DAY 1 Pre Columbian, Native American, Fossils

Lot: 1 - Olmec Serpentine Deity Plaque with Cinnabar-Highlighted Flame Brow

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Olmec. A broad ovoid plaque of mottled bluish-green serpentine, its face gently convex and worked to a soft polish. Across it runs a finely incised supernatural visage: almond eyes beneath a cleft, flame-shaped brow, a wide mouth with thick parted lips and squared upper teeth, framed by descending elements and pendant lappets. Every groove retains red cinnabar, the pigment turning line into blood-bright drawing against cool stone. Such worked greenstone plaques were prestige and ritual goods among the Olmec, likely worn or displayed as pectorals and interred as offerings, the material itself carrying associations with maize, water, and rulership. The cleft, flame-like brow and snarling, down-turned mouth belong to the Olmec repertoire of composite supernaturals, in which feline, avian, and saurian traits fuse with human features. Scholars have variously read this face as a were-jaguar, a maize deity whose cranial cleft sprouts the germinating ear, or one of several "God" categories in the classificatory scheme of Peter Joralemon; the readings are not exclusive, and the same head appears on celts, masks, and votive axes from La Venta to the Guerrero highlands.\n\nSerpentine, along with jadeite and other blue-green stones, was quarried and traded across enormous distances into the Gulf Coast heartland. Cinnabar (mercuric sulfide) rubbed into the incisions was itself an imported, costly substance, reserved for elite and mortuary contexts throughout Mesoamerica. The combination of hard stone, patient string- and burin-cut line, and red pigment marks this as high-status work rather than domestic equipment. Item # 73000

Lot: 2 - Olmec Serpentine Hand Palette Pectoral with Suspension Holes

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Olmec. A human hand rendered in gray serpentine, fingers curled inward with the nails crisply indicated and the palm hollowed into a shallow basin. The recessed interior served as a grinding or mixing surface, likely for pigments or ritual substances, and shows the soft wear such use imparts. Two pairs of biconically drilled perforations pierce the upper rim above the wrist, allowing the palette to be suspended and worn as a pectoral. The carving balances anatomical observation against severe geometric abstraction, the closed fist reduced to four parallel ridges. Deep patina overlays the polished stone, its cool gray tones flecked with iron-red mineral staining. Mounted on an old custom metal base. The hand held particular charge in Olmec visual thought, appearing in the paw-wing motif, in the gestures of ceremonial figures, and in incised glyphic compounds where it functions as a sign in its own right. Palettes and small basined objects of serpentine and other greenstones circulated widely along the Isthmian exchange routes that carried Olmec taste far south of the Gulf Coast heartland, and Costa Rican contexts have yielded imported and locally reworked greenstone in the Olmec manner. Objects that are simultaneously implement and ornament, functional at the palm and wearable at the wrist, blur the boundary between tool and regalia in a way characteristic of Formative period elite goods. Item # 73001

Lot: 3 - Olmec Jade Standing Figure with Scarification, Arroyo Pesquero

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Olmec, Arroyo Pesquero. A standing male carved from blue-green jade, thickset and heavy-shouldered, with the downturned trapezoidal mouth and puffy lidded eyes of the Olmec canon. Musculature is modeled in soft planes across chest, abdomen, and thighs, and both hands close before the body around a slender vertical element, likely a torch. He wears only a low loincloth; the ears are pierced by biconical drilling for ornaments now lost. Incised linear and roundel motifs run down the proper right side of the head, torso, arm, and leg, perhaps recording scarification or tattooing that marked rank or ritual identity. Small in scale and highly finished, such figures were probably offerings, held or set upright in caches. Arroyo Pesquero, a spring-fed stream in southern Veracruz near the Coatzacoalcos drainage, yielded one of the richest concentrations of Olmec jade and serpentine known: masks, celts, figurines, and perforators recovered from the water beginning in the 1960s. Scholars read the deposit as a votive spring, where objects of the hardest and most precious green stone were consigned to water rather than buried with the dead. Jade held cosmological weight for the Olmec, associated with maize, breath, and rain; its blue-green range was worked without metal tools, shaped instead by abrasion with quartz sand, string sawing, and tubular and biconical drilling, then burnished to the deep glassy sheen visible here. The asymmetrical body markings on this figure invite comparison with Olmec depictions of bodily modification, though their precise meaning remains a matter of interpretation. Item # 73002

Lot: 4 - Olmec Jade Avian Bloodletter Perforator with Bird Finial

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Olmec. A raptor with spread wings perches at the head of this slender jade perforator, its polished blue-green stone shading pale toward the tip. The bird finial is carved in the round with a hooked beak, drilled eyes and a plumed body, set above a ringed collar that separates it from the long tapering needle. A suspension hole drilled beneath the bird's feet allowed the implement to be worn or bundled with ritual gear. Objects of this form served as bloodletting perforators, drawing offerings of blood from the tongue, ear or limbs in autosacrificial rites, and the hardness of jadeite meant days of abrasive grinding to shape a single piece. Mounted on a custom metal display base. Bloodletting stood at the center of Mesoamerican religious practice from the Olmec horizon onward: rulers and elites pierced soft tissue with stingray spines, obsidian blades, bone awls and jade perforators, offering blood to nourish deities and open communication with the supernatural. Jade carried its own charge of meaning, associated with water, maize, breath and the color of new growth, so a perforator in blue-green stone joined the most precious material to the most consequential act. The avian finial invokes the raptor or "principal bird" imagery that runs through Formative-period Mesoamerican art, a celestial counterpart to the earth and underworld realms. Jadeite of this quality reached the Olmec world from the Motagua Valley of Guatemala, and Olmec-style lapidary work traveled far south along the same exchange routes, which accounts for pieces in this idiom surfacing in Costa Rican contexts. Item # 73003

Lot: 5 - Olmec Serpentine Maskette Pendant, Jaguar Transformation Face

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Olmec. A small mask of deep green serpentine, carved as a human face caught mid-transformation into a jaguar. Slit eyes are drilled and recessed beneath heavy brows, the nostrils bored into a broad snoutlike nose, and the parted bow-shaped lips draw back from the mouth, drilled at each corner. Narrow tab ears carry perforated lobes, and biconical suspension holes pierce the temples, indicating the piece was worn as a pendant, perhaps on the chest of a ruler or ritual specialist. Mineral deposits remain lodged in the drilled hollows, and the polished stone retains an ancient surface. Presented on a custom base. The were-jaguar is the central supernatural of Olmec art: a composite being fusing infant human features with the snarling, toothed mouth and flared nose of the jaguar. Olmec belief appears to have held that rulers and shamans could cross into animal form, and the transformation face records that passage rather than a portrait of an individual. Green stone carried its own charge. Serpentine, jadeite, and related greenstones were traded over long distances from sources in the Motagua valley and the Guerrero highlands, and their color linked maize, water, and the breath of life. Worked with abrasives, cord, and hollow drills rather than metal tools, a maskette of this refinement represented an extraordinary investment of labor and would have marked its wearer's rank as clearly as it invoked the deity it depicts. Item # 73004

Lot: 6 - Olmec Serpentine Standing Figure with Banded Headdress, Guerrero

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Guerrero, Olmec. A standing figure carved from mottled blue-green serpentine, the stone shot through with dark inclusions and warm ferrous veining. The body is reduced to essentials: a columnar torso, arms held slightly free of the sides, legs divided by a single deep channel. Above, an elongated tapering head dominates the composition, its face defined by incised brows, drilled pupils, a raised nose and firmly modeled lips and chin, crowned by a wide encircling headband. The economy of cutting is deliberate, the polish following the natural banding of the stone. Figures of this kind were carried, buried in caches, and set in offerings, likely serving as effigies of ancestors or supernatural patrons rather than as portraits. Mounted on an old custom base. The highlands of Guerrero produced greenstone carving of remarkable severity, and workshops there absorbed Olmec conventions from the Gulf Coast heartland while pushing them toward abstraction. The tapering cranium, drilled eyes, and downturned mouth belong to the Olmec repertoire; the planar reduction of limb and torso anticipates the later Mezcala tradition that flourished in the same river valleys. Green stone itself carried the meaning: serpentine, jadeite, and their relatives were associated with maize, water, and breath across Mesoamerica, and their color made a figure a fitting vehicle for offerings placed in caches, springs, and burials. Such objects were often handled over long periods before deposition, and many show the soft, waxy surface that comes of generations of contact. Item # 73005

Lot: 7 - Olmecoid Miniature Wood Standing Female Figure, Pre-Classic

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Olmecoid, possibly early Maya. A miniature standing female carved in wood, nude and stout, her hands raised to cradle both breasts. The sculptor pared the body to essentials: heavy rounded hips, a swelling stomach, short columnar legs, and a long dressed coiffure falling behind the shoulders. The broad face carries a bow-shaped upper lip, heavy lids, and an oval recessed panel on each cheek that likely once held inlays of shell, pyrite, or stone. Deep ancient patina warms the grain to a russet brown. Wood almost never survives from Pre-Classic Mesoamerica, and the fertility emphasis of the pose suggests a votive or personal amuletic function rather than a domestic one. Presented on a custom lucite base. Perishable media are the great absence in the Pre-Classic record. Wood, textile, and basketry rotted away in the humid lowlands, leaving jade, ceramic, and stone to stand in for entire visual traditions. The handful of surviving wooden figures, most preserved by unusual burial conditions in caves, cenotes, or dry rockshelters, show that carvers worked the same vocabulary of massed volumes and downturned mouths familiar from Olmec greenstone, and that the celebrated "Olmec style" was never confined to hard stone. The recessed cheek panels are the telling detail. Inlaying the face with contrasting materials is a persistent Mesoamerican habit, running from Olmec masks with shell and iron-ore insets to later Maya mosaic work, and it argues that this figure was made to be seen closely and probably held. Item # 73006

Lot: 8 - Teotihuacan Obsidian Ceremonial Mask, Ritual Use

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Teotihuacan. A dark, glassy face carved from obsidian, its broad planes rising to a flat brow band and squared crown. The sculptor worked the volcanic glass into an idealized countenance: a slender ridged nose, full parted lips, and heavy lidded eyes whose recessed channels retain pale residues from lost inlays of shell or stone. Flanking tabs at the temples stand in for ears, pierced in the customary manner for suspension or attachment. Masks of this class were not worn on the living face, the apertures being too small for sight or breath; they were instead affixed to mortuary bundles or wooden armatures, lending an enduring, unaging visage to the honored dead. Obsidian, prized at Teotihuacan as both economic engine and sacred substance, gives the form its mirror-dark gravity. Teotihuacan, the great grid-planned metropolis northeast of modern Mexico City, controlled the Pachuca obsidian sources whose green-gold glass traveled across Mesoamerica, and the city's lapidaries turned the same volatile material toward sculpture. Stone masks are among its most recognizable products, yet not one has been recovered from a securely documented burial context, so their precise placement within funerary or temple ritual remains debated. What is consistent is the aesthetic: bilateral symmetry, suppressed individuality, and a serene frontality that mirrors the city's own anonymous, corporate visual order, where no ruler is ever named and no portrait ever claims a name. This item is a dropship lot and will ship directly from the consignor's location. All condition, dimension, material, and chemical composition data reflect consignor-supplied information. This item is a dropship lot and will ship directly from the consignor's location. All condition, dimension, material, and chemical composition data reflect consignor-supplied information. Item # 204234

Lot: 9 - Olmec Blackware Head Vessel with Open Mouth, Cinnabar Traces

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Olmec regions. A modeled blackware vessel in the form of a human head, the burnished surface pulled to a lustrous graphite sheen and the mouth thrown wide in a howl. Lidded, framed eyes sit beneath an incised cranial band, coiled ears flank the face, and a few grains of cinnabar cling within the eye slits. Mouth and eyes are rendered in a doubled layer, a detail read by Ken Bower (The Lands Beyond Gallery) as the wearing of a flayed-skin mask... possibly one of the earliest depictions of a priest of the later deity Xipe Totec. The hollow, open-backed body was likely intended as a container rather than a wearable mask. A rare and forceful example. Xipe Totec, "Our Lord the Flayed One", is attested chiefly in Postclassic central Mexico, where impersonators donned the skins of sacrificial victims during the spring festival of Tlacaxipehualiztli, the doubled features of the flayed hide visible over the wearer's own face. If Bower's reading holds, this vessel pushes the visual vocabulary of that cult back some two millennia into the Preclassic horizon of the Gulf Coast, where hollow ceramic effigies and burnished blackwares were already vehicles for elite and ritual imagery. Cinnabar, ground mercuric sulfide, was reserved across Mesoamerica for high-status burials and cult objects, applied to bone, jade, and ceramic alike... its survival in the eyes here suggests the piece was pigmented rather than merely fired dark. Item # 73007

Lot: 10 - Huastec Seated Female Figure with Cross-Banded Headdress, Pre-Classic

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Panuco River region, Huastec / Veracruz. A seated woman rests her cheek against her right hand, elbow braced by the opposite palm, her legs folded and crossed at the ankles. Modeled in buff earthenware under a burnished red-brown slip, the nude body is smoothly rounded, the shoulders broad, the navel and breasts crisply indicated. The face carries the piece: wide almond eyes with drilled pupils, a broad nose, parted lips, and large rectangular tab ears pierced for ornaments. A tall cap-like headdress with cross-banded straps, a central boss, and a beaded brow fillet crowns the head. The pensive, chin-in-hand posture recurs in Gulf Coast ceramic sculpture and likely marks a figure of status or an ancestral presence rather than a generic votive. A very rare type. The Panuco River drainage of northern Veracruz and southern Tamaulipas is the Huastec heartland, and its earliest ceramic sequences fall within the Pre-Classic horizon, when Olmec forms and conventions circulated widely along the Gulf Coast. The cross-banded motif on this headdress belongs to that shared vocabulary: the crossed-bands sign appears from La Venta to the Maya lowlands as a marker of celestial or elite association, and its presence here anchors the figure's "Olmecoid" designation. Solid, large-scale seated females of this type are far scarcer in the record than the small hand-modeled figurines that dominate Pre-Classic Gulf Coast assemblages, and the anatomical confidence of the modeling, particularly the articulated hands and the naturalistic fold of the crossed legs, sets it apart from the schematic norm. Item # 73008

Lot: 11 - Tlatilco Janus-Headed Acrobat Whistle, Miniature Figure

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Tlatilco. A miniature buff-tan pottery whistle in the form of an acrobat, arms flung wide and legs thrown simultaneously forward and back in a contortionist's split. The head is janus-formed, two faces sharing one skull beneath a finely incised close-fitting coiffure, the features crisply modeled with heavy lidded eyes and full lips. A thick applied collar circles the neck, punctuated by button-like bosses at each side and beneath the arms. Four perforations, two in the leg and two in the head, serve the instrument's voicing and finger stops. Traces of reddish pigment survive across the limbs and face. Acrobats and dual-faced beings recur in Tlatilco ceramic art, likely tied to shamanic performance and transformation. Tlatilco, a village site in the Valley of Mexico occupied through the Middle Formative, is best known for the extraordinary ceramic figurines recovered from its burials. Among them are the celebrated two-faced and two-headed figures: single bodies bearing doubled visages, sometimes with three eyes or two mouths on one face. Scholars generally read them not as depictions of congenital anomaly but as expressions of duality, an idea that runs through Mesoamerican thought for the following three millennia, and as images of the shaman who occupies two states at once. Acrobats and contortionists form a second recurrent Tlatilco subject, their bodies bent into positions that suggest trance, ritual dance, or the ecstatic performance that accompanied it. That both themes converge in a single working whistle, an object made to be sounded rather than merely seen, makes this a genuinely uncommon survival. Item # 73009

Lot: 12 - Zapotec Urn Fragment, Fanged Jaguar Deity Face with Stepped Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Oaxaca, Monte Alban, Zapotec. A fanged face broken from the front of a ceramic effigy urn, modeled in tan-cream clay with a heavy brow, broad nose, and the upturned, snarling lip of a deity caught mid-transformation into a jaguar. Squared teeth bristle behind the drawn-back mouth; the eyes are pierced through, opening the face to the vessel's hollow interior. Above, a stepped-fret headdress carries diagonal bands and a projecting central boss, and disc ear spools flank the cheeks. Applique and incision do the work throughout, sharp lines cut into leather-hard clay. Such urns were placed in tombs and offering caches, where the modeled front presented the supernatural patron to the dead. A scarce type. Mounted on a custom stand. The were-jaguar, part human and part cat, is the oldest continuous supernatural in Mesoamerican art. Formulated in Olmec workshops along the Gulf Coast, the motif traveled south into the Valley of Oaxaca, where Monte Alban I and II potters absorbed it into their own idiom: the cleft or stepped headdress, the drawn-back snarling lip, the flat frontal stare. The result is a hybrid vocabulary that scholars have long used as evidence for Olmec contact with the emerging Zapotec state. Zapotec effigy urns were not cinerary containers in the usual sense. Most were placed empty, or nearly so, in tomb niches, antechambers, and dedicatory caches, where the elaborately modeled figure fronting a plain cylindrical vessel served as an attendant or embodiment of a deity watching over the deceased. Complete Preclassic examples with jaguar-transformation faces are far scarcer than the Classic-period urns that succeeded them. Item # 73010

Lot: 13 - Mezcala Serpentine Standing Figure with Tab Ears

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Guerrero, Mezcala. A standing anthropomorphic idol reduced to planes and edges, carved from deep greenish-black serpentine and polished to a soft sheen. The blocky head carries heavy arched brows above lidded eyes, an angular nose, a firm slit mouth, and squared tab ears set flush to the jaw. Arms fold across the waist in low relief, the torso a smooth rectangular slab, the legs divided by a single narrow slot cut from the hem. String-sawn grooves and pecked detail betray the abrasive technique used to work this hard stone without metal tools. Figures of this type, worked in the small scale of this example, were likely offerings, placed in caves, burials, and later Aztec ritual caches. Mounted on a custom lucite base. The Mezcala tradition takes its name from the Mezcala (Balsas) river drainage of Guerrero, where hard green stones were shaped into severe, geometric human figures, masks, and miniature temple models. Lacking metal tools, carvers relied on string-sawing, drilling, and abrasion with harder stone and sand, a process that produced the flat facets, incised slots, and sharply defined planes that define the style and that anticipate the reductive modernism twentieth-century collectors admired in it. The tradition's afterlife is unusually well documented: Mezcala figures were excavated by the Mexica centuries after their manufacture and redeposited as offerings in the Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan, evidence that the Aztecs regarded these austere ancestral effigies as potent antiquities in their own right. Item # 73011

Lot: 14 - Mezcala Serpentine Standing Figure with Cinnabar, Guerrero

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Guerrero, Mezcala. A standing figure carved from mottled olive-green and cream serpentine, reduced to the planar geometry that defines the Mezcala sculptural idiom. The face is built from a few decisive cuts: drilled pupils, a ridged angular nose, and parted lips set beneath a broad headband. Slab-like arms hang flush against the torso, the hips full and blocky, the legs divided by a single deep groove. Traces of red cinnabar survive in the incisions and across the headband, a pigment associated with funerary and ritual deposition throughout Mesoamerica. Root marks map the object's long burial. Figures of this kind were likely offerings, placed with the dead or cached in later Aztec ceremonial contexts, where such ancient stones were prized as relics. The Mezcala tradition takes its name from the Mezcala River basin in the modern Mexican state of Guerrero, a region whose carvers worked hard greenstones, serpentine, diorite, and amphibolite, with string saws, abrasives, and hollow-reed drills. There was no metal tooling; every plane and drilled socket was ground down by hand, which accounts for the economy of the finished forms. Mezcala sculpture is notoriously difficult to date because it comes almost entirely from unstratified contexts, and the tradition appears to have persisted for centuries with remarkable formal conservatism. The style's afterlife is unusually well documented. Excavations at the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan recovered Mezcala figures deposited as offerings by the Aztecs more than a millennium after their manufacture, evidence that these austere stone idols were collected and revered as antiquities within Mesoamerica itself. Item # 73012

Lot: 15 - Olmec Jade Avian Bloodletter, Miniature Hummingbird Piercer

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Olmec. A miniature blue-green jade piercer carved as an avian head, most likely a hummingbird. The rounded, block-like cranium is worked in taut planes, with a single large drilled perforation serving as both eye and suspension hole, incised lines defining the brow and beak, and the folded body summarized in low relief across the rear panel. The bill tapers to a long, needle-sharp point, finely polished along its length. Such implements were likely used as bloodletting perforators, drawing offerings from tongue, ear, or lip in autosacrificial rites, and the hummingbird, a nectar-drinker and darting soul-bird, suited that exchange of fluid and vitality. The lustrous polish across the stone is characteristic of Olmec lapidary mastery. Jade was the Olmec's supreme material, valued above gold and imported at great cost from the Motagua River valley of present-day Guatemala. Its blue-green range was associated with water, maize, breath, and the vital essence of rulers, and the finest pieces were reserved for ritual instruments and elite adornment. Working it without metal tools demanded abrasive sawing, string-cutting, and solid and hollow drilling with sand slurries, followed by prolonged burnishing to achieve the glassy surface this piece retains.\n\nBloodletting instruments in jade, stingray spine, and obsidian survive from across Formative Mesoamerica, and the Olmec set the iconographic template later elaborated by the Maya. Avian imagery on such implements links the act to flight and to the passage of offerings between earthly and celestial realms. Item # 73013

Lot: 16 - Chontal Stone Standing Figure with Openwork Arms, Guerrero

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Guerrero, Chontal. A standing figure pared to its essentials, carved from creamy gray stone with pale veining. The head is dominated by a heavy angular nose and a jutting muzzle-like face, the eyes and mouth cut as shallow recesses, with drilled perforations at the ears. Both arms fold across the abdomen, hands meeting above a grooved band, and the sculptor opened narrow slots between arms and torso by drilling a row of holes and linking them, a laborious technique that frees the limbs from the block. Grooved incisions define the legs and separate them below a plain, unarticulated body. Figures of this austere type, produced by the stone carvers of the Guerrero highlands, likely served as offerings, deposited in caches or in graves rather than displayed. The rugged interior of Guerrero produced one of the most abstract sculptural traditions in ancient Mesoamerica. Working hard metamorphic and igneous stone with string saws, drills, and abrasives rather than metal tools, Chontal and neighboring Mezcala carvers reduced the human body to a system of planes, grooves, and slots. Openwork of the kind seen here, in which arms are separated from the torso by conjoined drill holes, represents the most technically demanding solution in the repertoire: each perforation had to be bored from both faces and then worried into a continuous slit without fracturing the thin bridge of stone that remained. Such figures were long known only from looted contexts, but comparable carvings have been recovered from caches and burials, and the Aztec later collected Guerrero stonework as antiquities in its own right, depositing examples as offerings in the Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan. Item # 73014

Lot: 17 - Olmecoid Miniature Seated Figure with Labret and Suspension Hole

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Olmecoid. A miniature seated figure in solid buff ceramic under a fine cream-tan slip, modeled with disarming presence at pendant scale. He sits cross-legged, left hand resting on a rounded, distended belly, right hand on the knee. The head carries a closely cropped coiffure rendered in fine parallel striations, and the face is unusually articulate: heavy lids, broad nose, and full downturned mouth set with a chin labret. Small ear ornaments and an incised necklace complete the regalia. A suspension perforation pierces the neck, indicating the piece was worn or hung rather than set down. The corpulent, adorned body likely marks a person of ritual standing, perhaps a shaman, a recurrent subject in Olmec and Olmec-influenced figural work. "Olmecoid" is the standard hedge for objects that carry the Olmec formal vocabulary (the downturned mouth, the fleshy jowls, the inward-turned meditative gaze) without a secure attribution to the Gulf Coast heartland of San Lorenzo and La Venta. Olmec style radiated far beyond that core between roughly 1000 and 600 BCE, and workshops in Guerrero, Puebla, Morelos, and the Valley of Mexico produced figures in the idiom for local patrons. The labret, a plug or ornament worn through the lower lip, was a durable Mesoamerican marker of rank and remained in use into the Aztec era. Paired here with ear ornaments, a necklace, and a body deliberately modeled as heavy, it signals a personage of consequence rather than a generic votive. The neck perforation places the object in the class of small portable effigies worn on the body, amulets whose power was carried rather than housed. Item # 73015

Lot: 18 - Guerrero Mezcala Miniature Standing Figure in Dark Serpentine

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Guerrero, Mezcala. A miniature standing figure reduced to the clean geometry of a worked celt, carved from dark green-black serpentine with a soft polish. Semiabstract features are cut with economy: small drilled round eyes, a heavy unbroken browridge, a narrow ridged nose, and a parted open mouth. The arms are indicated by shallow grooves against the flanks, the shoulders squared, and the legs tapered to a blade-like lower body split by a single notch. The reverse is left plain and gently convex. Such small figures, portable and often perforated for suspension in related examples, were likely made as votive or funerary offerings, deposited with the dead or cached at shrines rather than displayed. The Mezcala tradition of highland Guerrero, named for the river drainage where such carvings concentrate, is defined by exactly this reductive vocabulary: hard greenstones ground and sawn with string, sand, and abrasion rather than cut with metal, and human forms distilled into a handful of planes and incisions. The technique descends from the celt, the polished stone axe that carried agricultural and cosmological weight across Mesoamerica, and many Mezcala figures preserve the celt silhouette almost intact, with anatomy added as grooves to a blade rather than modeled in the round. The type resisted change for centuries, which is why Mezcala carvings remain notoriously difficult to date closely. Their abstraction found a modern audience early: Diego Rivera collected them in quantity, and their formal severity drew comparison with the European modernists working in the same decades. Item # 73016

Lot: 19 - Effigy Metate with Human Head, Late Pre-Classic, Volcanic Stone

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica. A rectangular grinding table carved from a single block of dark volcanic stone, likely basalt, raised on four stout tapering legs. From the front edge a human head projects in the round, its broad face worked with heavy lidded eyes, a flat nose, and full parted lips in the manner of Late Pre-Classic sculpture. The upper surface has been worn smooth and lustrous by long grinding, a polish earned rather than applied, while the underside and legs retain the pecked texture of the original dressing. Metates served the daily processing of maize, and effigy examples of this kind, given a face and a posture, appear to have carried status or ritual weight beyond the domestic hearth. The metate and its handstone, the mano, form the oldest continuously used tool pair in the Americas, the technological foundation of maize agriculture and therefore of settled Mesoamerican life. Utilitarian versions are plain slabs; the small minority carved as effigies, with heads, tails, or animal legs, belong to a different register. Such pieces cluster in elite and funerary contexts across the Pre-Classic and later horizons, from southern Mesoamerica down into Costa Rica and Panama, where the effigy metate becomes a seat and a bier as much as a grinding surface. The projecting head here transforms an implement of subsistence into a body: the table becomes a back, the legs limbs, and the act of grinding a transaction conducted upon a living form. Item # 73017

Lot: 20 - Olmec Basalt Yugito Ballgame Handstone

Pre-Columbian, Guerrero, Mexico, Olmec. A ball of dark gray basalt, pecked and ground to a compact sphere, its upper face opened into a deep socket spanned by a raised basket-type handle. The hollowed interior lets the hand slip beneath the bridge so the mass rides against the palm and knuckles. The swelling profile reads as a stylized kneecap or joint, an anatomical conceit favored by Olmec lapidaries. Objects of this class, known as yugitos, are generally understood as ballgame equipment, probably worn or gripped as protective gear, though a purely ceremonial or votive role is equally possible. Weathered surface, tan mineral bloom over the volcanic stone. A rare survival of the heavy stone paraphernalia associated with the earliest Mesoamerican ballgame. The Mesoamerican ballgame is attested from the Olmec heartland onward, and the rubber balls that gave the sport its name were made from latex tapped in the Gulf lowlands. The heavy stone gear associated with it, yokes, hachas, palmas, and the small yugitos, is generally read as a combination of true protective equipment and its ritual, funerary, or trophy counterpart carved in stone too heavy for play. Guerrero produced a distinctive body of Olmec-affiliated stonework in basalt, serpentine, and greenstone, and hollowed handstones of this compact spherical type are among its scarcer forms. Item # 73018

Lot: 21 - Chontal Speckled Greenstone Head Pendant, Guerrero

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Guerrero, Chontal. A human face pared down to its essential planes, carved from mottled green and white speckled stone. Broad flat cheeks frame a prominent ridged nose that descends unbroken from the brow, flanked by deeply recessed lenticular eyes beneath heavy shelved lids, with a small oval mouth cut below. Trimmed ears are indicated in shallow relief at the sides. The reverse is left plain and gently domed, pierced at the upper ridge by a biconically drilled suspension hole, confirming the piece was made to be worn or suspended, likely as a pendant of personal or ceremonial consequence. Traces of earthen deposits remain lodged in the carved recesses, lending warmth to the cool speckled matrix. Custom metal display base. The stone-carving workshops of Guerrero, in the rugged Balsas River drainage of western Mexico, produced some of the most severely abstracted human imagery in Mesoamerica. Chontal and neighboring Mezcala lapidaries worked hard igneous and metamorphic stones with string saws, abrasive sand, and solid and tubular drills, reducing the face to intersecting planes and a few decisive grooves. The results anticipate twentieth-century modernist sculpture so closely that Diego Rivera assembled thousands of them, and their formal economy shaped how European and American collectors first understood Pre-Columbian art as art. Heads of this scale, drilled for suspension, were worn in life and frequently deposited with the dead; centuries later the Mexica gathered such heirlooms from Guerrero and buried them as offerings within the Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan. Item # 73019

Lot: 22 - Tlatilco Miniature Two-Headed Female Figure with Fringed Skirt

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Tlatilco. A miniature solid ceramic figure of a standing woman with two heads sharing a single body, each face modeled with slit coffee-bean eyes, an open mouth, applied ear ornaments, and a swept coiffure. Both hands rise to cup the breasts, and a short fringed skirt with incised pleats flares over the hips above tapering legs. Traces of red pigment survive across the dark chocolate-brown burnished surface, pooling in the incisions. Such two-headed and two-faced figures are among the rarest products of the Tlatilco workshops, and likely served as votive or household images tied to fertility and to the duality that runs through Formative Mesoamerican thought. Tlatilco, a Formative-period village and cemetery on the western edge of the Basin of Mexico, is known almost entirely through its burials, where hand-modeled female figurines were deposited in quantity. The corpus is dominated by slender women with elaborate hairdressing, body paint, and minimal dress, but a small subset departs sharply from the norm: figures with two heads, two faces on one head, or a single head split into contrasting halves, one fleshed and one skeletal. Scholars generally read these as expressions of duality rather than as records of physical anomaly, a concept that would remain central to Mesoamerican cosmology for the next two and a half millennia. Their scarcity within an otherwise highly standardized production has long made them the most sought-after Tlatilco type. Item # 73020

Lot: 23 - Tlatilco Miniature Double Headed Female Figure Fragment

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Tlatilco. A miniature solid ceramic torso crowned with two heads, each turned outward from a single shared neck and body. The faces are built up from applied fillets: slit coffee bean eyes, pinched noses, open mouths, and small button ears, while the coiffures are incised with dense combed striations above a banded fillet. Below, the female torso carries small rounded breasts and tapering upper arms. Red-orange pigment survives across the hair, shoulders, and body. Duality figures of this kind are among the rarest products of the Tlatilco workshops of the Valley of Mexico, and were likely deposited as grave offerings, perhaps expressing twinned or dual-natured being rather than portraiture. Tlatilco, a village site on the western shore of the ancient lake system of the Valley of Mexico, produced thousands of handmodeled figurines recovered largely from burials beneath house floors, excavated from the 1940s onward as brickyard quarrying exposed the cemetery. The overwhelming majority depict women, and a small but celebrated subset departs from the norm: figures with two heads, two faces on one head, or a single face split between living and skeletal halves. Scholars have read these as expressions of duality, an idea with deep roots in later Mesoamerican thought, though shamanic transformation and the commemoration of conjoined births have both been proposed. Whichever reading holds, the two-headed type is scarce, and its appearance in the Middle Preclassic anticipates the paired and doubled deities of much later Mexican religion. Item # 73021

Lot: 24 - Olmecoid Ballgame Player Figure, Central Highlands, Preclassic

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Central Highlands, Olmecoid. A solid buff ceramic ballplayer stands square to the viewer, arms hanging loose at his sides and legs tapering to blunt feet. He wears the gear of the Mesoamerican ballgame: a thick belt or yoke bound at the waist, a second padded wrap low across the hips, and a brimmed cap or protective helmet framing a broad, heavy-lidded face with pursed lips and pierced-lobe ears. Remains of a white slip cling to the modeled surface, pooling in the crevices of the face and torso. Modeled by hand at small scale rather than mold-made, figures of this type are thought to have accompanied burials, fixing the ballgame's ritual combat in permanent form. The Mesoamerican ballgame is among the oldest continuously attested rituals in the Americas, with rubber balls recovered from El Manati in Olmec territory dating to the second millennium BCE. Play was a contest and a cosmological argument at once, the court a liminal ground where solar and underworld forces met. Protective gear of the kind worn here, the heavy waist yoke and thickly padded hip wrap, absorbed the impact of a solid rubber ball driven by hip and thigh. The term "Olmecoid" marks a stylistic debt rather than a workshop: Preclassic Central Highland communities such as Tlatilco and Las Bocas absorbed Gulf Coast Olmec conventions, notably the fleshy downturned mouth and heavy eyelids, and reworked them in local ceramic idioms. Item # 73022

Lot: 25 - Chupicuaro Miniature Bedded Figures, Pair, Pottery Reclining Figures on Platform Beds

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Chupicuaro. A pair of miniature pottery tableaux, each a figure bound to its own platform bed. The first, in buff-brown clay, reclines beneath arching straps studded with applied, incised discs picked out in white and red pigment, the face modeled with slit eyes and pendant hair. The second presents a nude female lashed to a tetrapod bed, her breasts and folded limbs rendered in low relief, with two looping canopy supports rising at head and foot, each terminating in a small animal head. Traces of red slip remain across both. Such bedded groups are among the most inventive of Chupicuaro coroplastic types, likely mortuary offerings evoking the body at rest, in childbirth, or in death. The Chupicuaro tradition takes its name from a village in the Lerma River valley of Guanajuato, flooded in the 1940s by the Solis dam after salvage excavation had exposed hundreds of burials rich in ceramic offerings. Its potters worked a distinctive vocabulary of geometric red, cream, and black decoration and produced some of the earliest sustained figural sculpture in western Mexico. Bedded figures form a small and much-discussed subgroup. The straps and canopies have been read variously as swaddling and cradle bindings, as the litters used to carry the dead, and as birthing frames; the recurring animal-head finials on canopy supports suggest a guardian function. No single interpretation commands consensus, and the ambiguity is part of the type's appeal to collectors of Preclassic west Mexican ceramics. Item # 73023

Lot: 26 - Tlatilco Blackware Vessel with Flaring Neck, Preclassic Central Mexico

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Tlatilco. A burnished dark-brown vessel built in two tiers: a broad, squat lower body with a sharply defined square shoulder, surmounted by a tall cylindrical neck that flares to a rounded everted lip. A raised rope-like ridge encircles the shoulder junction, the only ornament on an otherwise austere profile that relies on silhouette and polish for its effect. The reduction-fired chocolate surface carries reddish-brown fire clouding and a tracery of pale root marks from long burial. Hand-built rather than thrown, the walls were smoothed and stone-burnished before firing. Such vessels served domestic and, likely, mortuary purposes, deposited with the dead in the cemetery zones of the Basin of Mexico. Tlatilco, on the western shore of the former Lake Texcoco, was a farming village whose extensive burial grounds came to light in the 1930s and 1940s during commercial brickyard quarrying. Excavation recovered well over three hundred graves, furnished with hollow ceramic figurines, roller stamps, and darkly burnished vessels of precisely this reduction-fired class. The pottery combines a local Central Mexican tradition with unmistakable Olmec-affiliated elements, evidence that the Basin of Mexico participated early in the wider Formative exchange networks of Mesoamerica. The chocolate to black surface is not a slip but the product of firing in a reducing, oxygen-starved atmosphere, with the sheen raised by patient burnishing with a smooth pebble before the vessel entered the fire. Item # 73024

Lot: 27 - West Mexican Painted Ceramic Olla, Michoacán Region

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Michoacan. A rounded olla with a narrow base swelling to a globular body, drawing inward to a short flaring neck and everted lip. The burnished brown surface carries white-painted ornament: a radiating sunburst across the shoulder, flanked by feathered fronds, scrolls, and hatched panels, with a band of undulating waves and dotted motifs around the belly. Vessels of this type served domestic and possibly ceremonial purposes, used for storing liquids or grain, and are associated with both domestic and funerary contexts. The vessel is a large and largely intact example of the white-on-brown ceramic tradition of western Mexico. Item # 202623

Lot: 28 - Colima Terracotta Figure, Pihuamo Style | 20.9"H

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Colima. A ceramic figure standing on spread legs, with arms crooked at the elbows so that the hands press to the chest below delineated nipples. The burnished surface carries a bichrome scheme, reddish slip against a paler cream ground with manganese deposits consistent with burial. Facial features include a ridged nose, modeled brows and lidded eyes, and a closed mouth. The figure is adorned with a flaring headdress or turban, spool earflares, a nasal ring, a collar at the throat, and a painted loincloth spanning the hips. Figures of this Pihuamo type are associated with funerary and commemorative use in the shaft-tomb tradition of western Mexico. Item # 203918

Lot: 29 - Colima Acrobat Whistle Figure in Handstand, Miniature

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Colima. A miniature acrobat balanced upside down on his hands, legs folded back over his head, face thrust forward to meet the viewer. Solid buff pottery, hand-modeled, with applied ear spools, a banded protective headdress secured by a chin strap, and a knotted loincloth at the hips. Mineral deposits crust the surface. A whistle is worked into the head, so the figure sounds as well as performs, an unusual pairing of aerophone and figural sculpture. Contortionists of this type likely belonged to the ritual performers and shamanic entertainers depicted throughout West Mexican shaft-tomb ceramics, where inverted postures may signal trance or passage between worlds. Colima ceramics come almost entirely from deep shaft tombs cut into the volcanic soils of Mexico's Pacific west, a mortuary tradition shared with neighboring Jalisco and Nayarit and running roughly from the last centuries BCE into the early centuries CE. The tomb assemblages read as portraits of a community: dogs, warriors, water carriers, musicians, and acrobats, all placed to accompany the dead. Acrobats and contortionists are among the most sought-after subjects in the corpus. Their extreme postures, back-bent, inverted, or knotted upon themselves, are widely understood as more than entertainment; ethnographic parallels in Mesoamerica associate bodily inversion with altered states and with the shaman's traversal between the living world and the world below. That a whistle should be built into this performer's head is telling, since sound and breath were themselves instruments of that passage. Item # 73025

Lot: 30 - Colima Pihuamo Style Standing Female Figure

Pre-Columbian West Mexico, Colima, Pihuamo Style, ca. 300 BCE – 300 CE. A tall and elegant standing female figure from the Pihuamo sculptural tradition of the Colima region. Shown upright with legs slightly apart and arms confidently crossed high across the chest—a hallmark posture of Pihuamo figures—the sculpture conveys a sense of composure and authority. She wears a broad, ribbed cap and large earspools, with traces of cream pigment highlighting the neckline and garment edges. The warm red slip and mineral deposits across the surface attest to long-term burial within a shaft tomb. Typical of the Pihuamo style, the figure presents simplified but confident modeling, a strong silhouette, and characteristic facial features including coffee-bean eyes and a small incised mouth. Size: 5.75" W x 15.25" H (14.6 cm x 38.7 cm) Item # 199771

Lot: 31 - Colima Redware Dog Effigy Vessel, Xoloitzcuintli

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Colima. A burnished redware effigy vessel modeled in the form of a dog, with the head lifted and muzzle raised. The rounded belly swells above four short legs, with splayed forepaws and incised toes, pointed ears, and a curled tail forming the vessel's spout. The terracotta slip is polished, with surface mottling from manganese deposits consistent with burial. The figure is modeled in the form associated with the Xoloitzcuintli, the hairless dog bred by West Mexican peoples. Effigies of this type were placed in shaft tombs, associated with the role of guiding the deceased through the underworld in West Mexican belief systems. Item # 203551

Lot: 32 - Colima Redware Funerary Face Mask with Perforated Ears

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Colima. A serene human face modeled in burnished red-orange pottery, its ovoid form swelling to a smooth domed cranium. Slit almond eyes sit beneath softly ridged brows, the narrow nose tapers to flared nostrils, and an incised line defines the closed mouth. Applied slab ears project at either side, each pierced for ornaments, while paired holes at the upper and lower rim allowed the mask to be suspended or bound. Mineral deposits mottle the polished slip. Masks of this scale were not worn by the living but placed with the dead in the deep shaft tombs of western Mexico, laid on or near the body as a substitute countenance for the deceased. The Colima peoples of the Pacific coastal lowlands are best known for the shaft-tomb tradition they shared with neighboring Nayarit and Jalisco: vertical shafts sunk several meters into volcanic tuff, opening into lateral chambers furnished with burnished redware effigies, the celebrated fattened dogs, warriors, musicians, and vessels. Face masks form a rarer class within that repertory. Their suspension perforations and the absence of cut eye or mouth openings argue against use in life; instead they appear to have been fixed to funerary bundles, wooden armatures, or the wall of the tomb itself, an idealized face held in permanent repose.\n\nMathias Komor (1909-1984), whose labels remain on mask and base, was among the most respected New York dealers in ancient and Asian art from the 1940s through the 1970s, and his custom hardwood mounts are a recognizable signature of the material that passed through his hands. Item # 73026

Lot: 33 - Colima Standing Musician with Pan Pipes and Rattle

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Colima. A tall ceramic performer caught mid-tune, lips pressed to a bank of pan pipes while his raised right hand shakes a gourd rattle. The burnished reddish-brown body carries black resist painting and crisply incised ornament: a broad belted stomach band framing quartered panels, a short loincloth, and a towering crested headdress with punctate fields and a diamond-bordered nape flap. Flaring earspools frame a narrow, sharply modeled face. Musicians rank among the more uncommon subjects in the West Mexican shaft-tomb repertoire, where such figures were interred as companions to the dead, likely evoking the music that accompanied funerary rites and communal ceremony. Colima ceramics come almost exclusively from deep shaft-and-chamber tombs cut into the volcanic soils of western Mexico, a mortuary tradition shared with neighboring Nayarit and Jalisco and unparalleled elsewhere in Mesoamerica. The chambers held assemblies of figures, vessels, and the famous plump dogs, arranged less as offerings than as an entourage. Within that repertoire, human figures divide into recognizable social types: warriors with clubs, standard bearers, ballplayers, water carriers, and, more rarely, musicians with drums, conch trumpets, rattles, and pan pipes. The combination here, wind instrument in the mouth and idiophone in the raised hand, suggests a single performer sustaining rhythm and melody at once, a practice documented in later Mesoamerican ritual. The resist decoration was achieved by masking areas of the burnished slip before a smudging firing, leaving the dark linear passages that shadow the polished surface. Item # 73027

Lot: 34 - Colima Seated Redware Figure with Crested Coiffure and Ear Spools

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Colima. A large seated man raises his right fist while lifting a slender object to his lips with his left hand, head turned sharply aside. Modeled in burnished two-tone redware, the body is smoothed to a lustrous polish, the face reduced to an angular blade of a nose, lentoid eyes, and open spool ornaments piercing the ears. A double crescent-crested coiffure sweeps back from the brow. A wide band of incised geometric hatching, likely a woven sash or body wrap, girds the waist. Scattered mineral deposits remain across the surface. Such figures were placed in the deep shaft tombs of western Mexico as companions to the dead, and the gesture may represent an offering, a smoker, or a musician sounding a flute. The shaft-tomb tradition of Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit produced some of the most naturalistic ceramic sculpture in ancient Mesoamerica. Chambers cut ten to twenty meters below the surface, reached by vertical shafts, held family groups accompanied by burnished redware effigies: dogs, warriors, water carriers, ballplayers, and seated figures like this one. Because these tombs sat outside the monumental civic architecture typical of Mesoamerica, the region's sculptors worked to a domestic and narrative register rather than a state one, and the resulting figures read as portraits of a living community. The high polish was achieved by burnishing the leather-hard surface with a smooth pebble before firing; the mottled black flecking and tonal shifts are firing clouds from an open, unevenly oxygenated kiln, not applied pigment. Incised bands like the one at this figure's waist are the potter's shorthand for textile, recording a woven garment that has not itself survived. Item # 73028

Lot: 35 - Colima Seated Shaman Figure with Offering Bowl and Horn

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Colima. A seated male figure in burnished red-orange pottery raises an ovoid bowl to his chin with both outstretched arms. A single horn rises from the center of his forehead, flanked by arched, striated cornrow bands sweeping over the temples. The face is broad and trance-like: heavy angular nose, half-closed lids, pierced and distended earlobes. Across the abdomen runs a wide incised band of six registers of short vertical strokes framed by solid borders, likely representing a woven or wrapped garment. The hollow body served as a vessel, its opening set at the crown. Figures of this type accompanied the dead in Colima shaft tombs, and the horn and offering bowl mark the subject as a ritual specialist. The shaft-tomb tradition of western Mexico, spanning Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit, produced some of the most naturalistic ceramic sculpture of the ancient Americas. Chambers were cut ten to twenty feet below ground at the base of a vertical shaft and furnished with hollow effigy figures, dogs, and vessels for the journey of the deceased. Horned figures are a recognized Colima subtype: the frontal projection is generally read as an emblem of shamanic office rather than a literal headdress, and comparable examples hold bowls, conch trumpets, or clubs. Because the tombs were looted long before controlled excavation, secure archaeological context for most surviving figures is lost, and typology and burnished-slip technique carry the weight of attribution. Item # 73029

Lot: 36 - Colima Redware Olla with Nine Modeled Heads

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Colima. A squat burnished redware olla, its flaring collar rising from a globular body girdled at the shoulder by nine modeled human heads. Each face is fully rounded, with slit eyes, a broad nose and puffy cheeks framing an open mouth, breath apparently escaping in a rush... the heads are perhaps wind-deity effigies. Crowning them, alternating small conical projections (often read as shamanic horns) and segmented raised crests set up a rhythmic alternation around the circumference. The lustrous slip is polished to a warm oxblood sheen, the lower body left plain so that the sculptural frieze carries the whole design. Vessels of this type are uncommon, and their scale and finish suggest use as prestige or mortuary offerings rather than ordinary domestic containers. Colima potters of western Mexico worked within the shaft-tomb tradition shared with neighboring Nayarit and Jalisco, in which burnished red-slipped ceramics were placed in deep chambers cut beneath the earth. Their best-known products are the plump dogs and effigy figures, but hollow ollas ornamented with applied and modeled elements form a smaller and less familiar category. The puffed cheeks and open mouths of the heads here recall the widespread Mesoamerican convention for wind, a breath expelled rather than a mouth speaking. That convention later crystallizes in the duck-billed Ehecatl of Postclassic central Mexico, though any direct link to a named Colima deity remains conjectural. Item # 73030

Lot: 37 - Colima Comala Type Shaman Figure with Horned Headdress and Shell Eyes

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Colima, Comala type. A seated male shaman modeled in burnished red-orange pottery, his winged headdress banded with incised chevrons and crowned by a single central horn. Inset shell eyes give the face an arrested, wakeful stare. He wears a multi-pendant necklace, a tunic incised with diamond motifs above a segmented fringe, and a loincloth with tapered rear panel, a seed bag slung at his right side. The raised right hand grips a zoomorphic knife while the left offers an ovoid bowl; a globular vessel rests between his feet, and a spouted opening at the back reveals the hollow body. Horn, knife, and offering vessels together mark him as a ritual practitioner, likely interred as a tomb guardian and companion. Comala phase ceramics from Colima are known almost entirely from shaft tombs, vertical chambers cut ten meters or more into volcanic tuff, their lateral galleries stocked with burnished redware for the dead. The polished slip and hollow, air-vented construction of these effigies were technical necessities as much as aesthetic choices: a solid figure of this scale would shatter in firing. Horned figures are among the rarest of the Colima repertoire. The projecting horn is generally read as the badge of a shaman or curer, a supernatural attribute rather than a costume element, and such figures are often shown with the paraphernalia of their office, as here with the blade and the paired offering vessels. Whether they portray specific individuals or a generalized office remains debated. Item # 73031

Lot: 38 - Colima Redware Squash Effigy Olla with Eight Vegiforms

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Colima. A burnished redware olla whose swollen body resolves into a bowl cradling eight upright vegiforms, each lobe defined by a modeled seam of fine notched ticking. The globular shoulder rises to a short neck and a broad, everted disc rim, and the lower register is banded like the rim of a vessel holding the produce above. Faint circular traces of black resist decoration survive on the lobes and the lower bowl. Squash, gourds, and other cultivated fruits were favored subjects among West Mexican potters, whose shaft-tomb assemblages paired vessels of food and drink with the dead, and this olla likely served that same funerary provisioning role before burial. Colima ceramics belong to the shaft-tomb tradition of West Mexico, a cultural horizon spanning Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit in which the dead were interred in deep vertical shafts opening into lateral chambers. Those chambers were furnished with modeled vessels, dogs, warriors, and musicians, an assemblage read as provisioning for the afterlife rather than as narrative sculpture. The polished red slip, achieved by burnishing the leather-hard surface with a smooth stone before firing, is the signature Colima finish, and the black resist patterning seen faintly here was applied with an organic mask that repelled smudge or pigment during a secondary firing, leaving a pale ghost where it burned away. Vegetal effigies, squashes and gourds foremost, reflect the agricultural base of the region and its preoccupation with abundance. Item # 73032

Lot: 39 - Colima Stone Anthropomorphic Dish with Carved Head

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Colima. A human figure reduced to a bowl: the shallow round basin is the body itself, ground from dense gray-green hardstone and framed by a raised border that resolves into a small head at the top, with recessed circular eyes, a ridged nose, and a slotted mouth. Lobed projections along the rim read as arms, and folded legs are indicated in low relief at the lower edge. The exterior is smoothly worked and rounded, the interior evenly hollowed by patient abrasion. Dishes of this type likely served in the presentation of offerings or in the grinding and holding of pigments and other precious substances. A soft, ancient surface sheen covers the stone. The Colima of western Mexico are best known for their burnished redware effigy ceramics, recovered from the deep shaft tombs that define the region's mortuary tradition. Worked stone from the same horizon is far scarcer: hardstone was shaped without metal tools, by pecking, grinding, and prolonged abrasion with sand and water, so a hollowed vessel of this scale represents an investment of labor that ceramic could deliver in an afternoon. The conflation of body and container, in which the vessel cavity doubles as a torso, recurs across West Mexican effigy forms and gives the object a dual reading as both figure and utensil. Item # 73033

