The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17541573363)

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo18amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library



Text Appearing Before Image:
A kiva or ceremonial chamber at Aztec in process of excavation. — The charred contents of this chamber told of a grim catastrophe. At one side of the room lay a few calcined bones of an adult, and against the opposite wall were clustered the carbonized bodies of four children. Bones and flesh were reduced to slaglike masses of charcoal, rendered bluely iridescent by burning body fats; cover- ings of cloth and matting were fused to the flesh, retaining perfectly their original texture. Pottery vessels, bone and stone implements, and ornaments of shell and turquoise were scattered about the room, where last used or laid aside. Apparently the five individuals were overwhelmed and burned alive together with most of their material possessions
Text Appearing After Image:
3^.>. a?i. '^ 1 11-' (' />. !i A burial chamber in the east wing at Aztec —The bowl and vase appearing in the lower right hand corner of the photograph were resting upon the breast of a skeleton covered from throat to thighs with beads and pendants. To recover these last the earth was passed through screens. First one with quarter inch meshes was tried, then one made of window screening. As many of the beads were so small that they passed through even such fine meshes without difficulty, the earth was sacked and taken to camp, where one patient assistant labored for seven days with a flour sieve and a mag- nifying glass before the last of the beads was separated from the black dust. There were seventy feet of them when strung—more than forty thousand in all 605