stirrup spouts, and some textiles and woodwork. The ceramics were covered with a cream slip and painted with linear designs showing warriors and gods in reddish-brown iron pigments. There are also modeled pots, which include a number of representations of human heads and which achieve the rare status of true portraiture. The Mochica were succeeded by the Chimu [c. 1100], who formed a great and powerful coastal empire. They were great metal workers, using gold, silver and bronze for vessels and for ornament. Woodwork is in the form of carved paddles and center-boards for balsa rafts. There are also a number of false heads for mummy-packs, sometimes covered with silver or go d masks. The textiles embrace a great range of techniques, including tie-dyeing and kilim weaves.

The brilliant Chimu kingdom was overthrown by the Incas [c. 1450] who have left a simpler and stronger design series. They preferred geometric pattern on textiles, and produced five standard forms of ceramic vessels [also painted with geometric designs] and a number of wooden beakers, called kero, which in later times were decorated with paintings in coloured mastic. The circumstances of the Spanish conquest ensured that most Inca g old and silver was melted down. Textiles are few but splendid and a great number of knotted string quipþs [record-tallies] have been found in Inca graves.

After about 1540 the arts in Peru were entirely in the Spanish tradition, and American Indian arts have only a minimal existence. In northern Argentina the Diaguita-Calchaqui continued to make some of their large pottery burial urns in effect, the arts of the pre-Columbian area in all the American regions came to an end about 1600. [pp. 44-46]