Lot: 40 - Colima Spondylus Shell Double-Headed Serpent Pendants, Pair

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Colima. A matched pair of large pendants carved from thick spondylus shell, each arcing into a stylized serpent with a head at either terminus. The sculptor exploited the shell's warm orange lip against its pale interior, then cut a raised, sawtoothed dorsal ridge along the spine and pierced it with a rhythmic row of drill holes. Suspension perforations run through the serpent heads and, on one example, along the back, indicating the pendants were sewn or strung as chest ornaments. Two eyes retain their original inset shell disks. Double-headed serpents are a persistent Mesoamerican motif of duality and regeneration, and imported spondylus was a prestige material reserved for ornaments of rank. Each is mounted on a custom base. Spondylus, the thorny oyster, was harvested by divers in the warm Pacific waters off western Mexico and Ecuador and moved through long-distance exchange networks that reached deep into Mesoamerica. Its red-orange margin was valued as a color of blood and fertility, and the labor of retrieval, from depths that endangered the diver, added to its worth. Colima artisans, better known for their burnished redware dogs and shaft-tomb ceramics, also produced a refined lapidary and shellworking tradition; ornaments of this kind emerge from shaft-tomb contexts, where they accompanied individuals of standing. The bicephalic serpent, a body with no single head and no true tail, recurs across Mesoamerican art as an emblem of paired opposites and of cyclical renewal, later crystallizing in Aztec sky-band and Vision Serpent imagery. Item # 73034

Lot: 41 - Colima Conch Shell Pendant with Jade Eyes

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Colima culture, ca. 300 BCE to 300 CE. A pendant carved from the spire of a conch shell into an abstract anthropomorphic figure. The natural curvature of the shell gives the figure a serpentine form. The head features a mouth, nose, and inlaid jade eyes. A small perforation through the side indicates it was likely worn as a pendant or used as a ritual ornament. In ancient Mesoamerica, conch shell was associated with fertility, water, and divine communication, suggesting this object held ceremonial or talismanic significance. The presence of jade, a highly valued material in Mesoamerican cultures, further indicates the prestige of this piece. Size: 6" L x 1" W (15.2 cm x 2.5 cm); 7" H (17.8 cm) on included custom stand. Item # 193946

Lot: 42 - Jalisco Sheep-Face Type Male Figures, Pair, Ameca-Etzatlan Style

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Jalisco. A pair of red-slipped ceramic men of the so-called sheep-face type, burnished to a warm oxblood sheen and detailed in cream-white pigment. The larger sits with knees drawn up, gripping a long undulating staff or notched rasp, his elongated cranium capped by a tall banded headdress, ears weighted with large ornaments, torso crossed by a dotted sling shirt. His smaller companion stands, holding a spotted instrument against his chest, wearing a crested headdress, disc ear spools and a beaded collar. Both display the pinched muzzle-like profile and coffee-bean eyes that give the type its nickname. Musician figures of this kind accompanied the dead in Jalisco's deep shaft tombs, perhaps as attendants for a funerary performance. The shaft-tomb tradition of Jalisco, Nayarit and Colima produced some of the most humane figural sculpture of ancient West Mexico. Chambers cut many meters below ground housed extended families along with ceramic populations: warriors, ballplayers, dogs, drinking vessels, and musicians. The "sheep-face" designation is a modern collectors' term, coined for the narrow tapering muzzle, high-set ears and applied pellet eyes of a distinct Jalisco workshop tradition associated with the Ameca-Etzatlan region, and it carries no ovine symbolism of its own. Instruments matter in these assemblages. Notched rasps (omichicahuaztli in later Nahuatl usage) were scraped with a stick or shell to produce a dry rhythmic rattle used in mourning rites, while small hand drums kept the pulse. Grouped as they are here, the two figures read as a fragment of an ensemble, the music intended to continue underground. Item # 73035

Lot: 43 - Jalisco Sheepface Seated Drummer Figures, Pair, Ca. 100 BCE - 250 CE

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Jalisco. A matched pair of seated musicians, hand-modeled in burnished red-brown slipped ceramic with white painted detail. The larger female sits with an incised, drum in her lap, one hand raised to her cheek; her elongated head carries a tall crested cap, broad disc ear spools, and triple strand beadwork above a patterned knee-length skirt. Her male companion, cross-legged, steadies a cylindrical drum between his feet, wearing a dotted shoulder sash and a banded headdress. Both display the narrow blade nose and heavy-lidded eyes of the "sheepface" type. Figures of this kind were placed in shaft tombs, and likely depict performers whose drumming accompanied funerary or communal rites. The so-called "sheepface" or "needle nose" figures belong to the shaft-tomb tradition of West Mexico, whose deep vertical shafts and lateral burial chambers were furnished with ceramic assemblies of warriors, ballplayers, dogs, house models, and musicians. Rather than gods, these are populations: entire villages in miniature, arranged for the dead. Drummers are among the most sought-after subjects, since percussion anchored the processions, dances, and mourning cycles that scholars believe accompanied interment. Paired male and female figures are especially prized, as the shaft tombs commonly held multiple individuals and their assemblies often mirror that social pairing. Item # 73036

Lot: 44 - Jalisco Sheep-Face Seated Drummer Pair, 100 BCE - 250 CE

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Jalisco. A pair of burnished redware musicians caught mid-performance. The taller male kneels with a large turtle-shell drum, its shell incised and painted in white geometric bands, held against his left side while his raised right hand grips a striker. Both figures wear the classic sheep-face profile of the Jalisco tradition: elongated crania under tall coiled headbands, needle noses, pointed ears, and broad disc earspools. White slip picks out beaded necklaces, body dots, and the smaller female's striped and dotted wraparound skirt; she cradles a smaller drum in her left hand. Modeled solid in fine red-slipped clay with a lustrous burnish, such couples were placed in shaft tombs, where musicians and dancers likely accompanied the deceased in perpetual ceremony. The "sheep-face" designation is a collector's shorthand for the Jalisco Ameca-Etzatlan style, whose figures share a long muzzle-like profile, coffee-bean eyes, and cranial deformation exaggerated by the tall banded cap. They belong to the shaft-tomb horizon of West Mexico, a mortuary tradition shared by Jalisco, Nayarit, and Colima in which deep vertical shafts led to lateral chambers furnished with ceramic households: warriors, ballplayers, dogs, dwellings, and above all musicians. Percussion assemblies of this kind, turtle-shell drums struck with a bone or antler beater, gourd rattles, and conch trumpets, are documented across Mesoamerica into the Colonial period, the carapace instrument surviving in Maya and Nahua ritual long after these figures were buried. Male and female pairs are a recurring convention in the shaft-tomb repertoire, generally read as complementary halves of a lineage or household rather than as portraits of named individuals. Item # 73037

Lot: 45 - Jalisco Pregnant Female Figure, San Juanito Style

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Jalisco, Protoclassic Period, ca. 100 BCE to 250 CE. A terracotta figure modeled as a seated nude pregnant female, a type associated with the shaft-tomb tradition of ancient West Mexico. The figure sits with legs extended forward and slightly apart, in the Jalisco San Juanito style. The torso is broad and rounded, with exposed breasts, and the figure's form is associated with themes of fertility and generation documented in this tradition. Both arms are raised outward from the body, with open hands. The toes of each foot are individually articulated. Size: 9.8" W x 20.3" H x 10.5" D (24.9 cm W x 51.6 cm H x 26.7 cm D) Item # 202432

Lot: 46 - Nayarit Seated Figure with Shaman's Horn

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Nayarit. A pottery figure shown seated with hands resting on thighs. Facing forward, the elongated head features slit-form eyes, a pinched nose, and an open mouth, beneath a protruding knob on the forehead, possibly intended as a shaman's horn. A collar necklace with a loop pendant falls on the clavicle, above sloped shoulders and slender, tubular arms adorned with layered bangles. Clay figures like this one are the only remains that we have today of a sophisticated and unique culture in West Mexico - they made no above-ground monuments or sculptures, at least that we know of, which is in strong contrast to developments elsewhere in ancient Mesoamerica. Instead, their tombs were their lasting works of art: skeletons arrayed radially with their feet positioned inward, and clay offerings, like this one, placed alongside the walls facing inward, near the skulls. A large effigy like this one would most likely have flanked the entrance to a tomb in a way that archaeologists have interpreted as guarding. Some scholars have connected these dynamic sculptures of the living as a strong contrast to the skeletal remains whose space they shared, as if they mediated between the living and the dead. Item # 185726

Lot: 47 - Nayarit Ixtlan del Rio Seated Couple, Male and Female Figures

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Nayarit, Ixtlan del Rio. A matched pair of large seated figures, male and female, modeled in burnished orangeware with legs crossed and arms drawn across the torso. Both wear twisted headbands, multiple nose rings, beaded armlets and elaborate spiral ear ornaments. The woman is dressed in a knee-length skirt and cradles a bowl in her right hand; the man wears shorts with a frontal loincloth flap and holds a cigar-like object in his left. Ocher, black and white geometric painting covers the red-orange ground, echoing textile patterns and body decoration. Mineral deposits veil parts of the surface. Such paired figures were placed in shaft tombs, likely as ancestral or household companions for the dead. Ixtlan del Rio is the type site for the most distinctive Nayarit figural tradition, a hollow ceramic sculpture with pinched, aquiline features, hooked noses pierced for multiple rings, and layered ear ornaments built up from coiled clay. Figures of this scale were made for the deep shaft-and-chamber tombs of West Mexico, where the dead were interred with elaborate assemblages of ceramic people, animals, and architectural models. Male and female pairs are the most sought form: they appear to represent a couple of rank, the woman with a serving vessel, the man with a smoking implement or ceremonial staff, together suggesting hospitality, lineage, and the continuity of the household beyond death. The painted geometry across the shoulders and back reproduces woven cloth and painted or tattooed body decoration, a rare record of West Mexican dress that survives nowhere in the archaeological textile record. Item # 73038

Lot: 48 - Teotihuacan Huehueteotl Old Fire God Stone Brazier

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Teotihuacan. A massive gray volcanic stone brazier in the form of Huehueteotl, the aged fire god, crouched beneath the weight of the circular basin he carries on his head. The sunken face is deeply cut: toothless mouth, recessed eyes, heavy disc earspools, wrinkled cheeks. One hand rests cupped, the other opens palm upward across the drawn-up knees, and a knotted loincloth is indicated at the back. The brazier rim is banded with incised bar and diamond motifs. Such sculptures held burning coals or copal at domestic and civic hearths, the deity's stooped posture and toothless mouth marking him as the oldest of the gods and the guardian of fire. Huehueteotl, the "Old, Old God," is among the most durable figures in Mesoamerican religion, attested from Late Preclassic Cuicuilco through Teotihuacan and on into Aztec ritual, where he merges with Xiuhtecuhtli, lord of fire and the turquoise year. His iconography is remarkably stable across a millennium: an aged, hunched man seated cross-legged, bearing a brazier on his head, his face furrowed and his mouth emptied of teeth. At Teotihuacan the type was carved from the porous gray andesite and basalt quarried in the Basin of Mexico, and examples have been recovered from apartment-compound patios, suggesting the fire god presided over the hearth of the household as well as the ceremonial precinct. The sculpture is accompanied by a large custom block mount fitted with roller wheels. **Shipping charges shown are for sculpture only, shipped in cardboard boxes. We recommend a wooden crate for safety. Additional cost for crate: $400. The custom pedestal base will cost an additional $850 domestic, $1,750 non-USA, plus $450 for a wooden crate.** Item # 73039

Lot: 49 - Veracruz Openwork Stone Hacha, Jaguar Head

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Veracruz. A gray volcanic stone hacha, its surface saturated with red cinnabar, carved as an abstract jaguar head seen in profile. The wide open jaws frame a broad openwork void, while a long tongue curls down from the roof of the mouth and the great cat's snout tapers to a raised muzzle. A notch crowns the head where the ears would rise, and a second notch marks the nose. Such thin, tenon-less stone heads were prestige objects associated with the Mesoamerican ballgame, likely worn ceremonially or displayed rather than fielded in play. Mesoamerican ballplayers wore protective gear called hachas, palmas, and yokes to guard against the solid rubber ball's impact. The heavy yoke rode at the hips, with a palma or hacha mounted at the front. The thin, ornately carved stone versions like this one were almost certainly ceremonial or commemorative, too fragile for the violence of active play; their imagery may have identified teams, patrons, or individual players. The jaguar was among the most potent symbols in Gulf Coast iconography, a creature of the night and the underworld whose predatory power resonated with the ballgame's cosmological stakes of life, death, and rebirth. Cinnabar, a mercury sulfide pigment prized for its blood-red hue, frequently coated ritual and funerary objects across Mesoamerica, its color evoking vitality and sacrifice. This item is a dropship lot and will ship directly from the consignor's location. All condition, dimension, material, and chemical composition data reflect consignor-supplied information. This item is a dropship lot and will ship directly from the consignor's location. All condition, dimension, material, and chemical composition data reflect consignor-supplied information. Item # 204230

Lot: 50 - Veracruz Granite Ballgame Yoke, Classic Period

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Veracruz. A weighty U-shaped yoke carved from black-and-white speckled granite, its tapered rectangular side rails sweeping forward to open, squared terminals. The interior channel retains a pecked, matte-textured finish, while the exterior surfaces were ground and burnished to a soft polish that draws out the stone's mottled crystalline field. Undecorated and severe, the form relies wholly on mass and silhouette. Such yokes represent in stone the protective waist belts worn by players of the Mesoamerican ballgame, likely serving as ceremonial regalia and funerary offerings rather than equipment for actual play. Mounted on a custom metal display base. Stone yokes, palmas, and hachas form the distinctive sculptural triad of the Classic Veracruz world along Mexico's Gulf Coast, where the ritual ballgame reached an elaboration matched nowhere else. The yoke translates into granite or greenstone the thick padded belt, probably of leather, wood, and cotton, that a player wore at the hips to strike the heavy rubber ball. At perhaps thirty to fifty pounds, the stone versions are too cumbersome for the court itself, and are generally understood as parade regalia, trophies of victory, or grave goods interred with the player or patron they honored. Plain examples such as this one privilege the material: the choice of a coarsely speckled igneous stone, laboriously pecked and abraded without metal tools, was itself a display of resources and command of labor. Item # 73040

Lot: 51 - Huastec Stone Female Figure Boundary Marker with Crescent Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Northern Veracruz, Huastec culture. A monumental slab figure carved from gray volcanic stone, standing frontally beneath a wide crescent headdress crowned by a pointed conical hat. The face is worked in low relief with lidded almond eyes and a parted mouth, flanked by long tresses ending in disc ear ornaments. Both hands rest against the stomach above a knee-length skirt, and paired disc breasts identify the figure as female. Openwork perforations separate the arms from the torso, and an integral tang below the feet was made for setting the sculpture upright in the ground. The pitted, weathered surface carries a deep ancient patina. Such figures likely served as territorial or agricultural boundary markers, and perhaps as representations of a fertility deity. The Huastecs occupied the humid lowlands of northern Veracruz and adjoining San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas, speaking a Mayan language separated by centuries and hundreds of miles from the Maya heartland. Their Postclassic sculptors developed a distinctive idiom of flat, frontal sandstone and volcanic-stone figures set against fan-shaped or crescent back slabs, a silhouette unlike anything else in Mesoamerica. Female examples with hands folded at the abdomen, conical hats, and skirt-clad bodies are conventionally associated with the fertility and earth complex the Aztecs later absorbed as Tlazolteotl, a goddess of childbirth, purification, and carnality whom central Mexican sources explicitly named as Huastec in origin. Erected in open ground rather than architecture, such stelae marked fields, community limits, and shrines. **Shipping charges shown are for sculpture only, shipped in cardboard boxes. We recommend a wooden crate for safety. Additional cost for crate: $400. The custom pedestal base will cost an additional $850 domestic, $1,750 non-USA, plus $450 for a wooden crate.** Item # 73041

Lot: 52 - Remojadas Large Seated Female "Goddess" Figure, Veracruz

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Veracruz, Remojadas. A monumental salmon-toned ceramic woman sits cross-legged, hands resting open on her lap, fingernails crisply modeled. She wears a hood and cape falling in a zigzag hem across the back, a double strand of beaded necklace, small disc earspools, and beaded bracelets. The face is arrestingly alert: heavy lidded eyes, broad nose, parted lips baring the upper teeth. Traces of red pigment survive over a white ground, the remnants of once brighter surface decoration. Hollow-built and hand-modeled at near life scale for the head and torso, the figure belongs to a class of Gulf Coast effigies interred in fragments, apparently broken deliberately as part of ritual deposition. Several scholars associate such seated women with a deity linked to childbirth. The Remojadas tradition of south-central Veracruz produced the most ambitious hollow ceramic sculpture in Mesoamerica, worked in a fine sandy clay and finished with chapopote (natural bitumen) and mineral pigments. Its large seated and standing figures were fired in open pits, a feat of kiln control given wall thickness and scale, and the great majority survive only because they were reassembled from sherds. The recurrent recovery of these figures in broken condition is not simply an accident of burial. Fragmentation patterns at Gulf Coast sites suggest that many effigies were shattered at the moment of deposition, an act of ritual "killing" that released or neutralized the animate charge attributed to the image. Seated, hooded women of this type have been read as embodiments of a maternal or generative deity, the divine counterpart of the cihuateteo of later Nahua belief: women who died in childbirth and were honored as warriors fallen in battle. Item # 73042

Lot: 53 - Veracruz Standing Xipe Totec Figure with Flayed Skin Mask

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Veracruz. A standing male figure of buff-salmon ceramic, hand-modeled and hollow, personifying Xipe Totec, the Flayed Lord, who wears the skin of a sacrificial victim over his own body and face. The borrowed hide reads as a slack second surface, its mask pierced by lidded slit eyes and a gaping mouth aperture through which the wearer's lips emerge. Regalia is crisply applied: outsized loop earspools, a double strand of stamped disc beads, crossed sashes over the chest, and a paneled kilt worn above the exposed phallus. Traces of dark pigment survive on the brow and punctate coiffure. Such figures likely served in mortuary or temple contexts tied to the agricultural renewal rites the god governed. Xipe Totec, "Our Lord the Flayed One," presided over springtime regeneration, seedtime, and the renewal of the maize crop. His cult, attested from the Gulf Coast through central Mexico and later canonized by the Mexica, centered on the festival of Tlacaxipehualiztli, during which captives were sacrificed and their skins worn for twenty days by impersonators until the hides dried and were shed. The metaphor is agricultural rather than merely grisly: the loosened skin was the husk of the seed, the impersonator the green shoot beneath. Gulf Coast potters rendered the conceit with unusual clarity, layering a second modeled epidermis over the figure's own and leaving the true mouth visible within the mask, exactly as here. Item # 73043

Lot: 54 - Huastec Ballplayer Figure with Yoke, Panuco River, Ca. 300-600 CE

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Panuco River region, Huastec. A lanky ballplayer stands at ease, solid-modeled in buff earthenware, his right hand resting on the thick yoke belted around his waist. The sculptor stretched the limbs into elegant attenuation, then punched coffee-bean eyes and an open mouth into a broad face framed by round earflares and a domed, brimmed headdress. A heavy collar rings the throat, and sooty black pigment survives across chest, shoulders and cap, remnants of a bolder painted scheme. Figures of this type, likely funerary offerings, commemorate participants in the Mesoamerican ballgame, the padded yoke protecting the hips that drove the rubber ball. Mounted on a custom metal display base. The Huastec occupied the northern Gulf Coast lowlands along the Panuco River in what is now Veracruz and Tamaulipas, speaking a Mayan language stranded far from the Maya heartland. Their Classic-period ceramic tradition favored solid, hand-modeled standing figures with elongated proportions and minimal, incised or applique detail, a sensibility distinct from the mold-made naturalism of neighboring Remojadas workshops to the south.\n\nThe yoke worn here renders in clay the U-shaped hip protector of the ballgame, whose stone counterparts survive in quantity from the Gulf Coast. Whether the heavy stone yokes were worn in play or served as ceremonial regalia and mortuary furniture remains debated; the lighter versions actually used on the court were probably leather, wood, and wadded cotton. The game itself carried cosmological weight across Mesoamerica, its court a threshold between worlds and its outcome, in some traditions, settled by sacrifice. Item # 73044

Lot: 55 - Veracruz Large Xipe Totec Standing Figure with Bitumen Highlights

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Veracruz. A salmon-buff ceramic figure stands frontally, hands raised to the chest, face fixed in a wide-eyed cry. The hollow, mold-and-modeled body carries applied ornament: a broad headband set with two large discs, spool earflares, a thick beaded collar and a diagonal sash crossing the torso. Perforated round eyes, an open mouth and heavy applied teardrops give the head its arresting expression, with brows, tears and lips picked out in black bitumen. The tears and mask-like features support identification as Xipe Totec, the flayed lord of renewal and spring planting. Large figures of this scale were likely funerary offerings, placed in tombs as companions or divine intercessors. Xipe Totec, "Our Lord the Flayed One," presided over agricultural renewal, seasonal rebirth, and metalworking. His cult, best documented among the later Aztec, drew on far older Gulf Coast and Oaxacan traditions in which impersonators donned the skin of a sacrificial victim for twenty days until it loosened and split, a visceral analogy for maize bursting its husk and for the earth shedding its dry cover at the first rains. Veracruz ceramicists rendered his attributes in a distinctive vocabulary: doubled or mask-like facial planes, a slack open mouth, and the streaming tears that in Mesoamerican thought bind rain, fertility, and sacrifice into a single image. The Classic Veracruz workshops of the Gulf lowlands produced large hollow figures in this buff-firing clay, built up from slabs and coils with press-molded heads and applied ornament, then fired at low temperature and finished with black bitumen (chapopote), a naturally occurring asphalt seeping from the region's oil-rich ground. Its use as a cold-applied pigment is a hallmark of Veracruz ceramic sculpture and is rarely encountered outside the Gulf Coast. Item # 73045

Lot: 56 - Veracruz Pottery Figural Head Pair with Feathered Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Veracruz. A pair of ceramic heads broken from larger figures, each modeled with the fluent naturalism of the Gulf Coast workshops. The larger, in buff clay, portrays a dignitary crowned by a plumed headdress over a stippled band, feather-form ear ornaments and a partial double-strand necklace finished with spools at either end, the raised elements picked out in black bitumen. His features are exceptionally refined: heavy lids, parted lips, a firm modeled nose. The smaller head wears a beret-like cap swept to the left, a nose ornament, and an applied "coffee bean" element at the right brow. Both were likely made as elements of standing or seated funerary figures, deposited in Classic period tombs. Classic period Veracruz potters worked in a hollow, mold-and-modeling tradition that prized individuated faces, and the polished black bitumen (chapopote) applied to hair, headdresses and ornament is a hallmark of the region, drawn from the natural asphalt seeps of the Gulf littoral. The applied "coffee bean" disc, a small ovoid lozenge with an incised central slit, recurs across Gulf Coast and Central Mexican figurines and is generally read as an ornament or facial adornment rather than a purely decorative accident.\n\nFrom the collection of Joseph Chess, Larchmont, New York, a formidable collector who assembled thousands of works between the 1950s and 1970. Item # 73046

Lot: 57 - Veracruz Terracotta Heads, Warrior in Zoomorphic Headdress and Deity, Pair

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Veracruz. A pair of buff terracotta heads broken from larger figures, hollow-backed and modeled with appliqued detail. The larger presents a warrior chief whose face gazes out from the open fanged jaws of a zoomorphic helmet, a chin strap knotted beneath his jaw and bulbous ear spools flanking his cheeks, the whole heightened with black bitumen paint. The smaller is a deity or attendant with closed eyes and parted lips caught mid-utterance, crowned by a broad-brimmed headdress with a partial bow above and rows of individually applied fillets beneath the brim. Both were likely broken from the large mold-and-hand-built ceramic effigies produced along the Gulf Coast for funerary and ceremonial deposit. Classic period workshops of central and southern Veracruz produced some of Mesoamerica's most ambitious hollow ceramic sculpture, from the smiling Remojadas figures to near life-size seated dignitaries. Faces were commonly pressed from molds and then finished by hand, with headdresses, ear spools, and jewelry built up from separately rolled and applied clay elements, a technique visible in both heads here.\n\nThe black highlighting is chapopote, natural asphalt seeping from the Gulf Coast petroleum deposits that gave the region its later economic identity. Applied cold after firing, it darkened lips, brows, and headdress elements and served as the standard Veracruz substitute for the mineral slips favored elsewhere in Mesoamerica. A warrior peering from the jaws of a beast is a widespread Mesoamerican formula for the transfer of animal power to its wearer, familiar from Maya and Teotihuacan imagery alike. Item # 73047

Lot: 58 - Veracruz Figural Whistle with Avian Headdress on Openwork Sun Disc

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Veracruz. A seated lord rides a pierced solar disc atop this ceramic whistle, the mouthpiece drawn out below into a long tapering tube. He wears a knee-length skirt and a towering avian headdress whose bird head projects forward above a spread tail, flanked by fanned feather panels forming a broad backsplash. The disc is cut through with paired ovals and stepped openings, its concentric bands modeled in low relief. Red, cream, and pale blue-green stucco pigment survives across headdress, garment, and rim. Mold-made and hand-finished in the Gulf Coast manner, whistles of this type produced a clear tone and likely served ceremonial or funerary music rather than idle amusement. Classic-period Gulf Coast workshops produced ceramic whistles, ocarinas, and flutes in extraordinary variety, many recovered from burials, where sound seems to have accompanied the dead as reliably as offerings of food and shell. The pierced disc supporting this figure is conventionally read as a solar or celestial sign, and a ruler seated upon it asserts a claim familiar throughout Mesoamerica: the lord as the sun's earthly counterpart, borne aloft on its wheel. The bird headdress reinforces the reading, since avian regalia links elite performers to the upper sky and to the day's passage. Post-fire stucco painting, applied in red, cream, and blue-green, is a hallmark of the region's finer figural ceramics and is rarely preserved in such quantity. Item # 73048

Lot: 59 - Mixtec Jade Figural Plaque Pendant with Jaguar Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Oaxaca, Mixtec. A standing lord emerges in low relief from a slab of variegated green jade, hands folded against his stomach in a posture of composed authority. The carver framed his broad face with concentric ring ear ornaments and crowned him with a towering headdress terminating in a jaguar head in profile, the feline muzzle and eye rendered in fluid curvilinear grooves. Below the beaded belt falls a loincloth with a long apron panel, its folds indicated by fine incised lines. The reverse is left unworked save for two pairs of biconical drilled suspension holes, confirming the plaque was worn, likely a pectoral or chest ornament proclaiming rank. Mounted on a custom metal base. Jade held a value in Mesoamerica that gold never matched: green, the color of maize shoots and standing water, was the color of life itself, and the stone's hardness demanded abrasive working with string, sand, and drill rather than the chisel. A plaque of this size represents days of patient reduction, and its wear as a chest ornament placed that labor directly over the heart of its owner. The jaguar headdress is the key to the figure's status. Across Oaxaca and greater Mesoamerica the jaguar was the animal of rulership, night, and the earth's interior, and a lord who wore its head above his own claimed its authority as an attribute rather than a costume. The frontal face with staring ringed eyes and the strictly bilateral composition are conventions of Classic-period Oaxacan lapidary work. Item # 73049

Lot: 60 - Veracruz Figural Whistle with Dignitary on Openwork Sun Wheel

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Gulf Coast, Veracruz. A salmon-buff pottery whistle in which a dignitary sits enthroned upon an openwork disc, its pierced field cut with stepped-fret motifs and framed by a rope-twist rim. He raises both hands palms outward, crowned by a broad fan-shaped feathered headdress above a stepped, striated coiffure, and wears disc ear ornaments, a beaded collar and an ankle-length garment. A long tubular stem projects from the disc, terminating in the rectangular fipple aperture that gives the instrument its voice. Moldmade and hand-finished, whistles of this type sounded in ritual processions and burials along the Gulf Coast, where sound and image worked together, the wheel perhaps solar, the seated figure perhaps a ruler or deity impersonator. Classic-period Gulf Coast workshops produced ceramic aerophones in extraordinary variety, from Remojadas smiling-face figures with whistle chambers to the multi-chambered flutes and ocarinas of central Veracruz. The combination here of a figural finial and a pierced circular plaque with a projecting duct is unusual, and the openwork field with its stepped-fret and volute vocabulary belongs to the same decorative grammar seen on Veracruz yokes, palmas and scroll-carved stone.\n\nMusic in Mesoamerica was rarely entertainment alone. Aerophones accompanied processions, ballgame ceremony and the interment of the dead, and their high, breathy timbre was understood to carry across the boundary between the living and the ancestral. The stem's fipple is intact and the instrument's original voice remains legible in its construction. Item # 73050

Lot: 61 - Mixtec Penate Amulet Group of Six, Miniature Carved Stone Pendants

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Oaxaca, Mixtec. A group of six miniature standing figures carved from jadeite and serpentine in pale green, white, and mottled russet stone. Each is reduced to essentials: a squared head with lentoid eyes and a straight slit mouth, arms folded across a plain torso, and short legs incised with parallel grooves. The four largest are the most finely worked and retain biconically drilled suspension holes at the back, allowing them to be worn. The two smallest are undrilled, likely votive deposits rather than personal ornaments. Known as penates, such figures served as portable household guardians, buried as offerings or carried as protective amulets. All preserve ancient surface patinas with scattered earthen deposits. The term "penate" was borrowed by early Spanish chroniclers from the Roman di penates, the household gods of the Latin home, and applied to the small stone effigies they found in Mixtec and Zapotec dwellings across the Oaxaca valleys. The comparison was apt enough to stick: these figures were kept in domestic shrines, tucked into building foundations, and interred with the dead, functioning as tutelary presences bound to a family or lineage rather than to a temple. Mixtec lapidaries were among the finest in Mesoamerica, a reputation confirmed by the Tomb 7 treasure at Monte Alban. Working greenstone without metal tools, they shaped and drilled with abrasives, cane and hollow-reed drills, and quartz sand, producing the paired conical borings visible on the drilled examples here. Greenstone itself carried meaning beyond craft: its color linked water, maize, and breath, making even the plainest amulet a small statement about fertility and continuity. Item # 73051

Lot: 62 - Mixtec Obsidian and Agate Star Ear Ornaments, Pair

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Puebla, Mixtec. A matched pair of ear ornaments, each assembled from two lapidary elements: a thin, translucent white agate disc seated within a separately carved black obsidian surround cut into radiating points, its facets enlivened by finely incised linear rays. A minute suspension hole pierces the center of each disc, allowing the ornaments to be secured through the lobe or hung with perishable fittings. Red cinnabar clings across the reverses, a pigment reserved in Mesoamerica for elite and funerary contexts. Star-form regalia of this kind signaled rank, and the eight-pointed motif is likely a Venus or celestial reference. The precision of the cutting, in two of the hardest and most refractory stones available to Mixtec lapidaries, marks these as luxury goods. Presented on a custom lucite and wood base. Mixtec lapidaries of the Postclassic were the acknowledged masters of hard-stone and precious-material work in Mesoamerica, their reputation carrying far beyond Oaxaca and Puebla into the Aztec heartland, where Mixtec craftsmen and their products were prized tribute. Obsidian, a volcanic glass that fractures conchoidally and resists controlled carving, was ordinarily reduced to blades and cores; shaping it into thin, symmetrical, multi-pointed plaques with incised surfaces required abrasive drilling and sustained grinding with harder mineral powders, a labor investment reserved for elite commissions. Cinnabar, mercuric sulfide, was ground and applied to bodies, bones, and grave goods across Mesoamerica. Its persistence on the reverses here, the faces that would have lain against the flesh or the burial wrapping, is consistent with interment rather than surface decoration. Item # 73052

Lot: 63 - Mixtec-Aztec Polychrome Tripod Bowl with Eagle Head Supports, Cholula

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Puebla, Mixtec-Aztec. A trio of eagles carries this bowl on their beaks. Each integral tripod support is modeled as a raptor's head, the hooked bill washed in orange-red, the great oval eye ringed with fine hatching, and the crown feathered in delicate brown line work. The vessel above takes a pinched tricorn form, its rim banded in red, its exterior wrapped with two registers of semiabstract eye elements set between scrolled cartouches in cream, orange, and dark brown slips. The Mixteca-Puebla painting tradition supplied this vocabulary of stepped, scrolled, and ocular motifs, executed here with the precision of a manuscript page. Vessels of this refinement served elite feasting and offering, their avian legs likely invoking the eagle as solar and warrior emblem. The Mixteca-Puebla stylistic horizon, centered on Cholula and the Mixtec highlands, produced the most prized polychrome ceramics of Late Postclassic Mesoamerica. Spanish sources report that Motecuhzoma II would eat from nothing but Cholulteca ware, and its distribution reached far beyond Puebla through tribute and long-distance exchange. The painters drew on the same iconographic canon as the Mixtec screenfold codices, so the scrolls, eye elements, and stepped frets on vessels of this class are legible as a shared symbolic script rather than mere ornament. The eagle (cuauhtli in Nahuatl) stood among the most charged of those signs: a solar being, the day-sign of the fourth position, and the emblem of one of the two great Aztec warrior societies. Supporting a serving vessel on three eagle heads placed the diner, quite literally, above the sun's own bird. Item # 73053

Lot: 64 - Aztec Volcanic Stone Figure of Ehecatl, Wind God

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Aztec. A compact deity figure hewn from dense grey volcanic stone, seated with arms folded close against a blocky torso. The head projects a long, tapering beak with layered lips, the buccal mask of Ehecatl, the wind aspect of Quetzalcoatl, whose muzzle-like beak allowed him to blow the winds that swept the roads before the rains. Above sits a tiered headdress crowned by a small avian element, its stepped bands rendered in shallow relief. The vesicular basalt has been reduced with direct percussion and abrasion, its pitted surface left largely untooled across the body so that carving concentrates on face and crown. Such figures likely stood as cult effigies within household or temple contexts, receiving offerings appropriate to a god of wind, breath, and movement. Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl occupied a peculiar place in the Mexica pantheon: the feathered serpent in his windblown guise, wearing the ehecacozcatl (cut-conch wind jewel) and the projecting duck-billed mask that is his unmistakable signature. Sixteenth-century sources record that his temples were built round rather than rectangular, so that no corner would obstruct the passage of the wind, and the best documented survives at Tlatelolco. As sweeper of the roads, Ehecatl preceded the Tlaloque, the rain bringers, and his season was the anxious interval before the storms broke over the Basin of Mexico. Volcanic stone was the sculptor's staple there, quarried from the andesite and basalt flows ringing the lake system, and its coarse vesicular structure encouraged the broad, blocky massing seen in Late Postclassic Mexica sculpture. Item # 73054

Lot: 65 - Maya Stone Frog Effigy Vessel with Twin Wells

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A crouching frog, or perhaps a toad, worked from dense gray volcanic stone, its body compacted into a rounded boulder form with folded limbs, swollen haunches, and a broad grinning mouth beneath heavy lidded eyes. Two deep hemispherical wells are hollowed into the back, drilled and ground out with care and separated by a raised ridge. Such paired cavities most likely held pigment, and the legacy record suggests poison as an alternative; both readings remain speculative. The carver favored massed volume over detail, cutting only the ridges of the brow, the mouthline, and the limb contours into an otherwise granular surface. Amphibians carried strong associations with rain, fertility, and the watery underworld across Maya thought. Frogs and toads occupy a distinctive niche in Maya religious imagery. Their emergence with the first rains tied them to Chaak and the agricultural calendar, and their croaking was read as a summons to the storm; the glyph for the syllable "wo" takes the form of a toad's head. The bufo species native to Mesoamerica also secrete potent parotoid compounds, which is likely the origin of the poison-container tradition attached to vessels of this type, though the association is a collecting-world convention rather than an excavated fact.\n\nSmall stone palettes with paired or multiple wells are known across Mesoamerica and are generally interpreted as grinders and holders for mineral pigments, cinnabar and hematite among them, used in painting, body decoration, and mortuary preparation. The choice of a hard vesicular volcanic stone suits that use: it resists staining and provides an abrasive interior surface. Item # 73055

Lot: 66 - Ulua Valley Marble Vase with Jaguar Handles and Deity Mask

Pre-Columbian, Honduras, Ulua Valley. A cylindrical vessel carved from pale marble, raised on an integral pedestal pierced with a band of openwork links. Two opposing handles take the form of fanged jaguars emerging from serpent maws, worked nearly in the round. The body carries a deity mask in low relief, its toothy mouth uncoiling into volutes, brow crowned by a headdress and flanked by scrolled smoke elements, the composition framed above and below by scale-like bands with stepped fret motifs. Vessels of this type held cacao beverages and other ritual drinks, prestige equipment for feasting and gift exchange among elites. White marble vases of this class were produced at workshops near Travesia in the lower Ulua Valley of the Gulf of Honduras, and after roughly the seventh century they became among the most coveted luxury goods of the region. Their distribution maps an exchange network of considerable reach: examples travelled south into Guanacaste and west into the central Maya lowlands, carried as diplomatic gifts and elite trade goods. The formula is remarkably consistent, a straight-sided cylinder on a low ring foot, banded above and below, with paired zoomorphic handles and a scrolled central face, yet each carver handled the volutes differently, and the tight, interlocking scrollwork here belongs to the accomplished end of the tradition. Item # 73056

Lot: 67 - Maya Jade Pendant with Standing Dignitary, 6th-9th C.

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A pale blue-green jade plaque carved in low relief with a standing dignitary in full regalia, his right hand raised beneath the chin and his left arm dropped to his side. He wears an elaborate headdress, a large ear ornament, and a broad belt set with circular medallions, the details rendered in shallow incision and rounded modeling on a stone left ample and full bodied, its rear face smoothly worked with softened edges. Biconical drill holes pierce the top and bottom for suspension, indicating that the plaque hung as a chest ornament, likely from the person of an elite wearer. Jade of this color was the most valued material in the Maya world, reserved for rulers and for offerings to the gods. For the Maya, jade (jadeite sourced almost exclusively from the Motagua River valley of present-day Guatemala) carried a dense web of meaning: the green of new maize, the breath-soul that left the body at death, water and the fertile center of the cosmos. Rulers wore it at the throat, wrists, and ears, and were buried in it, sometimes with a bead placed in the mouth. Figural pectorals of this type, with paired biconical perforations at head and foot, were strung horizontally or vertically as part of composite regalia. The seated or standing lord with hand raised toward the face is a gesture repeated across Classic period stelae and painted vessels, associated with speech, address, or deference within court ceremony. The pale, mottled tone of this example, sometimes called "cloudy" or "pale green" jadeite, was worked as readily as the deeper apple-green material and appears in burials across the Peten and the Usumacinta drainage. Item # 73057

Lot: 68 - Maya Jade Celt Pendant with Dignitary in Plumed Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A mottled deep blue-green jade pendant of celt form, the reverse left as a smooth rounded blank and the obverse worked in low relief with a standing dignitary. He wears an elaborate plumed headdress, oversized disc ear flares and a paneled loincloth, his hands set against raised hips in a pose of authority. The facial modeling is assured: heavy lidded eyes, broad nose, parted lips. A biconical suspension hole is drilled through the head, confirming use as a worn ornament. Jade was the most precious substance in the Maya world, and pectorals of this kind marked elite rank in life and frequently accompanied their owners into the grave. Modern polishing brings out the stone's variegated green and white banding. Maya jade came almost exclusively from the serpentinite belt of the Motagua River valley in present-day Guatemala, the only confirmed source of jadeite in Mesoamerica. Its value lay in more than rarity: green stone carried the linked meanings of maize, breath, water, and the animating soul, so that a lord wearing jade at his chest wore the color of life itself. The celt shape is itself ancient, a deliberate archaism reaching back to Olmec axe-form pectorals of the second millennium BCE, and Maya carvers continued to exploit it because the tapered blank flattered a frontal portrait bust while preserving the maximum weight of precious material. Item # 73058

Lot: 69 - Maya Jade Pendant of a Seated Dignitary

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A small jade plaque carved in profile with a seated dignitary, one hand resting upon a raised knee in the posture of rulership familiar from Classic Maya thrones and stelae. The mottled stone ranges from creamy white to pale blue-green, its crystalline veining left visible across the low-relief surface. Details are cut with string-sawn grooves and shallow incision, the eye, ear, and headdress reduced to elegant abbreviation. Two biconical suspension holes pierce the piece for wear as a pectoral or belt ornament. Jade of this quality was the most precious material in the Maya world, and such personal ornaments likely marked elite rank in life and accompanied their owners into the tomb. To the Maya, jade (chalchihuitl in the later Nahua term, but for the Maya, yax, "green/blue," the color of maize shoots and standing water) carried the essence of breath, rain, and fertility. All Mesoamerican jadeite derives from a single geological corridor, the Motagua River valley of highland Guatemala, and its distribution traced the trade and tribute networks that bound Classic-period courts together. Worked without metal tools, jade was shaped by abrasion with string, sand, and harder stone, then drilled biconically from both faces, a process that could occupy an artisan for weeks. Seated figures in this cross-legged, hand-on-knee attitude echo the enthroned rulers of monumental sculpture and painted vases, transposing courtly authority onto an object small enough to be worn against the body. Item # 73059

Lot: 70 - Maya Jade Pendant with Lord Emerging from Jaguar Maw

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A blue-green jade plaque carved on both axes so that its subject changes with every turn of the wrist. Held upright, a profile dignitary in belted loincloth and disc earflare strides from the gaping mouth of a jaguar; inverted, the same relief resolves into a lordly head crowned by a tall feathered headdress; laid sideways, the great cat itself appears, a human head between its jaws. Beveled planes and deep string-cut grooves model the composition with economy, and paired biconical suspension holes show the plaque was worn, most likely as a chest or belt ornament proclaiming the rank of its owner. Jade was the most precious substance in the Maya world, valued above gold for its association with maize, breath, water, and the green heart of the living world. The single Mesoamerican source, the Motagua River valley of Guatemala, supplied every workshop from Palenque to Copan, and the stone was worked without metal tools, shaped by abrasion with string, sand, and harder stone. The jaguar was the nocturnal aspect of the sun and the emblem of dynastic power; a ruler emerging from its maw enacts the passage between worlds that legitimized kingship. Reversible carvings of this kind, in which one image conceals another, exploit the Maya delight in transformation, where identity is provisional and a lord may be simultaneously man, animal, and ancestor. Item # 73060

Lot: 71 - Maya Jade Avian Pendant with Biconical Suspension Holes

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A carved jade pendant of mottled creamy pale gray and blue-green stone, its front worked in low relief with a stylized bird in profile: a long curved beak, a bold scrolled eye, and a large curved wing of overlapping feathers filling the plaque. The reverse is left plain and gently domed, pierced by two sets of biconical drilled holes for suspension, indicating that the plaque was worn or sewn as a costume element. Jade was the most precious substance in the Maya world, and avian imagery of this kind is likely tied to the celestial bird of Maya cosmology, an emblem of rulership and of the upper world. Jadeite reached the Maya lowlands from a single known source region, the Motagua River valley of present-day Guatemala, and its scarcity made it the standard of value across Mesoamerica, exchanged, hoarded, and interred with rulers. Its green was read as the color of maize shoots, standing water, and breath itself, so a carved jade ornament was less adornment than a claim on vitality. The avian subject belongs to a long iconographic line. The Principal Bird Deity, Itzamnaaj's ornithomorphic aspect, perches atop the world tree in Classic Maya imagery and lends its plumage and beak to royal headdresses and pectorals. Paired biconical perforations, drilled from both faces with a hollow reed and abrasive slurry, are the standard Maya solution for mounting such plaques on cloth or cord. Item # 73061

Lot: 72 - Maya Jade Face Pendant Plaque with Feathered Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A pale blue-green jade plaque carved in low relief with the face of a lord, his broad features framed by an elaborate feathered headdress and flanked by circular ear ornaments. Wide almond eyes, a flat nose, and a bar-like mouth are rendered in the shallow, fluid incision characteristic of Late Classic lapidary work, the surface polished to a soft sheen and veined with russet inclusions. Five sets of biconically drilled holes pierce the margins, allowing the plaque to be suspended or sewn onto a garment, headdress, or pectoral assemblage. Such ornaments, worked from the most precious of Mesoamerican materials, marked elite rank and were often interred with their owners. A small-scale piece. For the Maya, jade (properly jadeite, sourced almost exclusively from the Motagua River valley of present-day Guatemala) carried associations with maize, breath, water, and the vital soul. Its blue-green range echoed the young maize plant and the surface of standing water, and the stone was worked without metal tools: shaped by string sawing, abraded with sand slurries, and drilled from both faces with hollow reed or bone bits, which produces the biconical perforations seen here. Portrait plaques of this type were assembled into pectorals and belt assemblages, or stitched to textiles, and they circulated as royal gifts and tribute among Classic-period courts before accompanying their owners into the tomb. Item # 73062

Lot: 73 - Maya Jade Floral Ear Flare Pair with Spiral Quadrants

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A matched pair of ear ornaments carved from creamy pale green jade, each a squared quatrefoil whose four petal quadrants carry a raised spiral in low relief. A wide perforation pierces the center, and the reverse rises into a short tubular collar with a flared rim, drilled twice for suspension or for securing a counterweight and perishable insert. Worn through the distended lobe, flares of this scale announced elite rank: jade was the most precious substance in the Maya world, and matched sets were commissioned for rulers and courtiers alike. The quatrefoil silhouette, read as a flower and as the mouth of the earth, ties the wearer to solar and floral symbolism. Both retain a soft ancient surface polish flecked with earthen mineral deposits. Mounted on an old custom base. Maya jade came almost exclusively from the Motagua River valley of Guatemala, the only confirmed source of jadeite in Mesoamerica, and was worked without metal tools: forms were sawn with cord and abrasive slurry, hollowed by tubular drills of bone or reed, and finished to a glassy polish with fine sand and hide. The labor embedded in a single flare made these among the costliest ornaments a Classic Maya court could produce. The quatrefoil motif carries particular weight. In monumental art the four-lobed cartouche marks a portal, the cave mouth or the surface of the earth through which ancestors and deities emerge, and the same shape at the ear frames the wearer's head within that cosmological geometry. Painted vases and carved stelae show lords wearing flares of exactly this type, the tubular reverse threaded with a bead or a plume that fanned out behind the lobe. Item # 73063

Lot: 74 - Maya Jade Tubular Pectoral with Woven Mat Pattern

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A columnar pectoral carved from creamy pale bluish-green jade, its body wrapped in an interlaced weave in low relief that mimics a plaited mat. Eight vertical rows of biconical drillings pierce the pattern, each perforation worked from both faces in the standard Mesoamerican manner, allowing the ornament to be suspended or sewn to a garment. Stepped, flaring flat rims finish both ends, and a hollow channel runs the length of the core. The surface carries a mellow patina with russet mineral staining in the recesses. Such large worked jades were reserved for elite regalia, the plaited motif likely invoking the woven mat, or pop, an enduring Maya emblem of rulership. Presented on a custom hardwood block base. Jade held a value in Maya courts far above gold: green stone was the color of maize, water, and breath, and worked jade circulated as tribute, dedicatory cache offering, and burial furniture for rulers. The woven-mat design carved here belongs to a deep symbolic vocabulary. The pop, or plaited mat, named both the throne a lord sat upon and the first month of the solar calendar, Pop, and the title ah pop, "he of the mat," designated a ruler. A mat pattern rendered in imported Motagua Valley jadeite is therefore a statement of rank as much as an ornament, and hollow tubular forms of this scale are markedly less common than the flat plaque and bead pectorals that dominate surviving Classic period jade assemblages. Item # 73064

Lot: 75 - Maya Jade Floral Earspools, Pair

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A matched pair of pale creamy-green jade earspools, each cut as a six-petalled blossom pierced with openwork perforations around a wide central aperture. The rear of each disc extends into a short cylindrical tube, the sleeve that passed through the distended earlobe, and two small drilled holes at the back once secured a cord or counterweight. The surfaces carry a soft, mellow polish worked without metal tools, using abrasive sand, cord, and hollow drills. Flower-form ornaments of this kind belonged to the regalia of Maya elites, jade being the most precious of Mesoamerican substances, associated with maize, breath, and rulership. Mounted on an old custom metal display base. Jade held a value in the Maya world that gold never approached: green stone was the color of young maize, of standing water, and of the breath soul itself, and access to the Motagua Valley sources was controlled by ruling lineages. Earspools were among the most conspicuous markers of that access, worn by lords, ladies, and deities alike in monumental sculpture and painted vessels, where the flared disc frames the face and a bead or feather counterweight hangs behind the lobe. The floral form seen here reads as a stylized four- or six-petalled blossom, an emblem tied to the sun, to the ancestral flower mountain, and to the courtly rhetoric of paradise. Working the stone required patience rather than hardness: jadeite yields only to abrasion, so each perforation was ground with sand slurry, cord saws, and reed drills. Item # 73065

Lot: 76 - Maya Jade Earspool Pair with Flared Rims, Late Classic

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A matched pair of ear ornaments carved from translucent blue-green jade, each a disc of softly swelling profile whose face sweeps inward to a wide central perforation. The reverse of each carries an integral projecting tube, the shaft that passed through the distended earlobe, and two small drilled holes for the counterweight cords or perishable flare inserts that once hung behind. The stone is worked to a satin polish, the pale veining left visible rather than disguised. Jade ear ornaments of this scale belonged to the elite wardrobe, worn by rulers, nobles, and deities alike in Maya imagery, and were frequently interred with their owners. Mounted for display on a custom lucite and hardwood base. Jade was the most valuable substance in the Maya world, prized above gold and quarried almost exclusively from the serpentinite belt of the Motagua River valley in present-day Guatemala. Its blue-green range carried a dense knot of associations: maize, water, breath, and the vital essence the Maya called ik'. Earspools appear constantly in Classic period sculpture and painted vases, framing the faces of rulers on stelae and of the Maize God in his most idealized guise, and the assembled ornament often combined a jade flare with a bead counterweight and a perishable tubular insert. Working the stone required abrasion rather than cutting. Jadeite is harder than any tool the Maya possessed, so lapidaries shaped and hollowed these discs with cord, reed drills, water, and quartz sand, a slow attritional process that made a finished pair a considerable investment of labor as well as material. Item # 73066

Lot: 77 - Maya Greenstone Bowl with Crested Waterbird Head Handle

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A bowl carved from bluish-green stone, its rim rising at one side into the head and neck of a long-billed waterbird. The sculptor cut a raised, finely serrated crest along the crown, drilled round recessed eyes, and drew the beak down in a smooth rounded taper against the vessel wall. A double incised band encircles the exterior below the lip and sweeps down in a chevron to trace the bird's folded wing, so the container reads as the body of the creature itself. Hardstone vessels of this refinement were prestige goods rather than kitchenware, likely used to hold pigment, tobacco, or offerings in elite and ceremonial settings. The surface carries a soft ancient polish with warm mineral veining. Waterbirds carried heavy symbolic freight in Maya thought. Cormorants, herons, and other fish-taking birds belonged to the watery surface of the primordial sea, the threshold between the earthly world and the underworld, and they appear repeatedly in Classic period painting and sculpture with fish or serpents in their bills. A vessel shaped as such a bird would have joined that watery register to its contents.\n\nGreenstone, a broad category covering serpentine, jadeite, and related metamorphic rocks, was the most esteemed material of Mesoamerica, valued above gold for its association with maize, breath, and rain. Working it without metal tools required abrasion with harder sands and drills of cane or bone, which makes the crisp serrated crest and the unbroken incised bands here a considerable technical achievement. Item # 73067

