Title: Bulletin
Identifier: bulletin1531952smit (find matches)
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology
Subjects: Ethnology
Publisher: Washington : G. P. O.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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170 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY (BuU. 153
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Figure 48.—Incised obsidian core, and Bird-monster design from it. bent form. The bird seems to have been captured in the moment of striking its quarry. Of all the representations of eagles and the like in Mesoamerican art, I know of none that can compare with this for forcefulness. The drawing is surer, less scratchy, and superior in every respect to that of the incised cores from Uaxactun and Tikal (Kidder, 1947, pp. 21 ff). Parts of mosaic ornaments (?).—^A number of small objects are included here on the grounds that since they are thin, with flat backs, and have no perforations for suspension, they may have been intended to be inlaid in depressions cut to receive them or attached to the surface of some perishable base with gum to form mosaics. One pair of objects of this kind represent a right and a left hand and forearm (pi. 54, 5). The hands, fingers together, thumbs alongside the hands, are shown bent at an almost impossible angle from the line of the forearms. The outline of the hands is correctly shown, with the middle fingers longer and the rest in proportion. The line between thumb and forefinger, and that between the fore and middle finger, are continued up the backs of the hands to the wrist by grooves. Nails are shown only on the thumbs. The decorated sides of the objects are convexly rounded, the backs are flat and plain. Other objects also found with the Tomb materials in 1942 that may have been used in mosaics are two small flat semilunar pieces of jade and three flat ellipses of polished obsidian with slightly beveled edges. Spangles,—A great quantity of minute bits of jade, each of which has two or more perforations, was found in the Stone Cist in 1943

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