Abstract. − Examination is made of the contexts in which three collections of Puebloan pottery were assembled by Aby Warburg, Thomas Keam, and John Wesley Powell in the period in which Anthropology was birthed, between 1870 and 1896. Accessioned by European museums in Hamburg, Berlin, and Paris, these collections embedded conflicting meanings. Utilizing the concept of “ambivalence” reveals the agency with which these collections became mantled and extends analysis to engage these conflicting meanings. The concept-metaphors of “nation-state”; “imperial”; and “modernity” evolving as products of the search for an “authentic historical consciousness” are examined in terms of these conflicting meanings. [Hopi, Puebloan pottery, assimilation, ideological arguments]