Lot: 78 - Maya Jadeite Head Pendant with Biconical Suspension Hole

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A human face emerges from mottled blue-green and cream jadeite, the stone's speckled matrix reading almost like dappled light across the cheeks. The carver worked in low relief: a narrow angular nose ridged from the brow, softly modeled lips parted by a single incised line, and shallow recessed eyes beneath an incised browline that continues across a plain forehead band. A single biconically drilled suspension hole pierces the upper rear ridge, confirming the maskette was meant to hang, likely as a chest or belt ornament worn by an elite. Jadeite was the most valued substance in the Maya world, and pendants of this scale carried status and probably protective meaning for the wearer. Mounted on a custom base for display. Maya jadeite came almost exclusively from the Motagua River valley of present-day Guatemala, the only confirmed source in Mesoamerica, and it moved along trade routes that reached from the Peten to the Gulf Coast. Its value was not merely aesthetic: green stone was linked to maize, breath, and the vital soul, and rulers were interred with jade masks, beads placed in the mouth, and pectoral ornaments of exactly this kind. Small carved heads and maskettes were among the most common elite forms. Because jadeite is harder than steel and could not be cut with the metal tools unavailable to Maya lapidaries, such pieces were shaped entirely by abrasion, sawing with cord and sand slurry and drilling with hollow reeds. The hourglass profile of a biconical perforation, drilled from both faces until the bores meet, is the signature of that patient technology. Item # 73068

Lot: 79 - Maya Jade Openwork Coiled Serpent Pendant

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A coiled serpent worked in creamy blue-green jade, its body curling inward to a tight spiral that leaves an open crescent at the center of the plaque. The head rises at the upper edge with an upturned snout, parted jaws, and an incised almond eye, while shallow grooves segment the sinuous body and mark the flank. Both faces are ground smooth and lightly polished, the openwork cut through from a single tabular blank, with a biconical suspension hole drilled near the upper margin for wear as a chest or headdress ornament. Serpents carried associations with rain, ancestral vision, and dynastic power, so such a jade was likely an emblem of elite rank rather than simple adornment. Jade was the most valuable substance in the Maya world, prized above gold and quarried chiefly from serpentinite deposits along the Motagua River valley in present-day Guatemala. Its blue-green range was linked to maize, water, and breath, and finished ornaments circulated as tribute, diplomatic gifts, and heirlooms across generations before being interred with their owners. The serpent, particularly the vision serpent whose coiling body framed apparitions of ancestors in Classic period iconography, was among the most charged motifs available to a lapidary. Working it in jade demanded patience: with no metal tools, artisans sawed, drilled, and abraded the stone with string, sand, and water, so an openwork piece of this scale represents a considerable investment of labor. Item # 73069

Lot: 80 - Maya Miniature Jade Deity Head Pendant

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A miniature deity head carved from mottled blue-green jade, its broad face reduced to a few decisive planes. Recessed oval eyes sit beneath a low browband, flanking a large angular nose; the wide lips are punctuated by deep circular drillings at each corner. Flaring rectangular ears are pierced for ornaments, and two smaller holes bored through the upper corners of the forehead allowed the plaque to be suspended, likely as a pectoral or a costume element sewn to regalia. Traces of earthen cinnabar-colored deposits cling to the incised lines and drill pits. Jade was the most precious of Maya materials, and such heads served as portable emblems of divine and ancestral presence. Mounted on a custom block display base. For the Maya, jadeite (worked from the Motagua River valley of Guatemala, the only known Mesoamerican source) carried the color of maize shoots, standing water, and breath itself. Small carved heads in the material were strung as pectorals, sewn onto belts and headdresses, held in the mouths of the honored dead, and cached beneath stelae and temple floors. Because jade could not be cut with metal, each piece was abraded and drilled with string saws, sand, and hollow bone or reed drills fed with grit, a labor so slow that finished ornaments circulated as the highest currency of elite exchange. The tubular drillings at the mouth corners and the perforated ears on this example are the standard vocabulary of that technique, and the ear holes would once have held perishable spools or feather work. Item # 73070

Lot: 81 - Maya Volcanic Stone Boundary Marker with Crouching Jaguar Finial

Pre-Columbian, Central America, Maya. A crouching jaguar hunches atop a tapering tenon of gray-red volcanic stone, its body compressed into blocky masses of shoulder, haunch, and gripping paw. The head is carved with squared brow scrolls, drilled circular eyes, perked ears, and a bared rectangular muzzle from which the tongue protrudes. The lower shaft was left rough and unfinished, intended to be sunk into earth or masonry so that only the feline crest showed above ground. Such tenoned markers likely served to define territorial or ceremonial precincts, the jaguar acting as guardian and emblem of rulership, night, and the underworld. Bold, reductive cutting exploits the coarse vesicular stone rather than fighting it. Mounted on a custom base. The jaguar (b'alam) stood at the center of Maya political and cosmological imagination. Rulers took the animal into their names and wore its pelt as a badge of office, and the beast doubled as the night sun's aspect, prowling the underworld between dusk and dawn. A feline set at the edge of a plaza, causeway, or landholding therefore carried more than decorative weight: it marked the boundary and threatened whatever might cross it. Tenoned sculpture is a hallmark of Maya architectural practice, where hachas, facade masks, and marker stones were cut with unfinished shanks for insertion into masonry or ground. The deliberate contrast here between the finished crest and the rough shaft is a functional signature of that tradition, and a useful indicator that the piece was made to be seen only from the waist up. Item # 73071

Lot: 82 - Maya Stucco Portrait Head with Traces of Red Pigment

Pre-Columbian, Mexico or Guatemala, Maya. A face modeled with unusual tenderness: arched brows sweeping into a broad naturalistic nose, heavy lidded eyes lowered as if in reverie, and full bow-shaped lips parted to reveal the upper teeth. Worked in limestone with stucco surfacing, the head preserves faint traces of red-brown pigment along the brow, a remnant of the vivid polychromy that once covered Maya sculpture. The features follow the elite portrait conventions of the Classic period, in which rulers and courtiers were rendered with individualized profiles rather than generic masks. Heads of this type were most often set into architectural facades, roof combs, and modeled stucco friezes on temple and palace structures, where painted faces of dynasts gazed out over plaza audiences. Mounted on a custom metal base. Modeled stucco was the great public medium of Classic Maya cities. Lime plaster, burned from the same limestone that built the pyramids, could be worked wet into portraiture of a subtlety that carved stone rarely allowed, then painted in reds, blues, and greens. The finest surviving programs, at Palenque, Tonina, Comalcalco, and Copan, show rulers crowned with elaborate headdresses amid registers of glyphs and supernatural attendants, each face a recognizable individual within a rigid courtly idiom. Because stucco is fragile and soluble, the vast majority of these facades dissolved with their buildings; isolated heads such as this one are typically all that remains of what were once monumental compositions. The red traces here are almost certainly hematite-based pigment, the color the Maya associated with the east, the rising sun, and royal legitimacy. Item # 73072

Lot: 83 - Maya Carved Orangeware Cylinder Vase with Kneeling Lords

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A generously proportioned orangeware cylinder vase, its burnished walls interrupted by three deeply carved rectangular panels. Within each, a kneeling lord turns in profile, crowned by an elaborate headdress, throat encircled by a beaded collar, hips wrapped in a long panel loincloth, one raised hand gripping a bladed implement described in the earlier record as a "knife." The carving is cut back to a recessed matte ground, so the figures stand proud against the polished surface, a technique favored by Late Classic potters working in the incised and carved tradition. Vessels of this scale and finish served the elite as drinking cups for cacao and as prestige goods, frequently interred with their owners. Carved rather than painted cylinders occupy a distinctive niche in Late Classic Maya ceramics. Where polychrome vases carry their narratives in slip and pigment, the carved wares achieve their effect through relief alone, the potter cutting away the background after leather-hard drying and then burnishing the raised forms to a soft sheen. The repeating panel format, one figure per register, echoes the framing of carved stone lintels and stelae, translating monumental court imagery to a vessel that could be held in the hand and passed among guests.\n\nThe kneeling posture with an upraised blade recurs across Maya elite iconography in contexts of bloodletting and sacrifice, though without accompanying glyphs the specific narrative cannot be fixed. Cylinder vases of this type routinely accompanied their owners into the grave, and dedicatory texts on related examples identify them as vessels for cacao, the drink of rulers. Item # 73073

Lot: 84 - Maya Stucco Head of a Dignitary with Red Pigment

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Maya. A modeled stucco face of a dignitary, rendered with the individualized naturalism the Maya reserved for rulers and court elites. The narrow aquiline nose projects sharply, the full lips part as if caught mid-speech, and the heavy lids droop over almond eyes outlined in dark pigment. Much of the original red-brown wash survives across the cheeks and brow, with a small blue painted stripe at the left. Modeled in lime plaster over an architectural armature, such heads once ornamented the facades, roof combs, and interior friezes of temples and palaces, where painted stucco portraiture proclaimed dynastic identity in polychrome relief. Mounted on a custom base. Lime stucco was the Maya sculptor's most responsive medium: burned limestone slaked into plaster, built up over stone or armature cores while damp, and finished with modeling tools and the fingers before the surface set. The results at Palenque, Tonina, and Copan carry a portrait realism unmatched elsewhere in Mesoamerica, individual noses, lips, and eyelids that read as specific people rather than types. Nearly all of it was painted. Red, derived from hematite, dominated the palette and carried associations with blood, the east, and rulership, while the rarer blue, the celebrated Maya blue produced by binding indigo to palygorskite clay, was reserved for accents of ritual weight. Facade sculpture of this kind fell with the buildings it adorned, which is why such heads survive as fragments rather than complete figures. Item # 73074

Lot: 85 - Maya Terracotta Head of a Dignitary with Brimmed Cap

Pre-Columbian, Mexico or Guatemala, Maya. A large hollow terracotta head, mold-formed and finished by hand, broken from a standing or seated dignitary figure. The face follows the Maya courtly canon: heavy-lidded almond eyes with pierced pupils, an aquiline nose drawn forward in an unbroken line from the brow, and full parted lips. The cranium is elongated by deliberate modification, a mark of noble birth. A small vertical jewel rises between the brows, modeled ear assemblies flank the cheeks, and a band of finely combed hair frames the forehead beneath a broad brimmed cap. Such figures, among the most ambitious ceramic sculpture of the Late Classic lowlands, likely served funerary and commemorative ends, presenting an idealized elite countenance. Mounted on an old custom metal base. Maya elites shaped identity as deliberately as they shaped clay. Infant cranial binding produced the sloping, elongated profile seen here, aligning the wearer with the Maize God, whose head was imagined as a ripening ear of corn. The forehead ornament between the brows, along with pierced ears once hung with flares of jade or shell, completed a vocabulary of rank legible at a glance across the Late Classic lowlands. Large hollow figures of this scale were built from press-molded halves joined and then reworked by hand, allowing a workshop to repeat a facial type while individualizing headdress, ornament, and expression. The technique underlies the celebrated figural traditions of the Usumacinta and Campeche regions, and the surviving fragments of the broad brim and crown here indicate a headdress considerably taller than the face it surmounted. Item # 73075

Lot: 86 - Maya Cylinder Vase with Seated Lords in Avian Headdresses

Pre-Columbian, Mexico or Guatemala, Maya. A tall ceramic cylinder painted in iron-red slip on a cream ground, its walls carrying two nearly identical scenes of a lord seated cross-legged on a low throne. Each wears an elaborate avian headdress with a long-billed bird crest, beaded collar, and trailing sash, one hand raised in a gesture of address. Vertical panels of stepped, brick-like motifs separate the two figures and frame the composition, while bands of squared pseudo-glyphs run below the rim and above the base. Vessels of this form served the elite as drinking cups for frothed cacao and were placed with the dead as grave furniture, their painted programs recording courtly display rather than everyday use. The cylinder vase is the signature vessel of the Late Classic Maya court, a shape developed expressly for the consumption of chocolate. Dedicatory texts painted around the rims of such vases, the so-called Primary Standard Sequence, typically name the vessel, its contents, and its owner. Where a painter lacked full literacy, or where the workshop worked outside a scribal center, the sequence was reproduced as ornamental pseudo-glyphs: legible as a band of writing, but not as language. The repeating squared cartouches on this vessel belong to that tradition. The avian headdress worn by both seated figures is a standard emblem of noble rank, the bird's head projecting forward above the wearer's brow. Comparable scenes of enthroned lords receiving tribute or attendants appear across the ceramic corpus of the Peten and the Usumacinta drainage, though the schematic drawing and the columnar dividers here point to a provincial workshop rather than a palace atelier. Item # 73076

Lot: 87 - Maya Polychrome Bowl with Deities and Offering Bundles

Pre-Columbian, Guatemala, Maya. A deep, round-sided ceramic bowl painted in orange, red, cream, and black slips over a burnished buff ground. Two standing deities face one another around the circumference, each robed in a beaded and paneled costume, and each trailed by an enormous knotted offering bundle whose tasseled cords and cross-hatched medallions fill the surrounding field. A pseudoglyphic band, stylized rather than legible, runs beneath the everted rim, and a red band frames the register below. Fine black outlining carries the drawing; broad slip washes carry the color. Vessels of this class served elite feasting and gift exchange, and frequently accompanied their owners into the tomb. Late Classic Maya painters treated the cylinder and the deep bowl as a continuous field rather than a set of panels, so a scene read by turning the vessel in the hand. The knotted bundles behind each figure belong to a well-attested Maya visual vocabulary of presentation: cloth-wrapped offerings, tied with elaborate cords and often crowned with jade or spondylus, carried in court ceremony and tribute presentation.\n\nThe rim band here is pseudoglyphic, a sequence that imitates the cadence of a Primary Standard Sequence dedicatory text without spelling readable signs. Such bands are common on provincial and workshop wares whose painters commanded the courtly style but not the script itself, and they are diagnostic of the period rather than a defect of it. Item # 73077

Lot: 88 - Maya Polychrome Cylinder Vase with Long-Nosed Speaking Lords and Glyph Band

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A cylinder vase painted in red and black on a cream-buff slip, its walls carrying two seated lords in mirrored composition. Each wears a feathered headdress and ear ornament, one hand extended in the conventional gesture of speech, the face drawn with an extraordinarily attenuated, mosquito-like nose and open mouth. Two red offering jars with flaring necks stand between them. A band of glyphs runs below the rim, framed above and below by broad red bands. Vessels of this shape held frothed cacao at courtly feasts, and the paired figures with their emphatic speech gestures likely record a scene of formal address or tribute presentation. Painted cylinder vases were the prestige tableware of Late Classic Maya courts, made for the drinking of cacao and frequently inscribed with a dedicatory formula (the Primary Standard Sequence) naming the vessel's shape, contents, and owner. Many surviving examples carry pseudo-glyphs instead: decorative approximations of the script produced by painters working outside the scribal centers, a reminder that literacy and its imitation coexisted in the same workshops.\n\nThe elongated, proboscis-like nose given to both lords is a recognized convention rather than a portrait. It appears on supernatural courtiers, aged deities, and impersonators in Maya vase painting, where exaggerated facial profiles distinguish beings of the other world from human participants. The forward-thrust hand is the standard Maya sign for speech, so the two figures are shown mid-discourse across the offering jars set between them. Item # 73078

Lot: 89 - Maya Carved Cylinder Vase with Pseudo-Glyph Band

Pre-Columbian, Mexico or Guatemala, Maya. A tall ceramic cylinder rising from a flat base to a slightly flared rim, its buff-tan body banded below the lip with a carved register of blocky, cartouche-like glyphs, several filled with crosshatching and scroll elements. Below the frieze the wall carries a scattered field of painted tan-orange rings and rosettes, perhaps evoking jaguar pelage or cacao froth. Vessels of this shape served the Late Classic elite as drinking cups for frothed cacao, passed at feasts and interred with their owners. The carved band imitates the dedicatory Primary Standard Sequence found on painted counterparts, though the signs here appear largely pseudo-glyphic rather than fully readable. Late Classic Maya cylinder vases were among the most socially charged objects a lord could own. Painted or carved examples routinely bear the Primary Standard Sequence, a formulaic dedicatory text naming the vessel type, its contents (most often kakaw, cacao, or atole), and sometimes its owner and the artist who made it. Carved-and-slipped cylinders, as opposed to polychrome-painted ones, cluster in the Chochola and Puuc regions of Yucatan and in the southern lowlands, where potters worked the leather-hard clay with modelling tools before firing. Where the incised signs resolve into repeated, non-linguistic shapes, scholars call them pseudo-glyphs: the visual prestige of writing invoked without a literate scribe, a common and revealing feature of provincial workshops serving a court-emulating clientele. Item # 73079

Lot: 90 - Maya Carved Blackware Tripod Cylinder Vase with Dancing Figure

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A carved cylinder vase of burnished blackware, its body raised on three integral slab legs, each incised with a stepped concentric cross. Two opposing rectangular panels stand in low relief against the darkened ground, their surfaces filled with a dancing lord in profile: fancy plumed headdress, scrolled ornaments, and a trophy head suspended from his belt, framed by dense geometric and glyph-like fretwork. The carving was cut into leather-hard clay before firing, the recessed field left rough so the polished slip reads as shadow around the raised figures. Vessels of this type held cacao and other elite beverages, and frequently accompanied their owners into the tomb. Carved-and-incised tripod cylinders belong to the Late Classic courtly repertoire, when painted and relief-carved drinking vases circulated as gifts among Maya elites and were often named in dedicatory texts for their owner and their contents. The dancer with a trophy head at the waist draws on a well-attested Classic Maya theme in which lords perform in the guise of victorious warriors or supernatural patrons, the severed head serving as an emblem of captured vitality rather than mere spoil. Slab-footed tripod supports, an idea absorbed from Teotihuacan-influenced central Mexican vessel forms, entered the Maya lowlands during the Early Classic and persisted as a prestige shape thereafter, and the stepped cross motifs on the legs are of a piece with that borrowed vocabulary. Item # 73080

Lot: 91 - Maya Tripod Redware Vessel | Deity and Bird Motifs

Pre-Columbian, El Salvador, Maya. A cylindrical redware tripod vessel, with russet slip worn to a terracotta tone, carved in low relief with two registers. The lower band presents the heads of two deities in profile, framed by scrolling volutes and divided by vertical panels of incised bars. The upper register carries two avian zoomorphs in profile, each shown with beak open, the plumage rendered in feathered curls. Vessels of this type served elite households as containers for cacao and other prestige beverages, with sculpted surfaces conveying cosmological imagery. Item # 203700

Lot: 92 - Maya Jaguar Effigy Tripod Urn with Flanges

Pre-Columbian, Guatemala, Maya, Southern Highlands. A salmon-toned earthenware urn whose cylindrical wall breaks open into the modeled face of a jaguar, muzzle thrust forward, fangs bared between drawn lips, pellet eyes bulging beneath perked, hollowed ears. An arc of applied nubs frames the face like a beaded collar, and a pie-crust ridge runs above the three short rounded feet. Two flat rectangular lappets project from the sides, wing-like slabs that give the vessel its spread silhouette. The rim is everted and undecorated, the interior plain. Vessels of this type served as containers for offerings or interments, the jaguar guarding contents likely intended for the dead. Modeling is confident and economical: appliqued elements pressed onto a wheel-less coil-built body, then burnished to a soft matte finish. The jaguar was the most charged animal in the Maya bestiary. Lord of the night sun, patron of warriors and of the underworld passage, it appears on thrones, incense burners, and funerary furniture throughout the Classic period. The Jaguar God of the Underworld, marked by cruller eyes and filed teeth, carried the sun through the darkness between sunset and dawn, which made feline imagery a natural guardian for vessels holding the remains or offerings of the dead. In the southern highlands, urns of this kind were often deposited in tombs and cache pits, where the effigy face turned outward to confront whoever might disturb it. Item # 73081

Lot: 93 - Maya Large Orangeware Lidded Vessel with Bird Finial

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A perching bird presides over the lid of this substantial orangeware vessel, its wings rendered in crisp incised strokes and its beak lifted as if mid-call. The body is a broad, slightly tapered cylinder, burnished to a warm cinnamon slip and marked by clouded fire blooms from open pit firing. Its cover sits low and wide, the overhanging flange dropping past the rim in a clean horizontal shadow line. Lidded bowls of this scale served in Early Classic burials, holding offerings for the dead, and the avian finial likely carried a role beyond the decorative: birds move between earthly and celestial realms in Maya cosmology, fitting sentinels for a container sealed away underground. The wide, flanged lid with a modeled zoomorphic handle is a hallmark of Early Classic Maya ceramic production, contemporary with the basal-flange bowls and lidded tetrapod vessels recovered from elite tombs at Tikal, Uaxactun, and Kaminaljuyu. Such vessels were frequently interred as burial furniture, their sealed interiors holding foodstuffs, cacao, or smaller grave goods. Bird finials are among the most persistent motifs in the repertoire. The muan bird, the quetzal, and the great supernatural avian known to epigraphers as the Principal Bird Deity all appear in Maya art as messengers traversing the axis between the underworld, the earthly plane, and the sky. A bird set atop a lid places that passage precisely where the vessel opens, though the modeling here is generalized rather than diagnostic of any single species. Item # 73082

Lot: 94 - Maya Large Hollow Mold-Made Dignitary Figure with Shield

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Maya. A hollow, mold-made pottery dignitary stands frontally in a floor-length hooded robe, both hands closed over a small circular shield worn at the chest. A long beaded necklace falls from the throat, flanked by disc earflares and tiered curls framing the face beneath a tall flaring headdress. The features are boldly modeled: heavy lidded eyes, a bow-shaped upper lip, parted to bare the teeth. Low-relief bands and glyph-like motifs ornament the skirt. A chalky white stucco slip covers the surface, the ground for pigment now largely lost. Figures of this scale were pressed in two-part molds and joined at the seams, and likely served as offerings or grave furniture, portraying a robed elite or impersonator rather than an individual likeness. Late Classic Maya potters worked mold-made figurines in enormous numbers, most notably on Jaina Island off the Campeche coast, where hundreds were interred with the dead. Modest figurines of five or six inches are common; a hollow example approaching thirteen inches is genuinely uncommon, since large mold-pressed shells warp and split in the kiln and few survived firing, let alone burial. The white stucco coating seen here is characteristic: Maya modelers finished figures with a thin lime ground and then painted them, frequently in the celebrated "Maya blue," a pigment compounded from indigo and palygorskite clay that resists fading. What reads today as a pale monochrome was originally a polychrome image, and traces of that scheme sometimes survive in recesses. Item # 73083

Lot: 95 - Maya Polychrome Dish with Abstract Bird Head Roundel

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya. A wide earthenware dish whose burnished orange slip glows beneath a confident brush. The interior floor carries a large roundel enclosing an abstract avian head, its eye rendered as a tight spiral, crested plumes above and below drawn in fine parallel hatching. Concentric black and red-orange bands frame the medallion, and a broad rim register repeats seven schematized birds in the shorthand of Late Classic lowland painters. The exterior is left unslipped, revealing a buff, lightly gritted paste and a low ring foot. Vessels of this scale served the elite table and the tomb alike, holding tamales or offerings before accompanying their owner into burial, the painted birds perhaps invoking the celestial messengers of Maya cosmology. Avian imagery pervades Classic Maya painted ceramics. Long-billed, spiral-eyed birds of this type are usually read as manifestations of Itzam Ye (the Principal Bird Deity), the great celestial being who perches atop the world tree and mediates between the sky and the earthly plane. Reduced here to elegant contour and hatching, the motif belongs to a widespread lowland shorthand in which painters compressed a whole cosmological narrative into a single roundel and a repeating rim frieze. Slip-painted service wares of this diameter were prestige goods, produced in palace workshops and circulated through elite exchange before ending as grave furniture. Their pigments are mineral, ground hematite and iron-rich clays fired in an oxidizing atmosphere, which accounts for the range from pale orange to deep rust visible across the surface. Item # 73084

Lot: 96 - Maya Polychrome Bowl with Saurian Deity and Stepped Pyramid Frieze

Pre-Columbian, Guatemala or Mexico, Maya. A ceramic bowl raised on a low ring base, its flaring wall broken by a projecting rim skirt and slipped in warm orange. The exterior carries a procession of seven stepped-pyramid motifs in alternating red, brown, and cream, framed above and below by bands of dark triangles. Within, a saurian deity crouches in profile, head thrust forward on a long toothy snout, a spiked crest running the length of his back, a lobed floral rosette before his belly and a coiled snail-like element behind. Painted with a fine black outlining brush over burnished slip, the bowl belongs to the serving and presentation wares of Late Classic elite households, vessels that carried food at feasts and frequently followed their owners into the tomb. Reptilian and crocodilian beings pervade Maya cosmology. The earth itself was imagined as the back of a great saurian floating on the primordial sea, its spined ridge the mountainous surface of the world, and the water lily blossom, rendered here as the lobed rosette, is the standard marker of that watery underworld surface. The pairing of a spined saurian with a lily flower and a shell is therefore not a random menagerie but a compressed statement of the aquatic earth-plane. The stepped-fret motif banding the exterior is among the most durable elements of the Mesoamerican decorative vocabulary, read variously as pyramid platforms, cloud terraces, or the stylized coils of a serpent, and it recurs from Maya ceramics to the mosaic facades of Mitla. Item # 73085

Lot: 97 - Maya Polychrome Deity Head Plate with Kill Hole

Pre-Columbian, Mexico or Guatemala, Maya. A broad earthenware plate with steeply flaring walls, slipped cream and painted in red, orange, and black. The central roundel holds a profile deity head in three-quarter scale: fanged mouth, scrolled snout, dotted cheek, and a sweeping feathered headdress rendered in fine dark line. A ring of black triangles frames the medallion, and the interior wall carries a broad register of abstract geometric and scroll motifs beneath a red-painted rim. A small hole drilled through the center, at the deity's eye, is the customary kill hole, opening the vessel so it could accompany the dead. Presented on a custom metal display base. Late Classic Maya polychrome plates of this scale were serving wares for elite feasting before they became grave furniture. When interred, many were ritually "killed," a hole punched or drilled through the base to release the vessel's animating force so that it could travel with its owner. That the perforation here falls precisely on the painted deity's eye is unlikely to be accident: piercing the eye of a supernatural is a recurring gesture in Maya termination ritual. The fanged, scroll-snouted profile with dotted cheek markings belongs to the broad family of zoomorphic supernaturals painted on Peten and adjacent lowland wares, often read as an aspect of a saurian or jaguar deity. Without an accompanying glyph band, a firm identification of the individual god is not possible. Item # 73086

Lot: 98 - Maya Polychrome Tripod Plate with Profile Head and Kill Hole

Pre-Columbian, Mexico or Guatemala, Maya. A wide earthenware plate on three short nubbin supports, its shallow basin painted in orange, red, and dark brown slips over a cream ground. The central roundel holds a profile head in dark outline, crowned by a headdress of long feathered scrolls, wearing a pointed ear ornament and a broad collar above three bold circular beads. Concentric bands of red and orange, edged with dashed brown, ring the cavetto and rim. A drilled perforation pierces the center of the medallion, the "kill hole" that ritually deadened the vessel, likely when it was placed with the dead. Root marks trace the surface from long burial. Tripod service plates of this scale were the tableware of Late Classic Maya elites, used for tamales and other maize foods at feasts before following their owners into the grave. The deliberate perforation of the base is a widespread Mesoamerican practice: piercing the vessel released or extinguished its animating essence so that it could accompany the deceased rather than continue to serve the living. The profile head, with its feathered headdress and jeweled collar, follows the conventions used for both courtly portraits and deity impersonators, and the painter's economy of line, a few confident brown contours filled with orange wash, is typical of workshops in the central Peten and adjacent lowlands. Item # 73087

Lot: 99 - Atlantic Watershed Carved Volcanic Stone Metate with Mano, Costa Rica

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Atlantic Watershed. A large rectangular grinding table of gray volcanic stone, its gently concave plate raised on three tapering integral legs. The underside carries the sculptor's real ambition: a dense interlocking scroll border framing a stylized frontal human figure rendered in low relief, its limbs and headdress dissolved into rectilinear fret and volute patterns, with matching scroll bands banding each leg. Carved from a single block, the piece belongs to the tripod metate tradition of the Atlantic Watershed, where such tables served both to process maize and to signal rank, many recovered from elite burials. Accompanied by a very large ovoid mano of the same volcanic stone, its working surface worn smooth by use. Tripod metates rank among the most accomplished lapidary work of ancient Costa Rica. Sculptors of the Atlantic Watershed quarried dense volcanic stone and reduced a single block to a plate, legs, and a full program of relief, working with stone and abrasive tools alone. Because a metate could not be assembled, every error was permanent, and the finest examples were prestige goods rather than kitchen equipment. The decoration on this example follows the regional convention of placing the most elaborate carving where it would rarely be seen in use: on the underside. Interlocking scrollwork of this type descends from a shared Isthmian design vocabulary also seen on gold pendants and jade pieces, and the flattened, geometricized human figure at the center is characteristic of the period's preference for anatomy resolved into pattern. Comparable tables appear in funerary contexts, set beside the dead as an emblem of the maize that sustained the living. Item # 73088

Lot: 100 - Costa Rican Stone Mano with Jaguar Head Finials

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A long baton of gray volcanic stone, pecked and abraded into a slender cylinder and finished at each end with a stylized jaguar head worked in low relief, the muzzles blunt, the ears and brows reduced to raised nubs. Paired with a metate, such a mano ground maize and other foodstuffs, its underside worn smooth and flattened by generations of that labor. The feline finials lift a domestic implement into the realm of prestige goods: the jaguar was the preeminent power animal of the Central American isthmus, and its presence on a grinding stone likely signals a household of rank or an object reserved for feasting and ceremonial preparation rather than daily kitchen use. Costa Rican lapidaries of the Period V and VI horizons (roughly 500 to 1350 CE) turned volcanic stone into some of the most ambitious ground stone sculpture in the Americas, above all the flying-panel and tripod metates of the Atlantic Watershed and Diquis regions. Manos carved with animal-head terminals belong to that same workshop tradition, and are found in elite burials alongside their metates, suggesting the grinding set functioned as a marker of status and possibly as a seat of authority in symbolic terms. Jaguar imagery recurs throughout isthmian art, in gold pendants, mace heads, and stone thrones, as the emblem of the shaman and the chief. Item # 73089

Lot: 101 - Atlantic Watershed Jaguar Effigy Metate with Monkey Supports, Costa Rica

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Atlantic Watershed region. A jaguar arches its back to become furniture: this carved gray volcanic stone metate rests its rectangular grinding plate on the animal's body, a finely modeled feline head thrusting forward at one end and a triple-ridged loop tail curving up at the other. Beneath the plate, openwork crouching monkeys serve as caryatid supports, framed by squared legs and an apron of incised step-fret and guilloche banding. The porous, pitted surface retains scattered mineral deposits. Metates of this class ground maize but also carried rank; effigy examples were likely reserved for elite or ceremonial use and frequently accompanied burials, their zoomorphic imagery aligning the daily labor of grinding with the predatory power of the jaguar. Stone metates from Costa Rica's Atlantic Watershed, centered on the Linea Vieja and Reventazon drainages, constitute one of the most accomplished lapidary traditions in lower Central America. Carvers worked dense volcanic stone with stone tools alone, hollowing openwork galleries beneath the plate to produce a sculpture that reads as both table and animal, a technical feat given the brittleness of vesicular basalt and andesite. The jaguar dominates Isthmian iconography as the apex predator and the shamanic alter ego, while monkeys appear repeatedly as liminal, mischievous attendants. Their pairing here (feline head and tail as the frame, simians laboring below as supports) sets a hierarchy of animals into architectural form. The step-fret and guilloche borders echo motifs shared across Diquis, Chiriqui, and Greater Nicoya carving, evidence of a wide Isthmian visual vocabulary carried along trade routes linking Mesoamerica and northern South America. Item # 73090

Lot: 102 - Costa Rican Jade Frog Bead Necklace, 500-1000 CE

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A parade of nine crouching frogs in mottled blue-green jade, each carved flat with a broad head, tucked forelimbs and splayed hind legs, the darkest specimen anchoring the left curve and the largest hung with a smaller frog as a drop. Between them run graduated discs of dark green jade and small gold ball beads, with a pair of long tubular gold beads flanking the center and finished at each end with tight gold wire wrapping. The frog, associated with rain, fertility and regeneration across Central American cosmology, was a favored amulet form among the jade-working peoples of the Atlantic watershed. Restrung on a modern clasp for wear. Costa Rican lapidaries worked jadeite without metal tools, sawing slabs with cord and abrasive sand, then drilling suspension holes biconically before bringing the surface to a glassy polish. The frog and the closely related "axe-god" pendant dominate the repertoire of the Atlantic watershed and Nicoya zones between roughly 300 and 800 CE, after which gold gradually displaced jade as the prestige material of the isthmus. Amphibians, emerging with the rains and transforming in body across their lives, carried an obvious charge of fertility and renewal, and jade frogs are recovered chiefly from burials, worn at the throat. Item # 73091

Lot: 103 - Narino Gold Roundel & Costa Rican Jade Bead Necklace

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica and Colombia, Narino culture. A single strand of twenty jade beads ranging from pale celadon to blue-green, most elliptically barrel-shaped and drilled lengthwise, with a large squared bead anchoring the center. Slender tubular gold beads punctuate the stone at intervals, and a broad sheet-gold roundel hangs below as the focal pendant, its face worked in repousse with a double border of raised dots enclosing a domed central boss. The pendant assayed by XRF at 22.1K, roughly 92 percent gold with silver and a trace of copper. Restrung for modern wear. Personal ornament of this order signaled rank, and the pairing of hard green stone with reflective gold set two of the most prestigious materials of the ancient Americas against one another. Sheet-gold discs of this kind, hammered thin and ornamented with punched or repousse dotwork, are characteristic of the Narino (Piartal and Tuza) goldworking traditions of the southern Colombian highlands and adjacent Ecuador, where metalsmiths favored planar, light-catching forms over the cast volumetric figures made further north. Worn as pectorals, nose ornaments, or suspended danglers, they turned body movement into flashes of reflected sun.\n\nThe jade element belongs to a separate world. Costa Rican lapidaries of the Atlantic watershed prized jadeite and related green stones above metal for most of the first millennium CE, working them with string saws and abrasive sand into axe-god pendants and long barrel beads whose mottled greens and rust-brown veining were left visible rather than disguised. The two traditions met through long-distance exchange, and the present composite strand, restrung in modern times, brings them together in a single ornament. Item # 73092

Lot: 104 - Costa Rican Jade Bead Necklace with Massive Elliptical Beads

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A ribbon of blue-green jade strung as eighteen elliptical beads, twelve of them massive, their long barrel forms swelling toward a single oversized centerpiece. Each was ground and drilled by hand, then burnished to a glassy luster that catches the pale veining and mottled inclusions running through the stone. Scattered mineral deposits remain in the surface pits. Jade of this saturation was the highest-value substance in ancient Costa Rica, worked from imported and local sources into personal ornaments that marked rank as much as they adorned. A necklace of this weight and consistency of color would have belonged to a person of considerable standing, and likely accompanied that person into the grave. Costa Rican lapidaries worked jade intensively between roughly 500 BCE and 700 CE, drilling and sawing with cord, sand, and water in the absence of metal tools, a technique that leaves the slightly conical perforations characteristic of the tradition. Blue-green jadeite was prized above all other stones in the Intermediate Area, and its distribution across the Nicoya Peninsula and the Atlantic Watershed traces exchange networks reaching north toward the Motagua Valley sources of Guatemala. Beads of this scale represent an extraordinary expenditure of both raw material and labor, since each large barrel consumed a substantial block of stone. Item # 73093

Lot: 105 - Costa Rican Jade Avian Pendant with Condor and Rabbit

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A large plaque pendant carved from deep blue-green jade, its upper register a hook-beaked condor grasping the severed head of a rabbit. The bird's wings unfold as armlike appendages terminating in serpent heads that flank the prey, while the lower register renders the rabbit's torso with fingers held together above the raptor's legs and tail. Incised zigzag banding, drilled eyes, and string-cut openwork articulate the composition, and a string-cut ridge runs the length of the reverse, evidence of the abrasive cord technique used to shape the stone. Pendants of this scale served as chest ornaments of rank, worn by elites for whom jade carried associations with fertility, water, and avian power. Mounted on a custom metal base. Costa Rican lapidaries of the Linea Vieja and Nicoya zones worked without metal tools, sawing and slotting jadeite and related greenstones with cord, sand, and water. The distinctive string-cut ridge on the reverse of this pendant is the direct residue of that method: the cord bit inward from both faces and left a spine where the cuts failed to meet. Raptor imagery dominates the region's jade corpus. The hooked beak identifies a bird of prey, read variously as condor, king vulture, or harpy eagle, whose habit of carrying off small mammals made it an apt emblem of predatory authority. The pairing with serpent-headed limbs compounds the message: sky and earth predators fused in a single body, a conflation common across Isthmian iconography and one that would have marked the wearer as a person of consequence. Item # 73094

Lot: 106 - Costa Rican Avian Deity Celt Pendant, Carved Greenstone

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A bird deity crowned with paired horn-like projections presides over the polished blade of this celt pendant, carved from bluish-olive greenstone shot through with variegated brown mottling. The head is worked in crisp low relief: chevron brows, a V-shaped beak, deeply drilled circular eyes joined by an incised bar, and two bored nostrils. Wing elements fold across the chest in broad hatched lozenges, while the lower two-thirds tapers to a smooth rounded bit. Biconical suspension holes pierce the neck and waist for cordage. Such axe-god pendants, ground from imported greenstone with cord-and-abrasive technique, were worn as pectorals of rank rather than used as tools. Presented on an old custom metal base. The so-called "axe gods" of Costa Rica are among the most distinctive lapidary products of the ancient Americas. Craftsmen took the blank of a functional celt and transformed its butt end into an anthropomorphic or avian personage, leaving the working edge untouched, so that the finished object hovered between tool and effigy. Production peaked in the Atlantic Watershed and Nicoya zones during the first millennium CE, when greenstone circulated as the paramount prestige material, worked laboriously by sawing with cord and sand, drilling with hollow reed and abrasive, and polishing to a waxy lustre. Birds, particularly raptors and long-billed shorebirds, dominate the iconographic repertoire, plausibly as avatars of shamanic flight and celestial mediation. Greenstone jewelry of this class largely disappears after ca. 1000 CE, when gold displaced jade as the currency of elite display across lower Central America. Item # 73095

Lot: 107 - Costa Rica Agate Axe-God Pendant with Twin Bird Heads

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Atlantic Watershed. A translucent agate celt pendant carved as a standing figure, its honeyed banding and rust-red veining shifting with the light. The tapering blade body preserves the axe form, while the upper third resolves into a personage in a tall ridged headdress crowned by two opposing bird heads in profile. Below, a wide mouth releases a long protruding tongue; the arms fold across the stomach with fingers incised in fine parallel strokes. Traces of string-sawing survive along the spine on the reverse, and a biconical hole drilled through the neck allowed suspension. Such pectorals, usually rendered in jadeite, functioned as prestige regalia and likely as emblems of shamanic transformation; an agate example of this scale is exceptionally rare. Presented on a custom metal display base. The "axe-god" pendant is the signature lapidary form of Costa Rica's Atlantic Watershed and Nicoya zones. Its outline preserves the silhouette of a polished stone celt, the blade left plain and the butt end transformed into a human or avian personage, so that a tool of clearing and cutting becomes an ornament of rank. Bird-headed variants, with raptor or long-billed heads perched atop the headdress or substituted for the wearer's own, are read as references to the shaman's flight and to the avian alter ego that recurs across Isthmian iconography; the extended tongue is a widespread Central American sign of speech, breath, or trance utterance. Most surviving examples are worked in jadeite, serpentine, or other greenstones traded from the Motagua valley. Agate, a banded chalcedony far harder to shape by string-sawing and abrasive drilling, appears only occasionally, and its translucency would have made this pendant unusually theatrical against the body of its wearer. Item # 73096

Lot: 108 - Costa Rican Jade Duality Pendant, Serpent and Human, 500-1000 CE

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A blue-green jade pendant carved as a serpent, its tapering body scored with an incised zigzag punctuated by drilled dots and stepped notches along both edges. Reverse the orientation and the creature resolves into a human-headed figure: a broad rounded head with drilled eyes, banded brow, and flanking ear tabs above a narrowing torso. A biconical suspension perforation pierces the midsection, allowing the piece to be worn either way, so that the wearer's movement flipped one identity into the other. Such dual-image pendants belong to the lapidary tradition of the Costa Rican Atlantic Watershed and Nicoya regions, where jade signified rank and probably shamanic transformation. Mounted on a custom display base. Costa Rican lapidaries worked without metal tools, shaping and slicing jadeite and related green stones with string saws, sand abrasive, and hollow reed drills. The characteristic vocabulary of this workshop tradition is visible here: shallow incised lines terminating in conical drill pits, edge notches cut by repeated sawing, and a high polish carried across the whole blank rather than confined to the figure.\n\nGreen stone carried an agricultural and cosmological charge across ancient Central America, associated with water, maize, and breath. Serpents, avian forms, and human faces were freely interchanged in these pendants, and reversible compositions of this kind are usually read as statements about transformation between human and animal states, a concept central to the region's shamanic practice. Jade sourced from the Motagua Valley in Guatemala reached Costa Rica through long-distance exchange, and its scarcity made worked examples emblems of elite status. Item # 73097

Lot: 109 - Costa Rican Jade Phallic Pendant of Seated Man with Conical Cap

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A carved jade pendant in creamy tan and pale green, a stylized male figure seated atop his own exaggerated phallus. The body is compressed into a columnar mass: knees drawn up, hands folded to the chest, the face reduced to angular planes with a broad flattened nose and a wide banded mouth, crowned by a ridged conical cap. A vertical channel runs through the length of the stone and a biconical hole pierces the neck for suspension, the classic string-sawn and hollow-drilled technology of Costa Rican lapidaries. Traces of ferrous soil remain in the incisions. Pendants of this kind were worn as personal ornaments of rank and likely as fertility charms, the phallic form making the generative claim explicit. Costa Rican jade working reached its height between roughly 300 and 700 CE, concentrated in the Nicoya Peninsula and the Atlantic Watershed, where artisans had no metal tools and no local jadeite source of certain origin. Blanks were shaped by string sawing with cord and abrasive slurry, then bored with hollow reed drills, a slow subtractive process whose kerf marks and biconical perforations remain diagnostic. Many pendants were cut down from imported Motagua Valley jadeite, sometimes from recycled Maya celts and plaques, and the axe-god and columnar figural pendants that dominate the corpus preserve the elongated proportions of the celt they were cut from. Explicitly phallic examples are uncommon, and they sit within a broader Isthmian visual vocabulary in which fertility, lineage, and personal power were declared through the ornaments worn on the body. Item # 73098

Lot: 110 - Costa Rican Jade Bat Deity Pendant with Crocodile-Head Wings

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Guanacaste-Nicoya. A bat deity spreads his wings across a plaque of mottled blue-green jade, arms raised to grip the upper edges. Each wing terminates in an outward-facing crocodile head, jaws rendered as stacked, finely incised bands of teeth, with relief-carved forelegs tucked beneath. The central face is reduced to a triangular nose, drilled eyes, and a barred mouth between two erect ears. A biconical suspension hole is drilled horizontally through the center, so the pendant hung flat against the chest of its wearer. Worked entirely by abrasion and string-sawing without metal tools, the surface retains a soft polish that catches the stone's cloudy variegation. Likely an elite ornament of rank, its composite predator imagery uniting the creatures of night and water. Costa Rican jadeworking flourished between roughly 300 and 800 CE, concentrated in the Guanacaste-Nicoya zone and the Atlantic watershed, where lapidaries reworked imported blanks and local jadeite and greenstones into axe-god pendants, celts, and winged plaques. Lacking metal tools, they cut the stone with cord, sand, and water, then drilled with hollow reeds, a process measured in weeks per object.\n\nThe bat carried a dense symbolic charge across Central America: a creature of caves and darkness, associated with fertility, night, and passage between worlds. Pairing it with the crocodile, master of the water's edge and in many Isthmian cosmologies the earth itself, produces a single body that spans sky, land, and underworld. Composite pendants of this kind were almost certainly restricted to high-status individuals and frequently accompanied them into the grave. Item # 73099

Lot: 111 - Costa Rican Greenstone Anthropomorphic Half Celt Pendant, 500-1000 CE

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A tall blade of mottled green stone, string-sawn lengthwise so that only half the original celt survives, the severed rib ridge still standing along one face. The upper third carries an incised anthropomorphic figure: a headband banded with diagonal hatching, a narrow face with linear eyes and mouth, and one hand laid flat across the stomach. A biconical suspension hole pierces the neck, converting the polished axe into a pendant worn at the chest. Such reworked celts, cut down and re-carved generations after their manufacture, functioned as heirloom regalia and markers of rank rather than as tools. Mounted on a custom metal base. The polished stone celt was among the most durable forms of wealth in ancient Costa Rica, and the practice of splitting an older axe lengthwise, then incising a figure onto the resulting slab, treats the blade itself as an inherited object worth preserving. Greenstone pendants of this kind circulated as bodily insignia within the chiefly societies of the Atlantic Watershed and Nicoya regions, where jadeite and related green stones carried associations with maize, water, and fertility. The heirloom half celt is far better attested in Olmec Mesoamerica, where reused and re-carved celts are a well-documented practice; surviving Costa Rican examples of the format are correspondingly rare. Item # 73100

Lot: 112 - Costa Rican Jadeite Anthropomorphic Pendant with Animal Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A small pendant of grayish-green jadeite, carved as a standing figure with a human body and a semiabstract zoomorphic head crowned by an animal-head headdress. The lapidary worked the flat slab in stepped planes, cutting openwork voids at the arms and between the legs to articulate limbs from silhouette alone, and drilling a suspension hole through both legs with a second through one shoulder. Rendered at miniature scale, the piece was made to hang against the chest, where jade of this hue carried associations with water, maize, and rank. Such ornaments were among the most valued goods in the Costa Rican jade tradition, worn by persons of standing and frequently interred with them. Costa Rica's jade horizon, concentrated in Guanacaste and the Atlantic Watershed, produced no jadeite of its own: the raw stone traveled south from the Motagua Valley of Guatemala, and some Costa Rican pendants were recut from imported Maya celts and plaques, their original incised faces sliced away. Local carvers developed a distinct idiom nonetheless, favoring flat axe-god forms, string-sawn edges, and hollow-cane drilling with abrasive slurry, techniques that leave the tapering perforations and squared interior cuts seen on pieces of this type. The hybrid human-animal subject belongs to a widespread Isthmian vocabulary of transformation, in which a wearer's supernatural identity is signaled by the creature perched on or fused with the head. By the close of the first millennium CE jade largely gave way to gold as the prestige material of the region, making earlier lapidary work of this kind the terminal expression of a several-century tradition. Item # 73101

Lot: 113 - Costa Rican Quartzite Crocodile Pendant with Curled Tail

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A miniature crocodilian carved from semi-translucent white quartzite, its long tail sweeping up and curling over the back to enclose a crisp lunette of open space. The blunt snout is worked in openwork, drilled through to leave a row of bared teeth, and the body is reduced to smooth, softly swelling volumes that catch light across the stone. A suspension perforation passes through the forelegs, with a second tiny biconical hole drilled at the tail tip, suggesting the piece hung as a pendant, perhaps within a composite ornament of several elements. Saurian imagery carried considerable weight in the goldwork and lapidary traditions of the isthmus, where the crocodile served as an emblem of predatory power. Presented on a custom tapered hardwood block base. The crocodile ranks among the most persistent motifs of Costa Rican and wider Isthmian art, appearing in cast gold pendants, jade axe-gods, and carved stone from the Atlantic Watershed to the Diquis. Its appeal is partly ecological: the caiman dominates the region's rivers and estuaries, and its jaws became shorthand for a devouring, generative force mediating water and land. Lapidaries of the period worked without metal tools, shaping hard siliceous stone by pecking, abrasion with sand slurries, and solid or hollow drilling, techniques that make the pierced snout and paired biconical suspension holes seen here a considerable technical achievement at this scale. Item # 73102

Lot: 114 - Costa Rican Jade Avian Pendant with Hooked Beak

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Nicoya. A miniature avian pendant carved from mottled blue-green jade, its raptor identity compressed into a few decisive planes. A large angular hooked beak projects from beneath a raised crest, flanked by bold relief disc eyes, while stylized wings fold tight against the chest above short legs with delineated toes. A biconical suspension hole pierces the neck for wear. The form most likely began as a longer celt pendant whose lower blade was lost in antiquity and whose broken end was then recarved into feet, a reworking common among treasured jades. Presented on an old custom metal display base. Costa Rican jadework flourished in the Nicoya region and the Atlantic watershed between roughly 300 and 700 CE, worked without metal tools by string sawing, abrasion with sand slurries, and tubular and biconical drilling. Raptorial birds, harpy eagles and vultures among them, dominate the repertoire as symbols of aerial dominion and elite status, worn as chest pendants by those who claimed that authority. The celt-form pendant, an axe blade repurposed as personal ornament, is the signature Costa Rican type; a broken example recut into a complete figure, as here, records a stone valued highly enough to be salvaged rather than discarded. Item # 73103

Lot: 115 - Costa Rican Jade Anthropomorphic Celt Pendant with Double Bird Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A standing figure emerges from the blade of a polished celt, worked in blue-green jade of mottled translucency. The head wears a wide banded headdress crowned by paired opposed bird heads, likely ducks, above recessed slit eyes and a broad angular nose with drilled nostrils. Arms fold across the torso, hands meeting over the stomach with fingers incised in fine parallel lines; the lower body tapers to a bit-like edge with delineated toes. String-sawn cuts and solid drilling define the openwork at the elbows and the transverse suspension perforation at the neck, marking the piece as a pendant worn suspended horizontally at the chest, a prestige ornament of rank rather than a working tool. Mounted on a custom metal base. The so-called "axe-god" pendant is the signature form of the Costa Rican greenstone tradition, concentrated in the Nicoya Peninsula and the Atlantic watershed. Its logic is one of transformation: a utilitarian celt blade, itself a valuable import, is recarved so that a human or avian figure grows from the poll while the cutting edge is left intact below. Raptors, ducks, and vultures dominate the headdress vocabulary, birds that mediate between earth and sky in the cosmology of the region, and the double-headed crest seen here doubles that mediating power. The stone was worked without metal tools. Costa Rican lapidaries shaped jadeite and related greenstones by sawing with cord and abrasive sand, drilling with hollow reeds, and polishing to a waxy lustre, an investment of labor that made these pendants among the most concentrated stores of value in the society. Their frequent recovery from burials indicates that they accompanied their owners out of the world as well as through it. Item # 73104

Lot: 116 - Costa Rican Jade Double Chief Pendant with Zoomorphic Headdresses

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Atlantic Watershed. A pendant of blue-green jade carved with two seated chiefs, one upright and one inverted, so the plaque reads correctly from either end. Each wears a zoomorphic headdress whose long feathered tail sweeps down his back, rendered in crisp incised bands and scalloped relief. An openwork slit runs the full length of the reverse, terminating in a drilled perforation, and a suspension hole pierces each neck. Worked without metal tools, by string sawing, abrasion, and solid-drill boring, then polished to a soft luster. Jade of this color was the highest-status material in ancient Costa Rica, and such pendants were likely worn on the chest as emblems of rank, accompanying their owners into the grave. Presented on a custom base. Costa Rican lapidaries had no local jadeite source of their own; the raw material travelled south along exchange routes from the Motagua Valley of Guatemala, arriving as blanks and reworked celts. That scarcity made green stone the currency of prestige in the Atlantic Watershed and Nicoya zones, and it explains the extreme economy of these carvings: thin plaques, shallow relief, and slots cut with cord and wet sand rather than volumes carved away. The doubled, reversible figure is a recurring device in Isthmian jade work. Twin or mirrored beings, often paired human and animal aspects, address the shamanic idea of transformation and of a cosmos with an upper and a lower register, the inverted body signalling passage between them. By the close of the first millennium CE jade had largely given way to gold as the prestige medium of Costa Rica, making pendants of this quality the terminus of a long lapidary tradition. Item # 73105

