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A Unique Wooden Figure from Ancient Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Karl Anton Nowotny
Karl Anton Nowotny*
Affiliation:
Museum für Völkerkunde Vienna, Austria
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Extract

Among the Mexican antiquities in the Ethnographical Museum in Vienna dating from the time of the Conquest is a small wooden figure bearing the accession number 12,585. Though this object has received cursory attention in previous publications, it has never been fully described. Because of its unique design and the unusual complexity of its structure, the piece merits a full technical description.

In 1881 this figure was transferred from the then ”Imperial Cabinet of Coins and Antiquities“ to the then Anthropological- Ethnographical Division of the Imperial Museum of Natural History, which later became the present Ethnographical Museum (Museum für Volkerkunde). According to information supplied by Professor F. Eichler, Director of the Division of Antiquities in the Museum of Art, the object cannot be traced back farther than its entry under the number XIII/47 in the fifth volume of the ”New Inventory“ of the Cabinet of Coins and Antiquities. It is not known from what earlier collection it entered the “Cabinet.“ Possibly it came from the Imperial Treasure (Schatzkammer).

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , July 1949 , pp. 57 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1949

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