Conventionalism in ancient American art..
An 1887 scholarly study by archaeologist Frederic Ward Putnam, published by the Salem Press in Salem, Massachusetts, examining stylised conventions in ancient American Indian art and pottery for a learned audience. The plates show carved stone or clay heads with stylised faces and incised bands, alongside round vessels with lugs and modelled faces, drawn in clean line engraving with plate numbers and captions. A designer might take from them the economy of abstracted faces and the way simplified forms repeat across a set.