Lot: 117 - Costa Rican Jade Axe God Celt Pendant with Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A mottled blue-green jade celt carved into a standing personage, the polished blade left plain below while the upper third carries the figure. He wears a tall headdress crowned by a concentric ring disc and a zigzag-incised band; heavy double brows arch above small drilled eyes, and the wide nose and lipped mouth sit within full cheeks. Both hands rest on the stomach with fingers delineated in shallow grooves. A biconical suspension hole pierces the neck, and a string-cut ridge runs the length of the reverse spine. Such "axe god" pendants, worked from imported blue-green stone with string saws and abrasives, were prestige ornaments, likely worn at the throat as emblems of rank. Mounted on a custom metal base. Costa Rican lapidaries had no metal tools. Jade and jade-like greenstones were reduced with string saws charged with sand slurry, then drilled biconically and polished to a soft luster, a process that left the diagnostic string-cut grooves visible on pieces of this kind. The blank itself was frequently a functional celt, often traded in from the Motagua Valley sources of Guatemala, reworked into an "axe god": the blade end preserved and the butt transformed into a human or avian dignitary. Production of these pendants clusters in the Linea Vieja and Nicoya regions during the Period V florescence, when greenstone ornament served as the principal marker of elite status. By roughly 700 to 900 CE jade working declined sharply in the region, displaced by gold, which makes surviving axe gods a closed and finite class of objects. Item # 73106

Lot: 118 - Costa Rica Jade Double-Headed Avian Pendant, Ca. 500-1000 CE

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A miniature pendant carved from blue-green jade, worked in the round and finished on both faces. The subject is a perched bird, wings folded against a tapering body, with a second fully realized avian head emerging from the tip of its beak, a doubling rarely encountered in the Costa Rican jade corpus. Drilled eyes and a perforated beak lend depth to the reductive silhouette, while a suspension hole bored through the neck confirms its use as a worn ornament, likely a chest or throat pendant of status. Sawn planes and string-cut grooves record the abrasive lapidary technique by which such hardstone was shaped. Mounted on a custom metal-clad block base. Jade held greater value than gold in ancient Costa Rica until roughly 700 CE, when metallurgy arriving from Colombia and Panama began to displace it. Workshops in the Linea Vieja and Nicoya zones imported jadeite and related green stones, largely from the Motagua Valley of Guatemala, then reduced them with string saws, sand abrasives, and hollow-reed drills, since no metal tool could cut the material.\n\nAvian pendants, particularly raptors and long-billed birds rendered with outspread or folded wings, are among the most persistent forms in this tradition. Birds mediated between the terrestrial and celestial realms in Isthmian cosmology, and their beaks were frequently elaborated into secondary heads or beak-like axe forms, blurring the boundary between creature and implement. The doubled head here belongs to that visual logic of transformation rather than to naturalistic portraiture. Item # 73107

Lot: 119 - Costa Rican Jade Standing Anthropomorphic Pendant with Raised Arms

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A standing figure carved from mottled blue-green and cream jade, arms lifted so that the delineated fingers rest across the forehead in an arresting, rarely seen gesture. The face is worked in low relief with drilled round eyes, a broad nose and a banded mouth; a narrow belt crosses the waist, the navel is dimpled, and the toes are notched along the base. Openwork beneath the raised arms and a suspension hole drilled through the armpits allowed the plaque to hang against the chest. Jade of this hue was the highest-value substance in the Costa Rican Atlantic Watershed and Nicoya zones, and such pendants likely marked rank as much as they protected the wearer. Mounted on a custom display base. Costa Rican lapidaries worked jadeite and related green stones without metal tools, sawing blanks with cord-and-sand abrasion and drilling perforations with hollow reed bits, a slow subtractive process that makes the crisp openwork under this figure's arms a genuine feat. Between roughly 300 and 700 CE the greenstone industry of the Atlantic Watershed and Greater Nicoya reached its height, producing axe-god pendants, avian celts, and standing anthropomorphs of this kind, before gold displaced jade as the prestige material after about 700 CE. The gesture of hands raised to the head is uncommon in the corpus and has been read variously as a posture of mourning, of trance, or of supplication; no single interpretation commands consensus, and the figure is best appreciated as a compact study in frontal symmetry. Item # 73108

Lot: 120 - Costa Rican Jade Avian Pendant with Curved Beak, Miniature

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A miniature blue-green jade bird, perched and compact, its outsized down-curved beak sweeping forward from a broad head. The lapidary raised the round eyes and nostrils in low relief and incised fine lines to suggest folded wings, leaving the polished stone to carry the rest. A biconical suspension hole drilled through the neck shows the piece was strung and worn, likely as a personal amulet of rank. The heavy beak invites reading the subject as a toucan rather than a parrot, though the carver's economy of form resists precise ornithology. Avian pendants of this type belong to the lapidary tradition that flourished across the Costa Rican Atlantic watershed and Nicoya, where jade was the paramount prestige material. Mounted on a custom cube display base. Jade held the highest value of any material in ancient Costa Rica, outranking gold until roughly the sixth century CE, when metallurgical traditions moving north from Colombia and Panama began to displace it. Sources for the stone remain debated: some raw material derives from the Motagua Valley in Guatemala, arriving through long-distance exchange, while other pieces appear to come from local serpentinite and social jade deposits. Birds dominate the Costa Rican lapidary repertoire alongside axe-god pendants and bat forms. Raptors, toucans, and parrots recur constantly, their beaks exaggerated into the defining feature of the carving. In the cosmologies of the isthmus, birds mediate between the earthly and celestial realms, and a pendant worn at the throat would have marked the wearer's access to that intermediary power as much as it displayed wealth. Item # 73109

Lot: 121 - Costa Rican Jade Anthropomorphic Celt Pendant with Crosshatched Headband

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A standing personage compressed into the blade of an axe, carved from mottled blue-green jade. The figure holds his arms tight to his sides, hands and toes marked by shallow incised lines, the columnar body tapering to a bit-like base. Drilled circular eyes, a wide angular nose, and a straight lipped mouth sit beneath a broad headband worked with crosshatching, its crown notched at the summit. A biconical suspension hole pierces the neck, so the pendant hung at the chest. Such celt pendants, often called axe-gods, married the form of a working tool to human likeness and likely served as emblems of rank and supernatural protection among the elite of Costa Rica's Atlantic and Central regions. Costa Rican lapidaries had no metal tools. Jade and related greenstones were shaped by string sawing with cord and abrasive slurry, by solid and hollow drilling, and by patient polishing, techniques that make the crisp crosshatched band and the paired eye perforations far more laborious than they appear. Blanks were frequently cut from imported Motagua Valley jadeite reaching the isthmus through Maya exchange networks, and older Olmec heirloom pieces were sometimes resawn into local forms. The axe-god type flourished during the Period V florescence, when jade served as the paramount prestige material before gold displaced it after roughly 700 CE. The union of celt and body is deliberate: the productive blade that clears forest and the human form that wields it become a single charged object, worn on the chest and, in excavated examples, interred with high-status dead. Item # 73110

Lot: 122 - Costa Rican Avian Axe God Pendant in Blue-Green Jade

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A bird spirit compressed into the body of a polished celt, carved in blue-green jade with an economy that borders on abstraction. Large round recessed eyes flank a long tapered beak, the wings folded tight against the flanks and the lower body drawn out into a broad, flaring bit like the working edge of an axe. A biconical suspension hole drilled through the neck confirms the piece was worn, likely suspended at the chest as a badge of rank and spiritual protection. The reverse is left plain and smoothly ground, allowing the stone's mottled tone to carry the surface. Objects of this class, known conventionally as axe gods, merge tool and deity in a single small-scale form. Axe god pendants are the signature jade form of ancient Costa Rica, produced in quantity across the Atlantic Watershed, Central Highlands, and Nicoya regions during the Period IV to V horizon. Their shape descends directly from the utilitarian polished stone celt: lapidaries took the blank, reserved the poll end for a head, and let the blade end remain a blade, so the finished ornament reads simultaneously as tool and as supernatural being. Avian versions, with raptorial or long-billed heads, are among the most common, and the bird is generally understood as a mediator between earthly and celestial realms.\n\nCosta Rican jade was worked without metal tools, using string saws, sand abrasives, and hollow reed drills; the paired biconical perforation seen here is the diagnostic trace of drilling from both faces to meet in the middle. Much of the raw material appears to have arrived through long-distance exchange with Guatemalan sources in the Motagua Valley, making these pendants markers of both craft skill and access to trade. Item # 73111

Lot: 123 - Costa Rican Jade Axe-God Anthropomorphic Celt Pendant

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A slender celt of semi-translucent blue-green jade carved into a standing human figure. The polished blade tapers to a rounded bit below a belted waist, while above it a compact torso raises both hands over the stomach, fingers rendered in fine incision. The face is minimal and arresting: drilled round eyes, an angular nose in low relief, a wide banded mouth. Crowning the head is a very tall tapering headdress ringed with encircling grooves, its tip pierced by a biconical suspension hole so the pendant hung upright against the chest. Such "axe-god" pendants converted a working tool form into an emblem of rank, the labor of drilling and sawing hard stone with cord and abrasive sand making the object itself a measure of prestige. Costa Rican lapidaries had no metal tools. Jade and related greenstones were shaped by string sawing with wet quartz sand, then drilled from both faces with hollow reed or bone bits and burnished to a glassy finish, a process measured in weeks rather than hours. The blank was almost always a celt, the polished stone axe that cleared forest and felled timber, and the carver's task was to coax a human or avian figure from its upper third without sacrificing the blade below.\n\nThe so-called axe-god pendants concentrate in the Nicoya region and the Atlantic watershed, appearing in elite burials of the Period IV and V horizons. Because Costa Rica has no confirmed jadeite source of its own, much of the raw material travelled south from the Motagua Valley of Guatemala, making these pendants evidence of long-distance exchange as well as of local artistry. Custom metal display base included. Item # 73112

Lot: 124 - Costa Rican Jade Axe-God Celt Pendant with Incised Face

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A standing figure distilled into the blade of a celt, carved from grayish blue-green jade with a softly lustrous polish. The upper third bears the head: a domed cap above stepped notches, an angular face reduced to crossed and chevroned incisions, and biconical suspension holes drilled through the neck. Below, a raised transverse band carries finely ruled striations that read as arms folded across the stomach, the fingers delineated by parallel grooves. The lower body remains an unornamented, gently flaring blade with a rounded bit. Such "axe-god" pendants, worn suspended at the chest, converted the ordinary woodworking celt into an emblem of rank and likely of supernatural power, the labor-intensive stone itself signaling status. The Costa Rican "axe-god" (hacha dios) is one of the most distinctive lapidary forms of the ancient Americas, concentrated in the Atlantic Watershed, Central Highlands, and Nicoya regions during the Period IV-V horizon. Jadeite and related greenstones were not locally abundant, and much of the raw material appears to have travelled south from the Motagua Valley sources of Guatemala, sometimes as recut Maya heirlooms. Without a lapidary wheel, carvers shaped these blades by pecking, sawing with cord and abrasive sand, and drilling with hollow reeds, so the crisp string-sawn grooves and paired biconical perforations here represent many hours of patient abrasion. The vertical, blade-bodied schema, all detail crowded into the head and chest, is a deliberate conceit: the tool remains legible beneath the deity. Item # 73113

Lot: 125 - Costa Rican Jade Double-Headed Pendant with Inverted Face

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A compact pendant carved from semi-translucent blue-green jade, worked into two human heads set back to back, the lower one inverted so the amulet reads correctly whichever way it is turned. Both faces are defined with shallow incision and drilled points for eyes and nostrils, the mouths cut as narrow slots, and each head wears a tall conical cap or headdress rendered in smooth planes. A biconical suspension hole, drilled from both sides in the customary manner, pierces the body for cord. Personal ornaments of this kind carried status as well as adornment across the Costa Rican jade-working zone, and the doubled, opposed faces likely encoded a dual or transformational idea rather than a portrait. Mounted on a custom display base. Costa Rica sustained one of the most accomplished lapidary traditions in the Americas between roughly 300 and 800 CE, concentrated in the Atlantic Watershed, Central Highlands, and Nicoya regions. Lacking metal tools, carvers reduced hard jadeite and related greenstones with string saws, sand abrasives, and hollow-reed drills, techniques that account for the biconical perforations and the crisp, shallow grooving seen on ornaments of this type. Much of the raw material appears to derive from the Motagua Valley sources in Guatemala, arriving through long-distance exchange, and green stone was valued across the region for its associations with water, maize, and fertility. Janiform and bicephalic pendants recur in the Costa Rican corpus, where the doubling of a face is generally read as a statement about duality, reciprocity, or shamanic transformation rather than as portraiture of a specific individual. Item # 73114

Lot: 126 - Costa Rican Jade Anthropomorphic Celt Pendant with Striated Coiffure

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Nicoya region. A standing figure emerges from the butt of a polished celt in mottled blue-green jade, the lower two thirds left smooth and tapering to a broad working edge. The head is carved in the round with a striated coiffure, tiny drilled pupils, a wide flaring nose, and a lipped mouth pierced at the corners. Below a squared collar the arms fold across the chest, fingers rendered as shallow incised strokes. Biconical suspension holes drilled through the neck allowed the piece to hang at the throat. Such axe-god pendants fused the practical form of a woodworking tool with an ancestral or shamanic personage, and were likely worn as prestige regalia by those of high rank before accompanying them into the grave. Mounted on a custom metal base. The "axe-god" (hacha dios) is the signature jade form of Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula and Atlantic watershed, produced in quantity between roughly 300 and 700 CE and worn well beyond. Lapidaries began with a ground stone celt blank, then converted its poll into a human, avian, or hybrid head using string saws charged with sand, tubular and solid drills, and long sessions of abrasive polishing: jade cannot be carved, only worn away, so every incised strand of hair represents hours of labor. Costa Rican jadeite derives chiefly from the Motagua Valley in Guatemala, several hundred miles north, and its presence in Nicoyan graves marks a long-lived exchange network as much as an aesthetic preference. The green stone carried associations with maize, water, and breath across Mesoamerica and lower Central America alike, which made the pendant an emblem of vitality as well as status. By the tenth century, gold displaced jade as the prestige material of the isthmus, closing the tradition. Item # 73115

Lot: 127 - Costa Rica Jade Anthropomorphic Celt Pendant with Goggle Eyes

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A pendant carved from mottled blue-green jade in the form of a standing human, the celt blade itself becoming the body. The head shows a ridged, furrowed brow above small drilled eyes ringed by raised goggle-like elements, a broad nose, and a mouth drilled at the corners. Below, hands rest across the chest with fingers delineated in shallow relief, while the lower two-thirds tapers to the smooth polished bit of the axe form. The reverse carries a string-cut groove along the spine, evidence of the sawing-with-cord technique used to shape the hard stone, and a biconical perforation through the neck allowed suspension. Likely worn as a badge of rank or a protective amulet. Custom metal display base. Costa Rican lapidaries produced these "axe-god" pendants in quantity between roughly 300 and 800 CE, concentrated in the Nicoya Peninsula and the Atlantic watershed. The form fuses two ideas: the polished stone celt, a tool and a symbol of agricultural fertility and clearing power, and the human or avian figure that inhabits it. Because Costa Rica has no confirmed jadeite source, the raw material was traded south from the Motagua Valley of Guatemala, and Maya heirloom objects were sometimes recut into local celt pendants.\n\nWithout rotary drills or metal tools, carvers shaped jadeite by abrading it with cord, sand, and water. The resulting string-cut grooves, visible here along the reverse, are a diagnostic trace of the technique and a reliable index of hand manufacture. Item # 73116

Lot: 128 - Costa Rican Blue Jade Miniature Head Pendant with Avian Crest

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A miniature human face emerges from a polished plaque of deep blue-green jade, its features reduced to the fewest possible strokes: paired incised lines for the eyes and mouth, a crisp triangular nose in low relief. Two highly stylized avian heads crown the top, beaks turned in opposite directions, with suspension holes drilled beneath them so the pendant could hang face-forward against the chest. The lapidary worked without metal tools, abrading and string-sawing the stone before bringing it to a glassy finish. Such pendants were prestige adornments, likely worn by elites and often accompanying them in burial. Presented on a custom metal cube display base. Costa Rican jade carving flourished between roughly 300 and 800 CE, when workshops in the Atlantic Watershed, Guanacaste, and Nicoya regions produced pendants of imported and local greenstone in volumes unmatched elsewhere in lower Central America. Much of the raw material appears to have moved south along trade routes from the Motagua Valley of Guatemala, the only confirmed source of true jadeite in Mesoamerica, though local serpentines and other blue-green stones were worked interchangeably. The avian motif is the region's signature: bird-form pendants, from fully modeled raptors to abstractions as spare as the paired beaks seen here, dominate the corpus and are generally read as shamanic or lineage emblems. Costa Rican jade production had largely ceased by about 800 CE, displaced by gold, whose arrival from the south reoriented the entire vocabulary of elite ornament. Item # 73117

Lot: 129 - Costa Rican Jade Avian Pendant with Spread Wings, Ca. 500-1000 CE

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A small raptor spreads its wings in blue-green jade, carved and polished to a soft luster with the pale veining of the stone left visible across one wing. The bird is shown frontally in the classic avian-pendant posture: heavy hooked beak dropped over the breast, round eyes flanking a pair of small horn-like projections at the crown, wings extended and grooved with incised feather bars, tail fanned below. Biconical holes drilled through the reverse of the head allowed suspension against the chest. Such miniature avian ornaments were prestige adornment, worn by persons of rank and likely carrying associations of predatory power and flight between worlds. Mounted on a custom display stand. Costa Rican lapidaries worked jadeite and related green stones without metal tools, sawing blanks with cord and abrasive sand, then drilling suspension channels from both faces so the bores meet in the middle, the biconical perforation that is a signature of the tradition. Much of the raw material arrived through long-distance exchange with the Motagua Valley sources in Guatemala, and older Maya celts were sometimes recut into local forms, which is why avian pendants often preserve the flat, blade-like profile of an axe.\n\nThe spread-wing bird, usually read as a raptor or a king vulture, is the dominant motif of the Costa Rican jade horizon. Worn suspended at the throat, these ornaments marked status among the elite of the Atlantic Watershed, Central Highlands, and Diquis zones, and the raptor's command of the air made it a natural emblem for those who claimed authority over the boundary between the terrestrial and celestial realms. Item # 73118

Lot: 130 - Costa Rica Stone Deity Head Mace Head with Crest

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Atlantic Watershed. A compact deity head carved from pale creamy bluish-green compacted limestone, worked as the striking element of a ceremonial mace. The face is reduced to broad planes: large recessed round eyes beneath a heavy banded brow, a small angular nose, and a wide, narrow slot of a mouth. Concentric ring reliefs mark the ears, and a raised crest or headdress rises from the crown in stepped ridges. The interior is hollowed by a large drilled hafting socket that once received a wooden shaft. Weapons of this class were carried as insignia rather than swung in combat, their heads likely rendering ancestral or supernatural personages for display in procession and rite. Mounted on a custom metal base. Stone mace heads are among the signature productions of Costa Rica's Atlantic Watershed and Central Highland zones during the Period V and VI horizons, when jade working declined and hardstone carving turned toward maces, metates, and monumental figural sculpture. Excavated examples cluster in high-status graves, frequently alongside gold pendants and elaborate tripod metates, which supports reading them as emblems of rank held by chiefly or ritual specialists rather than functional arms. Their subjects range across raptorial birds, felines, and crested anthropomorphs of the sort seen here; the crest may render a feathered headdress, a mark of office in the region's iconographic vocabulary. The drilled socket, tapering to secure a hafted shaft, was produced by abrasion with sand and a hollow reed or bone drill. Item # 73119

Lot: 131 - Costa Rican Quartzite Owl Mace Head

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A horned owl condensed into a fist of stone. Carved from blue-green quartzite, this ceremonial mace head presents a broad, rounded facial disc framed by a beaded border of drilled punctations, large recessed circular eyes, and a sharply hooked beak in high relief. Two upright tufted horns rise above the crown, flanking a wide cylindrical socket bored through the globular body for hafting to a wooden shaft. The dense surface carries a chalky white calcified accretion. Owls in the Intermediate Area were linked to night, augury, and the perils of the spirit world, and mace heads of this type were carried as emblems of rank and authority rather than swung as practical weapons. Mounted on a custom tapered hardwood block base. Stone mace heads are among the most demanding sculptural forms of ancient Costa Rica. Worked without metal tools, they were shaped by pecking and abrasion from tough igneous and metamorphic stone, then bored through the center with a hollow cane or reed drill charged with sand and water, a slow process that risked splitting the blank at every stage. The Atlantic Watershed and Central Highland zones produced the finest examples, frequently in the form of raptors, owls, felines, and trophy heads. Hafted to a shaft, such heads served as batons of office and as ritual paraphernalia, appearing in elite burials alongside jade pendants and elaborately carved metates. The owl was a potent choice: a silent nocturnal hunter widely understood across the Isthmo-Colombian world as a messenger between the living and the dead, and an apt companion for a figure claiming authority over both. Item # 73120

Lot: 132 - Nicoya Polychrome Jaguar Effigy Tripod Urn, Costa Rica, 800-1500 CE

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Nicoya Peninsula. A jaguar crouches into the very walls of this polychrome ceramic urn, its modeled head thrust outward with bared teeth, its forelimbs, hind paws, and curling tail rendered in bold black outline and red-orange fill against a cream slip. The ovoid body rests on three bulbous rattle supports, and the flaring neck carries a register of scrolling semiabstract zoomorphs above banded and hatched geometric borders. The head itself is hollow and pellet-filled, sounding when the vessel is moved. Such feline effigy urns served ceremonial and mortuary functions in Greater Nicoya, where the jaguar stood as the preeminent emblem of predatory power and shamanic transformation. Greater Nicoya, spanning the Pacific coast of northwestern Costa Rica and southwestern Nicaragua, produced some of the most accomplished painted ceramics in lower Central America. During Period VI the region's potters developed a distinctive white-slipped repertoire, of which types such as Papagayo and Vallejo Polychrome are the best known, decorated with black and red-orange linework in which serpentine and saurian creatures dissolve into pure scroll and hatching. The style reflects sustained contact with Mesoamerica to the north, and Nicoya vessels traveled widely as prestige goods.\n\nThe jaguar occupies the apex of this iconography. Across the isthmus the animal was associated with rulership, warfare, and the shaman's capacity to cross between the human and animal worlds. Rendering the beast as a rattle, so that the vessel speaks when lifted, gives sound to that transformation. Item # 73121

Lot: 133 - Costa Rican Stone Parrot Effigy Bowl with Hooked Beak

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A parrot alights on the rim of its own body: this small vessel is carved from cream porphyritic stone shot through with russet inclusions, the mottling reading almost as plumage. The projecting head thrusts forward with a strongly hooked beak and large recessed round eyes, while flattened wings sweep out as flanges to either side and a fanned tail closes the rear. Short folded legs and clawed feet raise the rounded basin clear of the surface. The interior is hollowed to a shallow bowl, its walls thinned by patient abrasion. Such stone effigy vessels were prestige objects, likely used for offerings or the preparation of small quantities of pigment or other precious substances rather than for daily food service. Macaws and parrots occupied a privileged place in the iconography of Costa Rica and lower Central America, their scarlet and gold plumage associated with the sun, with fertility, and with the elite exchange networks that moved feathers, gold, and jade across the isthmus. Rendering the bird in hard stone, a material demanding days of pecking, grinding, and abrasion with sand and cord, was itself a statement of status: the labor invested far exceeds anything a ceramic equivalent would require. Costa Rican lapidaries worked without metal tools, shaping volcanic and sedimentary stones by percussion and long abrasion, then finishing surfaces to a soft sheen. The naturally variegated stone chosen here, with its swirls of brown and rust against cream, appears deliberately selected so that the geology supplies the bird's markings. Item # 73122

Lot: 134 - Taino Carved Stone Ball Game Balls with Serpent and Spiral Relief, Pair

Pre-Columbian, Caribbean, Greater Antilles, Hispaniola, Taino culture. A pair of carved stone spheres worked in low relief across their entire surfaces. The first, of speckled granite, carries nine undulating serpents whose bodies wind over the curve of the ball, the pecked ground between them still holding red pigment. The second, of volcanic stone, is covered by a continuous scheme of interlocking spirals cut in shallow relief. Both retain deep ancient surface patinas. Spheres of this type are associated with the Taino batey, the ceremonial ball court whose contests carried political and cosmological weight as much as athletic ones, though a votive or emblematic role rather than actual play is likely for worked examples such as these. The batey was the organizing institution of Taino public life. Plazas edged with stone slabs, some carved with petroglyphic figures, hosted matches between villages and between chiefdoms; Spanish chroniclers of the early sixteenth century, Las Casas and Oviedo among them, recorded games played with a resilient rubber ball struck by hip, shoulder, and knee, wagered on heavily, and used to settle disputes and seal alliances. The court itself was cosmological ground, a place where human contest mirrored the rivalries of the cemi spirits.\n\nThe serpent and spiral vocabulary seen here belongs to a wider Taino visual language shared with duhos, three-pointed cemis, and stone collars. Coiling and spiraling motifs are commonly read as references to water, generative force, and the movement of spirit between worlds, and red pigment rubbed into recessed ground is a recurrent Antillean device for making carved line legible against stone. Item # 73123

Lot: 135 - Taino Carved Wooden Game Balls, Hispaniola, Group of Three

Pre-Columbian, Caribbean, Hispaniola, Taino. A trio of hand-carved wooden spheres, each shaped by adze and abrasion into a near-perfect ball and now dry, silvered, and finely fissured with age. The grain reads plainly across their surfaces, with faint tool facets surviving where the wood resisted smoothing. Balls of this kind are associated with the Taino batey, the plaza ball game played on stone-lined courts throughout Hispaniola and the Greater Antilles, where contests carried social and likely ritual weight beyond sport. The three vary slightly in diameter, suggesting either graded play or the ordinary variance of individually worked pieces. Wood of this antiquity rarely survives in the Caribbean, which makes a matched group of three an unusual survival. The Taino ball game, batey, descends from the wider Mesoamerican and northern South American ballcourt tradition that Arawakan-speaking migrants carried into the Antilles. Spanish chroniclers of the early contact period, among them Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, described Caribbean players striking a bouncing ball with hip, shoulder, and knee rather than the hand, and recorded the wagers, prestige, and occasional political settlements riding on the outcome. Villages were laid out around rectangular bateyes edged with earthen embankments or upright stones, some carved with petroglyphs, and these plazas served as the setting for areito dance ceremonies as well as play. The game is the ancestral thread linking indigenous American sport to the ball games later inherited across the hemisphere. Item # 73124

Lot: 136 - Gran Coclé Painted Olla, Panama

Pre-Columbian, Panama, Gran Cocle. A low, wide-shouldered olla with a swelling body carrying a band of painted decoration in red, black, and cream slip. The everted collar is ringed with parallel lines and a dotted register, while the shoulder carries a series of vertical panels: lozenge-shaped reserves flanked by hatched blocks and bands of red and black. The geometric decoration, featuring cross-hatching and repeating oval motifs, is characteristic of ceramic workshops in central Panama. The vessel was hand-built and burnished before firing, and likely served both domestic and mortuary purposes, with its ornamentation associated with status. Item # 202672

Lot: 137 - Gran Coclé Polychrome Jar | Macaracas Saurian Motifs

Pre-Columbian, Panama, Gran Cocle. A globular earthenware jar, intact, with an everted rim above a rounded body decorated with bands of reddish orange slip and dark line work. Around the shoulder and belly, interlocking scrolls, plumed volutes, and hatched panels resolve into stylized saurian imagery, depicting abstracted crocodilians with serrated dentition, a motif associated with Central Panamanian art. The vessel is worked in the Macaracas style, a phase of the Gran Coclé polychrome tradition in which figural forms are rendered through curvilinear geometric patterning. Vessels of this form served domestic and ceremonial purposes and are documented from burial mounds in the region. The saurian motif is associated in Gran Coclé iconography with fertility and power. Item # 202624

Lot: 138 - Quimbaya Gold Female Figural Pendant with Dangling Panels

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Quimbaya. A standing female cast in high-karat gold, her broad face composed into narrow lidded eyes, high cheekbones and a small nose ring. She wears a segmented crown flanked by paired coiled spirals, a beaded collar with drop pendant, and banded ornaments at arms, knees and ankles. Both hands grip a finely ribbed bar from which two rectangular sheet-gold panels swing; a matching bar and pair of panels rest beneath her feet, so the whole ornament shimmers and rattles with the wearer's movement. Twin suspension loops behind the neck confirm its use as a pendant, worn as an emblem of rank and likely of ritual authority. Female figures of this scale and refinement are exceptionally rare in Quimbaya goldwork. The Quimbaya of the middle Cauca valley were among the most accomplished goldsmiths of the ancient Americas, working chiefly in tumbaga, a gold-copper-silver alloy whose surfaces were often depletion-gilded to a rich yellow. XRF analysis of this figure returns 64.5% gold, 25.8% silver and 10.4% copper, approximately 15.3K, consistent with that tradition.\n\nThe suspended sheet panels are a deliberate acoustic and optical device: hung on free-swinging loops, they catch light and clatter softly, animating the figure during procession or dance. Spanish chroniclers recorded such gold regalia worn by chiefs and their kin, and burials of the region have produced pectorals, poporos and figural pendants placed with the dead as markers of lineage and status. Item # 73125

Lot: 139 - Cocle Gold Deity Pectoral with Crocodilian Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Panama, Cocle. A cast gold deity pendant of remarkable presence, its standing anthropomorph crowned by a headdress of two stylized alligators with upturned toothy snouts and clawed feet flanking a fanged central element. Long serpents issue from the deity's mouth and loop back into the saurian bodies. Beaded eyes protrude beside a nose bar; paired cups sit atop the head and at each hip. The hands rise palms outward with curling talon fingers, and a finely chased triangular collar spans the chest above a tapered panel skirt, toothy wing forms trailing down the legs. A suspension loop behind the neck confirms use as a chest ornament, worn as regalia by elites of the Gran Cocle chiefdoms. Includes a custom display base. The goldwork of the Gran Cocle tradition, centered on the Rio Grande de Code drainage of central Panama and known above all from the cemetery at Sitio Conte, was produced by lost-wax casting in gold and gold-copper alloys, then finished by burnishing and depletion gilding to bring a rich surface color forward. Pectorals of this type were buried with high-status men in tiered graves, layered over the chest in numbers that signaled rank rather than wealth alone.\n\nThe saurian-human hybrid is the signature theme of the tradition. Crocodile and caiman imagery, doubled and splayed into heraldic symmetry, merges with serpents emerging from the mouth, a widespread Isthmian shorthand for breath, speech, or transformative power. Whether such figures represent deities, mythic ancestors, or shamans in a state of change remains debated; the convention of frontal stance, raised hands, and animal alter egos is consistent across Cocle metalwork and painted ceramics alike.\n\nXRF analysis reported by the consignor gives approximately 83.75 percent gold, 4 percent silver, 11.25 percent copper, and 1.15 percent iron, a composition consistent with the deliberate gold-copper alloying practiced across the Isthmus. Item # 73126

Lot: 140 - Diquis Gold Eagle Pectoral with Spiral Crest, Ca. 750-1450 CE

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Diquis. A raptor spreads scythe-shaped wings beneath a crown of seven coiled spirals in this large cast and hammered gold pectoral. The hollow head carries a heavy hooked beak, lidded eyes, a braided headband and a broad decorated collar, with a second braided band girdling the pendulous body below. Two smaller birds in profile, each with a domed eye boss, perch inward beneath the wings, while the sheet-gold tail sweeps outward in a wide crescent. A suspension loop on the reverse allowed the ornament to hang at the chest. Such avian pendants, worn by ranking men and women, likely served as insignia of status and of the predatory power attributed to birds of prey. The Spanish invaders called these pendants "aguilas", eagles, though the birds they depict are deliberately unnatural: composite creatures fitted with human collars, headbands, crests and protuberances that defeat any attempt at ornithological identification. As the Metropolitan Museum of Art observes of the type, leaders across the Isthmo-Colombian region exchanged such pendants widely and wore them to emulate the prowess of birds of prey, making the form both a symbol of mythological power and a currency of elite alliance. Goldwork in the Diquis Delta and the wider Chiriqui zone was produced by lost-wax casting in gold and tumbaga, a gold-copper alloy, frequently combined with hammered sheet for broad flat elements such as the wings and tail here. Depletion gilding, in which the copper is leached from the surface, gave even alloyed pieces the pure golden skin the wearer's rank demanded. Item # 73127

Lot: 141 - Uruba Eagle Pendant with Sheet Danglers, Colombia, Ca. 500-1000 CE

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Uruba. A raptor cast with wings spread to their fullest, fan tail flaring below, conical beak jutting forward above small beaded eyes. Two long twisted bars, one gripped in the beak, the other clasped by the feet, each carry three broad rectangular sheet danglers hung on wire loops, set to shiver and flash with the wearer's every movement. Twin suspension loops at the nape of the neck confirm it was worn suspended at the chest. The body is lost-wax cast in a gold-copper alloy, XRF tested at roughly 12.4K on the front and 10.5K on the reverse, with the danglers cut from hammered sheet. Avian pectorals of this kind marked elite and likely shamanic status among the goldworking chiefdoms of northern Colombia. The spread-winged bird is the signature emblem of Colombian goldwork, appearing from the Tairona and Sinu north coast through the Quimbaya and Popayan regions. Read variously as eagle, king vulture, or harpy, the raptor served as the shaman's aerial alter ego, the form his spirit assumed to travel between worlds. Suspended danglers amplify that idea: worn against the chest, the plates caught firelight and rustled audibly, transforming a static ornament into a moving, sounding one during dance and ceremony.\n\nThe deliberately debased alloy, tumbaga, was not a cost-saving compromise but a technical choice. Copper lowers the melting point and improves the flow of molten metal into fine lost-wax detail, and the finished casting could then be depletion-gilded, its surface copper leached away with plant acids to leave a skin of nearly pure gold over a copper-rich core. The differing front and back XRF readings on this piece are consistent with exactly that treatment. Item # 73128

Lot: 142 - Uraba Gold Mushroom Deity Pendant with Spiral Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Uraba. A heavy cast gold pendant reducing the human body to bold geometry: a semiabstract mushroom deity, angular and frontal, crowned by a multispiral headdress topped with three domed mushroom caps. Rows of faux braid define the face, punctuated by tiny coffee-bean eyes and a quadruple-spiral element set before the features. A braided collar spans the shoulders, the arms sweep inward to meet a triangular central flap, and tapered flat legs descend to a long foot bar incised with interlocking zigzags. A suspension loop on the reverse allowed the piece to be worn at the chest, likely as an emblem of rank and shamanic authority. XRF testing returned 19.3K gold: 80.5 percent gold, 16.3 percent copper, 1.5 percent silver. Mounted on a custom base. The goldwork of the Gulf of Uraba, at the hinge between Colombia and Panama, belongs to the broader International Style that circulated across the Isthmus in the centuries before contact. Smiths there worked in tumbaga, a gold-copper alloy whose copper content lowered the melting point and, after depletion gilding, left a rich gold-colored skin over a base of humbler composition. The measured alloy here sits at the high-gold end of that spectrum. Spiral volutes and paired scrolls dominate the visual vocabulary, rendered by the lost-wax process in which threads of wax were coiled onto a model and then replaced by metal. Readings of the triple domes as mushroom caps connect the figure to entheogenic practice and shamanic transformation, a widely discussed interpretation of Isthmian pendant iconography, though the identification remains a scholarly proposal rather than a settled fact. Item # 73129

Lot: 143 - Muisca Gold Avian Pectoral with Human Figure

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Muisca. A broad sheet-gold pectoral hammered into a stylized avian silhouette, its rounded wings sweeping out above a crescent tail. At the center rises a human figure in high relief, crowned and frontal, its lower body resolving into a bird's tail. Two domed breast bosses sit below, each ringed with faux-braid wire, a motif repeated around the entire perimeter. Upper and lower registers carry rows of segmented, lobster-tail elements terminating in small loops that once suspended dangling gold discs, now absent. A suspension loop on the reverse allowed the plaque to hang at the chest. Such ornaments proclaimed rank and, likely, ritual authority, the wearer transformed into a shining bird-being under Andean light. XRF analysis records an alloy of 60.5% gold, 17% silver and 22.5% copper (roughly 14.5K), a composition consistent with tumbaga, the gold-copper alloy favored across northern South America. Its lower melting point and greater hardness made large, thin sheets like this one possible, and depletion gilding could raise a pure golden skin over a copper-rich core.\n\nAs the Metropolitan Museum observes of this tradition, the Precolumbian peoples of the gold-rich regions of northern South America worked gold extensively, developing ever more complicated techniques of manufacture. Astonishing variety was achieved through the manipulation of color and size and by making objects with multiple parts, dangles being favored additions. Finished color ranged from pink to bright yellow, and bird imagery recurs frequently on pendants made to be worn about the neck.\n\nThe Muisca of the Colombian altiplano were the goldsmiths behind the El Dorado legend: at Lake Guatavita a new ruler was said to be coated in gold dust and rafted out to cast offerings into the water. Their votive tunjos and sheet ornaments were made as much for deposition as for display. Item # 73130

Lot: 144 - Cocle Large Sheet Gold Roundel with Zoomorphic Mask Face

Pre-Columbian, Panama, Cocle. A broad disc of heavy hammered sheet gold, worked from the reverse into a fierce zoomorphic countenance. Concentric ringed eyes stare from beneath long arched brows filled with ladder-like hatching, perhaps antennae; scrolling J-shaped ears curl at either side, and a rectangular mouth bares a full grid of clenched teeth. A tiered crest rises above the brow. Paired perforations at each temple allowed the plaque to be stitched to a garment or suspended, most likely worn as a chest ornament by a person of rank and later interred with them. The metal retains the burnished, faintly rippled surface left by the goldsmith's polishing, and the design reads at a distance, as regalia of this scale was meant to. Cocle goldwork, produced in the chiefdoms of central Panama, is known above all from the great cemetery at Sitio Conte on the Rio Grande de Cocle, where excavations in the 1930s uncovered elite burials layered with embossed discs, cuffs, greaves, and pendants. Repousse plaques of this type were among the most conspicuous elements of chiefly costume, and Spanish chroniclers of the early sixteenth century described Panamanian leaders appearing sheathed in gold.\n\nThe composite face, with its ringed eyes, bared dentition, and curling lateral scrolls, belongs to a widespread Isthmian visual language in which human, saurian, feline, and bat attributes merge into a single supernatural being rather than portraying any one animal.\n\nA comparable embossed gold disc is held by the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, object number 33-42-20/343. XRF analysis of the present plaque reports approximately 96 percent gold, 2 percent silver, and 2 percent copper (roughly 23K); Sonin and Bray reports are available on request. Item # 73131

Lot: 145 - La Tolita Gold Jaguar Head Applique with Feather Crest

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, La Tolita. A snarling jaguar in profile, worked in thick sheet gold and raised in high relief by hammering from the reverse. The great domed eye sits beneath an arched brow; the open muzzle bares its fangs within a beaded border that runs from lip to chin. Above the head rises a crest of plumes, likely Harpy eagle feathers, each element cut separately and fastened with gold staples, with further tubular ornaments hung along the edges so the whole would shiver and flash in motion. Perforations across the plate indicate it was sewn or pinned as an applique to a garment, headdress, or funerary bundle, a prestige emblem of feline power reserved for elites. XRF analysis reports 22.4K gold: 93.5 percent gold, 3.5 percent silver, 3 percent copper. The La Tolita culture, centered on the island of La Tolita in the estuarine lowlands where the Colombian and Ecuadorian coasts meet, produced some of the earliest and most technically ambitious goldwork in the Americas. Its smiths hammered native gold into foil-thin sheet, raised it over forms, and joined components not by soldering but by staples, tabs, and clinching, precisely the construction seen here. They are also credited with the first known working of platinum, sintered with gold into a whitish alloy centuries before European metallurgists managed the metal. The jaguar was the dominant supernatural of the region, the shaman's alter ego and the emblem of rulership; combining feline jaws with raptor plumage compounds the two great predators of forest and sky into a single composite being. Closely related sheet-gold traditions flourished nearby at Frias, on the Ecuadorian-Peruvian frontier, the source of the celebrated Gold Venus. Item # 73132

Lot: 146 - Quimbaya Gold Female Figure Pendant with Double Bird Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Quimbaya. A cast gold pendant of a female figure with legs splayed and arms raised, read variously as dancing or as giving birth. The flat, frontal body carries dense ornament: a double bird headdress with a braided fillet and paired spiral finials, large spiral disc earflares, a multistrand collar, and banded wrist and ankle cuffs. Splayed hands and feet fan out like small combs. The face is calm and schematic, with lentoid eyes, a ridged nose, and an open oval mouth. A suspension loop set between the shoulders shows the piece was worn, likely as a chest ornament marking rank or ritual office. XRF testing reports roughly 69 percent gold, 21 percent silver, and 8 percent copper. Quimbaya goldsmiths of the middle Cauca valley were among the most accomplished metalworkers of the ancient Americas, working chiefly by lost-wax casting in tumbaga, a gold-silver-copper alloy whose surface could be depletion-gilded to a rich yellow. The XRF profile here, gold with substantial silver and a measure of copper, is consistent with that tradition rather than with refined gold.\n\nThe birthing or dancing posture, paired with avian headgear, recurs across Colombian goldwork and is generally understood in terms of transformation: birds carry the shaman or the elite wearer between worlds, and the open-legged pose links fertility, emergence, and renewal. Such pectorals were prestige regalia in life and frequently accompanied their owners into the grave, which is how the great majority of surviving examples came to light. Item # 73133

Lot: 147 - Diquis Gold Dignitary Pendant with Scepters and Plumed Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica / Panama, Diquis or Chiriqui. A cast gold dignitary stands frontally, a scepter gripped in each fist, their shafts terminating in stylized head finials. He wears a double plumed headdress crowned by a tall pointed element, a segmented headband, double spiral ear ornaments, and a wide beaded collar over bare shoulders. The reverse carries an unusual all-over field of raised double spirals, worked with the same care as the front. A suspension loop behind the neck allowed the piece to be worn on the chest, where such lost-wax pendants marked the rank of chiefs and ritual specialists across the Isthmian gold-working provinces. XRF testing reports an 18.1K alloy: roughly 75 percent gold with silver and copper. Mounted on an old custom block base. Isthmian goldwork of the Diquis Delta and the Chiriqui region shares a vocabulary of frontal anthropomorphic figures with splayed limbs, elaborate crested headgear, and paired handheld attributes: rattles, staffs, or serpents. Cast by the lost-wax method in tumbaga (a gold-copper alloy) and often depletion-gilded to raise a pure gold skin, such pendants circulated as regalia among ranked lineages from roughly 700 CE until European contact, and were buried with their owners.\n\nThe frontal stance and doubled emblems are widely read as an image of transformed authority, the wearer presented in ceremonial garb at the moment of display. The double spiral motif, repeated here at the ears and across the entire reverse, recurs throughout Central American gold and jade as a shorthand for breath, wind, or coiled serpents; its use as an all-over ground on the back of a pendant, invisible when worn, is notably ambitious. Item # 73134

Lot: 148 - Chavin Tembladera Gold Crown with Plume Finial and Fish Ear Ornaments

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chavin, Tembladera, Jequetepeque Valley, North Coast. A composite ensemble of Andean regalia in hammered sheet gold and carved stone. The crown band is cut in a bold zigzag, a lightning bolt profile whose faceted planes catch light along every angle, and rises at center into a fan-shaped plume of slender cut fronds imitating feathers. Suspended below hang a pair of blue and white stone fish, each incised with gill arcs, scales, and a banded body, drilled through the eye for suspension. Sheet gold of this kind was worked cold, cut and burnished from a single hammered lamina. Such headdress elements likely marked elite or ritual status. The ancient components have been assembled in a modern interpretation of a crown composition and set on a custom stepped display base. Tembladera, on the middle Jequetepeque drainage of Peru's north coast, gives its name to a distinctive body of Formative-period material contemporary with the Chavin horizon: carved stone vessels, incised bone, and thin gold ornaments recovered from cemeteries along the river. Its goldsmiths worked almost entirely in cold-hammered sheet, cutting, folding, and perforating rather than casting, an approach that made light, glittering regalia meant to move with the wearer.\n\nThe zigzag is one of the durable Andean signs, read variously as lightning, serpent, and the terraced descent of water from the highlands to the coastal valleys, and it recurs across Chavin-horizon textiles, ceramics, and metalwork. Fish held the reciprocal position: the Jequetepeque runs to a coast whose maritime harvest sustained the valley's populations, and stone fish pendants appear in Formative burials as offerings and ornaments. The pairing of sky-water and sea in a single headdress is coherent Formative cosmology, though the present arrangement is a modern one. Item # 73135

Lot: 149 - Veraguas Twin Musicians Pendant with Shell Trumpets

Pre-Columbian, Panama, Veraguas. A pair of standing trumpeters, shoulder to shoulder, each raising a conch-form trumpet to a jutting muzzle, cast in gold-enriched tumbaga by the lost-wax method. Rattle-bell forms swell from their backs, and a suspension loop rises behind each head. The openwork backplate resolves into four abstract cayman heads in profile, while a twisted braided border carries fifteen flaring paddle elements, echoed again in the figures' splayed paddle feet. Bulging eyes, banded headdresses, and volute scrolls complete the frontal display. Such pectorals were prestige regalia among Gran Cocle and Veraguas elites, the depiction of paired musicians perhaps recording ceremonial performance rather than portraiture. Mounted on an old custom pedestal base. Tumbaga, the gold-copper alloy favored across Panama, Costa Rica, and Colombia, was prized less for purity than for transformation: castings were pickled in plant acids to leach surface copper, leaving a burnished skin of near-pure gold over a base-metal core. The technique, known as depletion gilding or mise en couleur, let goldsmiths stretch scarce gold into ambitious openwork while retaining the solar brilliance that carried the metal's ritual charge.\n\nMusic held ceremonial weight in the chiefdoms of the Isthmus. Sixteenth-century Spanish accounts describe processions of conch trumpeters and rattle-bearers accompanying chiefs, and Veraguas casters translated that spectacle into wearable form, often doubling or mirroring figures so that the composition reads as procession rather than portrait. The cayman, recurring here as four abstracted profile heads, was among the most persistent supernatural referents in Isthmian goldwork, a predator of the riverine underworld set as a frame around the human actors. Item # 73136

Lot: 150 - Muisca Gold Tunjo Votive Figure with Staff and Knife

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Muisca. A slender votive man cast in a single pour, his angular torso tapering to long wire-thin legs. Broad shoulders carry a triangular chest; the flat face bears almond eyes, a ridged mouth and a nose bar, framed by large concentric spiral earspools and crowned by a spiraled disc cap. In his right hand he grips a knife, in his left a long staff, attributes of rank. Worked in tumbaga, the gold-copper-silver alloy the Muisca cast by the lost-wax method over a fiber-and-clay core, its warm ruddy tone reflecting a high copper content confirmed by XRF analysis (gold 52.82%, silver 12.74%, copper 34.29%). Such tunjos were made as offerings rather than ornaments, never finished for wear. Tunjos are the signature product of Muisca goldsmithing in the high savannas around Bogota and Tunja. They were cast quickly, in one operation, with sprues and casting flash often left in place: the offering's value lay in the act of giving, not in polish. Warwick Bray, in "The Gold of El Dorado," observes that such figures "are usually found buried in pots or thrown into lakes. Like the 'ex votos' offered to Catholic saints today, their purpose may have been to thank the gods for past help, or to serve as gifts in anticipation of future services." The lake deposits gave rise to the El Dorado legend itself: Spanish chroniclers described a Muisca chief at Lake Guatavita, gilded with gold dust, casting treasure into the water at his investiture. Figures holding weapons and staffs are generally read as men of rank, warriors or chiefs, the emblems of office rendered as legibly as the face. Item # 73137

Lot: 151 - Muisca Tunjo Votive Figure with Staff and Spiral Ear Ornaments

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Muisca. A flat cast votive figure of arresting angularity, its wedge-shaped torso tapering into long blade-like legs that end in tiny upturned feet. Wire-thin applied threads define the face, the domed cap, the triple-strand collar and the coiled spiral ear ornaments, one still trailing a looped pendant. Both hands grip a slender staff laid diagonally across the chest, the mark of an offering-bearer or a figure of rank. Worked in a gold-silver-copper alloy by the lost-wax method, with the sprue-thread ornament left unburnished in the manner characteristic of Muisca offerings. Such figures, known as tunjos, were made to be given rather than worn or displayed. Tunjos were produced in the high savanna around Bogota and Tunja by the Muisca, the Chibcha-speaking polities whose gold offerings gave rise to the El Dorado legend. As Warwick Bray observed in "The Gold of El Dorado," such figures "are usually found buried in pots or thrown into lakes. Like the 'ex votos' offered to Catholic saints today, their purpose may have been to thank the gods for past help, or to serve as gifts in anticipation of future services." They were cast in a single pour and deliberately left rough: the finish was irrelevant because no human audience was intended.\n\nXRF analysis records an alloy of 60.77% gold, 28.28% silver, 10.74% copper and 0.21% iron, roughly 14.5 karat, consistent with the tumbaga alloys favored by Muisca metalsmiths. Item # 73138

Lot: 152 - Muisca Tumbaga Tunjo Votive Figure with Offering Bowl and Staff

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Muisca. A cast votive figure, or tunjo, of flat angular construction, the standing male reduced to a trapezoidal torso, wide squared shoulders, and long tapering wire legs. Beneath a domed cap the face carries lidded eyes, a nose ornament, and a wide open mouth set with "x" shaped teeth, flanked by coiled spiral ear ornaments and framed by a five strand collar of concentric wire. He grasps a shallow offering bowl in his left hand and a long staff in his right. Formed in a single pour of tumbaga, the copper rich gold alloy of the Colombian highlands, by the lost wax method over a wax model built from drawn threads and sheets, whose linear vocabulary survives intact in the metal. Tunjos were made to be given away rather than worn or displayed. Warwick Bray, writing in The Gold of Eldorado, observes that such figures "are usually found buried in pots or thrown into lakes. Like the 'ex votos' offered to Catholic saints today, their purpose may have been to thank the gods for past help, or to serve as gifts in anticipation of future services." The Muisca of the Cundinamarca and Boyaca highlands cast them by the hundreds, deposited in ceramic vessels within caves and shrines or consigned to sacred waters, Lake Guatavita chief among them, whose gilded chieftain gave rise to the legend of El Dorado. Because each was modelled in wax and destroyed in the pour, no two are identical; irregular edges and unfinished pour channels were of no concern to a maker whose object was destined never to be seen again. XRF analysis records 15.5 K: gold 64.89%, silver 20.96%, copper 13.95%, iron 0.21%, a composition consistent with the tumbaga alloys favored for Muisca votive casting. Item # 73139

