Abstract
A COLLECTION of antiquities from the Bay Islands, British Honduras, is on view at 10 Grosvenor Place, London, S.W.I, until May 31. The collection was formed by Lord Moyne during the summer of 1937, when a brief visit was paid to the islands and more than three thousand objects, mostly of stone and pottery, were obtained from sites known to the present inhabitants. Very few traces of burials or of skeletal material were found ; nor was there any other evidence to suggest that the great majority of the specimens were of a funerary character. The shallow overlying soil showed no evidence of stratification. In a note on the collection, Mr. R. W. Feacham and Mr. H. J. Braunholtz (Man, May 1938) point out that the objects of stone and pottery exhibited show a remarkable range of development in form and design, and that the collection as a whole is, therefore, of the greatest interest, not only archæologically, but also from the point of view of the evolution of design. Some of the specimens have features typical of the Archaic pre-Aztec culture of the Valley of Mexico, while others have characteristics indicating a period of development extending from the end of the first millennium of our era to the close of the sixteenth century, not long before the original inhabitants were exterminated by Spanish colonists. Although the absence of stratification, and of evidence of the associations of different articles one with another, makes chronological sequence and cultural grouping uncertain, the size of the collection and the period of time covered makes it possible to verify and demonstrate the development of design convincingly by providing all the links in the chain without gap. Stylistically the evidence points to strong influence at various times from such widely separated regions as Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico. The islands may have served as a trading station in pre-Columbian times, as the Pearl Islands did on the Pacific coast, whereby influences from various quarters would have been received and redistributed.
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Exhibition of Antiquities from British Honduras. Nature 141, 932 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141932c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141932c0