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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;2manybooks, post: 392377, member: 8267&quot;]The trouble with so much pre-columbian material is that 9 times out of 10 (or more) the object is a fake, made for the tourist trade. They have been making tourist items in Mexico and Peru since the 19th century (and perhaps earlier). You can find this confusing material in museum collections as well, which has compromised our understanding of what the real art should look like. When looking for comparative objects, we need to look for examples from documented archeological excavations. Here is an object that was found in the oldest known Maya royal tomb in San Bartolo, Guatemala, dating to about 150 BC:</p><p><img src="http://www.mesoweb.com/reports/SanBartolo/03.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><a href="http://www.mesoweb.com/reports/SanBartoloWest.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.mesoweb.com/reports/SanBartoloWest.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.mesoweb.com/reports/SanBartoloWest.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p>To most of us, it looks quite crude. If it is a very hard stone, it represents a great deal of work to shape even to this extent, without steel tools. It was clearly of value to those who included it in a royal burial. It all depends on context, which is why it is so unfortunate that so much pre-columbian material has been looted and sold without its history. IMHO.</p><p><br /></p><p>(Sorry - I pulled my museum teacher&#039;s hat out of the closet for a few minutes there.)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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