Lot: 153 - Narino Gold Hummingbird and Flower Ear Ornaments, Pair

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Narino. A matched pair of gold ear ornaments, each an eight-petaled blossom cradling a hummingbird at its heart. The birds are worked in relief with banded wings, fanned tails, and long tapering beaks that project beyond the flower's rim, set against a disc studded with repousse bosses. Integral cylindrical stems below carry two registers of geometric chasing, heavy wire hoops, and capped terminals. Hammered, embossed, and chased from high-karat gold, the ornaments would have flashed at the ears of an elite wearer, the hummingbird a widely shared Andean emblem of fertility, nectar, and transformation. Mounted on a custom display base. The Narino (Piartal and Tuza phases) occupied the high inter-Andean valleys straddling the modern Colombia-Ecuador frontier, where goldsmiths favored thin hammered sheet worked into large, light, visually expansive ornaments rather than the heavy cast forms of the Quimbaya or Sinu. Nose plaques, discs, and ear ornaments of this type survive in numbers from highland tombs, where the flash of gold in sunlight signaled rank. XRF analysis reported for this pair records approximately 77 to 77.5 percent gold with roughly 16 to 16.7 percent tungsten, 4.5 percent silver, and 1.3 to 2.5 percent copper, corresponding to 18.4K and 18.5K respectively. The hummingbird, a creature that hovers between flower and air, recurs across Andean and Isthmian metalwork as a figure of pollination, renewal, and passage between states. Item # 73140

Lot: 154 - Cocle Gold Tubular Bead Pendant with Three Crested Birds

Pre-Columbian, Panama, Cocle. A heavy cast gold tube ridden by three birds in file, each perched with folded body, a bulbous eye, a great hooked beak and a swept, openwork crest rising above the head. The tubular body is hollow and open at both ends, ribbed where the birds' legs grip it, and was strung as the centerpiece of a necklace. Raptorial birds, likely crested eagles or harpies, belong to the core vocabulary of Isthmian goldwork, where predatory creatures signaled the authority of the chiefly wearer. Modelled in wax and cast by the lost-wax method in a gold-copper alloy, with three-dimensional finials rather than flat repousse, the piece represents an uncommon and technically demanding class of Cocle bead. Cocle metalsmiths of central Panama worked chiefly in tumbaga, a gold-copper alloy prized as much for its color as for its workability; XRF analysis of this piece reports approximately 78 percent gold with roughly 18 percent copper and traces of silver, zinc and tungsten, consistent with an 18.6K reading. Molten alloy of this composition flows readily into fine wax models, which is what allowed the sculptor to carry three fully rounded birds, crests and all, off a single hollow armature. The great burial fields at Sitio Conte on the Rio Grande, excavated in the 1930s, produced the reference corpus for this material: chiefly interments accompanied by cuffs, plaques, pendants and long strands of gold beads. Birds of prey, saurians and composite man-animal figures dominate that iconography, and the repetition of a single creature along a bead or plaque is a recurring compositional habit. The custom metal display stand is a modern addition. Item # 73141

Lot: 155 - Sinu Large Gold Filigree Crescent Ear Ornaments, Pair

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Sinu. A matched pair of large crescentic ear ornaments in high-karat gold, each built from a solid tubular hoop that swells into a fan of openwork. Two graduated registers of interlocking rings, framed by twisted rope borders, fill the lower crescent, the whole cast by the lost-wax method in imitation of true filigree, a hallmark of Sinu goldsmithing. The pierced screen catches and scatters light with every movement of the head. Ornaments of this scale were prestige regalia, worn suspended from the ear or nasal septum by elite men and women of the Caribbean lowlands and interred with them as markers of rank and lineage. Examples of this size and finish are uncommon. The Sinu (Zenu) peoples of the Sinu, San Jorge, and Nechi river valleys of northern Colombia are best known for two achievements: an immense system of drainage canals that made the floodplains farmable, and a goldworking tradition built almost entirely on false filigree. Rather than soldering drawn wire, Sinu smiths modeled threads and coils in wax, assembled the design, and cast it in a single pour, producing openwork that mimics wirework while remaining structurally whole. The semicircular fan hung from a heavy hoop is the signature Sinu form, appearing across ear and nose ornaments in sizes from thumbnail to palm. XRF analysis of this pair returned 17.3K and 17.6K gold, the balance silver and copper with a trace of tungsten. Alloys in this range are consistent with tumbaga-family metallurgy, in which copper was added to lower the melting point and extend a scarce material, then depletion-gilded to restore a golden surface. Item # 73142

Lot: 156 - Tairona Crescent Ear Ornament with Coiled Hoop Fringe

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Rio Magdalena, Tairona. A crescent of hammered gold alloy swells into a hollow, lustrous body, its lower arc fringed with four staggered rows of thirteen small coiled hoops, fifty-two in all, that would have trembled and flashed with every movement of the wearer's head. Twisted faux-braided wire finishes the upper edges, and the tapering terminals close in doubled lipped collars. XRF analysis reports roughly 49 percent gold, 8 percent silver and 43 percent copper, the copper-rich tumbaga favored by goldsmiths of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Rio Magdalena. Such large ear ornaments were prestige adornment, worn by chiefly and priestly men whose gold announced rank and, in the Tairona understanding, solar power itself. A modern gold suspension loop has been added. Tairona metalsmiths worked almost exclusively in tumbaga, a deliberate gold-copper alloy whose lower melting point suited intricate lost-wax casting and whose surface could be depletion-gilded: treating the finished piece with acidic plant juices or mineral salts leached copper from the outer skin and left a shell of nearly pure gold over a base-metal core. The result is an object that reads as solid gold at a fraction of the bullion cost, and the practice explains why assays of Colombian goldwork so often return figures like the 11.6 karat measured here while the visible surface glows far richer. Spanish chroniclers arriving on the Caribbean coast in the early 16th century described Tairona lords in feathered headdresses hung with gold plaques, nose crescents and ear ornaments; the metal was understood less as wealth than as a solidified form of solar heat and generative energy, mediating between the living and the ancestral world. Item # 73143

Lot: 157 - Sinu Large Pair of Filigree Crescent Ear Ornaments (2)

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Sinu. A matched pair of gold ear ornaments spread into wide crescent fans, each built from four concentric bands of openwork diamond netting that read as woven wire but were cast in one piece by the lost-wax method over a fugitive fiber model. The straight upper bar terminates at both ends in zigzag elements finished with tiny spiral finials, and an integral hoop rises at the center to pass through the earlobe. Metal analysis reports a high-karat gold with silver and copper, a tumbaga-range alloy typical of Colombian goldwork. Ornaments of this scale were prestige regalia, worn to signal rank and, likely, to catch light in motion. The Sinu (Zenu) peoples of the lower Cauca, San Jorge, and Sinu river basins in northern Colombia raised vast systems of drainage canals and ridged fields, and buried their elite in mounded tombs furnished with gold. Their signature contribution to Andean and Isthmian metallurgy is the false-filigree earspool: the goldsmith wound fine threads of wax or cotton fiber into a lattice, invested the model, and cast the whole in a single pour, so that what appears to be soldered wirework is in fact solid metal. The technique let a small quantity of gold occupy a wide, luminous surface.\n\nXRF analysis reported for this pair records gold 71.84 percent, silver 15.21 percent, copper 12.72 percent, and iron 0.23 percent, consistent with the naturally alloyed placer gold and deliberate copper additions that characterize the region's production. Item # 73144

Lot: 158 - Sinu Massive Gold Nose Ring with Flaring Capped Finials

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Sinu. A heavy crescent of solid gold, hammered into a smooth tapering hoop that swells toward two flaring trumpet terminals, each closed by an applied disc cap. The metal carries a warm high-karat color with a soft burnished sheen and faint hammer facets along the curve. Worn suspended through the pierced nasal septum, a nariguera of this mass declared rank as loudly as it caught firelight, the caps framing the wearer's face on either side. Scattered mineral deposits remain in the crevices from long burial. Examples at this scale and weight are uncommon; most surviving narigueras are thin sheet or slender wire. Mounted on a custom display base. The Sinu (Zenu) peoples of the Caribbean lowlands of northern Colombia, along the San Jorge, Sinu, and lower Cauca river valleys, built one of the Americas' great hydraulic landscapes: thousands of kilometers of drainage canals across seasonally flooded savanna. Their goldsmiths are best known for cast filigree ear ornaments, staff finials, and heavy cast personal regalia, worked in high-gold alloys rather than the copper-rich tumbaga favored to the south. Nose ornaments were among the most conspicuous markers of status in the Isthmo-Colombian world, visible at conversational distance and impossible to conceal. Weight itself was part of the message: the quantity of metal committed to a single ornament indexed the wearer's access to labor, alluvial sources, and exchange networks. XRF analysis of this piece reports approximately 79% gold, 18% silver, and 2.9% copper (roughly 18.9K), with trace indium below 0.1%. That silver-rich, low-copper signature is consistent with worked native placer gold rather than a deliberately debased tumbaga alloy. Item # 73145

Lot: 159 - Sinu Gold Broadwing Nose Ornament, Colombia

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Sinu. A wide crescent of hammered sheet gold, its broad wings sweeping outward to rounded tips and rising in a shallow lunate curve. The central notch terminates in an oval perforation, the point at which the ornament was hung from the pierced nasal septum so that it spread across the lower face and caught the light with every movement. The surface retains a warm, softly mottled ancient patina with scattered mineral deposits. Nose ornaments of this broadwing type were prestige regalia among the goldworking chiefdoms of northern Colombia, worn by elites in life and interred with them, the metal read less as wealth than as a solar substance appropriate to rank. XRF analysis of this ornament returned 20.6K gold: 86 percent gold, 12.75 percent silver with germanium, 0.25 percent copper, 0.8 percent iron, 0.2 percent trace. The high native silver content is characteristic of unrefined placer gold from the Colombian cordilleras, which the Sinu and their neighbors worked directly rather than assaying and purifying. The Sinu (Zenu) occupied the drainages of the Sinu, San Jorge, and Cauca rivers on Colombia's Caribbean plain, where they engineered one of the ancient Americas' most extensive systems of raised fields and drainage canals. Their metalsmiths were equally accomplished, mastering both lost-wax casting for filigree ear ornaments and, as here, the hammering and annealing of sheet gold into large, thin, structurally rigid forms. Spanish chroniclers of the sixteenth century recorded the looting of Sinu burial mounds for precisely such regalia, which accompanied the dead in quantity. Item # 73146

Lot: 160 - Sinu Gold Nose Ornaments, Pair with Disc Terminals, Ca. 800-1200 CE

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Sinu. A matched pair of small gold nose ornaments, each hammered and bent from a single heavy rod into a tight curl and finished at both ends with a flattened, slightly flaring disc terminal. The metal retains its worked surface, warm and softly burnished, with faint hammer facets visible across the discs. Ornaments of this type were sprung into the pierced nasal septum, the twin discs sitting to either side of the nose so that the wearer's face caught the light from every angle. Gold in this region signified rank and solar power rather than mere wealth, and such adornments announced status in life and accompanied their owners in burial. Miniature in scale, presently mounted together on a custom tapered lucite display block. The Sinu (Zenu) peoples of the Caribbean lowlands of northern Colombia, centered on the San Jorge, Sinu, and Cauca river basins, built an immense landscape of raised fields and drainage canals and buried their dead beneath earthen mounds accompanied by goldwork. Their smiths favored a comparatively high-purity gold worked by hammering, annealing, and lost-wax casting, in contrast to the copper-rich tumbaga alloys preferred by some neighboring traditions. XRF analysis of the heavier ornament reports 85 percent gold, 13.3 percent silver, and 1.7 percent copper, roughly 20.3 karat. The silver content is consistent with naturally alloyed placer gold from Andean and lowland Colombian river deposits rather than with deliberate debasement, a signature commonly observed in Sinu and Zenu metalwork. Item # 73147

Lot: 161 - Calima Sheet Gold Mustache Nose Ornament with Spiral Terminals

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Calima. A crescent of hammered sheet gold bent into a shallow inverted U, its tapering arms curling into tight volutes at each tip. The outer edge carries a raised border of repousse bosses, punched from the reverse into an even beaded chain that catches light along the whole silhouette. A single small perforation pierces the apex for suspension. The form, often called a "mustache" ornament, was worn as facial adornment, hung from the nasal septum so the spiral ends framed the mouth, or suspended as a pendant, marking rank among Calima elites. XRF analysis reports roughly 85 percent gold with copper and silver, consistent with the copper-rich alloys favored by Colombian goldsmiths. The Calima region of the Cauca Valley produced some of the most technically accomplished goldwork in the ancient Americas, worked almost entirely by hammering and repousse rather than casting. Sheet was beaten thin over yielding supports, decorated from the reverse with bone or wood punches, then trimmed and burnished. Nose ornaments of this crescent type appear across the Yotoco and Sonso horizons and are frequently recovered from shaft tombs alongside diadems, pectorals, and ear spools, the ensemble of a body dressed for burial in reflected light. Copper-bearing alloys of this kind, generically called tumbaga in the literature, were often surface-enriched by depletion gilding: the copper at the surface was chemically leached away to leave a skin of nearly pure gold over a base metal core, an economy of material that lost nothing in brilliance. Item # 73148

Lot: 162 - Huari Sheet Gold Coiled Belt or Headdress Band

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Huari. A single ribbon of hammered sheet gold, drawn out to extraordinary length and left entirely undecorated, coiled upon itself into a springy double spiral. The metal is worked paper-thin, its surface rippled with the faint planishing marks of the hammer and warmed by a rosy tone from the copper and silver in the alloy. Such long, flexible bands were worn wrapped about the body or the head, most likely as a belt or a headdress wrap binding textile and feather regalia in place. Unadorned gold of this scale was reserved for elites within the Huari state, where the metal's light-catching sheen, rather than any incised imagery, carried the message of rank. Presented on a custom tapered hardwood block base with a metal top plate. The Huari (also written Wari) built the first true expansionist state of the Andes, ruling from a monumental capital near modern Ayacucho between roughly the 7th and 10th centuries CE and projecting administrative centers as far as Pikillacta in the south and Cerro Baul in the Moquegua valley. Their metalsmiths favored the hammered sheet over the cast form, exploiting gold's ductility to produce plaques, masks, and long banded ornaments of remarkable thinness, a strategy that made a modest quantity of metal read as lavish display. XRF analysis of this piece returned approximately 68 percent gold, 27.5 percent silver, 3 percent copper, and 1.5 percent tungsten, roughly 16.3 karat. The high silver content is consistent with naturally occurring Andean electrum-bearing placer gold rather than deliberate debasement; ancient Peruvian smiths routinely worked such native alloys and often enriched the surface by depletion gilding to heighten the golden color. Item # 73149

Lot: 163 - Uraba Gold Poporo Spout with Fine-Line Neck, Ca. 800-1200 CE

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Uraba. A flaring trumpet of cast gold, drawn upward into a narrow cylindrical neck finished with a doubled, rolled lip. The neck carries a band of closely spaced fine-line ringing, a hallmark of the region's goldsmiths, achieved in the wax model before casting and left crisp against the burnished sweep of the body below. The spout originally crowned a gourd poporo, the lime flask carried by coca chewers throughout ancient Colombia; a dipping pin, wetted in the mouth, was drawn through this mouth to lift powdered lime into the quid. Such fittings turned a humble calabash into an emblem of rank, and gold, the metal of solar and shamanic power, was reserved for it. Coca chewing, still practiced across the northern Andes, requires an alkali to release the leaf's alkaloids. The poporo answered that need: a small gourd of powdered burnt shell or limestone, sealed by a spout through which a slender pin was worked, its head repeatedly rubbed against the rim until the accumulated paste built the flanged collars seen on many surviving examples. The act was as much ritual as pharmacological, and among Colombian chiefdoms the gold-fitted poporo became a portable declaration of status, entering the grave with its owner.\n\nXRF analysis reports an alloy of roughly 60 percent gold, 5.5 percent silver and 34.5 percent copper (about 14.3K), consistent with tumbaga, the copper-rich gold alloy favored across the Isthmo-Colombian world for its lower melting point, greater fluidity in the mold, and the warm rose-to-gold surface obtainable by depletion gilding. Item # 73150

Lot: 164 - Huari Gold Balance Scale Pans, Pair, Ca. 800 CE

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Huari. A matched pair of shallow dishes raised from sheet gold, their walls rippling with the hammer marks of the smith who thinned them. Each pan is pierced with two small holes below the rim, the suspension points by which cords once carried them from the arms of a beam balance. The metal is unusually pure for Andean work, XRF tested at roughly 22K with a small copper component, and the pans are close enough in weight and profile to have functioned as a true opposed set. Such balances weighed precious commodities, gold dust and mineral pigments among them, and gold pans would have signalled the standing of whoever held the beam. Surviving examples in gold are rare. Now suspended from a custom metal beam and base. The Huari (Wari) state expanded from its capital near modern Ayacucho across much of the Peruvian highlands and coast between roughly 600 and 1000 CE, running an administrative apparatus that moved textiles, metal, and foodstuffs along an early network of highland roads later inherited by the Inca. Standardized weighing equipment belongs to that apparatus. Andean beam balances, known from Moche and later Chimu and Inca contexts as well, typically pair a bone, wood, or metal beam with cordage and two pans, and are found in graves of individuals associated with metalworking and exchange. Andean goldsmiths worked almost entirely by hammering rather than casting, annealing sheet repeatedly to keep it workable and raising vessels from a single blank. The copper reported in the XRF analysis here is at a level consistent with natural alloy in placer gold rather than deliberate tumbaga debasement, which typically carries far higher copper. Item # 73151

Lot: 165 - Quimbaya Gold Nose Ornaments, Group of Five, Mounted

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Quimbaya. A constellation of five cast gold nose ornaments, four of them a matched set of open crescent rings ringed with a beaded outer border of small spheres, the fifth a broader cuff form whose flaring face carries three vertical columns of double spiral motifs between beaded upper and lower margins. Each was worn suspended from the pierced septum, catching firelight across the face of its wearer and announcing rank within Quimbaya society, where goldwork functioned as the visible currency of status and perhaps of spiritual authority. XRF analysis records high-karat gold for both types, consistent with the lost-wax casting and burnished finishes of the Middle Cauca goldsmiths. Presented together on a custom metal display plaque. The Quimbaya of the Middle Cauca valley in present-day Colombia were among the most technically accomplished goldsmiths of the ancient Americas, working in tumbaga and high-karat gold with lost-wax casting, false filigree, and depletion gilding. Spanish chroniclers of the sixteenth century described the region's inhabitants wearing gold at the nose, ears, and chest, and the burials of the Quimbaya Classic period have yielded flasks, helmets, and personal ornaments of extraordinary refinement. Nose ornaments of this crescent type were slipped through the pierced septum so the beaded arc framed the mouth. The spiral vocabulary on the cuff example recurs across Quimbaya metalwork, a motif read variously as coiled serpent, breath, or water, though no single reading is secure. Reported XRF results: cuff ornament, 21.3K, 89 percent gold with silver, copper, and a tungsten reading; beaded-border ring (upper left), 21.5K, 90 percent gold with copper, silver, and trace cadmium. Item # 73152

Lot: 166 - Lambayeque Sheet Gold Head Appliques, Group of 19 with Crescent Crowns

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Lambayeque (Sican). A parade of nineteen miniature faces hammered from thin sheet gold, each raised in repousse into the same lordly countenance: almond eyes beneath a beaded headband, a broad crescent crown, flaring spool ear ornaments, and a bared rectangular mouth. Pointed ears and crisply defined brows give each head its own slight variation of expression, the metal ranging from pale yellow to warm coppery rose. Every plaque retains two sets of minute perforations along the upper and lower edges, evidence that the group was once stitched in rows onto textile garments, banners, or funerary wrappings as the massed regalia of an elite personage. XRF analysis reports roughly 12.5K gold: 52.4% gold, 35.6% silver, 10% copper, with trace tungsten and germanium. Individually mounted on metal display stands. The Lambayeque (Sican) culture rose on Peru's north coast after the collapse of the Moche, centering on the monumental adobe pyramids of Batan Grande and, later, Tucume. Its goldsmiths were among the most accomplished in the ancient Americas, working alloys of gold, silver and copper into masks, beakers, tumi knives and vast quantities of thin sheet ornament produced by hammering over carved dies, a technique that allowed near-identical repetition of a single motif across dozens of plaques.\n\nThe face repeated here is the so-called Sican Lord, the culture's defining icon: a masklike visage with upswept, comma-shaped or almond eyes and a crescent headdress, appearing on everything from tumi handles to funerary masks. Whether it portrays a deity, a mythical ancestor, or the deified ruler himself remains debated. The high silver content and modest gold fineness are characteristic of north coast alloys, where color was often achieved by depletion gilding rather than by purity of metal. Item # 73153

Lot: 167 - Lambayeque Miniature Repousse Appliques with Lord Sican Faces, Set of 7

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Lambayeque (Sican). A matched set of seven miniature sheet-metal appliques, each hammered in repousse with the frontal face of a crowned lord. The trapezoidal plaques rise to a combed headdress band above an arc of raised bosses, framing almond eyes with drilled pupils, a wedge nose, and a broad open mouth; angled flanges at the cheeks read as flaring ear ornaments. Beaded borders enclose each composition. XRF analysis of one example returned a ternary gold-silver-copper alloy of roughly 9.7 karat fineness. Ornaments of this kind were sewn or pinned in rows onto textile garments, headcloths, and funerary bundles, multiplying the ruler's image across a costume so that it caught light with every movement. Each is individually mounted on a metal display stand. The Lambayeque, or Sican, culture rose on Peru's north coast after the collapse of Moche authority and built its ceremonial capital at Batan Grande in the La Leche valley, where furnace complexes and elite shaft tombs have yielded metalwork by the thousand piece. Its smiths were the most prolific in the ancient Americas, working thin hammered sheet of gold, silver, copper, and arsenical alloys rather than casting, and burying it in quantities that suggest metal itself carried ritual value.\n\nThe repeated face is the Sican Lord, the culture's dominant icon: a masked visage with upswept comma eyes, crowned and winged, appearing on tumi knives, funerary masks, beakers, and garment plaques alike. Whether he represents a deified ancestor, a mythic founder, or the living ruler in divine guise remains debated, but his relentless repetition across an elite wardrobe was clearly the point.\n\nThe recorded XRF result, roughly 40 percent gold, 40 percent silver, and 18 percent copper, is characteristic of north-coast sheet alloys, which were often surface-enriched by depletion gilding to read as pure gold while conserving precious metal. Item # 73154

Lot: 168 - Ecuadorian Spondylus Shell Pectoral, Crouching Fox, Ca. 200-500 CE

Pre-Columbian, Ecuador. A crouching canid, likely a fox, carved in the round from a massive slab of thick purple and white shell. The body curls into a compact arc, the long tail sweeping up over the back, one ear pricked and a foreleg thrust forward as though caught mid-step. The carver exploited the shell's natural gradation, pale nacreous flesh against the deep magenta rind that still clings to the outer edge. A large suspension hole pierces the head and three smaller perforations were drilled through the reverse, indicating the piece was worn or sewn as a pectoral. Mounted on an old custom metal base. The purple-lipped thorny oyster, Spondylus princeps, ranges the warm Pacific from the Gulf of California to the Gulf of Guayaquil, and Ecuador's coast was its principal ancient source. Divers harvested it at depth, and the shell moved north and south along maritime trade routes as a prestige good more valuable than gold, later reaching the Andes as mullu, an offering tied to rain, fertility, and the sea. Coastal workshops of the Regional Development period turned the dense purple-and-white valves into beads, inlays, and pectorals like this one. Foxes recur across Andean and coastal iconography as clever, liminal animals: hunters of the night, associated in later highland traditions with the harvest and with the dark constellation the Quechua called Atoq. Item # 73155

Lot: 169 - Valdivia / Chorrera Stone Zoomorphic Mortar with Spiral Tail

Pre-Columbian, Ecuador, Valdivia or Chorrera culture. A blocky quadruped hewn from olive-green serpentine, its surface marbled with dark veining and mineral inclusions. The rectangular body carries a deeply hollowed rectangular basin on its back and rests on four short integral legs, while a tightly coiled openwork spiral forms the tail. The projecting angular head is dominated by an enormous gaping mouth set with rows of incised teeth, above which two rectangular incised eyes stare from the flat brow. The creature reads as a stylized monkey or feline, the ambiguity native to the idiom. Mortars of this weight and finish were likely used to grind pigment, lime, or psychoactive preparations, tasks that carried ritual as much as domestic significance. The coastal cultures of Ecuador, Valdivia in the Formative period and Chorrera after it, produced some of the earliest monumental-feeling stone carving in the Americas, working serpentine and other soft green stones into grinding implements whose sculptural ambition far exceeds their utilitarian task. The spiral tail is a recurring device in Ecuadorian and neighboring Colombian imagery, read variously as a monkey's prehensile curl and as a shorthand for coiled vital force.\n\nSuch mortars are frequently found in contexts suggesting the preparation of substances used in ceremony: mineral pigments for body paint, powdered lime as an activator for coca, and vegetal preparations tied to shamanic practice. The animal that carries the bowl on its back is therefore rarely incidental; it is the agent through which the transformation of the ground substance is imagined to occur. Item # 73156

Lot: 170 - Valdivia Fish-Form Votive Stone Axe, Ecuador

Pre-Columbian, Ecuador, Valdivia. A votive axe carved from greenish-gray hardstone, its silhouette reduced to the essentials of a fish: a full rounded body swelling from a narrow waist, flaring at the top into the twin lobes of a splayed tail. The single crescent cutting edge sweeps across the lower end, ground to a working bevel yet never intended for labor. The surface retains its original matte polish, softly abraded, with faint ochre-toned mineral blooms across the body. Such highly finished celts belong to the prestige and offering sphere rather than the toolkit, likely deposited or exchanged as emblems of status. Presented on a custom metal display base. The Valdivia culture of coastal Ecuador is among the earliest sedentary, ceramic-producing societies in the Americas, its shell-mound villages along the Santa Elena Peninsula yielding pottery and stone work from the fourth millennium BCE onward. Marine life dominates its symbolic vocabulary, unsurprising for a people whose economy turned on the Pacific, and the fish silhouette recurs across media. Ground-stone celts of this quality demanded days of pecking and abrasion against sand and water, an investment of labor that removed them from ordinary use and placed them among goods held for display, offering, or burial. Item # 73157

Lot: 171 - Valdivia Stone Slab Figure with Recessed Eyes

Pre-Columbian, Ecuador, Valdivia. A columnar figure reduced to its essentials, carved from compacted limestone into a flat, tapering slab. The rounded head carries a pair of deeply recessed rectangular eyes cut in stepped relief, the only facial notation the sculptor allowed. A shallow incised groove sets the head off from the shoulders, while the broad body swells slightly at the hips before terminating in a horizontal line and a single vertical cut that indicate abbreviated legs. The surface retains a granular, weathered tooth with scattered mineral deposits. Such abstracted anthropomorphic figures, likely female, are associated with fertility observance and household or ancestral ritual among the earliest ceramic-using communities of coastal Ecuador. Presented on a custom metal display base. The Valdivia culture of the Ecuadorian coast, centered on the Santa Elena peninsula, produced some of the earliest fired ceramics in the Americas and, alongside them, a remarkable corpus of small anthropomorphic figures in both clay and stone. The stone examples, worked in limestone, sandstone, and shell, are the more austere: a slab is dressed to a tapering silhouette and the body is announced by nothing more than a few grooves, with the eyes reduced to sunken rectangles. Scholars have generally read the series as female and connected it to fertility, curing, and life-cycle observances, an interpretation supported by the frequent recovery of figurines in domestic contexts and refuse deposits at Real Alto and Valdivia rather than in formal burials. Item # 73158

Lot: 172 - Valdivia Stone Idol with Recessed Eyes, Ecuador

Pre-Columbian, Ecuador, Valdivia. A blocky anthropomorph reduced to its geometry: a tapered, helmet-like head set with two deeply recessed rectangular eyes inside a raised frame, squared shoulders, massive slab arms held clear of the torso, and broad splayed feet below a shallow incised cleft. The blue-green limestone is worked in flat planes and crisp channels, its surfaces softened by mineral deposits and rust-toned inclusions. Unusually, the sculptor chose a hard limestone rather than the friable compacted stone typical of the type, a choice that preserved the sharpness of every cut. Figures of this kind are generally understood as votive or ancestral effigies, perhaps household guardians. Presented on an old custom metal base. The Valdivia culture of coastal Ecuador is among the earliest sedentary, ceramic-producing societies of the Americas, established on the Santa Elena Peninsula by the fourth millennium BCE. Its best-known sculptural tradition is the small "Venus" figurine in fired clay, but a parallel lithic tradition produced flat, frontally posed idols of exactly this type: reductive, symmetrical, and built from stacked rectangles, with the face given over almost entirely to the eyes. Large examples are scarce; most surviving stone figures are palm-sized, which makes a work of this scale, and this degree of finish, a notably ambitious product of a Formative period workshop. Item # 73159

Lot: 173 - Chavin Incised Bone Snuff Tube with Interlocking Glyph Motifs

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chavin. A long hollow bone tube, gently curved along the shaft and flaring to an open mouth, its surface covered in finely incised interlocking glyphic scrollwork of stepped frets, hooks, and eye forms in the manner of the Raimondi Stele at Chavin de Huantar. A dark organic mass, likely hardened resin, is applied as a swelling collar near the upper end, probably serving as a grip for the fingers. Tubes of this type were used to inhale powdered psychoactive snuff, most often vilca or related tryptamine preparations, in visionary rites conducted by ritual specialists. The mellow tan patina and the confident, unbroken linear design mark it as a prestige implement rather than a utilitarian one. Mounted on a custom metal display base. The Chavin horizon, centered on the highland ceremonial complex of Chavin de Huantar in the Peruvian Andes, produced the earliest pan-regional art style in South America. Its visual language, dense with interlocking contour lines, kennings, and feline, raptorial, and serpentine substitutions, is best known from the incised Raimondi Stele and the Tello Obelisk, where a single figure reads differently depending on the orientation of the stone. Snuff paraphernalia sits at the center of that system. Excavated tubes, trays, spoons, and mortars, together with the sculpted tenon heads of the Circular Plaza showing mucus streaming from distended nostrils, indicate that the priesthood entered altered states through inhaled preparations of Anadenanthera colubrina (vilca) and infusions of the San Pedro cactus. The transformation imagery carved on this class of object was not decoration alone but the depicted content of the vision itself, the human celebrant becoming jaguar. Item # 73160

Lot: 174 - Chavin Bone Ear Plugs with Turquoise Mosaic Inlay, Pair

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chavin. A matched pair of slender tubular ear ornaments cut from long bone, each shaft ringed near the flared terminal with narrow registers of inlaid green turquoise tesserae set in fine mosaic bands. The upper rim of each is carved with a stepped, wave-like geometric fret, a motif recurrent in the visual vocabulary of the northern Peruvian highlands. Warm ivory-toned surfaces carry a deep earthen patina. Ornaments of this scale were worn through distended earlobes and served as emblems of rank, the imported turquoise itself signalling access to long-distance exchange. A rare surviving type in bone, presented together on a custom fitted display pedestal. Chavin culture radiated outward from the ceremonial center of Chavin de Huantar in the Peruvian highlands, drawing pilgrims and trade goods across the Andes and coastal valleys. Turquoise and related blue-green stones travelled considerable distances into the highlands and were reserved largely for elite adornment and ritual paraphernalia, so mosaic inlay of this kind marks the wearer as a person of consequence within that religious and political sphere. Elongated ear ornaments are among the most durable signals of status in Andean art, a convention that persists for two millennia after Chavin and culminates in the great gold and shell earspools of the Moche and the Inca "orejones". Item # 73161

Lot: 175 - Chavin Carved Bone Snuff Spatula with Jaguar-Man and Serpents

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Chavin culture. A slender bone spatula carved along its bifurcated handle with dense, semiabstract low relief. The two natural condylar joints have been converted into serpent heads, their toothy jaws incised across the bone's cancellous ends, while the shaft carries a Jaguar-Man rendered in interlocking rectilinear glyphs, scrolls, and stepped frets in the classic Chavin idiom. Traces of red pigment remain in the cut lines, throwing the design forward against the tan surface. The lower half is left plain and paddle-shaped, worn smooth from use. Implements of this kind served in the preparation and consumption of psychoactive snuff, a practice central to Chavin ritual specialists. Housed in a custom fitted lidded display box. Chavin de Huantar, high in the Peruvian sierra, gave its name to the first pan-Andean art style, and its visual grammar of fanged felines, raptors, and serpents spread across the coast and highlands between roughly 1200 and 500 BCE. That grammar is deliberately difficult: figures are broken into modular bands, doubled, and read as much sideways as upright, so that a jaguar's eye resolves into a serpent's head on a second look. Carved bone and stone snuff implements, spatulas, tubes, and small trays, formed part of the equipment used by ritual practitioners to ingest hallucinogenic preparations derived from Anadenanthera seeds, the transformation from human to feline being the express aim of the exercise. The provenance credits the H. J. Westermann collection, Germany, mid-20th century. Item # 73162

Lot: 176 - Cupisnique Bone and Spondylus Necklace Elements, Stylized Jaguar Heads, Turquoise Inlay

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Jequetepeque Valley, likely Cupisnique. A crescent of twenty-seven carved plaques, alternating warm bone tablets with slender batons of orange spondylus shell, strung as a single collar. Many of the bone elements carry incised feline masks reduced to essentials, the brow, muzzle, and fanged jaw rendered in a few confident grooves, several centered on a disc of turquoise set flush into the surface. The rhythmic red-and-ivory alternation would have flashed against the throat of a person of rank. Spondylus, dived from warm Ecuadorian waters and traded south at great cost, marked both wealth and the promise of rain, making such a collar an emblem of status and ritual authority rather than simple ornament. Mounted together on a custom display base. The stylized jaguar is the governing image of Peru's Formative north coast. Cupisnique artisans of the Jequetepeque and Chicama valleys, contemporaries of the Chavin horizon, distilled the cat into a shorthand of split brow, interlocking fang, and staring eye that recurs across their stirrup-spout vessels, carved bone, and shell work. The eye inlays here follow that convention: a bright mineral pupil sunk into a plain field.\n\nSpondylus princeps does not live in Peruvian waters. It was harvested by breath-hold divers off Ecuador and moved south through long-distance exchange networks, arriving on the north coast as a controlled luxury. Its association with water and fertility persisted for two millennia, through Moche, Chimu, and Inca practice, which makes its appearance in a Formative-period collar an early witness to a trade in sacred material that outlasted every polity that valued it. Item # 73163

Lot: 177 - Manteno Carved Bone Miniature Standing Dignitary Figure, Ecuador

Pre-Columbian, Ecuador, Manteno. A miniature male dignitary carved nearly in the round from bone, standing rigid and frontal on abbreviated legs. The oversized head dominates, crowned by a broad rolled cap or headdress, with drilled pupils, a wide flaring nose and a firm horizontal mouth. Large flanged ears each carry three tiny drill points, perhaps indicating multiple ornaments of shell or metal. Squared shoulders give way to arms held tight against the torso, the hands resting at either side of an incised loincloth. Piercings through the flanks and between the legs suggest the figure was strung and worn, likely as a pendant or amulet of personal status. The bone has mellowed to a warm honeyed patina. Mounted on a custom display base. The Manteno flourished along the central coast of Ecuador from roughly 800 CE until the Spanish incursions of the sixteenth century, controlling a maritime trade network that carried Spondylus shell, cotton, and metalwork by balsa raft as far north as western Mexico and south into Peru. Their prestige goods, worked shell, greenstone, silver, and bone, are typically small and portable, made for the person rather than the temple. Bone carvings of this type belong to that intimate register. The rolled cap or turban and the exaggerated head follow a coastal Ecuadorian convention for marking rank, the head being the seat of identity and authority, while the multiple ear perforations record the compound ornaments that signalled status in life. Such figures were worn suspended, and frequently accompanied their owners into the grave. Item # 73164

Lot: 178 - Chavin Stone Tenon Head, Serpent-Jaguar Deity, Miniature

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chavin. A snarling composite face carved in the round from a dense pale stone, small in scale yet monumental in conception. Bulging ball eyes with drilled pupils sit beneath heavy scrolled brows, above a wide mouth set with bared teeth and prominent fangs, the broad nose flanked by curling serpentine appendages. The crown carries a relief boss within a raised border. A projecting integral tang at the rear once socketed the head into a masonry wall, the standard mounting for Chavin tenon heads, which glowered outward from temple facades as guardians and as images of the fanged supernatural. Serpent and feline attributes are merged here into a single being, the visual language of a priesthood whose deities took shape as creatures of the jungle night. Chavin de Huantar, high in Peru's Ancash highlands, was the ceremonial center of the first pan-Andean religious tradition, and its stone-faced temple walls bristled with tenon heads driven into the masonry like a ring of sentinels. The sequence of those heads is often read as a transformation cycle: human features dissolving stage by stage into feline muzzle, serpent hair, and mucus-streaming nostrils, a sculptural record of shamanic metamorphosis. That transformation was chemically assisted. San Pedro cactus, depicted in Chavin relief carving and rich in mescaline, together with snuffs of Anadenanthera, drove the visions in which priest became jaguar. The merged serpent and feline morphology seen here is the artistic residue of that experience rather than a decorative conceit. Item # 73165

Lot: 179 - Chavin Stone Spiked Mace Head, North Coast Peru

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Chavin culture. A weapon head bristling with authority, carved from dense gray hardstone into a tapered cylinder studded with four staggered rows of conical spikes. The upper collar is drilled straight through the core, a socket sized to receive a wooden haft lashed tight for combat. Ground and polished entirely by abrasion, without metal tools, the surface carries a deep earthen patina. Mace heads of this class served as both striking weapons and emblems of rank among Andean elites, their labor-intensive manufacture and hard stone signaling status as much as lethality. Mounted on a custom metal display base. The Chavin horizon, radiating from the highland ceremonial center of Chavin de Huantar, unified much of the Peruvian coast and sierra in a shared religious and artistic idiom during the first millennium BCE. Stone mace heads circulated widely within that sphere, and the spiked or star-form type persisted for centuries afterward in Andean weaponry, later rendered in copper alloy by Moche, Chimu, and Inca smiths. Working a stone of this hardness required pecking, grinding, and long hours of abrasive drilling with sand and reed or bone bits, an investment of labor that placed such objects well beyond ordinary armament and into the vocabulary of prestige. Item # 73166

Lot: 180 - Vicús Stirrup Vessel Flying Shaman Figure, Peru

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Vicus. Pre-Columbian, Peru, Vicús culture, ca. 200 BCE to 600 CE. A modeled figure stretches prone across the shoulder of a globular stirrup vessel, chin propped upon one hand. The buff-to-rust earthenware body is decorated in negative-resist geometry, with nested chevrons and stepped frets banding both the chamber and the reclining figure's tunic. A conical cap tops the face, with an aquiline nose and lidded eye. The stirrup spout arches behind the figure, balanced by a projecting tubular element at the opposite side. Effigy vessels of this type are associated with ritual specialists, sometimes described as "flying shamans," and are documented as funerary offerings. The resist-decoration technique, achieved by masking areas of the surface before applying a dark wash, is associated with the northern Peruvian ceramic tradition that precedes later Moche ceramic modeling. Item # 203923

Lot: 181 - Paracas Chocolate Ware Deity Head Bridge-Spout Vessel

Pre-Columbian, Peru, South Coast, Paracas culture. A squat, globular chocolate ware jar crowned by a modeled deity head, its features cut in crisp incision: slit eyes, a projecting nose, small pierced ear tabs, and a banded headdress. A tapered rear spout rises from the shoulder, joined to the head by a flat strap bridge handle. The front register carries an incised tunic design, arcs, a row of ovoid bosses, and panels of ladder-like hatching, filled with red-orange and white pigment against the burnished dark ground. Vessels of this class served both as containers and as prestige goods, most often recovered from funerary contexts on the arid south coast. Paracas potters worked in a distinctive idiom in which the design was first incised into the leather-hard or fired surface, then filled with resin-suspended pigments applied after firing. The incised lines acted as cloisons, holding each color apart and producing the flat, textile-like fields of red-orange, white, and cream seen here. Because the resin paints were never fixed by heat, they abrade readily, and vessels retaining strong color are correspondingly scarce. The frontal being modeled at the neck, with its rayed or banded headgear and staring circular eyes, belongs to the repertoire of anthropomorphic supernaturals that dominates Paracas ceramics and embroidered mantles alike. The same figure recurs across the Necropolis and Cavernas horizons, its attributes shifting but its rigid frontality constant, and its appearance on a double-vessel form links the piece to the elite mortuary assemblages of the Peruvian south coast. Item # 73167

Lot: 182 - Peruvian Virú Whistling Jar, Panpipe Musician

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Viru. A double-chambered whistling vessel joined by a strap bridge and a single tapering spout, with two rounded rectangular chambers. Atop one chamber sits a modeled musician, legs folded, hands raised to the lips, playing a panpipe beneath a broad brimmed headband. The vessel is constructed with an internal whistle mechanism: poured or rocked water displaces air through the mechanism, producing sound as though the figure is playing the instrument. The redware body still produces tone when air is passed through it. Remnants of black slip trace straight and zigzag bands across the chambers, the bridge, and the figure's headband. Vessels of this type are associated with ritual and funerary contexts in Virú culture. The Vicus culture flourished in the far north of Peru, in the Piura valley near the Ecuadorian frontier, a crossroads where highland, coastal, and northern Andean traditions mingled. Vicus ceramics are noted for their vigorously modeled figures and their command of the whistling-vessel tradition, a technology shared across the ancient Andes from Chavin through Moche and Nazca. These vessels exploit hydraulics and trapped air: tilting or filling the chamber forces air across a concealed fipple, producing tones that would have animated the object in ritual performance. That the whistle was concealed within the figure of a panpipe player is a deliberate conceit, fusing the sound of the vessel with the image of the musician so that the effigy seems to play the very note it produces. Item # 203925

Lot: 183 - Vicus Feline Stirrup Spout Vessel with Resist Spotted Coat

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Vicus. A snarling cat crouches in ceramic: the bulbous body doubles as the animal's spotted flank, while the modeled head presses forward with bulging lidded eyes, incised whiskers, perked ears, and a wide mouth bared over a row of sharp teeth. The salmon-toned earthenware carries rings and dots in negative resist, evoking the dappled pelage of a jaguar or pampas cat. A tubular arch rises from the shoulder to a short cylindrical spout, the stirrup form standard to north coast Peruvian bottles. Vessels of this type held liquids and were typically interred with the dead, the feline reading as a predator of potency and shamanic transformation rather than mere ornament. The Vicus culture flourished in the Piura valley of far northern Peru, at a crossroads between the Andean coast and the Ecuadorian frontier, and its potters shared the stirrup spout bottle with their Moche neighbors to the south while keeping a distinctly plumper, more sculptural body and a fondness for negative resist painting. That resist technique is the piece's signature: a masking agent, often wax or clay slip, was applied in rings and dots before the surface was smoked or overpainted, so the pattern emerges as the ground rather than as an added mark. Feline imagery runs deep in Andean religion from Chavin onward, where the spotted cat stands for predatory power and the shaman's capacity to cross between worlds. Item # 73168

Lot: 184 - Jamacoaque Large Seated Shaman with Knife and Gourd Vessel

Pre-Columbian, Ecuador, Jamacoaque. A commanding seated dignitary modeled in light salmon-tan pottery, cross-legged beneath a long ceremonial apron. In his right hand he grips a knife crowned by an anthropomorphic head finial; his left cradles a gourd vessel. Ornament announces rank: a necklace hung with two anthropomorphic pendants, an outsized lower-lip labret, a nose ring, and long tasseled ear spools. A beaded-brim cap rises to a central topknot, its side lappets now absent, while applied coffee-bean discs stipple the garment and body. The paired implements, blade and gourd, likely identify a shaman engaged in ritual practice, perhaps the preparation of lime or a psychoactive infusion. The Jamacoaque flourished along the northern coast of Ecuador, in what are now Manabi and Esmeraldas provinces, producing some of the most detailed ceramic figural sculpture of the Andean north. Their coroplasts combined mold-made faces with hand-modeled and applique detail, the so-called coffee-bean technique among them, to record costume, headgear, and body ornament with near-ethnographic precision. Figures of this scale and elaboration are generally read as ritual specialists or elites: the labret, nose ring, and pendant necklace are markers of status rather than everyday dress. The gourd container recalls the poporo, a lime flask used with coca throughout the ancient Andes, and its pairing with a bladed implement is consistent with the paraphernalia of ceremonial consumption. Item # 73169

Lot: 185 - Moche IV Stirrup Spout Vessel of Musician Blowing a Shell Trumpet

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche IV. A salmon-slipped pottery effigy vessel modeled as a standing male musician, both hands raised to sound a conch trumpet held against his lips. He wears a domed cap bound by a broad white fillet, large beaded disc ear ornaments, and a layered tunic and skirt whose vertical bands and dotted registers are picked out in cream slip against burnished red. A cylindrical spout rises from an arching stirrup handle at the rear, the signature closed form of North Coast ceramics. Modeled figural vessels of this type accompanied the dead, and the trumpeter belongs to a recurring cast of ritual performers whose music likely framed processions and sacrificial ceremony. Conch trumpets (pututus) reached the Moche heartland through long-distance exchange with Ecuadorian waters, where the thorny oyster and the Strombus conch were harvested; their arrival on the arid North Coast made them prestige objects long before they were instruments. Moche fineline painting and modeled ceramics repeatedly show trumpeters flanking prisoners, litters, and officiants, and Strombus shells have been recovered from elite tombs alongside the very vessels that depict them.\n\nPhase IV, the classic horizon of Moche ceramic production, is marked by increasingly naturalistic portrait and genre modeling paired with a tightly restricted red-and-cream palette, produced in press molds and finished by hand. Item # 73170

Lot: 186 - Moche Stirrup Spout Vessel with Animal-Headed Warriors

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche. A pair of animal-headed combatants circles the shoulder of this burnished redware bottle, modeled in low relief against a cream slip ground. The chamber rises to a strap stirrup handle and cylindrical spout, the classic north-coast form. One warrior wears the beak and eye of a raptor and carries a long spear with a small shield and darts; his opponent bears feline features, a serpent belt, and a snake draped across the shoulder. The composition belongs to Moche ritual battle imagery, in which supernatural champions in animal guise duel as proxies for human warriors. Such bottles were made as prestige goods and interred with the dead, their contents poured through the narrow spout. Moche potters of the Peruvian north coast (roughly the Lambayeque to Nepena valleys) worked in press molds, allowing complex relief scenes to be repeated across a workshop's output while retaining crisp modeling. The stirrup spout, inherited from earlier Cupisnique and Chavin traditions, limited evaporation and served as a handle, but by the Moche III-V phases it had become above all a canvas armature: a fixed silhouette against which sculptors and painters staged an encyclopedic iconography of rulers, prisoners, deities, animals, and combat. Animal-headed warriors belong to that iconographic repertoire's supernatural register. Raptor, fox, and feline-headed figures appear repeatedly on fineline vessels engaged in ritual combat, running, or presenting captives, and scholars generally read them as anthropomorphized companions or alter egos of elite Moche warriors rather than as narrative portraits. Serpent attributes, such as the snake belt seen here, commonly mark figures of heightened supernatural status. Item # 73171

Lot: 187 - Moche Pottery Stirrup-Spout Vessel - Blind Man Effigy

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche. A molded pottery stirrup-spout vessel depicting a seated blind man leaning against a rolled blanket, modeled with hollow eyes, an open mouth, one arm drawn across the chest and the other resting at his side. The vessel is painted in cream and red-brown slip and reflects the Moche tradition of depicting the human figure with realism. Effigy vessels of this kind were placed in burials and are a primary source for the study of Moche society. The Moche (also Mochica) flourished along the north coast of Peru between roughly 100 and 800 CE, leaving no writing but an extraordinary ceramic record. Their stirrup-spout vessels, so named for the looping tubular handle that resembles a saddle stirrup, were produced in press-molds yet individually finished, allowing both serial output and portrait-like specificity. Depictions of blindness, facial disfigurement, and illness are a recurring and deliberate theme. Scholars have proposed that the blind held a special ritual status, associated in Andean thought with inward or prophetic vision, a sight beyond the ordinary. Vessels of this type were frequently interred as grave offerings, accompanying the dead into the afterlife. This item is a dropship lot and will ship directly from the consignor's location. All condition, dimension, material, and chemical composition data reflect consignor-supplied information. This item is a dropship lot and will ship directly from the consignor's location. All condition, dimension, material, and chemical composition data reflect consignor-supplied information. Item # 204233

Lot: 188 - Moche Crab Deity Stirrup Vessel with Fisherman and Monster Fish

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche. A crab deity leans over the shoulder of this globular stirrup vessel, modeled in relief with a human face beneath a crested headdress, disc earspools, fanged mouth, and a claw gripping a taut fishing line. The line descends across the buff-slipped body to hook a great monster fish, incised with saw-toothed dorsal fins, ridged gills, and bared teeth. White pigment sharpens the outlines against the light brown ground. The chimney spout and arching handle define the classic north coast Moche form, made for elite use and finally for burial, where such vessels accompanied the dead. The angling deity belongs to the Moche marine cycle, in which supernatural beings hunt the creatures of the sea. The Moche of Peru's arid north coast lived by the Pacific, and their ceramics record that dependence with unusual candor: reed boats, net fishermen, sea lions, rays, and crabs recur across the corpus. The crab, molting and regenerating, carried associations with renewal, and it is frequently anthropomorphized into a warrior or fisherman figure with human face and limbs emerging from the carapace. The prey here, a fanged fish with serrated fins, is not a naturalistic species but a supernatural adversary of the type Moche art repeatedly sets against divine anglers and boatmen.\n\nStirrup spout vessels of this kind were produced from press molds and finished by hand, with fine-line and modeled decoration added before firing in a reducing then oxidizing atmosphere that yielded the characteristic cream and rust palette. They served as funerary offerings, and the closed double-arch spout may have limited evaporation of the liquid they held. Item # 73172

Lot: 189 - Moche Grasshopper Effigy Vessel with Red-on-Cream Slip

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche. A grasshopper modeled in the round, its body swelling into a hollow chamber with a broad oval opening set into the back. The buff, cream-slipped earthenware carries red-brown bands across the thorax and abdomen, with narrower stripes reserved along the tail and a dark accent marking the mandibles. Folded wings and hind legs are rendered in low relief that follows the natural taper of the form, the domed eyes applied as raised pellets. Insect subjects are uncommon in Moche ceramic sculpture, which favors humans, felines, and marine life, and this vessel likely served a funerary or offering role rather than daily use. Moche potters of Peru's north coast worked in a tightly disciplined palette of red-brown slip on cream, applying it with brush-like precision to press-molded and hand-modeled forms. Their zoomorphic vessels functioned as a visual census of the coastal world: owls, foxes, sea lions, crustaceans, and deer all appear, frequently with human attributes grafted onto them. Insects enter that repertoire far more rarely. Where they do, they are generally read as agricultural omens, tied to the fertility of irrigated valley fields and to the seasonal swarms that could ruin them. Vessels of this type were regularly interred with the dead, and the openings in their backs suggest they held liquid or maize-based offerings. Item # 73173

