Estate / Collection: The Property of a New England Family

[PANAMA]
ZELTNER, M.A. Note sur les sépultures indiennes du département de Chiriqui, (état de Panama). Panama: Imprimerie de T.M. Cash, 1866. First edition. Publisher's wrappers (the front only retained) in period vellum-backed boards. 12 pp (including title) mounted on guards, with a single albumen print of vignettes of the artifacts signed in the plate by [Emil] Herbruger (apparently as issued; this plate appears in other copes noted on WorldCat); this copy extra-illustrated, presumably by the author, with six additional oval salt prints on card mounts (likely also by Herbruger, as they match the vignettes in the previously mentioned plate). The card mounts are extensively annotated in ink with the details of these objects in Zeltner's collection. The binding somewhat worn, the book in sound condition and the plates with generally strong tones.

Zeltner was the French consul in Panama and collected these fine artifacts at a necropolis in the region. The plates are an early example of the application of photography to archaeology, and the book seems to be excessively rare (and perhaps unrecorded) with these additional plates (and is uncommon in any form). Emil (or Emilio) Herbruger was active in Central America in the 1860s and 1870s making cartes des visites, stereographs etc. The Chiriqui artifacts are now at Yale, the Zeltner collection having been purchased in 1872.