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49 ______________________________________ Adela was away from England during much of the late 1890s. She had traveled over most of central, south, and west Mexico, thoroughly covering the central area of Mexico in particular. She had spent little time in the north except passing through on the train, and she had not yet traveled to Yucatán or the far southeastern area of Mexico. In the course of these travels she accumulated a substantial amount of artifacts and objects as well as samples of obsidian. In 1895 she had given about two hundred objects, primarily very small, carved or shaped objects and figurine heads, to the forerunner of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution (BRLSI, still in existence), and that was her first choice for placing her collection.1 At that time the BRLSI had a large and impressive building to house its collections, library, and meeting space. Since its founding in the 1820s, the institution had amassed a sizeable and varied collection; one of its centerpieces was the Roman antiquities owned by the Corporation of Bath. The organization was an umbrella for various interest groups, such as the Photographic Society, the Philosophical Society, and the Microscopical Society, many of which became incorporated into the BRLSI. The Institution was an active place, with its lectures and programs and exhibitions.2 Adela’s father had been an annual subscriber for many years and had served on several committees . (In 1886 Adela was a subscriber, nonmember .) He periodically had given the BRLSI Chapter Nine Sorting Out As it [the collection] takes up the whole of my dining room, including a long dinner party table, I am beginning to think it would look better in nice glass cases, like some things I gave the Peabody Museum at Harvard. If a Museum would provide cases I would give time to arrange them . . . —Adela Breton to Professor C. Lloyd Morgan, August ,  50 Chapter Nine ______________________________________ material he had gathered from his travels in the South Seas as well as various books for the institution ’s library. His collection was eclectic to say the least, and the record of donations at the BRLSI shows that he donated, among other things, spear throwers, mineral specimens, specimens of sago bread, boomerangs, wooden clubs or digging sticks, various geology specimens such as lignite from Tasmania, an ivory bracelet, and the “dried hand of an infant.” Her brother Harry had also made several small donations including fossils gathered during his five years on St. Helena. Collectors are found in varying degrees of intensity. Collections themselves vary as widely as their collectors, with factors such as size, quality , and marketability of the pieces. Although there were antiquity laws in effect in Mexico that prohibited taking archaeological material and artifacts out of the country, a considerable amount of collecting went on. For some people it was a business, dealing with the collecting, brokering, or trading of the objects, or production of fakes. For others collecting was a private matter, entered into for the sake of amassing a personal collection. Some travelers and archaeologists in Mexico did not collect at all. Adela collected but as a scientist and archaeologist , giving careful attention to labeling and provenance, and she collected with what may have seemed an eccentric eye. Her collecting focused on west Mexico, particularly the Rio Balsas area, and on obsidian. Pablo collected for her, and the labels of many of the pieces show Churumuco or the Rio Balsas as the source. West Mexico was not fashionable in collecting circles. It did not have the elaborate polychrome pottery or stone statuary found in other regions. As mentioned earlier, Adela was one of the first to recognize that west Mexico had an individual culture and art style; it was not derivative or a second-rate copy of other cultures. Her collecting was intended to reflect this. Adela never collected large pieces, even when she was working in the Maya area. At this time she was collecting in areas where there would have been few, if any, large vessels or carvings to be found. On a practical note, larger objects were more awkward to carry. And there were the new antiquity laws. In 1896 when she sent material to Frederic Ward Putnam of the Peabody Museum at Harvard, she explained why she was sending so many small objects (many of which, not surprising, are obsidian pieces): “Owing to the new law which prevents antiquities leaving the country, I don’t see how I...

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