Lot: 190 - Moche IV Portrait Head Stirrup Spout Vessel of a Young Lord

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche IV. A large modeled ceramic portrait head rises to a looping stirrup handle and cylindrical spout, the face burnished in deep red-brown slip against cream. The young lord's features are individualized: heavy lidded eyes, an angular nose with pierced septum, and a faint smile. He wears a wrapped turban tied at the back with two long lappets bearing painted geometric bands, and a red-brown cylindrical knob projects from the headcloth. Disc ear ornaments with beaded borders carry pinwheel devices in red-brown on cream. Such portrait vessels record specific elite individuals rather than generic types, and were deposited as grave furniture accompanying the burials of the north coast nobility. Moche portrait vessels are among the very few genuine portrait traditions in ancient American art. Modeled in press molds and then finished by hand, they depict named individuals across the arc of a lifetime: scholars have matched the same distinctive faces on vessels recovered from different valleys and different decades, tracking a single man from youth through maturity and, in some cases, through mutilation or ritual death. Headgear, ear ornaments, and face paint encode rank, so the wrapped turban, the projecting knob, and the large discs seen here place the sitter within the warrior-elite of the Moche polity. Production peaked in Phase IV, roughly the sixth and seventh centuries CE, when the ceramic workshops of the Moche and Chicama valleys were at their most technically ambitious. Item # 73174

Lot: 191 - Moche IV Stirrup Spout Vessel of a Seated Dignitary

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche. A seated dignitary sits heavy and alert atop a burnished cream ceramic chamber, hands resting flat on his knees, head thrust forward as though addressing someone just out of reach. Slip-painted decoration in red-brown carries a zigzag-banded turban, a broad diagonal sash across the torso, painted brows, mustache and goatee, and paired discs at the corners of the mouth. Modeled ears carry cylindrical spools. The rear stirrup handle rises to a single cylindrical spout, the signature north-coast form that served both as a drinking vessel and as a grave offering accompanying persons of rank. The facial modeling is sharp and individualized, close to the portrait tradition for which Moche potters remain unmatched in the Americas. Moche potters of Phase IV (roughly the sixth to eighth centuries) worked from press molds yet finished each vessel by hand, and it is that final modeling, the set of a jaw, the flare of a nostril, that gives the corpus its startling individuality. Sashes, earspools, and patterned headcloths are not generic ornament but rank insignia: the diagonal band and zigzag turban seen here recur on figures who officiate at ceremonies in Moche fineline painting, suggesting a person of standing rather than a generic type. The double-chambered stirrup form, with its closed loop and narrow spout, limits evaporation and pouring loss, an elegant answer to carrying maize beer through the arid coastal valleys of northern Peru. An old collection number, "1738", is painted on the underside. Item # 73175

Lot: 192 - Moche Jaguar Stirrup Vessel with Shell and Turquoise Inlay

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche. A snarling feline rears from the shoulder of this drum-bodied bottle, modeled in buff ceramic and finished in red-brown slip on cream. The jaguar's brows and muzzle are inlaid with spondylus shell, the eyes ringed in turquoise and shell, and the open jaws set with carved shell fangs, teeth, and tongue. A stirrup spout rises behind the head, its arch springing from the flattened disc body. Painted ornament covers the drum edge with a large double-spiral bird and a file of four smaller spiral birds along one half. Likely a prestige or funerary offering, made for the elite tombs of the north coast rather than for daily service. The stirrup-spout bottle is the signature vessel of the Moche, who dominated the desert valleys of Peru's north coast for some seven centuries. Its closed loop limits evaporation and restricts pouring, qualities suited to funerary chicha offerings, and its silhouette became a canvas for the most inventive figural modeling in the ancient Andes. Inlay of this kind is rare and costly. Spondylus princeps, the thorny oyster, does not occur in Peruvian waters and had to be traded south from Ecuador; turquoise came from the highlands. Setting both into a fired clay face marks the vessel as elite work. The feline itself carries supernatural weight in Moche art, appearing as companion and alter ego to the ritual specialists who preside over sacrifice scenes on painted fineline wares. Item # 73176

Lot: 193 - Moche IV Seated Shaman Stirrup Vessel with Jaguar Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche IV. A seated shaman sinks into trance atop this modeled effigy vessel, eyes lidded, arms crossed tight over drawn-up knees. Burnished cream and red-brown slips define his ornate tunic: scroll volutes, stepped frets, and banded triangles, worn with a broad multi-strand collar and half-disc ear ornaments. A crested feline rides the headdress, forepaws splayed above a domed finial often read as a mushroom cap, a probable reference to entheogenic ritual. The rear stirrup handle rises to a straight cylindrical chimney spout, the canonical Moche closed form. Molded and hand-finished in fine oxidized earthenware, such portrait-quality effigies were made as burial furniture, accompanying ranked individuals whose ceremonial regalia the potters recorded in detail. Moche IV, the apogee of North Coast ceramic production, is the phase in which stirrup-spout vessels reach their most exacting sculptural realism: individualized faces, precisely rendered textiles, and regalia that can be matched piece for piece against excavated tomb assemblages at Sipan and San Jose de Moro. Feline headdress ornaments and half-disc ear spools mark elevated ritual status rather than everyday dress.\n\nThe folded-arm, knees-drawn posture with heavy lidded eyes belongs to a recognized Moche repertoire of altered-state figures. Ethnobotanical readings connect these to San Pedro cactus and, less securely, to psychoactive fungi; the domed finial here is consistent with a mushroom cap, though a simple cap or headdress boss cannot be excluded. Curing and divination remained the province of specialists on the North Coast well into the colonial period, and Moche imagery is the earliest sustained visual record of that practice. Item # 73177

Lot: 194 - Moche Monumental Funerary Mask of a Lord with Disc Ear Ornaments

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Moche. A monumental sheet metal mask, hammered and repousse-worked into the broad face of a lord, the brow crossed by a raised headband and the almond eyes fitted with small disc danglers now fused in place by corrosion. The nose is modeled naturalistically in high relief, the wide mouth set with barely parted lips. Large separately worked disc ear ornaments with beaded borders flank the cheeks, while a pectoral of seventeen large gilded discs, ancient and of Moche date but strung on recently, sweeps below the chin. A deep blue-green patina covers the surface. Masks of this scale were mortuary furnishings, likely mounted on a funerary bundle or coffin to give a face to the elite dead. Moche metalsmiths of Peru's north coast were the finest in the ancient Americas, working copper and its alloys by cold hammering, annealing, and repousse rather than casting, and mastering depletion gilding, a chemical process that leached base metal from an alloy's surface to leave a skin of gold on an object that was mostly copper. The great royal tombs at Sipan, excavated from 1987, revealed how such regalia functioned: masks, ear discs, nose ornaments, and sheet pectorals wrapped the bodies of lords, converting the corpse into an image of authority for the grave.\n\nScale is the measure of status here. Most surviving Moche funerary masks are a fraction of this one's size, and the record's claim that it ranks among the largest known Mochica examples is credible on the visual evidence. The gilded disc pectoral, though of the period, is a modern assembly and should be understood as an addition rather than as an excavated association. Item # 73178

Lot: 195 - Sican Lambayeque Sheet Silver Funerary Mask with Danglers, Naylamp

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Sican (Lambayeque), Batan Grande. A broad funerary mask hammered from sheet silver, its trapezoidal face flaring into flanged ear panels bordered with fine repousse beading. Domed eyes sit within pointed almond sockets rimmed in red cinnabar, each pierced by a curving wire that carries a suspended plaque, the tears the ruler is said to shed for his people. Rows of large sheet danglers hang from mouth, cheeks, and lower edge, set to shimmer and chime with the least movement. A cool blue-green cuprous patina veils the face, broken where the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears retain their pale metallic sheen. Masks of this type were affixed to funerary bundles of the elite, giving the dead the winged-eye visage of the culture hero Naylamp. The Sican (Lambayeque) polity centered on Batan Grande in Peru's La Leche valley was the greatest metalworking tradition of the ancient Andes, producing arsenical copper, tumbaga, gold, and silver in industrial quantity from shaft-tomb workshops. Its signature image is the so-called Sican Deity or Lord: a frontal face with upswept, comma-shaped eyes, conical nose, and flanged headdress, repeated across masks, tumi knives, beakers, and ceremonial gloves. Colonial chronicles preserved by Miguel Cabello de Balboa recount Naylamp (also Naymlap), a lord who arrived by balsa raft with his retinue and founded the Lambayeque dynasty, departing the world on wings rather than dying. The pointed, wing-like eyes of masks such as this one are generally read as an allusion to that flight, though the identification of the mask image with the chronicled hero remains a scholarly argument rather than a settled fact. Item # 73179

Lot: 196 - Moche Gilded Maskette with Shell and Lapis Inlay Eyes

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Moche. A small human face stares out with unnerving directness, its gilded surface still bright across brow and cheek. The maskette was raised and hammered from sheet copper, the features pushed up from behind into a broad nose, downturned mouth, and flaring ears pierced for attachment. Ovoid eyes are inlaid with white shell set with round lapis pupils, a costly combination reserved for high-status regalia. Paired slots at the hairline and tabs at the ears indicate it was once fixed to a larger object, most likely the headdress of a full-scale mask or a ceremonial ensemble. Gilding on North Coast copper was achieved by depletion techniques that drew precious metal to the surface, lending modest alloys the appearance of solid gold. North Coast metalsmiths of the Early Intermediate Period were the most technically ambitious in the ancient Americas, mastering annealing, repousse, soldering, and the surface enrichment now called depletion gilding: an object of copper-gold or copper-silver alloy was treated with mineral acids to strip base metal from the outermost layer, leaving a skin of gold or silver that could be burnished to a mirror. The result carried the visual authority of solid precious metal at a fraction of its weight and cost, and it allowed large composite regalia to be assembled from many thin, gleaming plates. Inlay materials mattered as much as the metal. Spondylus and other marine shell came north from Ecuadorian waters, and lapis lazuli was traded from the far southern Andes, so a face of this scale gathered exotic substances from opposite ends of a long exchange network. Set into the eyes, they animated the countenance in firelight, an effect deliberately exploited in the elaborate costumed performances that dominate the region's painted and modeled iconography. Item # 73180

Lot: 197 - Paracas Nazca Sheet Gold Crown with Hummingbirds

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Paracas / Nazca, south coast. A broad diadem of hammered sheet gold, its waisted band worked in dense rows of repousse bosses that catch light like a field of beaten seeds. Traces of red cinnabar pigment survive in the recessed channels between them, the residue of a coloring practice reserved for high-status regalia. Two small hummingbirds perch along the upper edge, each with a carved wooden body fitted with gold eyes and a slender gold beak; one carries a wire flourish rising above the back in imitation of a wing. Crowns of this scale were almost certainly worn by elite or priestly figures of the Peruvian south coast, and likely accompanied their owners into the grave. Presented on a custom display base. Goldwork on the Peruvian south coast in the Paracas and early Nazca horizons was overwhelmingly a hammered rather than a cast tradition: nuggets were beaten into foil-thin sheet, then raised from behind over yielding supports to produce bosses, faces, and animal forms. The technique yields maximum visual mass from minimal metal, an economy that mattered where gold arrived by long-distance exchange. Cinnabar (mercury sulfide) was traded into the region from highland sources and applied to burial textiles, masks, and metal regalia alike. Its brilliant vermilion, read against gold, carried associations with blood and vitality, and its survival in the recesses here indicates the crown's surface was originally far redder than it now appears. The hummingbird is among the most persistent motifs of the south coast, threaded through Paracas embroidery, Nazca polychrome vessels, and, most famously, the Nazca geoglyphs, where a hummingbird figure is traced across the desert pampa. As a creature that feeds in flight and vanishes without apparent effort, it was widely understood as an intermediary between worlds, an apt companion for regalia worn by those who mediated with them. Item # 73181

Lot: 198 - Moche Gilded Sheet Funerary Mask with Danglers, Loma Negra

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Early Moche, Loma Negra. A gilded sheet-metal face hammered into a broad trapezoidal plaque, its features raised from behind: lozenge eyes with domed pupils, a rectangular mouth set with a row of squared teeth, and a separately formed tubular nose riveted to the surface. Three tapered danglers hang along each edge, and five rows of small staple-like tabs pierce the sheet, once anchoring further danglers that would have rattled and flashed with every movement of the wearer. Small paired holes at top and bottom served for attachment. Masks of this kind were mortuary regalia, likely lashed to the wrapped bundle or headdress of an elite burial, where gilded copper stood as the sun's own metal. The Loma Negra material, recovered in the far north of Peru's coastal Piura valley, forms the earliest and most technically inventive body of Moche metalwork known. Its smiths mastered depletion gilding, a chemical process in which copper is leached from the surface of a copper-gold alloy to leave a skin of nearly pure gold, allowing a modest quantity of precious metal to clothe a large object entirely. The result was ideologically potent: on the north coast, gold was bound to the sun and to the person of the ruler, and burnished metal glinting with mobile danglers translated that solar authority into something audible and kinetic during ceremony. Loma Negra pieces are frequently distinguished by their hybrid construction, in which separately worked components (noses, ears, tongues, appliques) are riveted or stapled to a hammered ground rather than cast in one piece, a hallmark visible here in the applied nose and the surviving rows of tabs. Item # 73182

Lot: 199 - Viru Mochica Miniature Raft Tableau with Gilded Standing Oarsman

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Viru-Mochica transitional, North Coast. A miniature raft in worked sheet metal, its flat deck chased with a low-relief reed pattern in imitation of bound totora bundles. At the stern stands a gilded lord or oarsman, cut from sheet and embossed with a fanged frontal face, twin triangular danglers swinging from his headdress, his hands raised to grip a separately made oar. Two palm trees rise from the deck, each crowned with a conical gilded fruit and thin sheet leaves. Blue-green cuprous patina veils the whole. Such tableaux are exceedingly rare, likely funerary offerings that render in metal the reed craft plying the North Coast rivers and surf, a vessel of both commerce and, perhaps, mythic passage. The reed raft, or caballito de totora, remains in use on the Peruvian North Coast today, and its ancestors appear again and again in Moche art: modeled on stirrup-spout vessels, incised on fineline ceramics, and cast in metal. In the fineline repertoire, supernatural beings pole rafts loaded with prisoners or jars, and the raft becomes a vehicle for passage between worlds as much as a fishing craft. The gilding here is characteristic of North Coast metallurgy, where artisans achieved a gold surface on high-copper sheet by depletion techniques rather than by applied leaf, an economy of precious metal that let modest alloys read as solid gold in ritual display. The Viru (Gallinazo) to Moche transition on the North Coast is a period of shared technology and overlapping iconography, and hammered sheet-metal figures with fanged frontal faces and suspended danglers sit squarely in that horizon. Item # 73183

Lot: 200 - Loma Negra Bell Panels with Incised Hummingbirds, Pair

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche, Loma Negra. A matched pair of fan-shaped bell panels, each cast in copper with six globular chambers ranged in two tiers across an openwork frame. The interstices between the chambers carry incised stylized hummingbirds, birds shown in profile with long beaks and hatched wings, a decorative refinement rarely encountered on bells of this class. Deep blue-green cuprous patinas cover both surfaces. Such clustered bells were sewn or lashed to garments and regalia, and are reported to have been worn by warriors into battle so that their approach was heard before it was seen. Each panel is presented on a custom metal display base. Loma Negra, a cemetery site in the far northern Piura Valley of Peru, produced an extraordinary corpus of sheet and cast copper regalia associated with the early Moche horizon: nose ornaments, masks, backflaps, and bells of exactly this clustered type. Northern metalsmiths there worked copper with gilding and silvering techniques that would later define Andean prestige metallurgy.\n\nThe hummingbird carried weight beyond ornament in Andean thought. Its darting flight and its habit of appearing to die and revive (torpor) made it a traveler between worlds, a messenger linked to death, the ancestors, and the afterlife, and the same bird recurs in Moche painted ceramics and in the great Nazca geoglyphs to the south. Item # 73184

Lot: 201 - Moche Figural Tumi with Warrior and Bound Prisoner, Loma Negra

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche, Loma Negra. A cast copper tumi crowned by a platform finial staging a sacrifice in miniature. The seated warrior or chief wears an elaborate feathered headdress centered by its own tumi, wide ornamental collar, and inlaid spondylus shell disc earspools, with shell set into the eyes. He holds a disc shield and a weapon. Kneeling before him is a bound captive, a noose trailing down his back, with a bloodletting bowl between them, the prisoner likely awaiting sacrifice. A long integral blade extends below the platform. The surface carries a dense blue-green cuprous patina. Ceremonial rather than utilitarian, such knives belonged to the sacrificial rites depicted throughout Moche art. Loma Negra, a cemetery site in the far north Piura valley of Peru, produced a remarkable body of early Moche metalwork, much of it worked in copper and gilded or silvered copper by smiths whose technical command of sheet, cast, and depletion-gilded metal remains among the most sophisticated in the ancient Americas. The site's material sits at the northern edge of Moche influence, where Vicus traditions and Moche iconography intersect.\n\nThe scene modeled here belongs to the Sacrifice Ceremony, the central narrative of Moche ritual life and one attested across ceramics, murals, and the elite tombs of Sipan: warriors capture opponents in ritual combat, strip and bind them, and lead them by a rope to a presiding lord, where their blood is drawn into a goblet. The tumi is the instrument of that rite, and here the knife carries a portrait of its own use. Item # 73185

Lot: 202 - Moche Openwork Figural Plaque with Crescent Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche. A frontal dignitary stands within a rectangular frame, hammered from sheet metal and cut away in openwork so the figure reads against empty ground. He wears a broad crescent headdress with fluted rays and stepped side elements, oversized disc ear ornaments flanking a heavy-lidded face, and a short flaring skirt with a zigzag hem. Arms curve to the hips, feet splay outward over a plain lower rail. Silvered surface survives in patches beneath red, green, and gold corrosion products. Seven small holes pierce the border, indicating the plaque was once sewn or riveted to a backing, likely a garment, litter, or funerary bundle where such adornments announced elite rank. Moche metalsmiths of Peru's north coast were the finest in the ancient Americas, working sheet copper by hammering and annealing rather than casting, then transforming its dull surface through depletion silvering and gilding: alloys of copper with silver or gold were chemically etched at the surface so that the base metal leached away and a thin skin of precious metal remained. The result is an object that looks solid silver while weighing a fraction of it, and the patchy white sheen surviving here is the residue of that process.\n\nPlaques of this kind rarely traveled alone. Excavations at Sipan and San Jose de Moro have recovered comparable perforated sheets attached in ranks to tunics, headdresses, and the wrappings of high-status burials, where movement and light did the rest of the work. The stepped motifs flanking the head and the fanned crescent diadem belong to a standard vocabulary of rank, rendered again and again across Moche ceramics, murals, and metal. Item # 73186

Lot: 203 - Vicus or Moche Horned Owl Head Votive Ornament with Wire Post

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Vicus or Moche. A horned owl regards the viewer from beneath heavy hammered brows, its head worked in sheet metal over a mold and finished with an applied two-piece beak. Broad oval orbits ring the recessed eyes, and two tapering tufted horns curve up from the crown, the whole surface carrying a deep blue-green cuprous patina. An ancient wire post projects from the base, indicating the piece was once mounted, perhaps crowning a staff, standard, or headdress element. Owls were potent north-coast beings, associated with night, curing, and the sacrificial rites depicted in Moche art, and the miniature scale suggests a votive or emblematic function rather than a purely ornamental one. The Vicus culture of the upper Piura valley and the Moche of the valleys to the south shared a metallurgical vocabulary: sheet copper raised over molds, joined by tabs, crimping, and mechanical fastening rather than solder, then often gilded or silvered by depletion techniques. Small three-dimensional heads of this kind were built as hollow shells from two or more sheets, with details such as beaks added separately, a construction visible here in the seam behind the applied beak.\n\nIn Moche iconography the owl appears as a warrior, a curer, and an officiant at sacrifice, sometimes wearing the same crescent headdress as human lords. The horned or tufted species, likely the great horned owl (Bubo virginianus nacurutu) of the coastal desert, was singled out precisely for the ear tufts rendered here, a marker that distinguishes it from the barn owls also depicted in ceramic and metal. Item # 73187

Lot: 204 - Moche Carved Hardwood Figural Snuff Tube with Gold Bands

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Moche. A slender tropical hardwood tube carved for the inhalation of powdered psychoactive snuff, its shaft banded with sheet gold secured by tiny nails. At the midpoint stands a male figure in low relief, arms folded at the waist, wearing a tall crown that flares above the brow and a stepped-motif kilt; the register above him carries an incised stepped fret. The remaining surfaces alternate plain and lightly tooled zones, the whole darkened to a deep brown patina. Tubes of this kind were held to the nostril by a shaman or elite practitioner, the gold sheathing marking the instrument as a prestige object rather than common equipment. Mounted on a custom metal base. Snuffing paraphernalia is among the most eloquent evidence for altered-state ritual in the ancient Andes. Powdered seeds of Anadenanthera, along with tobacco and other preparations, were blown or inhaled through paired tubes and trays, a practice attested archaeologically from the Formative period onward and preserved in wooden kits recovered from the arid coastal and highland cemeteries where organic material survives. Wood rarely endures in most burial environments, which makes intact carved examples far scarcer than the ceramic and metal objects by which the Moche are usually known.\n\nGold on the north coast was a political material before it was a decorative one. Moche metalworkers hammered sheet from native and alloyed gold and wrapped it around ritual implements, ear ornaments, and regalia, restricting its use to lords, priests, and the specialists who officiated at sacrifice and curing. The crowned figure carved on the shaft, with his flaring headdress and stepped-fret garment, belongs to the same visual vocabulary of elite office found in Moche fineline painting and in the ornaments of the Sipan tombs. Item # 73188

Lot: 205 - Moche Ear Disc Mosaic Pair with Turquoise Warriors, Loma Negra, 1st-3rd C. CE

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche, Loma Negra. A pair of mosaic ear ornament faces, each a disc of carved mother of pearl ringed by trapezoidal shell plaques enclosing a warrior worked in green turquoise tesserae. Sheet gold forms the profile head with its stepped headdress and the splayed fingers of each hand; one figure grasps a mother of pearl tumi, and a coiled serpent head hangs before him, read as a sling. Assembled originally as the inlaid faces of large wooden ear spools worn by elite Moche men, the wooden supports long since perished. The two discs are mirrored compositions, made as a matched set for a single wearer, and are now set on black backing and mounted for display. Loma Negra, in the Piura valley of far northern Peru, produced a distinctive corpus of early Moche metalwork and inlay whose gilded copper, shell and turquoise ornaments entered collections in the mid twentieth century. Ear spools of this scale were restricted regalia: Moche fineline painting and burials such as those at Sipan show them worn by warrior-priests and rulers, the discs flaring several inches wide from the distended lobe.\n\nThe iconography is martial. Moche combat, waged with club, shield and sling, was ritually staged, its captives paraded and sacrificed rather than absorbed as territory. The sling, here rendered as a looped serpent, is one of the most frequently depicted Moche weapons, and the tumi, the crescent-bladed knife, is the instrument of the sacrifice that concluded the encounter. Turquoise and Spondylus or pearl shell were traded across long distances and carried value beyond their color. Item # 73189

Lot: 206 - Moche Wood Ear Ornament with Turquoise and Shell Mosaic Disc

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche. A carved hardwood ear ornament, its cylindrical insertion tang rising to a broad disc face laid with mosaic. Four concentric bands of cut stone and shell tesserae, russet, cream, and olive-green, radiate from an oval turquoise boss set within a pale shell bezel, the inner ring cut into fine wedge shapes that read as petals. Such flared ear spools were worn through distended lobes by elite Moche men, the scale and material of the inlay signaling rank; comparable ornaments appear on modeled portrait vessels and on the lords interred at Sipan. The surface carries a deep ancient patina. Moche lapidaries worked in a restricted, highly charged palette: turquoise traded down from the highlands, warm orange Spondylus and pearlescent mother-of-pearl carried north from Ecuadorian waters, and local stone. Shell in particular was a prestige substance tied to water and fertility, and the labor of dive, transport, and micro-cutting made a mosaic disc a statement of a wearer's reach as much as his taste. Ear ornaments were among the clearest markers of male status on the north coast. Moche portrait vessels show the flared discs jutting from the lobes of named individuals, and the tombs excavated at Sipan in the late 1980s yielded paired ear flares of gold and turquoise mosaic worn by rulers alongside nose ornaments and pectorals. Wooden-backed examples such as this one preserve less often than metal, arid coastal burial conditions being the reason any survive at all. Item # 73190

Lot: 207 - Moche Shell Mosaic Roundel with Jaguar Deity, Miniature

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Moche. A miniature roundel assembled from cut shell tesserae in cream, rose, and white, inset with discs of green stone. The semiabstract frontal figure brandishes a club in his right hand and a knife in his left, likely the jaguar deity of Moche belief. Green stone rounds serve as his eyes, nose plug, and ear spools, and a large pectoral medallion carries a matching green disc at its center. Radiating fan-shaped plaques fringe the head and the lower body in a spread tail. Such mosaics were built up on a perishable backing and worn as regalia or sewn to garments by elites, their materials, warm-water Spondylus and imported greenstone, carrying prestige far beyond their scale. Mounted on a custom display base. Moche lords of the Peruvian north coast dressed in composite ornament: inlaid ear flares, pectorals, and nose plugs whose tesserae of Spondylus princeps, mother of pearl, turquoise, and chrysocolla were fitted like marquetry onto wood, gourd, or gilded copper. The tomb assemblages at Sipan and San Jose de Moro have shown how completely such regalia encoded rank, each element declaring the wearer's role within the ritual order. Armed, fanged supernaturals of this kind are usually grouped with the being scholars call the Decapitator, a feline-attributed deity of the Sacrifice Ceremony who appears on ceramics, murals, and metalwork holding a tumi knife in one hand and a severed head or a club in the other. The pairing of weapon and blade seen here fits that iconographic family, though the abstraction of the mosaic medium makes a firm identification cautious rather than certain. Item # 73191

Lot: 208 - Moche Spondylus Shell Feline Maskette and Inlay Group (13)

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche. A constellation of thirteen miniature shell appliques, four of them stylized feline maskettes cut from spondylus with rounded muzzles, perked ears, and eyes and mouth reduced to drilled boreholes. The remaining nine are geometric mosaic elements: open lozenges and diamond frames in purple and orange spondylus, two annular discs, and a mother-of-pearl disc with attached bar. All were shaped by grinding and rotary drilling, then perforated for stitching onto textile, gilded copper, or wood. Such inlays formed the surface of Moche regalia, pectorals, headdresses, and ear ornaments, where the thorny oyster's red and violet zones were prized as imported wealth from Ecuadorian waters. The jaguar head, the apex predator of Moche iconography, marked the wearer's rank. Mounted on a custom black lucite display panel. Spondylus princeps, the thorny oyster, does not live in the cold Peruvian current; it had to be dived from warm Ecuadorian waters and carried south along a trade corridor that operated for millennia. That scarcity made the shell a currency of the sacred, offered in foundation deposits, ground into powder for ritual paths, and reserved for elite adornment. Its color range, from deep violet through coral orange to chalky white, gave Andean lapidaries a palette no local material could match.\n\nMoche metalworkers and shell carvers built composite ornaments by fixing hundreds of such elements to backings of copper, gilded copper, or cloth, a technique documented in the royal tombs at Sipan and San Jose de Moro. Feline imagery ran through the whole system: the jaguar and pampas cat appear as attributes of warriors, sacrificers, and supernatural figures throughout Moche fineline painting and modeled ceramics. Item # 73192

Lot: 209 - Moche Carved Wood Medicine Spoon with Standing Fox

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Moche. A fox stands watchful along the shaft of this small carved wood implement, its long tapering tail drawn out to serve as the handle and its jaws clamped around the rim of an integral oval bowl. The animal is worked in the round from a single length of wood: rounded haunches, four planted paws, pricked ears, and incised eyes, with the bowl scooped shallow and smooth against the coarser body. Surfaces carry a deep brown patina. Implements of this type are generally identified as medicine or lime spoons, used to dispense powdered substances during curing or ritual consumption. Presented on a custom pedestal base. Wooden objects survive only rarely from the Mochica culture; the humidity and salt loads of Peru's north coast valleys destroyed most organic material, so the carved corpus is a fraction of the ceramic and metal record that defines the culture in museum collections. The fox occupies a distinct place in Moche iconography. Painted and modeled on stirrup-spout vessels, it appears as a hunter, as a warrior in fox headdress, and as a companion to curing specialists, an animal read as cunning and quick-witted and thus fitted to the practitioner who negotiates with unseen forces. A spoon that puts the fox's own mouth at the bowl makes the creature the agent of the dose. Item # 73193

Lot: 210 - Nazca Polychrome Anthropomorphic Bottle with Weeping Eyes

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Nazca. A human presence rises from a globular jar: the tall tapering spout doubles as a head and conical cap, its modeled nose and pursed mouth flanked by painted eyes trailing vertical cream stripes like falling tears. A strap handle loops from neck to shoulder. Across the bulbous body, slip-painted in cream on burnished red-brown, runs a five-strand necklace, while two splayed hands are set at the sides as though the vessel itself were the figure's torso. Such polychrome bottles were built by coiling, burnished, and fired in oxidizing conditions, the pigments applied before firing in the mineral slips for which Nazca potters are known. Vessels of this type served as offerings and grave furniture as often as containers for liquid. Nazca potters of Peru's south coast worked without glaze, achieving their palette instead through finely levigated mineral slips applied before firing, a technique that gave them a broader range of stable colors than almost any other Andean tradition. The striped markings beneath the eyes of figures like this one are conventionally read as tears or facial paint, a motif also carried by the so-called Oculate Being of Paracas and Early Nazca iconography, and associated with water, fertility, and agricultural supplication in a desert where irrigation determined survival.\n\nThe reduction of a whole human body to a face on the spout, a painted necklace, and two disembodied hands is characteristic of Nazca abbreviation: the vessel becomes the torso, and the ornament does the work of anatomy. Item # 73194

Lot: 211 - Nazca Polychrome Headhunter Effigy Vessel with Trophy Heads

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Nazca. A warrior looms out of the clay: modeled in the round with a broad, slit-eyed face, the head rising from a bulbous body that doubles as the chamber of the vessel. Slip-painted in cream, orange, red-brown and black, the figure wears a whiskered nasal mask, a wide segmented collar, and a bird-form headdress banded with fine lines. Across the body he grips a knife and a severed trophy head, while a register of ten frontal faces, hair black and eyes half-lidded, runs around the lower rear. A cylindrical spout and strap handle rise at the back. Trophy-head imagery is central to Nazca ritual, and such vessels likely served ceremonial or funerary drinking rather than daily use. Nazca potters of Peru's south coast worked without glaze, achieving their palette from mineral slips applied before firing and burnished to a low sheen, a technique that supported as many as a dozen distinct colors on a single vessel. The severed head, taken in raid or ritual combat, was perforated at the forehead, threaded with cord, and carried or cached; caches of such heads have been excavated at Cahuachi and elsewhere in the Nazca drainage. Whether these were enemy trophies, venerated ancestors, or offerings tied to agricultural fertility remains debated, but their persistent pairing with masked warriors, knives, and germinating plants on painted ceramics ties them to cycles of water, harvest, and renewal in one of the driest inhabited landscapes on earth. Item # 73195

Lot: 212 - Nazca Polychrome Vessel with Four Sharks

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Nazca. A shoal of four sharks circles this handsome slip-painted vessel, each creature outlined in black and filled with rust, maroon, and deep brown against a cream ground. The form tapers from a rounded base to a slightly flaring rim banded in red, the interior likewise washed red. Three of the sharks bend their bodies into taut U-shapes, jaws gilled with fine parallel strokes and eyes rendered as white-ringed discs, while the fourth swims upright with a jagged dorsal ridge. Nazca potters achieved this palette with mineral slips burnished before firing, an unusually broad range of colors for the ancient Americas. Vessels of this scale served both domestic and funerary purposes, deposited in graves on the arid south coast where the sea's predators carried potent symbolic charge. The Nazca flourished in the river valleys of Peru's south coast, best known today for the enormous geoglyphs incised into the Pampa de Nazca. Their painted ceramics constitute one of the great colorist traditions of the pre-Hispanic world: as many as a dozen mineral slips, applied before firing and polished to a soft sheen, replaced the resist and incised techniques of the earlier Paracas potters. Marine creatures recur throughout Nazca iconography, and the shark, along with the killer whale, ranks among the most charged. Both appear in mythic form as the Killer Whale Being, a supernatural often shown clutching a trophy head, linking the ocean's predators to warfare, fertility, and the agricultural abundance that the sea's cold currents made possible. Rendered here without anthropomorphic attributes, the sharks belong to the naturalistic strand of Nazca painting, in which observed animals are stylized into rhythmic, repeating registers that wrap the vessel wall. Item # 73196

Lot: 213 - Moche Stirrup Spout Bottle with Modeled Iguanas

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Moche. A pair of iguanas circles the shoulder of this cream ware bottle, their bodies raised in low relief and finished with brown slip: banded backs, splayed clawed feet, blunt snouts, and a long serrated tail sweeping around the lower body. The surrounding ground is stippled with rows of brown dots, a desert field for the reptiles to cross. Above rises the classic Moche stirrup, a looped tubular handle rising to a single cylindrical spout, a form perfected on the north coast of Peru for holding and pouring liquid. Such modeled bottles were made for elite use and for interment with the dead, the animal likely chosen as much for its place in coastal cosmology as for its familiar presence in the fields. The stirrup spout is the signature vessel form of Peru's north coast, inherited by the Moche from Cupisnique and Chavin predecessors and refined over some six centuries into a vehicle for portrait heads, architectural tableaux, and modeled fauna. The closed loop limits evaporation and spillage, a practical virtue in a desert littoral, while offering the potter a broad, uninterrupted body to sculpt and paint. Lizards and iguanas recur throughout Moche art, most famously the anthropomorphic figure scholars call Iguana, a long-snouted companion who accompanies the deity Ai Apaec through mythic narratives painted on fineline ceramics and modeled in the round. Whether the reptiles here carry that narrative charge or simply record the animals that share the irrigated valleys, they belong to a wider Moche fascination with the creatures of the coast, rendered with a naturalist's attention to scale patterning and limb articulation. Item # 73197

Lot: 214 - Tiwanaku Polychrome Kero with Geometric Half-Faces

Pre-Columbian, Bolivia, Tiwanaku. A flaring ceramic beaker of classic kero form, its tapered walls rising from a narrow base to a wide drinking rim. The lower body is left a burnished gray-brown, while the upper register carries a polychrome band in red, orange, cream and black, framed by thin white lines. Within it, diagonal panels divide semiabstract half-faces: stepped fret elements, ringed eyes, and hatched muzzles that read as split profiles of feline or anthropomorphic beings. Slip-painted before firing, the design turns the vessel into a continuous frieze best read by rotating it in the hand. Keros served as drinking cups for chicha, the maize beer poured at feasts and reciprocal exchanges that bound Andean communities to their elites. The kero is the signature vessel of Tiwanaku, the highland polity centered near the southern shore of Lake Titicaca whose influence radiated across the Bolivian altiplano and into southern Peru and northern Chile between roughly 500 and 1000 CE. Its bevelled, flaring profile was standardized to a remarkable degree, a uniformity that scholars read as evidence of state-sponsored production for ritual drinking. Chicha consumption was the mechanism of Tiwanaku statecraft: labor, allegiance, and agricultural surplus were negotiated over shared cups, and the vessel itself carried the authority of the host. The fractured, geometricized faces on this band belong to a visual language shared with Tiwanaku stone sculpture and textiles, in which profile heads, stepped frets, and ringed eyes are compressed into rectilinear modules. The same grammar governs the Gateway of the Sun reliefs at the site itself, and its portability across media, cloth, stone, and clay, was central to how the style traveled. Item # 73198

Lot: 215 - Nazca Double Spout and Bridge Vessel with Chili Peppers

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Nazca. A cluster of six ripening chili peppers, modeled full round in ceramic and bundled stem-up into the body of a vessel. Twin tapered spouts rise from the outer pods and are joined by a flat strap bridge, the whole spout-and-bridge assembly slipped a warm reddish-orange against the tan ground of the fruit. Each pepper carries fine dark brown longitudinal lines flanked by dashed strokes, a painted shorthand for the ridged, glossy skin of the capsicum. Vegetal effigy vessels of this type are uncommon in Nazca ceramics, and the form, awkward to pour from and lavish in modeling, suggests a piece made for offering or burial accompaniment rather than daily use. The double spout and bridge jar is the signature closed form of the Nazca south coast, inherited from Paracas antecedents and carried through the sequence for some five centuries. Its two vents equalize air and liquid flow, and the bridge doubles as a carrying grip, but the shape's persistence owes more to convention than to hydraulics: it was the vessel of ceremony, of grave lots, and of the polychrome slip painting for which Nazca potters are best known. Aji peppers (Capsicum) were among the oldest domesticates of the Peruvian coast, seasoning almost every dish and valued as medicine and as a ritual substance. Nazca potters rendered the agricultural world with unusual fidelity, and modeled produce, peppers, beans, tubers, and lucuma fruit, functions as a plastic inventory of the irrigated valley economy that sustained the culture in one of the driest deserts on earth. Item # 73199

Lot: 216 - Nazca Double Spout Bridge Vessel with Trophy Head Warrior

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Nazca. A globular ceramic vessel rising to twin tapered spouts joined by a flat strap bridge, its surface burnished and painted in slip polychrome of oxblood red, cream, orange, grey and black. The principal figure is a headhunter, his face masked by a whiskered nasal ornament and framed by large disc ear spools, with two small trophy heads suspended beneath them. He grips a beheading knife in his left hand while a long serpentine appendage streams from his headdress, terminating in a perched bird. Repeating zigzag bands and a second feline or serpent creature complete the field. Such double spout and bridge bottles held liquid for ritual and mortuary use, and their imagery belongs to the martial and agricultural symbolism of the south coast. Trophy-head imagery is among the most persistent themes in Nazca art, appearing on textiles, drums, and painted ceramics alike. Excavated caches from Cahuachi and the Nazca drainage have yielded human crania perforated at the forehead and fitted with carrying cords, matching the small heads painted at this warrior's ears. Whether they memorialize captured enemies or venerated ancestors remains debated, though most scholars now read them as agents of fertility, the taken head returning water and abundance to a desert valley dependent on subterranean aqueducts.\n\nThe double spout and bridge bottle is the signature closed form of the Nazca potter, inherited from the earlier Paracas tradition. Its slip paints, up to a dozen mineral colors ground and applied before firing, were burnished with a pebble to the low satin sheen visible here, a technique that distinguishes Nazca wares from the resist-decorated pottery of contemporaneous Andean cultures. Item # 73200

Lot: 217 - Nazca Double Spout Vessel with Mythical Beings and Trophy Heads

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Nazca. A globular ceramic vessel rising to twin tapered spouts joined by a flat strap bridge, its burnished surface painted in slip polychromes of red, orange, cream, brown and black. Two mythical flying beings circle the shoulder, each with staring rimmed eyes, a golden mouth mask with radiating whisker-like appendages, and a fringed headdress; each grasps a bladed knife in the right hand while severed trophy heads trail from the body. A cream line encircles the lower wall, leaving the base plain. The double-spout-and-bridge form is the signature Nazca ceremonial container, likely made for liquid offerings and mortuary deposit rather than daily use. Nazca potters worked without a wheel, building vessels by hand and painting them before firing with mineral slips, a palette that could exceed a dozen distinct colors and remains among the most chromatically ambitious in the ancient Americas. The imagery here belongs to the long-lived Anthropomorphic Mythical Being cycle: a masked, airborne composite figure associated with agricultural fertility and the capture of trophy heads. Severed heads, prepared with a carrying cord through the forehead and cached in ritual deposits, have been excavated in quantity at Cahuachi and elsewhere on the south coast, and their appearance on painted vessels ties this vessel to the same ceremonial economy of warfare, water, and regeneration that produced the desert geoglyphs. Item # 73201

Lot: 218 - Nazca Polychrome Effigy Canteen Flask with Modeled Head

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Nazca. A globular canteen whose slender neck becomes a face: ringed eyes, a pinched nose, and a broad banded mouth beneath a checkered headband. The rounded body carries the wearer's garment in slip paint, arcing stripes of cream, orange, oxblood, and near-black falling over the shoulders like the drape of a poncho, closed by a red hem band ticked with vertical white strokes above an unpainted burnished lower register. Two perforated lug handles at the shoulders allowed the vessel to be suspended or carried on a cord. Such figural flasks held liquid, likely chicha, and were placed as offerings in coastal Peruvian burials. An uncommon form within the Nazca ceramic repertoire. Nazca potters worked without glaze, achieving their spectrum from mineral slips applied before a single low firing and burnished to a soft sheen; their palette, running to a dozen or more distinct tones, is the broadest of any Pre-Columbian ceramic tradition. Here the painter has used that range for a documentary purpose, transcribing an actual textile onto clay. Andean weaving carried rank and affiliation, and the striped poncho with its bordered hem records a garment the modeled figure would have worn in life. The flask's lug handles echo the leather and gourd canteens carried across the arid south coast, a practical form elevated into an image of a person. Item # 73202

Lot: 219 - Nazca Polychrome Diver Effigy Vessel & Beaker, 2 pcs

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Nazca. A pair of small polychrome slip-painted earthenware vessels from the south coast of Peru. The first is an anthropomorphic effigy jar, its modeled head crowned by a banded fillet, the rounded body painted with netting and geometric panels and fitted with a tapering rear spout joined by a bridge handle to the back of the head, likely representing a diver gathering his nets. The second is a slightly flaring beaker banded in cream, red, and dark brown: an upper register of abstract creature heads with wide staring eyes above a lower frieze of pendant "tongue" forms. Both carry the burnished mineral slips for which Nazca potters are known, fired in a single pass to a palette of remarkable range. Nazca potters worked without glaze, building their palette instead from finely ground mineral slips applied before firing and burnished to a low sheen, a technique that yielded as many as a dozen distinct colors on a single vessel and set their wares apart from every other Andean tradition. The bridge-spout form seen here is a south-coast signature inherited from Paracas and carried through the whole Nazca sequence.\n\nMarine subjects recur throughout Nazca art, unsurprising for a people whose desert valleys met one of the richest fisheries on earth. Divers, netted catches, and fish appear alongside the trophy heads and masked beings of the ceremonial repertoire. The staring, fanged faces banding the beaker belong to that second world: highly abstracted mythical creatures whose eyes and headdress rays are reduced to a repeating decorative rhythm.\n\nEarly collection numbers are inked on the interior of the beaker. Item # 73203

Lot: 220 - Wari Double-Spout Effigy Vessel | Fox Motifs

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Wari (Huari). A globular earthenware vessel with twin cylindrical spouts joined by a bridge handle, framing a modeled human effigy rising from the shoulder. The figure's face is painted with concentric-ringed eyes, a barred mouth, and vertical cheek markings, with stubby arms raised toward the bridge. Across the body, painted in dark manganese-brown and cream over burnished red-orange slip, are a pair of confronted foxes, rendered in stepped and serrated geometric forms with open muzzles. Serpentine and cactus-like motifs appear in the field between them. Double-spout-and-bridge vessels of this type served as containers for liquids and are associated with ritual or funerary use. The frontal figure and paired animal motifs reflect the iconographic conventions of the Middle Horizon Wari state. The Wari (also spelled Huari) flourished across the central Andean highlands during the Middle Horizon (roughly 600 to 1000 CE), building an expansionist state centered near modern Ayacucho whose administrative reach and iconographic conventions anticipated the later Inca. The double-spout-and-bridge vessel is a hallmark Andean form inherited from earlier coastal traditions such as Nasca, adapted by Wari potters into an idiom of stylized, often heraldic imagery. The paired foxes may allude to the Andean fox (culpeo), a creature woven into highland cosmology as a marker of seasons and agricultural fortune. The serrated columnar motif flanked by the figure has been read by some as the ribbed San Pedro cactus (Echinopsis pachanoi), a mescaline-bearing plant with a long ritual history in the Andes; that identification is plausible but not certain, and the motif may equally be a stylized plant or serpent. Item # 203924

Lot: 221 - Nazca Polychrome Kero Stepped / Cruciform Motifs (TL'd)

Pre-Columbian, South Coast Peru, Nazca culture, ca. 200 to 600 CE. A polychrome pottery kero (drinking vessel), with flaring walls rising above a slightly convex base to form a tall, hourglass profile. The vessel is painted in red, black, and cream, characteristic of Nazca ceramic tradition, with geometric and abstract motifs encircling the exterior. Around the upper register, a repeated stepped pattern encircles the vessel, a design associated in Andean iconography with mountains and sacred architecture. Below, cruciform rosettes extend across the mid-body, each arm articulated with rectilinear detailing, while the lower section bears vertical linear elements resembling stylized feathers or vegetal forms. The interior is coated in a red slip. Size: 6.1" Diameter x 7" H (15.5 cm x 17.8 cm) Item # 197627

Lot: 222 - Chancay Cuchimilco Guardian Figures, Male and Female

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chancay. A pair of hollow terracotta cuchimilco figures, one male, one female, each shown nude with delineated nipples and genitalia, and flattened torsos with stubby, splayed legs, typical of Chancay modeling. Cream slip and manganese-brown pigment articulate the faces, with almond eyes, striped and crested headdresses, and banding across the wrists and ankles, while diagonal hatching on the hands suggests body paint or tattoo. The arms are raised with palms turned outward, a gesture associated with protective or apotropaic function in Chancay iconography. Cuchimilcos were placed in burials of the Chancay valley, associated with a protective role for the deceased. Item # 203922

Lot: 223 - Chancay Female Cuchimilco Figure, Conical Cap

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chancay. A mold-made cuchimilco figure standing with both arms lifted and outspread, palms turned forward. The figure is painted in the Chancay bichrome palette, with grayish-brown pigment over a cream slip, and a tall conical cap crowned by a zigzag band, with modeled ears, almond eyes, and a closed mouth. The rounded torso carries delineated nipples and a painted pubic triangle indicating a female figure; as the piece was mold-made rather than incised, the genital marking is rendered in paint rather than carved relief. Short columnar legs end in blocky feet with incised toes. Figures of this type, sometimes referred to in the trade as "bishop" figures for their pointed headgear (though this is not a traditional or accurate designation), were placed in burials in quantity as part of Chancay funerary practice. Item # 203962

Lot: 224 - Chancay Figural Olla, Seated Effigy at Neck

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chancay. A generous ovoid vessel rises to an unexpected crown: the neck and spout are modeled as a seated human figure, knees drawn up and hands resting upon them, gazing outward with almond eyes. The buff-slipped body, swelling and full-bodied, carries two small looped handles at the shoulder, while the effigy above is picked out in dark brown pigment against the pale ground. A zigzag collar, banded cuffs, and a patterned garment ornament the figure, and its flaring headdress ingeniously becomes the open rim of the olla. Coil-built in the low-fired earthenware tradition of Peru's central coast, the piece unites utilitarian storage form with sculptural personhood. Such figural vessels likely served both domestic and funerary roles, accompanying the dead as vessels of sustenance and identity in the arid Chancay valleys. Item # 203919

Lot: 225 - Chancay Rotund Figural Vessel with Gauze Textile Wrap

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chancay. A globular pottery vessel modeled as a corpulent seated personage, his body the swelling belly of the jar and his tiny splayed feet pressed against its base. The upturned face bears heavy-lidded applied eyes, a pinched nose, flaring ears, and two perforated lugs rising from the crown. Chocolate-brown slip on a cream ground paints a checkered tunic across the body and a banded headcloth over the brow. Draped across the shoulders is a loosely woven cotton gauze mantle, a rare survival of the openwork weaving for which Chancay workshops are best known. Such figural vessels were placed in the sandy coastal graves of the Chancay valley, standing in for the dead or their attendants. A very scarce type. The Chancay flourished along the arid central coast of Peru between the collapse of the Wari state and the Inca annexation of the region. Their potters worked in a distinctive black-on-white idiom, mass-produced in molds and finished by hand, with matte pigments left deliberately unburnished. Chancay textile production was equally prolific: the dry desert cemeteries of Ancon, Chancay, and Lauri have preserved painted cloths, feathered panels, and above all the openwork cotton gauzes, whose leno and warp-crossing structures produce a net so light it was probably worn as a head or shoulder covering by the living before accompanying them into the grave. A gauze surviving in place on the vessel it was buried with is uncommon, and the pairing here of ceramic and cloth documents both halves of Chancay funerary practice in a single object. Item # 73204

Lot: 226 - Chancay Cuchimilco Guardian Figure, Peru

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chancay. A hollow ceramic guardian figure, or cuchimilco, standing on columnar legs, with arms outstretched from the shoulders in the orant gesture characteristic of this figure type. The face is painted in red and cream with a diagonal bipartite division, beneath a tall biconical cap. Fine linework traces the anatomy, including delineated nipples, a triangular abdominal design, and modeled genitalia identifying the figure as male, while banded pigment on the legs suggests body paint or tattoo. The figure is slip-painted in the maroon and buff palette characteristic of Chancay ceramics and is associated with burial contexts as a tomb offering placed among textiles and grave goods. Item # 203917

Lot: 227 - Chancay Large Ovoid Vessel with Applied Monkey and Painted Eye Motif

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chancay. A monkey clings to the shoulder of this imposing ovoid jar, modeled in the round and set within a painted roundel as though caught mid-meal. The bulbous buff-ware body carries opposing loop-strap handles and a short flaring collar banded with fine geometric register. One face is dressed in cream slip and ruled with dark chocolate verticals alternating with tremulous zigzag lines; the opposing face is washed solid brown, relieved only by a serrated triangular panel enclosing a single concentric eye. Vessels of this scale served as chicha or storage jars, and the eye motif, staring out from an otherwise blank field, likely gave the container a watchful presence. Raised on a metal tripod ring base. The Chancay flourished along the central Peruvian coast in the valleys of Chancay, Chillon, and Huaura during the Late Intermediate Period, filling the political vacuum left by the collapse of the Wari state. Their potters worked at a scale rivaled by few of their neighbors, building large vessels by coil and paddle and finishing them in a limited palette of dark brown-black on cream, the ware conventionally called black-on-white. Decoration was applied quickly and rhythmically: fields of vertical lines, undulating zigzags, lattices, and rows of small birds or fish, brushed with a freedom that sets Chancay work apart from the tighter draughtsmanship of Moche or Nasca ceramics. Monkeys appear across coastal Andean art as visitors from the eastern forests, exotic animals traded across the sierra and associated with abundance, mischief, and fertility. Modeled and applied to the shoulder of a jar rather than painted, this one converts a storage form into a small stage. Large ovoid jars of this type are recovered from Chancay cemeteries, where they accompanied the dead as containers for maize beer and provisions. Item # 73205

Lot: 228 - Ica Polychrome Storage Jar with Jaguar-Headed Mythical Figures

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Ica culture. A generous globular jar of buff ceramic, its swollen body rising to a short collar and outflaring rim. The upper zone carries a broad shoulder band painted in cream, red, and dark brown: three semi-abstract profile beings, each with a human-form body, an animal paw, and a jaguar head with bared muzzle. Beneath them runs a narrow register of stylized birds in silhouette, closed by a solid band; a stepped fret encircles the neck. The lower body is left plain and burnished. The capacity and wide mouth suggest storage of maize beer or foodstuffs, perhaps for feasting, while the mythological frieze marks it as more than utilitarian ware. The Ica culture flourished on Peru's south coast during the Late Intermediate Period, heirs to the Nasca ceramic tradition and eventually absorbed into the Inca empire in the later 15th century. Ica potters are known for a tightly controlled geometric vocabulary, small repeating motifs, stepped frets, birds, and fish, laid out in banded registers over red and cream slips. Composite beings that fuse human bodies with feline heads belong to a long Andean lineage of predatory supernaturals, from Chavin onward, in which the jaguar signals power, transformation, and access to other realms. Large-format jars of this type are comparatively scarce; most surviving Ica vessels are bowls and small flasks, and the scale here implies a vessel intended for communal use rather than a single household. Item # 73206

