ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses ways of engaging with pre-Columbian material culture as ‘antiquities’, from the late 1700s into the early twentieth century, with a particular focus on those objects that commanded – and continue to command – the greatest interest, and contributed most to defining ‘representations’ of the New World: the ‘antiquities’ associated with the Inka and Mexica empires of Meso- and Andean South America. The chapter seeks to understand how and why ‘antiquities’ became central to ‘representations’ of various aspects of post-conquest Spanish America, how they gained recognition, interest and value – epistemic as well as monetary and popular value. The chapter argues that ‘antiquities’ acquired their modern significance, and visibility, at the confluence of three distinct purposes and meanings they came to assume and were to retain into the recent era: first, as ‘epistemic things,’ i.e. objects of intellectual curiosity to antiquaries and archaeologists in Europe and across the Americas; secondly, as political symbols, available for the wider imagined collectivities of several Latin American republics; and thirdly, as commodities, as collectibles, tourist destinations, and museum exhibits, advertised and sold on and through an ever-expanding Atlantic market.
