ANCON, in-lcae, a Peruvian coast town, of special interest to archaeologists as the site of an ancient necropolis. It is now a seaside resort 30 miles by rail northwest of Callao and has been the scene of several important his torical events. Its anchorage was used by Lord Cochrane in 1820 during his attacks on Callao; it was the landing-place of an invading Chilean army in 1838; it was bombarded by the Chileans in 1880; and in 1883 it was the meeting-place of the Chilean and Peruvian commissioners who drew up the Treaty of An con, which ended the war between Chile and Peru (see CHILE). One of the noteworthy contributions to our knowledge of the culture and industries of the empire of the Incas was made by Reiss and Stiibel as a result of their excavations at this place before 1880. They succeeded in making quite apparent the import ance of the discovery of numerous objects which, as industrial products, belonged to the domestic economy of the people of the ancient Inca state. °All these objects,' they wrote, "have been excellently preserved, a fact due to the scarcely accidental coincidence of two cumstances climate and worship of the dead.
To the dry climate we are primarily indebted for the fact that the rich contents of piously equipped graves have in manifold instances reached us uninjured, and that consequently the picture of a culture speedily swept away by the Spanish conquerors may still be restored' Their discoveries "in a single burial place, al though one of great extent the AncOn necropolis" certainly helped, as they asserted, to "carry us back to the busy life and inner soul of the ancient Indian populations.° Con sult Reiss, W., and Stfibel, A., 'The Necropolis of Anceon) (3 vols. folio, Berlin 1880-87).
ANCONA, Alessandro d', Ital ian critic and philologist : b. Pisa; 1835, and from 1860 a professor of literature in the University of Pisa. Among the many works of this dis tinguished scholar are Precursori di (1874) del Teatro in Italia' (1877); 'La Poesia Popolare Italian' (1878), Wa rieta Storiche e Lettarie) (1883-85) ; (Manuale della letteratura Italiana' (1892-95).