Lot: 229 - Huari Carved Wood Snuff Tube with Stepped Fret Masks

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Huari. A slender tube of tropical hardwood, bored end to end and sheathed in crisply incised ornament. Bands of interlocking stepped frets and scroll-ended volutes run the full length on both faces, resolving into a repeating row of semiabstract masks punctuated by small triangular notches, the carving shallow, confident, and unbroken by any blank ground. The bore terminates in neat circular openings at each tapering end. Tubes of this type served in the inhalation of psychoactive snuff prepared from Anadenanthera seed, a practice bound to Andean shamanic and elite ritual. Mounted on a custom metal display stand. Snuff paraphernalia is among the most diagnostic material of the Middle Horizon. Kits recovered across the south-central Andes typically pair a tube of this form with a small tray or tablet and a spatula, and their distribution traces the reach of Huari and Tiwanaku influence from the Peruvian highlands into the Atacama. The active preparation was ground from the seeds of Anadenanthera colubrina, a tree of the eastern lowlands, so every such kit implies a long-distance exchange across the cordillera.\n\nThe fret vocabulary carved here belongs to the same geometric grammar that governs Huari tapestry tunics and polychrome ceramics: rectilinear stepped elements, volute terminals, and faces reduced to eyes and stepped brow until they read as pure pattern. Read one way the register is ornament, read another it is a procession of masks, an ambiguity the Huari designer exploited deliberately. Item # 73207

Lot: 230 - Wari Wood Baton with Standing Dog Finial

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Wari. A hardwood baton crowned by a small carved dog, its ridged coat rendered in tight parallel grooves, ears perked, muzzle bared to show a full row of teeth, stub tail cocked. The animal stands foursquare on a boxy plinth whose four faces carry incised stylized birds and stepped geometric borders in the Middle Horizon vocabulary. Below, the shaft swells to a rounded grip and tapers to a blunt point, its surface a deep brown patina worked smooth by handling. Such finialed batons likely served as emblems of rank or ritual implements rather than tools, the dog perhaps functioning as a companion and guide of the dead in Andean belief. The Wari state, centered on its highland capital near modern Ayacucho, projected a remarkably standardized visual language across Peru during the Middle Horizon: staggered frets, profile birds and felines, and eye motifs reduced to concentric circles, all of which recur on the plinth of this baton. Wood survives from the period only in the arid coastal valleys the Wari administered, which makes carved wooden regalia far scarcer than the textiles and ceramics that carry the same designs. Dogs occupy a persistent place in Andean thought as guardians and as escorts of the soul across the water that divides the living from the dead, a belief recorded ethnographically in the highlands well into the colonial era. A dog set atop a staff, elevated on its own architectural platform, reads as an emblem of that guiding role as readily as it does a badge of office. Item # 73208

Lot: 231 - Chimu-Inca Wooden Scepter with Double-Sided Figure Holding Trophy Heads

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Central Coast, Chimu-Inca. A carved hardwood scepter worked on both faces with a standing figure who grips a severed trophy head by the hair in each hand. A broad oval nimbus frames the face, incised with a cross-banded headdress above lidded eyes and a narrow nose; below, a knee-length skirt is rendered in shallow relief. A tall tapering blade rises from the crown, hollowed as a rattle chamber that once held loose pellets, so the implement sounded as it was raised. The shaft continues below a notched collar into an integral grip that tapers to a point. The deep brown surface carries the sheen of long handling. Likely an emblem of rank carried in ritual procession, its clashing of sound and severed heads a display of martial authority. The Chimu-Inca horizon names the material culture of the Peruvian north and central coast after the Inca conquest of the Chimu kingdom around 1470, when imperial forms and coastal workshop traditions merged. Woodcarving flourished along the arid coast, where burial conditions preserved staffs, paddles, litter poles, and figural posts that would have perished almost anywhere else in the Andes. The trophy head held aloft by the hair is one of the oldest and most durable motifs in Andean art, reaching back through Moche and Nasca imagery to Chavin. It signals captured vitality as much as battlefield victory: the head was a source of fertility and power, not merely a token of a defeated enemy. The oval frame enclosing this figure's face is usually read as a radiant nimbus, an attribute of solar and ancestral beings, marking the bearer as more than mortal. The integrated rattle is characteristic of Andean ceremonial staffs, where sound was an active ritual instrument rather than ornament. Item # 73209

Lot: 232 - Chancay Wooden Mummy Mask with Textile Headband, Red Cinnabar Pigment

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Central Coast, Chancay. A broad shield-shaped face carved from a single plank of light wood, its surface saturated with red cinnabar pigment. Lozenge-shaped eyes are incised and filled with pale paint, each set with a dark resin iris; a separately carved wedge nose projects sharply above a small crescent mouth. Bound across the brow is a woven headband in gold, crimson, and deep purple stripes framing a diagonal band of stepped zigzag and bird motifs, secured with cord through drilled holes. Masks of this type were lashed to the false heads of textile-wrapped mummy bundles, giving the deceased a permanent face for the funerary rites of the central coast valleys. The Chancay flourished in the Chancay, Chillon, and Rimac valleys north of present-day Lima between roughly 1000 and 1470 CE, absorbed at last into the Inca empire. Their dead were interred seated and bundled in layers of cotton cloth, the topmost layer built up into a false head that received a carved wooden mask, sometimes with attached wigs, ear ornaments, and woven headgear. Cinnabar, a mercury sulfide prized across the Andes and traded from highland sources such as Huancavelica, was reserved for high-status funerary use; its brilliant red carried associations with blood and vitality. The gauzes, brocades, and tapestry bands the Chancay produced remain among the most technically inventive textiles of ancient Peru, and the stepped-zigzag and avian motifs on this headband belong to that shared decorative vocabulary. Item # 73210

Lot: 233 - Chimu Carved Wooden Lidded Box with Diamond and Circle Motifs

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chimu, Chan Chan type, North coast. A rectangular lidded box cut from dense hardwood and covered, lid and all four walls, in low relief carving. The design runs as an overall lattice of diamonds and crossed bands, each field packed with concentric ring circles and framed by sawtooth borders, with a single stepped diamond reserved at the center of each face. Traces of red and white pigment survive in the recesses, heightening the geometry. The rim of the lid is notched with a dentil band, and paired perforations along the back edge once carried a cord hinge. A prestige container of this kind likely held small valuables, textiles, or ritual paraphernalia belonging to a person of rank. Wooden objects of this quality survive from the Peruvian north coast only because of the extreme aridity of the desert littoral, where the Chimu built Chan Chan, a capital of nine monumental adobe compounds spread across some twenty square kilometers near modern Trujillo. The stepped diamond and lattice vocabulary carved here is the same repertoire that Chimu artisans pressed into adobe friezes, wove into tapestry, and hammered into sheet metal, a shared design grammar that moved freely between media and marked goods produced under elite patronage. The concentric ring motif, cut with a compass-like tool or hollow drill, is a diagnostic feature of north coast woodwork and recurs on staffs, spindle whorls, and ear ornaments from the same horizon. Item # 73211

Lot: 234 - Chimu Carved Wood Lintel with Chief, Serpent, Monkey and Feline

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Central Coast, Late Chimu. A lunate plank of hardwood carved in low relief with a procession of figures across its curved face. At center a standing chief spreads his hands, crowned by a broad crescent headdress and belted in a zigzag skirt. A double-headed serpent undulates beside him, while a smaller attendant figure and a lizard occupy the tapering left end. To the right a monkey clutches a fruit and a long-tailed feline, likely a jaguar deity, closes the composition. The cutting is shallow and confident, the ground left tooled and rippling, the whole darkened to a deep brown patina. Such carved planks served as lintels and architectural fittings in adobe compounds of the Peruvian coast, where wood was scarce and its ornament reserved for spaces of rank. The Chimu inherited the north coast from the Moche and built Chan Chan, the largest adobe city in the ancient Americas, a warren of walled ciudadelas whose mud-brick friezes repeat the same vocabulary seen here: files of animals, sea birds, felines, and lunate-crowned lords. Wood carving occupied the same register as those friezes. Posts, lintels, litter frames, and burial figures were cut from algarrobo and other coastal hardwoods and set into doorways and audiencias where they marked thresholds of authority.\n\nThe crescent headdress worn by the central figure is the same form as the tumi, the ceremonial knife of Andean sacrifice, and identifies its wearer as a lord or a deity rather than a commoner. The double-headed serpent belongs to a long Andean lineage of bicephalous sky and water beings, and the monkey and feline flanking the scene draw the eastern forest and the highlands into a single coastal composition. Item # 73212

Lot: 235 - Chancay Carved Bone Balance Beam with Birds

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chancay. A slender bone bar pierced into a marching file of long-billed birds, their tails cocked upright and their bodies reduced to crisp rectilinear cutouts. Six full birds and two additional heads occupy the openwork upper register; below them runs a band of drilled ring-and-dot circles, their recesses darkened with black pigment for contrast against the mellow tan bone. Small perforations at the ends and center once carried the suspension cords and pans of a handheld balance, the portable scale used along the Peruvian coast to weigh pigments, coca leaf, precious metal, and other goods measured in small quantities. Its decoration is far finer than function required, a sign the instrument belonged to someone whose trade or status warranted display. Carved bone balance beams are among the most distinctive small artifacts of the Chancay valley and neighboring central-coast cemeteries, where dry conditions preserved bone, wood, gourd, and textile in extraordinary quantity. The instrument worked on the simple principle of the equal-arm scale: cords descended from the pierced terminals to a pair of small pans or net bags, while a central cord held the beam aloft between finger and thumb. Weighing sets recovered from coastal burials are frequently accompanied by tiny wrapped bundles containing mineral pigment, metal foil, and lime, suggesting the beams served merchants and specialists handling valuable commodities rather than bulk foodstuffs. The bird frieze is a staple of Chancay design vocabulary, appearing in painted gauze textiles, slip-painted blackware, and carved bone alike. Long-billed shore and wading birds populated the coastal lomas and river mouths, and their stepped, reduced silhouettes carry the same angular grammar that governs Chancay weaving, where the loom's geometry disciplines every curve into a right angle. Item # 73213

Lot: 236 - Chancay Bone Scale Beam with Seven Standing Figures, Miniature

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chancay. A miniature beam of carved bone from a handheld balance scale, worked in openwork on both faces. Seven blocky figures stand shoulder to shoulder along its upper edge, arms extended to clasp their neighbors' hands, their faces reduced to drilled pinprick eyes and slot mouths picked out in red. Squared uprights terminate each end, once carrying the suspension cords for the pans. The long integral bar beneath them is incised with a continuous row of drilled ring-and-dot elements darkened with black pigment. The mellow ivory-toned surface has acquired a soft patina. Such steelyard beams weighed small quantities of coca, pigment, and precious metal, and their figural friezes turned an instrument of exchange into an object of display. Mounted on a custom lucite and hardwood base. The Chancay flourished along the central Peruvian coast between roughly 1000 and 1470 CE, in the valleys north of present-day Lima, and were absorbed into the Inca empire late in that span. Their dry cemeteries preserved an unusually rich inventory of perishable and small-scale goods: gauze textiles, painted cuchimilco figures, wooden implements, and delicately carved bone. Balance beams of this type belong to a widespread Andean weighing tradition. A cord at the center supported the beam while netted pouches hung from the notched or perforated ends, and the operator adjusted the load until the bar hung level. Because the commodities measured were valuable and light, coca leaf above all, the instruments themselves were small and often elaborately embellished. The frieze of linked figures, a motif that recurs in Chancay textiles and painted ceramics, has been read as a dance or processional line, though the reading remains interpretive rather than documented. Item # 73214

Lot: 237 - Nazca Hardwood Seat or Throne with Twin Rail Feet

Pre-Columbian, Peru, South Coast, Nazca. A low seat adzed from a single block of dense hardwood, its oval top hollowed into a shallow saucer whose grain rings spiral outward from the center. The bowl rests on a thick rectangular standard that spreads at the base into two long rail-like feet, tapered at their ends like runners, giving the piece the stance of a sledge. No carved ornament interrupts the surface; the interest lies wholly in mass, silhouette, and the deep honeyed patina raised by handling and use. Traces of red pigment cling to one rail. Seats of this kind were reserved objects rather than common furniture, likely supporting a person of rank during ceremony, though a use as a working platform or offering stand cannot be excluded. Wood survives on the Peruvian south coast for the same reason its textiles and feathered panels do: the Nazca drainage is one of the driest inhabited places on earth, and organic material interred in its sand can emerge millennia later with tool marks and pigment intact. That accident of climate makes Nazca woodwork disproportionately rare in collections, since equivalent objects from wetter Andean zones have long since rotted away. Elevated seating carried social weight throughout the pre-Hispanic Andes. The Quechua term "tiana," a low bench or stool, later denoted the seat of an Inca lord, and iconography from earlier coastal cultures repeatedly shows dignitaries raised on platforms while attendants remain on the ground. The convention is old enough that a seat of this scale and labor investment is best read as an emblem of standing rather than as ordinary domestic furniture. Item # 73215

Lot: 238 - Huari Hardwood Backstrap Loom Poles with Carved Bound Captives

Pre-Columbian, Peru, south coast, Huari (Wari) culture. A matched pair of slender tropical hardwood loom poles, each tapering shaft terminating at both ends in a carved squatting captive, arms drawn behind the back and wrists bound. The faces are broad and stern beneath low cap-like headgear, the knees pulled up tight against the torso, the whole compressed into the cylinder's diameter with remarkable economy. Deep reddish surface patina throughout. Such bars served as the end beams of a backstrap loom, the warp stretched between them while the weaver's body supplied tension, and their prisoner imagery likely equated the disciplined labor of weaving with the subjugation of enemies. Presented on a custom metal display base. The Huari (Wari) empire spread from its highland capital near modern Ayacucho across much of Peru between roughly 600 and 1000 CE, and its coastal cemeteries have preserved the organic material that highland sites lost: baskets of spindles, weaving swords, needle cases, and loom bars of precisely this kind. Andean weaving was a state industry as much as a domestic craft, its finest tapestry tunics rationed by the administration and buried with the elite, and the tools of that industry were themselves worth carving. Bound captives are a persistent motif in Wari and contemporaneous Tiwanaku art, appearing on textiles, wooden kero cups, and snuff tablets. Their placement at the terminals of a loom, where the weaver's hands rest and the warp is anchored, has been read as an assertion of control: the prisoner immobilized at the beam, the threads held taut between. Item # 73216

Lot: 239 - Inca Painted Wood Kero with Figures and Parrots

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Inca. A carved hardwood kero of corseted profile, waisted at the middle and flaring to a wide drinking rim. Incised outlines carry inlaid resinous polychrome in red, green, cream, black, and yellow across three registers. The upper band holds two rectangular panels, each with a frontal human figure in tunic and headdress flanked by paired parrots and flowering stems. A central band runs with stepped chevrons and lozenges, and the lower band bears four large blossoming plants. Keros were made and used in pairs for the ritual consumption of chicha, exchanged in acts of reciprocity between Andean lords and their guests, the vessel itself a diplomatic instrument as much as a cup. The polychrome technique here is mopa mopa, a resin harvested from the Elaeagia pastoensis tree of the Colombian highlands, kneaded, tinted with mineral pigments, stretched into sheets, and pressed into shallow incisions cut in the wood. The medium reached Cusco through long-distance trade and gave Andean woodworkers a lacquer-like palette that ceramic slip could not match.\n\nFigural registers of this kind, with frontal personages, parrots, and flowering plants, belong largely to the colonial continuation of the kero tradition, when Andean elites kept commissioning the vessels under Spanish rule and their imagery absorbed rainforest fauna and heraldic conventions. Ancient repairs of the sort seen here, with drilled holes and tied bindings, testify to how highly the object was valued: a cracked kero was mended rather than discarded. Item # 73217

Lot: 240 - Inca Kero Cup with Royal Archers Drawing Bows, Painted Wood

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Inca. A generously scaled hardwood kero of flaring corset form, its walls incised and filled with multicolored mineral pigments in red, ochre, gold and deep green. The upper register carries four royal Inca figures in fringed tunics and stepped headdresses, each drawing a bow and loosing an arrow toward a flowering tree; the lower register answers with four broad flowering plants whose stems sweep around the body. Keros were ceremonial drinking vessels, made and used in matched pairs for the reciprocal exchange of chicha that sealed alliances and honored ancestors and the earth. Archery is exceptionally rare in Inca imagery, the bow belonging to the forest peoples of the eastern lowlands rather than the sling-armed highland army. The kero (qiru) is the defining Andean prestige vessel, a straight-sided or flaring beaker turned and carved from hardwood, most often from the tropical woods traded up from the montana. Its decoration is not paint on a surface but pigment held in incised cells: a resinous mopa mopa lacquer, ground with mineral colorants, pressed into cut channels and burnished level, a technique that gives Inca and Colonial keros their inlaid, enamel-like brilliance. Drinking from keros was a political act. Chicha, maize beer, was poured and returned between hosts and guests, lord and subject, the living and the huacas, and the pairing of vessels made reciprocity visible. Figural registers of this kind, with rows of costumed personages set above bands of vegetation, became increasingly narrative in the decades surrounding the Spanish conquest, when Andean carvers began recording scenes of state, war and the eastern frontier. The bow-and-arrow warriors here likely belong to that frontier vocabulary: the Antisuyu, the forested quarter of the empire, whose archers the Inca both fought and absorbed as auxiliaries. Item # 73218

Lot: 241 - Inca Kero Cup with Warrior and Flowering Plants

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Inca. A carved hardwood drinking cup of corset form, its walls sweeping inward at the waist before flaring to a wide lip, the surface incised and filled with multicolor resin inlay. The upper register carries two arched panels, each framing a male figure who holds a long rectangular shield and stands between blossoming stalks. A narrow central band runs with stepped geometric fret, while the lower zone opens into three large flowering plants. Keros were made and used in matched pairs for the ritual exchange of chicha, the maize beer that sealed alliances, honored ancestors, and bound host to guest across the Andean world. The lacquer-like decoration on keros of this type is mopa mopa, a resin harvested from the buds of the Elaeagia pastoensis tree of the Colombian highlands, kneaded with mineral pigments, drawn into thin sheets, cut to shape and pressed into incised beds in the wood. The technique is colonial in its full polychrome flowering, and figural keros of this kind were produced by Andean craftsmen under Spanish rule as well as in the late Imperial period, a continuity of Inca visual language that outlasted the empire itself.\n\nThe shield-bearing warrior amid flowering stalks belongs to a repertoire of victory and abundance imagery, in which the armed figure and the fertile field are read together. The stepped fret of the middle band is the chakana motif, a form repeated across Andean textiles, architecture and metalwork. Item # 73219

Lot: 242 - Atacama Snuff Tray with Jaguar Effigy and Shell-Inlaid Eyes

Pre-Columbian, Chile, San Pedro de Atacama. A crouching jaguar guards the head of this carved hardwood snuff tray, its tapered rectangular palette hollowed into a shallow recessed bowl for grinding and holding pulverized psychotropic seeds. The feline is rendered in the round with squared muzzle, bared teeth, arched haunches and a long curled tail incised along the flank, its eyes set with pale shell inlay that still catches light. Bands of drilled circle-and-dot motifs run in rows across the shoulder of the panel, framing the effigy. Such tablets were paired with bone or wood inhaling tubes and used by specialists to take hallucinogenic snuff, likely in divinatory and curing rites. A rare survival in wood. Snuff trays of this type belong to the elaborate inhalation kits recovered from cemeteries around San Pedro de Atacama in Chile's northern desert, where extreme aridity preserved wood, leather, and basketry that would have vanished elsewhere. A complete kit typically comprised the tray, a tubular snuffer, a small spatula, and a pouch, buried with its owner as personal equipment. The active substance was most often cebil (Anadenanthera colubrina), a tryptamine-bearing seed traded into the oasis from the eastern Andean lowlands, evidence of long-distance exchange along caravan routes that also carried Tiwanaku iconography south. The feline is the dominant supernatural of that iconographic vocabulary, associated with shamanic transformation: the practitioner who inhaled from the tray was understood to take on jaguar attributes. Shell inlay, itself a coastal import, marks the piece as a high-status object rather than ordinary household equipment. Item # 73220

Lot: 243 - Chimu Wooden Ear Spools with Shell Mosaic Owl Faces, Pair

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Chimu. A matched pair of small carved hardwood ear spools, each cylindrical shaft opening into a broad disc face inlaid with mosaic. Set into each front is a large mother of pearl disc bearing a compact owl visage: round turquoise eyes, a triangular beak, and a radiating collar of spondylus and shell tesserae. The reverse rims carry alternating mother of pearl and orange spondylus insets around a hollowed socket. Ornaments of this scale and materials were prestige adornment on the Peruvian north coast, worn through a distended lobe and announcing rank as clearly as any garment. Mounted together on a custom rectangular pedestal. Spondylus princeps, the thorny oyster of warm Ecuadorian waters, was the most charged material in the Andean world: dived at considerable risk, traded hundreds of miles south, and offered to the sea and to the ancestors as a request for rain. Its orange flesh-colored shell appears in Chimu inlay wherever status is being asserted. The owl carries its own weight of meaning on the north coast, a night hunter linked in Moche and Chimu imagery with shamanic sight, warfare, and the world of the dead, so an ear ornament bearing an owl face marked its wearer as more than merely wealthy. Item # 73221

Lot: 244 - Condorhuasi Alamito Stone Armadillo Bowl, Argentina

Pre-Columbian, Argentina, Condorhuasi-Alamito. A dense gray-black stone bowl carved in the round as a resting armadillo, its thick walls hollowed to a shallow recessed receptacle. The pointed snout lifts toward the rim, bulging eyes set above a neck banded by rows of incised horizontal ridges that echo the animal's carapace; the opposite end resolves into a short tail defined by incised stripes. The surface retains a deep ancient patina and the soft abrasion of long handling. Vessels of this type, laboriously ground and polished from hard volcanic stone, likely served in ritual preparation, perhaps for pigments or psychoactive snuff, rather than in ordinary domestic use. The Condorhuasi-Alamito peoples were llama pastoralists in what is now Catamarca province, northwestern Argentina, and skilled artisans in ceramic, metal, and stone. Archaeological evidence indicates that they maintained extensive long-distance contacts across the southern Andes, including with the important center of Tiwanaku near Lake Titicaca in present-day Bolivia. Their carved stone sculpture, the celebrated "suplicantes" among it, is among the most technically demanding work of the region, produced entirely by pecking, grinding, and polishing without metal tools. The armadillo, an animal of burrow and armor, recurs widely in Andean and Chaco-adjacent imagery. Item # 73222

Lot: 245 - Inca T-Shaped Axe Money Ingots, Pair, Tumi Form

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Inca Empire. A pair of heavy cast copper alloy blades in the flared tumi silhouette: a narrow shaft opening into a broad crescentic cutting edge, crowned by a straight transverse bar that once seated the haft. Both are hammered flat and thin, their surfaces carrying scattered blue-green patina, cuprite reds, and earthen deposits. Objects of this ingot type were probably never swung in earnest; their standardized shape and weight suggest they served as a medium of exchange, a form of premonetary currency circulated across the Andes and along the coastal trade routes. Each is individually mounted on an old custom metal display base. Flat T-shaped or "axe money" blades (hachas monedas) are among the most intriguing artifacts of late Andean economics. Concentrated in coastal Ecuador and northern Peru, they were produced in graded sizes and often deposited in bundles of five or multiples thereof, tied together and buried or interred with the dead. Their edges are frequently too thin and too soft to have held a working bevel, which has led most scholars to read them as standardized units of value rather than tools, exchanged by weight within the maritime trade networks that carried Spondylus shell, metals, and textiles between Ecuador and the central Andes. The tumi outline they echo, the crescent-bladed ceremonial knife of Andean ritual, gave the form a resonance beyond commerce. Item # 73223

Lot: 246 - Inca Tumi Form Ingot Axe Heads, Pair, Mounted

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Inca Empire. A matched pair of thin, flaring axe heads hammered into the crescent tumi silhouette, each with a narrow waisted shaft rising to a broad flat poll and descending to a wide arcing blade. The sheet-thin gauge and unsharpened edges argue against practical use: forms of this type, often called axe money or naipes, circulated across the Andes and the Ecuadorian coast as standardized units of value and prestige exchange, bundled and stored rather than hafted. Surfaces carry a mineralized blue-green patina with earthen deposits. Each is presented on an older custom display base, allowing the profile to read against the light as it would have when the pieces were traded by weight and count. Thin metal axe blanks of this kind belong to a wider Andean tradition of commodity currency. The best-documented examples, the naipes of the Sican and Chimu north coast, were produced in graded sizes, bound in bundles of five or multiples thereof, and deposited in tombs and caches in the hundreds, evidence of a counted, weight-regulated medium of exchange rather than a tool. The Inca inherited this metalworking economy when they absorbed the north coast polities in the later 15th century, and their state redistribution system continued to value worked copper alloy sheet as tribute and prestige wealth.\n\nThe tumi outline itself, a crescent blade on a central stem, is among the most persistent forms in Andean art, serving in full-scale versions as the ceremonial knife of sacrifice and surgery. Item # 73224

Lot: 247 - Chimu-Inca Glazed Whistling Vessel with Monkey, Five Gourd Lobes, Colonial Period

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chimu-Inca, Colonial period. A cluster of five plump melons or gourds, each set point down, forms the body of this transitional Andean bottle. Two of the lobes carry tall tubular necks joined by a flat bridge handle: one opens as a functioning spout, the other rises to a flared platform surmounted by a small seated monkey, its chamber holding a whistle that still sounds. The classic Chimu-Inca stirrup arrangement is preserved, yet the entire surface wears a mottled green-gold alkaline glaze of European introduction, pooling and pitting across the swollen lobes. Vegetal effigy forms of this kind celebrated agricultural abundance, and the whistling chamber suggests use in ceremonial pouring or libation rather than ordinary domestic service. A rare type. Glaze technology was unknown in the pre-contact Andes, where potters achieved their surfaces through burnishing, slip painting, and reduction firing. Lead and alkaline glazes arrived with Spanish and creole potters in the sixteenth century, and vessels like this one, which keep an indigenous shape vocabulary (the double-spout-and-bridge bottle, the modeled fauna, the produce effigy body) while adopting an imported kiln chemistry, mark the brief and rarely documented moment when the two traditions ran together in a single workshop. Whistling bottles are among the most ingenious inventions of the Peruvian north coast, attested from Chorrera and Vicus through Moche and Chimu. Air displaced by liquid moving between chambers is forced across an internal fipple, producing a note as the vessel is tipped or rocked. The monkey perched above the resonating chamber is a favored Chimu subject, associated with the warm eastern forests and their prized exotic goods. Item # 73225

Lot: 248 - Inca Miniature Female Figures, Silver & Spondylus Shell, Pair

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Inca. A pair of miniature female effigies, one cast in solid silver, the other carved from warm orange and cream spondylus shell. Both stand frontally with hands drawn up to chest and belly, breasts and navel lightly modelled, faces reduced to broad brows, wedge noses and pursed mouths. Each wears a long incised hairdo falling in braided strands down the back, the shell example finished with fine parallel grooves. Figures of this scale were dressed in miniature textiles and deposited in high-altitude caches as offerings, likely to Pachamama and the mountain deities. The silver retains blue-green cuprous bloom in its recesses. Mounted together on a custom pedestal base. Miniature human effigies in silver, gold, and spondylus shell are among the most consistently recovered objects from Inca mountaintop shrines, where they accompanied the capacocha rites: state-sponsored offerings that carried children, camelids, and precious goods to the summits of the Andes. Excavated examples at Llullaillaco and Cerro El Plomo were found still clothed in woven miniature garments pinned with tiny tupu shawl pins, a reminder that these figures were understood as animate participants rather than symbols.\n\nSpondylus, the thorny oyster of the warm Ecuadorian littoral, was the single most valued substance in Andean ritual economy, traded hundreds of miles south and reserved for offerings tied to water, fertility, and the sea. Its scarlet mantle gave it a symbolic charge no local material could match, and its use here places the pair squarely within the imperial ritual apparatus rather than domestic devotion. Item # 73226

Lot: 249 - Chimu Miniature Sheet Gold Idols, Pair, Repousse Standing Figures

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chimu. A pair of miniature standing idols raised in the round from hammered sheet gold, each worked to a hollow cylindrical body. The larger holds broad hands against the chest beneath a bold repousse face, its heavy brow, lobed ears and beaked nose crowned by a flaring headdress. Its companion is plainer, a smooth tapering column with low relief features and a domed cap. Figures of this scale were made as offerings, tucked into elite burials or votive caches along the north coast, and their metal is not pure: XRF places the larger at roughly 10.2K and the smaller at 15.6K, both silver-rich golds of the sort Andean smiths favored. Mounted together on a custom pedestal. Chimu goldsmiths of the Peruvian north coast inherited the metallurgical repertoire of the Moche and industrialized it, working from the capital at Chan Chan in specialized artisan barrios. Their preferred technique was not casting but hammering: ingots beaten into paper-thin foil, raised over forms, and joined by crimping or mechanical seams rather than solder. Miniature anthropomorphic idols of this kind belong to a broad Andean tradition of small votive effigies, kin to the Inca illa and the later cast figures deposited in high-altitude shrines, offered to huacas and interred with the dead.\n\nThe XRF readings are worth reading closely: silver at 52.4 percent in the larger figure exceeds the gold content outright, a composition consistent with the naturally auriferous silver alloys of Andean placer sources rather than deliberate debasement. Surfaces were typically brought to a golden finish by depletion gilding, leaching the baser metals from the outer skin to leave a gold-rich face over an alloyed core. Item # 73227

Lot: 250 - Chimu Sheet Gold Crown Band with Caballito de Totora Wave Riders

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chimu, Chan Chan type. A long band of hammered sheet gold, worked in repousse into a procession of twelve hybrid figures, half fish and half human, each riding the curl of a wave aboard a caballito de totora reed craft and grasping a sea bird. Rows of raised bosses run above and below the frieze, framing the scene in a beaded border, and the metal retains traces of red pigment caught in the recesses. Crown bands of this type were worn as headgear by Chimu elites, and their maritime imagery ties the north Peruvian coast's ruling class to the fishing economy that sustained it. Mounted on a custom display base. The caballito de totora, a one-man craft bundled from totora reeds and straddled rather than boarded, is still built and paddled on the beaches of Huanchaco, within sight of the Chimu capital at Chan Chan. Its appearance here, ridden by fish-tailed beings, is not a genre scene but a cosmological one: the Chimu placed the sea at the center of their world, and their metalsmiths repeatedly rendered the boundary between fisherman and fish as porous. Chan Chan, the vast adobe capital near modern Trujillo, gives its name to the type. Chimu goldsmiths were the finest in the Andes, working gold to foil thinness by hammering and annealing, then raising the design from the reverse with blunt tools over a yielding bed. Their reputation was such that the Inca, on conquering the kingdom in the later 15th century, deported Chimu metalworkers wholesale to Cusco to serve the imperial court. The Nora and John Wise collection of South American Pre-Columbian art was established at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1975; the Wises also gave material to the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The John and Nora Wise Papers document their collecting both privately and through John Wise Ltd., and record exhibitions including The John Wise Collection of Ancient Peruvian Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum (1937), World of Ancient Gold at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and Ornamental Costumes from the John Wise Collection of Ancient Peruvian Textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1971-1972). Item # 73228

Lot: 251 - Sican Lambayeque Ear Ornaments with Naylamp, Pair

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Sican (Lambayeque). A matched pair of ear ornaments hammered from heavy sheet gold, each disc raised in repousse with a frontal figure identified as Naylamp, the mythical founder of the Sican kingdom. He wears a tumi-shaped headdress with rising antennae, a short fringed tunic, and grips a long staff in either hand, framed by concentric beaded borders. Each disc rises from a long tapered cylindrical shaft, itself worked in two registers of sea birds between banded circle-and-dot borders. Ornaments of this scale and metal were reserved for elite men, worn through distended earlobes as insignia of rank and lineage. Mounted on a custom base. The Sican (Lambayeque) culture rose on Peru's north coast after the collapse of the Moche, centered on the monumental adobe pyramids of Batan Grande in the La Leche valley. Its dynastic legend, recorded by the colonial chronicler Miguel Cabello de Balboa, tells of Naylamp, a lord who arrived by sea on a fleet of balsa rafts with his retinue and idol, founded a ruling line, and at his death was said to have sprouted wings and flown away. His stylized face, with almond eyes, winged headdress, and comma-shaped ears, became the signature image of Sican goldwork, repeated across masks, beakers, tumi knives, and ear ornaments in the elite tombs of Huaca Loro and Huaca Las Ventanas. XRF analysis records the alloy as 14.1K on the left ornament (59% gold, 36.25% silver, 2.25% copper, 2.5% tungsten) and 13.5K on the right (56.5% gold, 40% silver, 2.5% copper, 1% tungsten). Such gold-silver-copper ternary alloys are characteristic of Andean metallurgy, which prized surface color achieved by depletion gilding over bullion purity. Item # 73229

Lot: 252 - Inca Gold and Silver Ball Bead Necklace

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Inca. A weighty procession of hollow spheres, ten of gold and eleven of silver, alternating around the throat in a rhythm of warm and cool light. Each bead was raised from sheet metal in two hemispheres and joined at the equator, the faint seam still legible across several examples. Tiny ancient silver spacer beads punctuate the strand, which terminates in conical silver finials and a modern clasp on a modern restring. Precious-metal ornament of this scale was regulated in the Andes, gold associated with the sun and silver with the moon, and such adornment marked elite or ceremonial status rather than ordinary wear. Suitable for wearing. Andean smiths worked precious metal by hammering rather than casting, annealing thin sheet repeatedly until it could be raised over a stake into hemispheres and then soldered or crimped into a hollow ball, a method that produced impressive volume from very little bullion. Under the Inca state, gold and silver were not currency but sacred substance: gold was glossed as the "sweat of the sun" and silver as the "tears of the moon," and both were monopolized by the crown, distributed as gifts that bound provincial lords to Cusco. Ornaments of this kind were therefore instruments of political theater as much as personal adornment, and the vast majority were melted down in the sixteenth century, leaving intact bead strands uncommon. Item # 73230

Lot: 253 - Sican Lambayeque Silver Beaker with Repousse Monkeys

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Sican / Lambayeque. A tall drinking beaker raised from sheet silver, its flaring trumpet mouth swelling from a slender waisted shaft and spreading conical pedestal foot. Just below the rim, on opposing faces, a monkey emerges in repousse relief, curl-tailed and splay-limbed, its rounded face punched with wide eyes and a broad grin. The vessel was hammered from a single sheet, the details worked from the reverse and refined with tracers from the front, a technique the north-coast smiths mastered. Beakers of this profile were made in graduated sets for elite feasting and were interred with high-status burials, where chicha served from precious metal marked rank as clearly as any regalia. The Sican (Lambayeque) culture rose on Peru's north coast after the collapse of the Moche, controlling the richest metallurgical tradition of the pre-Inca Andes. Its workshops at Batan Grande produced silver, gold, tumbaga, and arsenical copper in industrial quantity, and elite tombs there have yielded stacked caches of hammered beakers numbering in the dozens, deposited as concentrated wealth rather than as individual grave goods. Monkeys carry a particular charge in north-coast imagery. Not native to the desert littoral, they arrived through long-distance exchange with the eastern montana and Amazonian lowlands, and their appearance on prestige metalwork signals both exotic luxury and a link to the forested world beyond the Andes. Their association with agility, mischief, and fertility recurs across Andean iconography from Chavin onward. Item # 73231

Lot: 254 - Chimu Lambayeque Anthropomorphic Beaker with Dignitary Head, Peru

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Chimu / Lambayeque. A tapered cylindrical beaker raised from sheet copper, its upper register worked in high repousse relief into the face of a dignitary. Almond eyes, a projecting nose, and a bar mouth sit above a collar of embossed beads, flanked by broad disc ear ornaments; the reverse carries a domed hair bun stippled with tiny punched circles. The flaring lip and slender base give the vessel the profile of the kero form used across the Andean north coast for chicha, poured and drunk at feasts that bound elites to their retainers. Scattered cinnabar remains in the recesses, a red pigment reserved for high-status and funerary contexts, suggesting the beaker accompanied its owner into the tomb rather than serving daily use. The metalsmiths of the Lambayeque (Sican) and succeeding Chimu kingdoms were the finest in the pre-Hispanic Americas, hammering arsenical copper and copper-silver alloys into sheet thin enough to model by repousse yet strong enough to hold a raised face. Beakers of this type were produced in graded sets and buried in quantity: the great shaft tombs at Batan Grande and the Chimu capital of Chan Chan yielded caches numbering in the dozens, stacked rim to rim. The frontal face with lunar-crescent headdress, ringed eyes, and disc ear spools belongs to the Sican Deity repertoire, an image so consistently repeated that it functioned less as portraiture than as a signature of rank and dynastic legitimacy. Item # 73232

Lot: 255 - Chimu Silver Kero Beaker with Register of Double Headed Birds

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Chimu. A tall silver beaker raised from sheet metal, its cylinder rising from a narrow base and opening into a broad flared rim. Below the lip runs a raised register bounded by ridges, worked in repousse with five double headed birds, wings outspread and beaks turned in opposing profile, alternating with five smaller avian forms. The hammered surface retains the faint facets of the smith's tooling. Beakers of this type, made in matched sets, served elite feasting and the ritual exchange of maize beer, in which paired drinking vessels sealed alliance and obligation. Silver, associated with the moon and with lunar deities on the Peruvian north coast, marked the drinker's rank as plainly as the vessel's size. Chimu metalsmiths inherited the technical vocabulary of the Moche and industrialized it: sheet silver and gilded copper were hammered thin over wooden forms, embossed from the reverse against pitch, and finished with chased detail. When the Inca conquered Chan Chan around 1470, they deported its goldsmiths to Cuzco wholesale, a transfer that shaped imperial Andean metalwork thereafter.\n\nThe double headed bird is a persistent north coast motif, generally read as a raptor or a seabird, and its bilateral symmetry belongs to the same visual logic as the paired vessels themselves. Sets of two beakers, buried together and drunk from in tandem, materialized the reciprocity that structured Andean political life. Item # 73233

Lot: 256 - Chimu Silver Pectoral Ornaments, North Coast Peru

Pre-Columbian, North Coast Peru, Chimu culture, ca. 900 to 1470 CE. An assemblage of Chimu silver ornaments, each hammered from thin sheets of high-purity silver (95–96%) and pierced for attachment, presented in a modern frame under glass. The individual elements, including small pendants possibly shaped as stylized fish or figures, and circular discs, are arranged in a crescent formation resembling a collar or funerary pectoral, of the type associated with regalia worn by high-ranking nobles or priests. Silver in Chimu cosmology was associated with the moon, the night, and the watery underworld. The Chimu are understood to have venerated a moon deity, recognizing its association with tides, fertility, and cyclical rebirth. Size of a silver ornament: 2.3" L x 1" W (5.8 cm x 2.5 cm); frame: 27" L x 21.5" W (68.6 cm x 54.6 cm); silver quality: 96% to 97% Item # 198947

Lot: 257 - Lambayeque Sican Silver Pectoral Components, Seabird and Ray Roundels with Face Plaques

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Lambayeque (Sican). A group of pectoral components hammered from sheet silver: nine convex roundels, each worked in repousse with a seabird seizing a stingray against a densely stippled field, and pierced at the upper rim with paired suspension holes. With them are two sheet face plaques, likely female, their long multi-pendant necklaces and stylized floral cheek marks raised in the same technique, the lower edges cut into fringed tabs. Assembled and strung, such elements formed the shimmering breast ornament of an elite wearer. Silver carried lunar and feminine associations in Lambayeque cosmology, a deliberate counterweight to the solar gold reserved for other regalia. Custom mounted in a black velvet lined lidded display case. The Sican (Lambayeque) polity rose on Peru's north coast after the collapse of the Moche, and its smiths were among the most accomplished metalworkers of the ancient Americas. Working alloys of silver, gold, copper and arsenical bronze, they mastered depletion gilding, silvering, and the mass production of hammered sheet, turning out ornaments by the hundreds for elite burials at Batan Grande and Huaca Loro. The seabird-and-ray motif belongs to the coastal maritime repertoire that runs through north Peruvian art: cormorants, pelicans and boobies taking fish or rays, an image of the sea's abundance and of predatory power. Rendered in repousse on convex ground and stippled overall, the scene would have caught and scattered light with every movement of the wearer, the visual logic behind so much Sican sheetwork. Item # 73234

Lot: 258 - Chimu Ceremonial Tumi with Caballito de Totora Reed Boat Finial

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Chimu. A large ceremonial tumi crowned by an openwork disc finial in which two rowers pole a caballito de totora, the bundled reed craft of the Peruvian north coast, laden with offerings: a broad vessel astern and a slender vase at the prow. A double ring of beaded bosses and a solid band frame the tableau. Below, a long tapering shaft descends to a wide fantail blade, its edges swept into crescent points. Worked in copper with a blue-green cuprous patina throughout. Tumi of this scale served display and ritual rather than cutting, carried in procession or interred with elite dead as emblems of rank. The maritime subject ties the piece to the fishing economy that underwrote Chimor's wealth. The caballito de totora is among the oldest continuously used watercraft in the Americas: a straddled bundle of lashed totora reeds, paddled out through the surf of the Peruvian littoral by fishermen who still build them at Huanchaco, a short distance from the Chimu capital of Chan Chan. Its appearance on prestige metalwork is not incidental. The Chimu state, heir to Moche traditions and eventually absorbed by the Inca around 1470 CE, drew its surplus from marine harvest and long-distance coastal exchange, and its smiths ranked among the finest in the pre-Hispanic Americas, working sheet copper, arsenical copper, and gilded alloys by hammering, annealing, and repousse rather than by casting alone. Tumi, the crescent-bladed knife of the Andes, spans a wide functional range, from small utilitarian tools to monumental ceremonial forms whose thin blades could never have taken an edge. The openwork narrative finial seen here, with its miniature figures in the round, belongs to the upper register of that spectrum. Item # 73235

Lot: 259 - Chimu Large Tumi Ceremonial Knife with Incised Staff Bearers

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Chimu. A large ceremonial tumi, its tall rectangular haft rising from a broad crescentic blade, hammered from sheet metal of coppery alloy now cloaked in blue-green patina. Both faces of the haft carry three stacked registers, each framed by a scrolling geometric border and filled with a frontal staff bearer who grips a staff or spear in either hand beneath a tall, radiating feathered headdress. The repeated figure, crowned and armed, belongs to the vocabulary of Andean north-coast authority rather than to butchery: tumis of this scale served in ritual and display, and accompanied elite burials. Decorated examples of this size are uncommon, the incised work crisp and confidently laid out across a demanding vertical field. Presented on a custom metal base. The tumi, a semicircular-bladed knife, is the signature metal form of Peru's north coast, inherited by the Chimu from Moche and Sican predecessors and refined into an emblem of rank. Chimu smiths of the Chimor kingdom, centered on the vast adobe capital of Chan Chan in the Moche Valley, were among the most accomplished metalworkers of the ancient Americas, working copper and arsenical copper alloys by hammering, annealing, and repousse rather than by casting, and mass-producing sheet-metal objects on a scale unmatched elsewhere in the Andes. Frontal figures with rayed or feathered headdresses appear across Chimu metalwork, textiles, and architecture, generally read as lords, ancestors, or a solar-associated deity. Their triple repetition here, boxed in matching cartouches, follows the modular, endlessly reiterated design logic that also governs the friezes of Chan Chan, where a single motif is repeated along a wall until the wall ends. Item # 73236

Lot: 260 - Chucu Painted Stone Plaque with Concentric Rings and Checkerboard

Pre-Columbian, Peru, South Coast, Chucu, Inca period. A broad tabular slab of sandstone, tapering to a point, its face covered edge to edge in mineral pigment. The lower half carries a bullseye of concentric rings in white, ochre, red and slate gray; above it a checkerboard of alternating squares in the same earthen palette climbs to the apex. The pigments are ground natural earths applied directly to the unprepared stone, their granular texture following every irregularity of the surface. Plaques of this type were carried into dry caves and set upright as offerings, likely petitions to Pacha Mama and Pacha Papa for water, for healthy herds and for the wellbeing of the clan. The chronology of these painted plaques rests on a single well-documented cache: a group of slabs found stacked inside a cave, each separated from the next by a wooden branch. One of those sticks yielded a radiocarbon date of about 1400 CE, placing the tradition squarely within the Inca horizon on Peru's south coast. The ritual logic is geographic. This is one of the driest inhabited landscapes on earth, and its only reliable water arrives as spring runoff from Andean snowfields. Offerings deposited in caves, the mouths of the earth, addressed the powers that governed that flow. The concentric ring is widely read in Andean visual language as a solar or water sign, while the checkerboard recalls the tocapu grids woven into elite Inca textiles, a vocabulary of ordered squares that signalled rank and rightness. A modern custom metal wall hanger is attached to the reverse. Item # 73237

Lot: 261 - Chucu Painted Stone Plaque with Concentric Bullseye and Stripes, Inca Period

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chucu, Inca period. A broad slab of tabular stone painted in earth pigments, its irregular leaf-shaped outline left as the quarry gave it. The lower half carries a concentric bullseye, ring within ring in white, ochre, umber and green closing on a small red-and-olive eye; above it, a register of vertical stripes alternates red, cream, gold and slate. Pigments were ground from natural minerals and laid directly onto the unprepared surface. Plaques of this type were carried into dry-coast caves and set out as offerings, likely petitions to Pacha Mama and Pacha Papa for water, herd fertility and the health of the community, in a landscape watered only by Andean snowmelt reaching the rivers each spring. The chronology of these painted plaques rests on a single well-documented cache: a group of slabs found stacked inside a cave, each separated from the next by a wooden branch. Radiocarbon analysis of one of those sticks returned a date of approximately 1400 CE, placing the tradition squarely within the ascendancy of the Inca state. Their deposition in caves, in the arid coastal margins where no rain falls and the only water is snowmelt descending from the Andes, ties them to a rainmaking and fertility observance directed at the paired earth deities. Nothing in the painting is representational. The bullseye and the striped register are graphic devices whose meaning was carried by convention rather than by picture, a visual language shared across the coast's textiles and painted media. Item # 73238

Lot: 262 - Huari Painted Cotton Panel with Radiant Sun Face

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Huari (Wari), Pacific coast. A broad panel of handspun cotton bearing a solar visage painted in soft edged washes of red, ochre, slate blue and cream. The rounded face, ringed by concentric bands, gazes out with wide circular eyes and a toothy grin, while a corona of tapering rays alternates in warm and cool tones across the field. Stepped and scrolling geometric borders in red close both ends. The pigments were brushed freehand onto plain weave cloth rather than woven in, a technique favored on the Peruvian coast for large hangings. Panels of this scale likely served as ceremonial cloths or wrappings, their solar imagery invoking a deity central to Andean cosmology. Now professionally sewn to a cloth backing, mounted on a wooden stretcher and custom framed. Painted cotton cloths of this type survive chiefly from the arid coastal valleys of Peru, where burial conditions preserve organic material that would have perished in the highlands. During the Middle Horizon the Huari state extended its reach from Ayacucho toward the coast, and coastal workshops absorbed its iconographic vocabulary while retaining local preferences for painted rather than tapestry-woven decoration. The frontal radiant face belongs to a long Andean lineage of solar and staff-deity imagery running from Chavin through Tiahuanaco and Huari, later resurfacing in Inca sun worship. The stepped fret and scroll borders are standard framing devices in Andean textile design, marking the sacred field at its edges. Item # 73239

Lot: 263 - Chancay Openwork Gauze Tunic with Feline Border

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chancay. A short-sleeved midriff-length shirt woven in tightly controlled openwork cotton gauze, its white-on-white ground carrying an allover abstract geometric pattern that may resolve into stylized birds. Bands of processing felines, probably jaguars, march along the sleeve cuffs and lower hem, their faces picked out in brown, and knotted white string fringes finish the edges. The near-monochrome scheme relies wholly on the play of open and closed weave for its imagery, a virtuoso display of loom control. Garments of such fineness were likely worn by persons of rank and ultimately accompanied them into coastal burials, where the arid sands preserved them. Professionally lined with tan cloth, mounted on a lucite armature and set in a custom lucite box frame. Chancay weavers of the Peruvian central coast, working the Chancay and Chillon valleys between roughly 1000 and the Inca conquest, are best known for exactly this kind of openwork: leno and warp-crossed gauzes so light they read as woven air. Because the cloth was worked almost exclusively in undyed white cotton, all of the design burden falls on structure rather than color, with figures emerging as densities of thread against voids. Feline processions, along with birds, fish, and stepped frets, form the standard Chancay vocabulary, the cat almost certainly a reference to the pervasive Andean predator-power complex. Survival at this scale owes everything to the near-rainless coastal desert, which preserved textiles in grave bundles where nothing organic should have lasted. Item # 73240

Lot: 264 - Chancay Polychrome Textile Tunic with Bird Bands

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chancay. A wide, short-sleeved tunic woven in warm camelid and cotton yarns, its body divided into vertical bands of crimson, gold, and ivory. Nested chevrons and stepped zigzags climb each panel, punctuated by small polychrome birds worked in supplementary weft, while a continuous procession of profile birds parades along the lower register above a knotted fringe. A slit neck opening interrupts the patterning at center. Garments of this type were worn by the living and later interred with the dead along the central Peruvian coast, where arid conditions preserved the dyes in remarkable saturation. The textile has been professionally cleaned and mounted on a cloth lining for display. The Chancay flourished in the valleys north of present-day Lima between roughly 1000 and 1470 CE, in the interval between Wari collapse and Inca annexation. They are known above all for textiles: gauzes, painted cloths, openwork nets, and tapestry-banded tunics produced in quantity by a society that appears to have organized weaving on a near-industrial scale. Birds, both waterfowl and small coastal species, are among their most persistent motifs, repeated in rows across borders in a rhythm that reads as much numerical as pictorial. Chancay dyers drew reds from cochineal and relbunium roots, yellows from local plants, and browns from undyed alpaca and vicuna fiber, a palette echoed exactly in the bands here. Item # 73241

Lot: 265 - Nazca Textile Panel with Stepped Zigzag Bands

Pre-Columbian, Peru, South Coast, Nazca. A long rectangular panel woven in warm polychrome, its field filled edge to edge with broad stepped zigzags that climb diagonally across the cloth in gold, deep red, and near-black brown. The design is built entirely from interlocked rectangular blocks, each color advancing one notch at a time so the bands read as terraced staircases rather than smooth chevrons. Fibers are likely camelid wool, dyed with plant and mineral colorants and worked in tapestry technique on a warp-weighted loom. Textiles of this scale served as mantles, hangings, or burial wrappings among South Coast peoples, where cloth ranked among the highest forms of wealth. The panel has been sewn to a cloth backing and mounted on a wooden stretcher for display. Nazca weavers inherited the technical vocabulary of the Paracas Necropolis workshops that preceded them on Peru's arid south coast, and the same desert conditions that preserved Paracas mummy bundles account for the survival of cloth like this. Textiles were the region's premier prestige medium, exceeding ceramics and metalwork in labor invested and in social value; a single large mantle could consume months of spinning and dyeing before a thread reached the loom. The stepped-fret and terraced zigzag belongs to the deep Andean geometric repertoire, a motif carried across millennia and media, from Chavin stonework to Inca tunics. Readings vary: agricultural terraces, mountain profiles, water channels, the interlocking halves of a dualist cosmology. Whatever its intended sense, the pattern's construction is dictated by the loom itself, where color changes fall on discrete warp and weft intersections and curves are structurally impossible. Item # 73242

Lot: 266 - Chancay Painted Cotton Textile Panel with Diamond and Checkerboard

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Central Coast, Chancay. A monumental plain-weave cotton panel painted in earthen browns, tans, and cream. One half carries a dense checkerboard of alternating squares; the other is scattered with rows of ringed discs, each a pale circle enclosing a dark center and a corona of dots. Between them a vast lozenge, reserved in unpainted brown, is framed by a doubled zigzag outline that steps across the field like a ripple. Narrow striped bands close the ends. The pigments are mineral and vegetal washes brushed directly onto the woven ground rather than dyed into the yarns, a technique the Chancay used for large hangings and mortuary wrappings. Mounted for display on a fabric-covered stretcher. The Chancay flourished in the river valleys north of present-day Lima between roughly 1000 and 1470 CE, in the interval between Wari collapse and Inca annexation. Their arid coastal cemeteries preserved cloth in extraordinary quantity, and weaving became the culture's principal medium of expression: gauzes, openwork nets, painted cottons, and the doll-like relleno figures made from the same materials. Painted panels of this scale were produced as hangings and as outer wrappings for the seated mummy bundles interred in the valley necropolises, where geometric fields of checkers, lozenges, and stepped frets substituted for the narrative imagery favored on the north coast. The ringed disc, read variously as a stylized flower, a shell section, or an astral sign, is a recurrent element of the Chancay painters' vocabulary and remains without settled interpretation. Item # 73243

Lot: 267 - Chimu Embroidered Mantle with Interlocking Birds, Three Loom Panels

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Chimu. A monumental camelid-fiber mantle assembled from three separately woven loom panels, joined along their selvages into a single field. Across a deep madder-red ground runs a dense embroidered lattice of interlocking semiabstract birds, their hooked beaks, stepped crests, and eyed bodies worked in gold, tan, ivory, and hot pink, each register offset so the creatures lock together without a break. The stepped, pixelated drawing follows the grid of the weave itself, a discipline typical of north coast workshops. Textiles of this scale carried rank on the Peruvian coast, serving as wrapping cloths, garments, and ultimately funerary offerings in the dry desert burials that preserved them. Now professionally mounted to a cloth-backed wooden stretcher for display. The Chimu empire, centered on the adobe capital of Chan Chan in the Moche Valley, dominated the Peruvian north coast until its absorption by the Inca in the later 15th century. Its weavers inherited a technical vocabulary refined over two millennia of coastal practice and organized it on an industrial scale, producing cloth that functioned as currency, tribute, and the primary marker of social rank. Bird imagery, pelicans, cormorants, and the sea birds of the Humboldt current, recurs throughout Chimu art in cast metal, painted blackware, and adobe frieze alike, and its endless repetition here is characteristic: the motif is multiplied rather than centered, meaning carried by rhythm instead of by a single focal image. The extraordinary survival of such fabrics owes everything to the Atacama-edge aridity of the coast, where textiles wrapped around seated burial bundles remained dry for a millennium. Cloth was arguably the most valued medium in the ancient Andes, above gold and above ceramic, and pieces of this breadth were the work of many hands over many months. Item # 73244

Lot: 268 - Chancay Chevron Textile Tunic with Spiral Border and Fringe

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Central Coast, Chancay. A complete woven tunic banded in bold chevrons of crimson, gold and tan-brown, the zigzags marching across the full width of the body. Below them run narrow horizontal registers, then a frieze of scrolling volutes set within triangular reserves, and finally a sawtooth border releasing a dense fringe of loose yarns. The garment is built of two loom panels joined along the center, the neck slit left open at the seam. Camelid and cotton yarns carry the dyework, the color blocks shaped by discontinuous wefts rather than by embroidery. Such shirts clothed the living and, more often, accompanied the dead in the sand-preserved cemeteries of the central coast, where textile was the currency of status. The Chancay flourished in the valleys north of present-day Lima between roughly 1000 and 1470 CE, in the interval between the collapse of the Wari state and the Inca conquest. They are known above all as weavers: the arid coastal cemeteries of Ancon, Chancay and Huaura preserved their gauzes, painted cloths, openwork nets and slit-tapestry garments in extraordinary quantity, and textiles rather than metal or stone carried prestige in Andean society.\n\nThe scrolling volute set inside a triangle, seen along the lower border here, is a long-lived coastal motif usually read as a wave or a stylized marine form, appropriate to a people whose economy leaned on the Pacific. Chevron fields of this kind exploit the loom itself: the diagonal is the natural product of stepping colored wefts, and Andean weavers made a virtue of that geometry for centuries. Item # 73245

Lot: 269 - Chancay Textile Panels with Zigzag and Spiral Bands, Group of 3

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Central Coast, Chancay. A trio of polychrome woven panels banded in crimson, gold, and soft browns, two of them the finished ends of a single long scarf and the third a joined double panel of matching design. Bold zigzags march across each field, framed above and below by narrow guard bands of running spirals set in triangular reserves, with a sawtooth border releasing long plied fringe along the lower edges. The weaving is camelid and cotton yarn in tapestry technique, the dyes still vivid. The scarf ends were originally joined by a plain brown center section, now absent. Textiles of this quality functioned as prestige dress and, ultimately, as burial wrappings for the coastal elite. The Chancay flourished in the river valleys north of present-day Lima after the collapse of the Wari state, and their weavers worked in a dry coastal environment that has preserved an extraordinary volume of their output. Cotton grew locally; the camelid fiber that carries the strongest reds and golds came by trade from the highlands, and its presence in a garment signaled reach as much as wealth. The running spiral, a wave or scroll read by some scholars as a marine motif, is among the most persistent devices on the Peruvian coast, echoed in Chancay painted gauzes and in the ceramic repertoire alongside the familiar cuchimilco figures. Long fringed scarves and sashes of this type were worn in life and later bundled with the dead in the seated funerary packs excavated across the valley cemeteries. Item # 73246

Lot: 270 - Huari Four-Cornered Pile Hat with Birds and Zoomorphs

Pre-Columbian, Peru, South Coast, Huari. A four-cornered cap of camelid wool, its squared crown rising to a tufted knot at each corner. The four sides are knotted in dense pile against a looped foundation, each face divided into four rectangular registers filled with two stylized birds and two semiabstract zoomorphs rendered in gold, crimson, blue-green and cream. The palette repeats around the hat with slight variation, so no two faces read identically. Such caps were prestige headgear in the Andean highlands and along the coast, worn by men of standing and frequently recovered from burials, where the hat marked rank and affiliation as clearly as any insignia. The pile technique, laborious and rare, sets these hats apart from ordinary Andean weaving. Four-cornered hats (Spanish gorro de cuatro puntas) are among the most distinctive garments of the Middle Horizon, produced across the Huari and Tiwanaku spheres between roughly 600 and 1000 CE. They were built by a knotted looping technique in which short lengths of dyed camelid fiber were tied into a fabric foundation and clipped to form a plush surface, an approach closer to carpet knotting than to weaving and demanding an extravagant quantity of dyed yarn for so small an object. The compressed, right-angled figures seen here belong to the same visual grammar as Huari tapestry tunics, where profile birds, felines and staff-bearing attendants are squeezed and stretched to fill their allotted panels. The distortion is deliberate: legibility yields to the geometry of the register, and the resulting abstraction has long been read as a marker of elite Middle Horizon style rather than a failure of representation. Item # 73247

Lot: 271 - Huari Four-Cornered Hat with Geometric Camelid Wool Pile

Pre-Columbian, Peru, South coast, Huari. A four-cornered cap of dyed camelid wool, its cubic crown rising to a knotted tuft at each upper corner. All four faces carry stepped and diamond motifs in rose, ochre, cream, brown, and turquoise, worked in a dense knotted pile over a knotted-loop foundation so the surface reads as clipped velvet. The panels alternate their designs, each corner turning the eye to a fresh arrangement of nested triangles and small squares. Headgear of this type marked rank and regional affiliation among Andean elites, likely worn in life and later interred with its owner; the plush pile and labor-intensive dyework place it well above ordinary dress. Four-cornered hats are among the most recognizable products of the Middle Horizon, the period when the Huari state of the central Andean highlands and its southern counterpart Tiwanaku extended shared iconography across much of what is now Peru and Bolivia. The cubic shape has no antecedent in earlier Andean headgear and no clear successor after the state collapsed, making the form a chronological marker in its own right. Construction is unusual: the body is built in cross-knit looping or a related knotted technique rather than woven on a loom, with short lengths of dyed camelid fiber knotted in and clipped to raise the pile. Each color change required a separate insertion, so a hat of this size represents an extraordinary investment of time. The dyes, drawn from cochineal, indigo, and plant sources, held their saturation through centuries in the arid coastal burial grounds where most surviving examples were preserved. Item # 73248

Lot: 272 - Inca Woven Textile Belt with Geometric Panels, Framed

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Inca Empire. A long warp-faced band woven in camelid fiber and cotton, its crimson ground divided into a continuous march of framed panels in indigo, cream, olive and rose. Each compartment holds an abstract device: eight-pointed stars, stepped diamonds, chevrons and schematic figures, the sequence alternating in color so no two neighbors repeat. Both terminals taper into braided cords finished with tufted ends, the fastening system that let the sash be wound repeatedly about the waist. Belts of this scale served as dress and as declaration, their motif vocabulary legible as markers of status and community affiliation. Presently mounted on cotton cloth over a wooden stretcher for display. Cloth was the supreme currency of value in the Andes. Inca administration measured tribute in textiles, stockpiled them in state warehouses, and burned them as the highest form of offering; a garment could be a payment, a diplomatic gift, or a sacrifice. Weaving was largely women's labor, from household production to the aqllakuna, the cloistered chosen women who produced the finest cumbi cloth for the emperor and the state cult. The repeating framed square, or tocapu, is the signature ordering device of late Andean design. Its motifs were not random ornament but a restricted vocabulary of geometric emblems, and scholars have long debated whether particular sequences encoded lineage, rank, place, or something closer to writing. No decipherment commands consensus, but the deliberate, non-repeating alternation of color and device on bands such as this one suggests information rather than mere pattern. Item # 73249

Lot: 273 - Paracas Textile Mantle Border with Hummingbirds, Framed, Ca. 300-100 BCE

Pre-Columbian, Peru, South Coast, Paracas. A processional flight of hummingbirds runs the length of this alpaca mantle border, worked in the single-needle cross-knit loop stitch that Paracas embroiderers mastered on Peru's south coast. Six sections from a single border are presented together: narrow polychrome bands of serial avians, their long beaks dipped into flower-like elements, framed above and below by looped red tabs and a dense fringe of red, indigo, gold, and green yarns. The mantle body would have been a solid field, with color and narrative reserved entirely for its edges. Such garments were worn by men of standing and ultimately accompanied them into the burial bundle. The sections are mounted on a cotton backing over a wooden stretcher and set in a custom wood frame under glass. Paracas textile production is known almost entirely from the necropolis burials of the Paracas Peninsula, where hundreds of mummy bundles were wrapped in layers of embroidered mantles, tunics, and headcloths. The arid desert preserved dyes of extraordinary saturation, and the cross-knit loop stitch, built loop by loop with a single needle rather than woven on a loom, allowed embroiderers to render curvilinear figures impossible in warp-and-weft. The hummingbird style belongs to the linear and block-color repertoire of the late Paracas horizon, when avian imagery, birds of prey, hummingbirds, and composite flying beings, dominated border design. The bird taking nectar carries associations with fertility and transformation that later Nasca artists inherited and elaborated across their ceramics and geoglyphs. Item # 73250

Lot: 274 - Proto-Nazca Indigo Textile Panel with Munecas Head Fringe Border

Pre-Columbian, Peru, South Coast, Proto-Nazca. A broad expanse of camelid wool steeped in deep indigo, its lower edge crowned by one of the most inventive border traditions in Andean weaving. Fourteen stylized human heads, worked in single-needle cross-knit looping, grin out in red, gold, blue and olive, each trailing a thick hank of dark brown yarn as hair. Above them run stacked registers of stepped and geometric motifs in polychrome wool, the fret patterns interlocking in the reciprocal rhythm favored on the south coast. Panels of this scale served as mantles or funerary wrappings, layered around seated bundles in desert cemeteries where the arid sand preserved dye and fiber alike. Mounted for display: professionally sewn to a cloth backing on a wooden stretcher. The three-dimensional knitted figures known as munecas are a hallmark of the Paracas Necropolis and early Nazca horizon on Peru's south coast. Built up stitch by stitch with a single needle in cross-knit looping, a technique unrelated to European knitting, they were worked directly onto the fringe of a woven cloth so that the small heads and figures projected free of the surface and moved as the textile moved. Their repertoire ranges from trophy heads and masked ritualists to birds, felines and plants, and their reading is contested: some scholars see agricultural fertility imagery, others the ancestral or captured heads that dominate south coast iconography more broadly. Indigo of this depth required repeated immersion and oxidation, and the dye was among the most labor-intensive available to Andean weavers. Reserving so large a field for a single saturated color, then concentrating all pattern into the lower band, is a deliberate compositional decision, not an economy. Item # 73251

Lot: 275 - Nazca Checkerboard Mantle Panel, Camelid Wool and Cotton, 1st-6th C.

Pre-Columbian, Peru, South Coast, Nazca. A broad woven panel in camelid wool and cotton, its field alive with interlocking checkerboards of madder red, golden ochre, and deep brown that step diagonally across the cloth like a staircase seen in plan. Solid vertical bars close the composition at both ends, framing the pattern with the discipline Andean weavers reserved for finished garment edges. The blocks are joined tapestry-fashion, each hue butting cleanly against the next, and scattered squares carry a raised pile that catches the light against the flat weave. Likely a mantle or the principal panel of one, worn as prestige dress and, in many South Coast burials, ultimately wrapped around the dead. It has been professionally stitched to a cloth backing over a wooden stretcher and set in a custom lucite box frame. Nazca weavers of Peru's arid south coast worked in an exceptionally stable environment: the desert cemeteries of the Ica and Nazca valleys have preserved fiber for two millennia, and it is largely from these mortuary bundles that the culture's textile achievement is known. Cotton, grown on the coastal plain, supplied the structural yarns; camelid hair, traded down from the highland herds of alpaca and llama, took dye more readily and supplied the saturated reds and yellows seen here.\n\nGeometric block patterning of this kind runs parallel to the better-known Nazca repertoire of mythical beings and trophy heads. The stepped checkerboard is not merely ornament: stepped and diagonal motifs recur across Andean art as a visual shorthand for terraced landscape and ordered space, and their arrangement in ranked blocks anticipates the standardized garment grammar the Inca would later formalize in the tocapu. Item # 73252

Lot: 276 - Nazca Munekas Textile Border Panels with Knit Figures, Framed (3)

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Nazca. A parade of some 190 tiny knit figures marches across three mantle border sections, worked in dyed alpaca fiber by the single-needle cross-knit looping technique for which the south coast of Peru is famous. Each doll stands in the round on two legs, arms linked to its neighbors and batons in hand, its torso patterned with a stepped motif that mimics woven garment design. Faces are fierce and individual: red, blue, ochre and cream, with bared teeth and staring eyes. The dark fringe of the mantle doubles as the figures' hair. Such borders finished elite mantles and shrouds, likely destined for funerary bundles. The sections are mounted on an original panel of plain blue woven cloth, sewn to a cotton backing and stretched over a wooden frame. Three-dimensional cross-knit looping, built up with a single needle rather than a loom, is the signature achievement of Paracas Necropolis and early Nazca textile workshops. The technique allowed embroiderers to build fully sculptural figures at the edge of a plain-weave cloth, so the border became a miniature population rather than a pattern. Collectors have long called these figures "munekas", little dolls, though the ranked, baton-bearing personages more likely represent participants in a procession or ritual dance, a subject repeated across Nazca ceramics and painted cloth. The dyes, drawn from local plants, insects and mineral sources, retain a saturation the arid coastal burial environment preserved for two millennia. Item # 73253

Lot: 277 - Spanish Colonial Silver Farol Processional Lantern with Cherubim, 18th C.

South America, Bolivia, Spanish Colonial. A large ecclesiastical farol, its four sheet-silver walls worked in high repousse and finished with chasing and pierced openwork so candlelight could escape. Each face frames an arched niche between flanking columns hung with flowering vines, rosettes and pomegranates, crowned by a winged cherub head; a domed, pierced cover rises above, and winged cherub feet crouch at the corners. Devotional plaques distinguish the sides: a bearded priest holding a Bible, a cross with the Christogram "IHS", and the initials "IMVR", probably a donor or confraternity mark. A suspension ring at the apex and a small integral candle socket set into the floor confirm its use, carried or hung in church processions, and perhaps serving as a portable sacrarium. Silver flowed out of Potosi in quantities that reshaped the world economy, and a share of it stayed in the Andes, beaten into liturgical furnishings for the churches of Upper Peru. Colonial silversmiths there absorbed Iberian Baroque vocabulary, acanthus, Solomonic columns, seraph heads, and inflected it with a dense, horror-vacui surface and Andean flora: pomegranates, sunflower rosettes, and coiling vines that leave scarcely a blank field. The "IHS" monogram is the Christogram formed from the first three letters of the Greek IHSOUS, adopted as the emblem of the Society of Jesus and ubiquitous across Jesuit and Franciscan foundations in the viceroyalty. Faroles of this scale accompanied the Blessed Sacrament in procession, sheltering the flame that announced its passage through the street; the interior candle socket and apex suspension ring together allowed it to be borne on a pole or hung before an altar. A farol with comparable cherub feet is illustrated in "The Silver and Silversmiths of Peru" (Lima, 1997), fig. 11-77. Item # 73254

Lot: 278 - Spanish Colonial Acetre Holy Water Bucket with Devil of Puno Masks, 18th C.

South America, Bolivia, Lake Titicaca region, Spanish Colonial. A heavy hammered silver acetre, the vessel from which a priest carried holy water for aspersion. The wide flaring upper wall drops to a squat bulbous belly and rises on a low pedestal foot ringed with concentric moldings, the whole raised by hand and left with the soft undulations of the hammer. Two separately cast masks are applied at the rim, horned, bearded and wreathed in curling foliate hair, each pierced by a suspension ring that carries the swinging bail handle. The faces follow the Devil of Puno, a demonic type native to the Puno shore of Lake Titicaca and unmistakable in colonial Andean silver. Substantial in weight and generous in scale, an impressive survival of highland church plate. The acetre (from the Arabic 'al-sitl', bucket) is one of the oldest forms in Christian liturgical furnishing: paired with an aspergillum, it held the blessed water sprinkled over congregation, fields, houses, and the dead. Andean silversmiths inherited the shape from Iberia and then made it their own, working the vast bullion of Potosi into church plate for parishes ringing Lake Titicaca.\n\nThe applied masks are the piece's signature. The Devil of Puno belongs to the diablada, the masked devil-dance that grew out of Corpus Christi and Candelaria processions on the altiplano, where friars enlisted Andean performers to stage the defeat of the damned. The result is a hybrid: a horned European demon rendered with the swelling volumes and vegetal scrollwork of Andean Baroque, and set, without apparent irony, on a vessel of holy water. Attribution of this mask type to the Puno area rests on that regional dance tradition. Item # 73255

Lot: 279 - Bolivian Colonial Style Silver Chocolate Pot with Zoomorphic Spout, 19th C.

South America, Bolivia. A heavy hand-raised silver chocolate pot of compressed globular form, rising on a low ring foot to a stepped collar and a high domed lid crowned by a plume-form finial. The hinged lid opens against a tapered, gently curved handle whose upper terminal is cast as a zoomorphic head, answered across the body by a tubular pour spout finishing in a second modeled beast head. Surfaces are left plain and burnished, the hammer facets still legible under the polish, so the sculptural terminals carry all of the ornament. Vessels of this weight served the hot chocolate that remained the prestige drink of Andean households, poured at table and stirred through the lid aperture with a molinillo. Bolivian silver of the nineteenth century drew directly on the bullion of Potosi, where the Cerro Rico had supplied the Spanish crown since 1545 and continued to feed regional workshops long after independence in 1825. Smiths in La Paz, Sucre, and Potosi worked in a conservative idiom, holding to seventeenth and eighteenth century Iberian shapes (baluster and globular bodies, domed lids, boldly cast animal terminals) generations after European fashion had moved on, which is why colonial-style vessels of this kind are routinely later than their forms suggest. Chocolate arrived in the Andes as a colonial import from Mesoamerica and was quickly absorbed into elite creole ritual. The dedicated chocolatera differs from a coffee or tea pot in one telling detail: the finial or lid is made to admit the shaft of a molinillo, the turned whisk used to raise the froth that drinkers prized above the liquid itself. Item # 73256

Lot: 280 - Spanish Colonial Silver Ewer with Serpent Handle, Bolivia, Late 18th C.

South America, Bolivia, Spanish Colonial. A serpent climbs the back of this hand-raised silver ewer, its jaws clasping the rim and its tail curling down to grip the swelling belly of the vessel. The body rises in three assembled parts: a pear-shaped reservoir with a broad lipped pouring spout, a stepped pedestal foot, and the cast handle. The reptile's length is stamped throughout with overlapping scales, and the underside of the rim carries an engraved border of leafy lappets. Ewers of this type served the table and the sacristy alike, poured for handwashing at meals or at the altar. Serpent handles are rarely encountered on colonial Andean holloware of this date, making the form an unusual survival from the silver-rich viceregal workshops. Bolivia's colonial silver flowed from the Cerro Rico at Potosi, the mountain whose ore financed the Spanish crown for two centuries and supported a dense community of silversmiths in Potosi, La Plata (Sucre), and La Paz. Andean smiths worked to metropolitan Spanish and Peruvian models yet consistently loosened them, favoring hand-raised bodies, generous stamped and engraved ornament, and zoomorphic handles of a kind rarely tolerated in peninsular plate. The serpent is a doubled symbol in this context. In Christian iconography it carries the weight of Eden and of the bronze serpent raised by Moses; in Andean cosmology the amaru, a serpent of the lower world, mediated between the earth and the waters that fed it. Colonial workshops staffed largely by indigenous and mestizo craftsmen often let the two readings stand together, a habit of visual bilingualism that runs through Andean colonial painting and architecture as well. Item # 73257

Lot: 281 - Bolivian Colonial Style Silver Chocolate Pot with Bail Handle, 19th C.

South America, Bolivia. A heavy hand-raised silver chocolate pot with a squat, tapering bulbous body and a domed, stepped cover crowned by a flower-bud finial. The scalloped bail handle swings between two foliate lug attachments riveted to the shoulder, and a long curved spout rises from the lower body to pour clear of the rim. The hammered surface is left undecorated, its polished sweep and generous gauge doing the work that chasing would elsewhere. Chocolate, whipped to a froth with a molinillo, was the prestige drink of colonial and republican Andean households, and vessels of this weight served the table rather than the kitchen. Bolivian silver of the 19th century drew on the enormous output of Potosi, the Cerro Rico whose ore had bankrolled the Spanish crown for three centuries. Long after independence in 1825, provincial smiths continued to work in a conservative idiom inherited from colonial models: raised bodies, minimal ornament, and heavy gauge, with the metal itself as the display of wealth. The swing bail handle and high-set curved spout descend from the Iberian chocolatera, a form purpose-built for a beverage that required stirring and repeated frothing before serving. Item # 73258

Lot: 282 - Bolivian Colonial Silver Oval Bowls, Pair, 19th C.

South America, Bolivia. A matched pair of substantial hand-raised silver bowls, each of shallow oval form with softly canted walls and a thickened, reeded rim. The exterior carries a band of concentric ribs encircling the mid-body, below which runs a crisply chased zigzag or sawtooth register that repeats in relief across the underside. Hammer facets remain legible beneath the polish, marking the vessels as raised from sheet rather than cast or spun. Weighty in the hand and free of applied ornament beyond these linear registers, they belong to the Andean domestic and table silver tradition, where bullion from the highland mines was worked into serving wares whose value lay equally in metal and in craft. Likely made as a companion set for the table. Bolivian silver of the 19th century sits at the end of a long arc that begins at Potosi, the Cerro Rico whose ore bankrolled the Spanish empire and made silver the ordinary material of prosperous Andean households long after the viceregal period closed. Provincial smiths there worked in an idiom that stayed deliberately plain: raised forms, reeded rims, and chased geometric registers descended from colonial models rather than the naturalistic repousse fashionable in Europe at the same date. Unmarked wares are the norm, since much regional production fell outside any assay office, and weight rather than a maker's stamp was the measure a buyer trusted. Item # 73259

Lot: 283 - Spanish Colonial Fish Platter, Mexico City, Marked Forcada, Ca. 1790-1810

Central America, Mexico, Mexico City, Spanish Colonial. A broad oval dish of hand-raised silver, its shallow well framed by a wide sloping rim that swells to gentle points at either end, a profile long favored for serving fish at table. The surface is left plain and unengraved, letting the metal's own bright planishing carry the ornament. Marks tell the rest: on the upper rim a crowned R with "Rozas" and "Sette"; on the reverse a crowned M for Mexico City, "Caamano" for the assayer, and the maker's stamp read as Jose Antonio Forcada. Beside them runs the burilada, the scraped serpentine furrow left where the assayer lifted a sliver of metal for testing, the signature of colonial fiscal control. Silver leaving a Mexico City workshop passed through a tightly regulated sequence before it could be sold. The crowned M identified the city, a separate stamp named the assayer of record, and the burilada, a wriggled scoop taken from an inconspicuous surface, provided the physical sample by which fineness was confirmed and the royal quinto reckoned. Colonial American silver is therefore often more densely marked than its European contemporaries, and those marks, rather than any applied ornament, are what date and place a piece.\n\nThe marks on this platter were examined by Michael Haskell. Item # 73260

Lot: 284 - Bolivian Silver Torito Bull Vessels and Tassito Cups, 19th C. (4)

South America, Bolivia, Colonial tradition. A quartet of Andean festival silver: two solid cast bulls and two flaring sheet-silver beakers. The toritos stand four-square with curved horns, curled tails, and incised caparisons of dotted and banded ornament, each hollowed through an opening in the back and pouring through a spout worked into the snout. The tassitos rise from faceted lower walls, girdled top and bottom with twisted wire, their bodies chased with fluted arcades and fitted with ornate zoomorphic handles terminating in rosettes and scrolled beasts. Vessels of this kind served pisco and other spirits at celebrations, the bulls reserved for the head of the household and the cups passed to guests. The torito is one of the great survivals of Andean colonial art: an Old World animal, introduced with the Spanish, absorbed into an indigenous vocabulary of ritual drinking that reaches back to the Inca kero and the pre-Hispanic pacha. Cattle became emblems of household wealth and fertility in the altiplano, and silver bull vessels were brought out at patronal feasts, harvest rites, and marriages, poured for the man of the house while lesser guests drank from the accompanying beakers. Bolivia's Potosi silver made such display possible even in modest rural households.\n\nA comparable pair of bulls is illustrated in Colores de America, Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, Santiago, 1992, p. 54. Item # 73261

Lot: 285 - Paquimé Tripod Bird Effigy Vessel, Casas Grandes

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Casas Grandes. A hand-built polychrome effigy jar with a modeled bird rising from the wall of the vessel, the head and beaked face projecting outward above a compact body raised on three short supporting feet. The cream slip ground carries geometric ornament in black and iron-red: stepped panels, hatched triangles, banded chevrons, and concentric linework. The everted rim is edged in red, and the effigy's eye and beak are picked out in pigment. The vessel was coiled and burnished by hand, without the use of a wheel. Effigy vessels of this type combined utility with zoomorphic imagery and are associated with domestic and ceremonial use in the Casas Grandes region. Bird imagery recurs throughout Paquimé iconography and has been associated with water, sky, and fertility. Item # 202663

Lot: 286 - Casas Grandes Ramos Polychrome Olla - Geometric Design

Casas Grandes Ramos Polychrome Olla, Chihuahua. A globular earthenware olla rising from a rounded base to a short, out-flaring neck, with cream slip ground painted in black and red-brown. Nested chevrons and concentric triangles sweep across the shoulder, punctuated by solid discs and a coiling scroll, in the style known as Ramos Polychrome. The vessel was built by coil and scrape, burnished, and painted with mineral pigments. Storage and serving vessels of this kind formed part of the domestic and mortuary assemblage at Paquimé (Casas Grandes), a trade center of the northern Chihuahuan desert region. Item # 202625

Lot: 287 - Casas Grandes Ramos Polychrome Olla, Chihuahua

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Casas Grandes (Paquime). A tall ovoid olla rises from a rounded base to a gently everted rim, its buff surface animated by a bold vocabulary of red and black geometry. Interlocking stepped frets, banded diagonals, and terraced key motifs sweep around the shoulder and body, the crisp brushwork set against the pale slip in a rhythm that reads as both architectural and restless. Hand-built by coil and burnished before firing, the vessel exemplifies the Ramos Polychrome tradition of the Paquime culture centered at Casas Grandes in present-day Chihuahua. Such jars served domestic storage and water-carrying functions while carrying the visual language of a sophisticated trading center that linked the American Southwest to Mesoamerica. The stepped motifs likely evoke clouds, rain, and the terraced world so central to the region's cosmology. nd dependent on careful water management. Item # 202665

Lot: 288 - Caddo Engraved Blackware Bottle | Trans Mississippi South

Native American, Caddo. A globular bottle with a tall, flaring neck, the burnished blackware body carrying engraved scroll and spiral decoration. Sweeping scrolls and interlocking spirals wrap the shoulder, some rows finished with tick-marks along the curves. The incisions cut through the smoke-clouded surface to reveal the paler clay beneath, producing a light-on-dark design, with patches of oxidized orange near the base. Bottles of this type served the Caddo peoples of the Trans-Mississippi South as containers for liquids and are documented as grave goods in burial contexts. Item # 203161

Lot: 289 - St. Johns Black-on-Red Bowl, White Mountain Red Ware

Native American, Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi). A hemispherical earthenware bowl rising from a rounded base to an everted rim, the exterior left in burnished red slip. The interior carries a composition of hatched bands, sawtooth triangles, and an interlocking spiral, rendered in dark organic paint against the red ground. This is St. Johns Black-on-Red, a type of White Mountain Red Ware produced across the southern Colorado Plateau. The design, with parallel lines pivoting into a central volute, is characteristic of the Cibola ceramic tradition. Vessels of this type served domestic and social functions for holding and serving food, with painted interiors visible when the bowl was in use. Item # 203920

Lot: 290 - Ancestral Puebloan Black-on-White Seed Jar, Four Corners

Native American, Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi). A globular seed jar of buff clay, with a short flaring neck rising from a rounded body. The surface carries black-on-white decoration, with mineral-paint designs over a slip. A band of interlocking scrolls and stepped frets encircles the neck, while the shoulder and body carry hatched zigzags in opposing diagonals, characteristic of Pueblo II and III wares. The vessel is hand-coiled, scraped smooth, and painted with a yucca brush, and would have served domestic storage functions for seed grain or water in Four Corners region settlements. between ground and design. The Ancestral Puebloans, historically known by the Navajo-derived term "Anasazi," inhabited the Colorado Plateau of the American Southwest, building the masonry pueblos and cliff dwellings of Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. Their black-on-white ceramics, produced from roughly the 9th through 13th centuries, are known for a geometric vocabulary of hatching, scrolls, and interlocking frets. The use of hatched-line filling, as opposed to solid black, helps place such wares within the Pueblo II to III horizon. Mineral and carbon paints were applied with yucca-leaf brushes over a kaolin slip, then fired in a reducing atmosphere to produce contrast between ground and design. This item may fall under the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony (STOP) Act or other federal laws protecting Native American, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian cultural heritage. As such, it is not eligible for international shipping, and may also be subject to repatriation or tribal consultation within the United States. Buyers are responsible for ensuring their legal right to acquire, possess, or transfer this item under all applicable laws. This lot cannot be shipped outside the United States. Item # 204196

Lot: 291 - Ancestral Puebloan Black-on-White Pottery Jar - Tularosa

Anasazi. Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi), Cibola White Ware, American Southwest, ca. AD 1150–1300. A broad-shouldered storage olla of compressed globular form, the body swelling to a wide equator before drawing in sharply to a short, nearly vertical neck. The vessel is coil-built and scraped thin, then finished in a chalk-white slip and painted in dark mineral pigment with a design of considerable sophistication. Turkey foot tracks adorn the neck. The composition is built entirely on opposition. Large stepped and terraced units filled with fine parallel hachure interlock against units of equal weight in solid black, each answering the other across a serrated boundary so that neither can be read as figure and neither as ground. The hachure is drawn with remarkable control — lines close, even, and consistently angled within each cell, framed throughout by heavier bounding strokes that hold the pattern in tension. The design wraps the full circumference without repeat or panel break, resolving at the shoulder against a band of opposed sawtooth triangles, and continues onto the neck in a pair of simple arrow-like devices. Item # 204241

Lot: 292 - Anasazi Tularosa Black-on-White Bird Effigy Vessel

Native American, Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloan), Tularosa Black-on-White. A ceramic bird effigy vessel with a rounded body, the breast tapering to a tail while the head lifts on a short neck to a hooked beak, with concentric-circle eyes. The white slip carries mineral-black painted decoration in the Ancestral Puebloan style: hatched bands, stepped frets, dentate triangles, and parallel-line fields arranged in registers across the body and neck. An opening at the top of the neck served the vessel's function as a container, likely for water or seed. The piece is hand-coiled, scraped smooth, and painted freehand. Tularosa Black-on-White is a Cibola White Ware type of the Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) tradition, produced in west-central New Mexico and east-central Arizona during the Pueblo III period, ca. 1100 to 1250 CE. The design system interlocks solid forms, frets, keys, and sawtooth triangles, with panels of fine parallel hatching, giving equal visual weight to both elements. The black line derives from either iron-bearing mineral paint or boiled Rocky Mountain beeplant (guaco), fused into the slip during firing. Effigy vessels are less common than bowls and jars, and avian forms are associated with water, breath, and directionality in Puebloan cosmology. Item # 204194

Lot: 293 - Ancestral Puebloan Tularosa Black-on-White Bird Effigy

Native American, Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi), Tularosa Black-on-White. A ceramic bird effigy vessel, with a rounded body rising into a tail and an upturned head, the eyes ringed by concentric bands and the crown stippled with dots. The piece is hand-coiled and slipped in white, with black-on-white decoration in the Tularosa style: stepped zigzags paired with parallel hatching, and a checkerboard field bounded by framing lines. Small pierced suspension loops at the tail and back allowed the vessel to be hung. Item # 204193

Lot: 294 - Snowflake Black-on-White Effigy-Handle Jar, Ancestral Puebloan

Native American, Southwest United States, Arizona/New Mexico, Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi), Snowflake Black-on-White. A globular ceramic jar rising to a constricted neck with a small spout, the cream-white slip decorated in black geometric painting. Interlocking stepped frets and rectilinear scrolls cover the body in the Cibola white ware tradition, with a banded key pattern encircling the neck. A small modeled handle, with a zoomorphic quality suggestive of an effigy form, projects from the shoulder opposite the spout. The jar is built by coil-and-scrape technique and painted with mineral pigment, and served domestic storage or serving functions in a Puebloan household. Item # 204195

Lot: 295 - Mississippian Portrait Head Vessel with Shell Bead Ear Ornaments

Native American, Mississippian culture. A salmon-toned ceramic vessel modeled as a human face, its open mouth cut by an angular nose, lidded ovoid eyes, and parted lips incised with a row of teeth. C-shaped ears stand proud of the wall, each pierced with four holes hung with strands of ancient disc shell beads. The surface is burnished to a soft sheen, with mineral and earthen deposits pooled in the recesses. Head vessels of this type were shaped as ceramic portraits, likely commemorating ancestors or honored dead, and are recovered chiefly from burial contexts in the Mississippi Valley. The rendering favors essential planes over detail: a face reduced to nose, eye, and mouth, yet unmistakably individual. The Mississippian tradition, the mound-building societies centered on Cahokia and spreading through the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, produced the most sophisticated ceramic sculpture of ancient North America. Head pots and portrait vessels concentrate in the northeastern Arkansas and southeastern Missouri region, where a small corpus of surviving examples represents one of the rarest classes of Native American pottery. Their function remains debated: candidate readings include trophy heads taken in warfare, mortuary portraits of the deceased, and ritual containers for ceremonial liquids.\n\nMarine shell was among the most valuable materials in the Mississippian world, moved inland from the Gulf Coast along long-distance exchange networks and worked into disc beads, gorgets, and cups. The presence of pierced ears strung with shell strands here signals a figure of rank, adorned exactly as an elite person would have been in life. Item # 73262

Lot: 296 - Hohokam Red-on-Buff Storage Jar, Medallion Design, TL'd

Native American, Hohokam. A broad-shouldered earthenware storage jar rising from a rounded base to an angled shoulder, tapering to a short, everted neck. The buff-colored surface is painted in iron-red slip with a repeating design: encircled medallions quartered by a cross and filled with paired lenticular eyes, alternating with diagonal bands and hatched triangles around the vessel's girth. This red-on-buff decoration is characteristic of Hohokam ceramic tradition, associated with agricultural communities of the Sonoran desert who developed canal systems along the Salt and Gila rivers. The vessel was formed by the paddle-and-anvil technique rather than coiling. Jars of this type served to store grain, water, and seed. This item may fall under the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony (STOP) Act or other federal laws protecting Native American, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian cultural heritage. As such, it is not eligible for international shipping, and may also be subject to repatriation or tribal consultation within the United States. Buyers are responsible for ensuring their legal right to acquire, possess, or transfer this item under all applicable laws. This lot cannot be shipped outside the United States. Item # 203557

Lot: 297 - Hohokam Paddle-and-Anvil Jar, Sonoran Desert Tradition

Hohokam, Native American. A broad-shouldered earthenware storage jar rising from a rounded base to an angled shoulder, tapering to a short, everted neck. The buff-colored surface is painted in iron-red slip with a repeating design: chevrons quartered by a cross and filled with paired lenticular eyes, alternating with diagonal bands and hatched triangles around the vessel's girth. This red-on-buff decoration is characteristic of Hohokam ceramic tradition, associated with agricultural communities of the Sonoran desert who developed canal systems along the Salt and Gila rivers. The vessel was formed by the paddle-and-anvil technique rather than coiling. Jars of this type served to store grain, water, and seed. Item # 203556

Lot: 298 - Mississippian Shell Hand Pendant with Incised Palm

Native American, Mississippian culture. A human hand cut from marine shell, fingers splayed and the thumb swung wide, its silhouette pared to the essentials. Shallow incised lines articulate the knuckles and finger joints, while faint engraved traces across the palm suggest a further motif, perhaps a bird, now largely obscured by mineral encrustation. A small hole drilled at the edge of the thumb allowed suspension, so the ornament likely hung at the throat or was sewn to regalia. The open hand belongs to the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex vocabulary of eyes, crosses, and raptors, and was worn as an emblem of status and cosmological allegiance rather than as simple adornment. Mounted on a custom block pedestal. Hand imagery is one of the most persistent motifs of the Mississippian world, appearing on engraved shell cups and gorgets from Spiro, Moundville, and Etowah, sometimes alone, sometimes with an eye or a cross set in the palm. Scholars generally read the hand-and-eye as a celestial sign, associated with the portal in the night sky through which souls travel, and with the constellation modern viewers know as Orion. Marine shell reached the interior river valleys through long-distance exchange from the Gulf coast, and its whiteness and rarity made it a prestige material reserved for ornaments carrying ritual or rank. Item # 73263

Lot: 299 - Mississippian Mother of Pearl Bird Pendants, Miniature Pair

Native American, Mississippian culture. A matched pair of miniature raptors cut from marine shell, each carved to follow the natural curve of the nacre so the bodies swell and the wings thin toward feathered edges. Rounded heads carry drilled eyes and hooked beaks, while the raised wings and notched tails suggest a bird caught mid-flight. Biconical perforations along the lower wing edge allowed the plaques to be sewn or suspended, likely as regalia ornaments worn on garments or as pendants. The lustrous surface has mellowed to a warm ivory tone with scattered earthen deposits. Avian imagery, especially the falcon, stands at the center of Mississippian iconography, and shell was among the most highly valued media for its rendering. Mounted together on a custom pedestal base. Marine shell reached the interior river valleys of the American Southeast through long-distance exchange networks that carried Gulf Coast lightning whelk and other species hundreds of miles inland. In Mississippian centers such as Cahokia, Moundville, Etowah, and Spiro, worked shell was reserved for gorgets, beads, cups, and small effigy plaques associated with elite burials and ceremonial deposits. The falcon and the composite falcon-man ("birdman") are among the defining images of the iconographic complex once labeled the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, linked to warfare, chiefly authority, and the Upper World of a tiered cosmos. Small avian ornaments of this kind, perforated for attachment, would have read as emblems of that authority when worn. Item # 73264

Lot: 300 - Prehistoric Hohokam Slate Pigment Palette

Native American, Southwest United States, Hohokam culture, ca. 500 to 1400 CE. A Hohokam slate implement or pigment palette, carved from a dark, fine-grained stone slab and shaped into a rectangular form with worked edges. The surface shows areas of smoothing and wear consistent with grinding or mixing activities, suggesting use in the preparation of pigments, minerals, or other substances. A beveled edge along one side may have facilitated handling or scraping during use. Stone palettes and grinding implements of this type were used in Hohokam craft traditions to process mineral pigments, plant materials, or other compounds employed in painting, ceremonial decoration, or domestic production. The flat working surface and slate material would have suited it for grinding ochre and other colorants used to decorate pottery, textiles, or the body. Size: 7.8" L x 3.4" W (19.8 cm x 8.6 cm) Item # 200238

Lot: 301 - Mississippian Shell Gorget, Pintlala, 1929 Excavation

Native American, Mississippian culture, found at Pintlala, Montgomery County, Alabama. A disc cut from the columellar wall of a marine whelk shell, with a ring of small punched dots tracing the perimeter. The gorget was suspended at the throat by a single drilled perforation. Recovered in 1929 from an urn burial at Pintlala, in central Alabama within the Alabama River drainage, an area associated with dense Mississippian settlement. The piece carries documented field provenance from its 1929 excavation. Size: 3.1" W x 2.8" H (7.9 cm W x 7.1 cm H) Item # 202898

Lot: 302 - Precontract Quapaw Polychrome Water Bottle, Arkansas

Native American, Southeastern United States, modern-day Arkansas, Poinsett County, Quapaw culture, ca. 1500 to 1700 CE. A Quapaw water bottle with red and cream banding, a tall flaring neck, and a sharply carinated body. Hand-coiled, the bottle presents a flattened globular lower body that angles upward into a defined shoulder before narrowing into a cylindrical neck with a flared rim. The surface is decorated in horizontal bands of red pigment alternating with natural buff clay, forming a polychrome pattern. The banding is arranged symmetrically around the widest point of the body. Size: 8.3" Diameter x 10.7" H (21.1 cm x 27.2 cm) Item # 201328

Lot: 303 - Mississippian Fish Effigy Bottle, Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

Native American, Mississippian culture, Southeast Missouri. A burnished blackware bottle modeled in the form of a flatfish, with a compressed, lenticular body reflecting the asymmetry characteristic of flounder and related species. The head is turned to one side, the dorsal fin runs along one flank while the anal and pelvic fins emerge from the other, corresponding to the anatomy of a flatfish that swims on its side. A tall cylindrical neck rises from the ovoid body, a form characteristic of Late Mississippian water bottles produced across the central and southeastern Mississippi Valley. The surface is smoothed with a carbon-rich patina consistent with reduction firing. Fish effigies recur within Mississippian iconography, where aquatic beings are associated with the Beneath World in the tripartite cosmology of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Bottles of this type are understood to have accompanied burials or held ritual liquids. Item # 203004

Lot: 304 - Caddo Incised Pottery Jar | Trans-Mississippi South

Native American, Caddo, Mississippian culture. A hand-built earthenware jar attributed to Caddoan potters, with a rounded base rising to a slightly flaring rim. The upper register is scored with parallel hatching, broken by a pair of small applied lugs set below the rim. A horizontal incised band divides the textured neck from the lower body, where the clay is worked into swirling motifs, each curl spiraling inward. The combed and incised treatment is characteristic of Caddo ceramic traditions in the trans-Mississippi south, where vessels of this kind served domestic and ceremonial roles and are documented from ancestral mounds. The volute decoration has been associated with references to water, wind, or cosmological motion in Caddo iconography. Item # 203022

Lot: 305 - Native American Woodland Period 3/4-Groove Stone Axe

Native American, Woodland Period. A hardstone axe head, pecked and ground into a weight-forward form, with a dark green-black surface and mineral staining. A three-quarter groove encircles the poll, leaving one face open where the haft was seated and bound with rawhide or sinew. The bit tapers to a rounded working edge, worn from use. Axes of this type served felling, hewing, and woodworking functions in Eastern Woodlands village life, and are understood to have held status as both practical tools and prestige items. Item # 204023

Lot: 306 - Woodland Steatite Human Effigy Pipe, ex-Museum

Native American, Woodland period. A seated human effigy pipe carved from brown steatite, with knees drawn up and arms wrapped around a broad pipe bowl positioned between the figure's thighs. The head bears ridged brows, a flattened nose, deep-set eyes, and a small parted mouth, with detailing on the fingers clasping the bowl and the toes of the feet. The forward-hunched shoulders may indicate that the figure depicts a hunchback, a condition sometimes associated with special spiritual status in Woodland-period iconography. The steatite surface carries a worn patina consistent with handling. Pipes of this type served ceremonial and social functions, with tobacco used in ritual and council contexts. The hollowed bowl and surviving stem channel indicate that this was a functional object. This pipe carries an unusually deep and distinguished provenance. It passed through Parke-Bernet, New York, in 1976, the storied American auction house absorbed by Sotheby's, and through Skinner of Marlborough, Massachusetts, the respected Americana and tribal art house now part of Bonhams. Earlier still it belonged to the collection of the Evergreen Museum and Library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, bearing inventory number 853. A continuous chain of recognized auction and institutional custody of this depth is rare for Woodland-period material and meaningfully strengthens the object's standing. Item # 203034

Lot: 307 - Iroquois Bone Effigy Comb with Raccoon Finial, Cameron Site, NY

Native American, Iroquois, Cameron Site, Madison County, New York. A miniature comb cut from a single sliver of bone, its openwork crest carved as a stylized raccoon standing in profile above a pierced rectangular void. Nine slender tines, tapered and rounded at the tips, descend from a plain shoulder, worked with a fine saw or blade and smoothed to a mellow tan surface. The animal is reduced to essentials: arched back, blunt muzzle, pricked ear, forelegs merging into the comb's frame. Such effigy combs served as personal hair ornaments and markers of identity, the crowning creature perhaps invoking a clan association or a guardian animal. An old painted black collection number, "C123", remains on the face. Effigy combs are among the most accomplished small carvings of the Iroquoian world. Worked from split mammal bone or antler, they proliferated through the contact and early historic periods, when iron knives and files let carvers cut ever finer tines and ever more elaborate crests. Crest imagery runs from single quadrupeds and birds to paired human figures and, later, scenes borrowed from colonial life. The Cameron Site in Madison County, New York, lies in the Oneida heartland and is a documented early historic occupation that has yielded a notable group of these carvings.\n\nThe lot is accompanied by an old newspaper clipping reproducing this very comb with its earlier auction record, and by the handwritten collection label naming the Bigford and Casteline collections. Item # 73265

Lot: 308 - Native American Charmstone Head, Northern California

Native American, Northwestern California. A carved stone effigy head, worked from a rounded cobble into an abstracted anthropomorphic form, with a ridged brow, raised nose, and incised mouth. A single drilled perforation pierces one side. The surface shows a weathered, pitted patina consistent with age. Carved stone heads of this type are known from several Native Californian traditions, where small stone effigies served ceremonial or ritual functions; some examples are associated with "charmstones," though precise function is rarely documented for individual pieces absent excavation context. Item # 203959

Lot: 309 - Santa Ana Polychrome Olla with Floral Motifs, 19th C.

Native American, Pueblo, Santa Ana or San Ildefonso. A globular hand-coiled earthenware olla, its wide shoulder tapering to a short flared neck and rolled rim. The upper zone carries a chalky white slip painted with red-brown and dark brown floral sprays, feather-like pendants, and a scalloped chain of looping devices at the framing line. Below the midbody the surface shifts to a burnished terracotta slip relieved by an interlacing white scallop band, the classic Tunyo division of red base and white field. Mineral and vegetal pigments were applied with a chewed yucca brush before firing. A utilitarian storage and water vessel of the Rio Grande pueblos, made for household use in the era when floral vocabulary entered Pueblo painting. The bipartite scheme called Tunyo, named for the black mesa near San Ildefonso, sets a red-slipped underbody against a white-slipped upper zone and was shared across the northern and middle Rio Grande pueblos in the second half of the 19th century, which is precisely why attributions between Santa Ana, San Ildefonso, and their neighbors remain fluid. The naturalistic flowers, leaves, and drooping feather forms reflect the absorption of Hispanic and Mexican decorative vocabulary into a painting tradition that had long favored geometry, a shift accelerated by railroad-era trade after 1880. Legacy cataloguing filed this vessel as Polacca. That term properly designates a Hopi-Tewa ware of the same period and does not describe the slip structure or palette seen here; the Rio Grande attribution is retained instead. Item # 73266

Lot: 310 - Northwest Coast Carved Horn Spoon with Bear Crest Figure, 19th C.

Native American, Northwest Coast. A translucent horn spoon whose handle rises into a crest figure of a bear seated on its haunches, forepaws drawn to the chin, long claws incised in shallow relief. Broad grinning mouth, ovoid eyes of the eagle type, and small perked ears crown the composition, the forms fitted to the natural taper of the horn. Below, the shaft opens into a long, deep ladle bowl with a warm amber glow where the horn thins. Spoons of this type were steamed, spread, and worked into shape, then reserved for feast and potlatch service, where the crest animal on the handle announced the lineage of the household serving the food. Mounted on a custom metal base. Horn spoons and ladles were among the most prestigious serving implements of the Northwest Coast, produced chiefly among the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian and traded widely along the coast. Mountain sheep horn, softened by prolonged steaming or boiling, could be splayed into a bowl and the solid tip carved into stacked crest figures; the more elaborate examples joined a sheep-horn bowl to a mountain goat horn handle with rivets or sinew lashing. At a potlatch, the size and ornament of the spoon signaled the standing of the host, and the crest creature, here a bear, functioned as heraldry rather than decoration, naming the clan whose ancestral encounter with that being entitled it to the image. Item # 73267

Lot: 311 - Iroquois Ball Head Club, Carved Hardwood War Club, 18th-19th C.

Native American, Northeastern Woodlands, probably Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), New York State. A ball head club carved from a single length of dense hardwood, likely maple. The long handle is worked into four flat panels, canting at a slight angle near the top where it swells into a globular striking head, the join undercut so the ball reads as a fist gripped by the shaft. A row of incised lines notches the lower edge of the handle, perhaps tally marks recording coups or kills. The surface carries a deep red-brown patina raised by handling and, likely, applied pigment. Weapons of this form were carried across much of Native North America; the type served as both a close-quarters striking weapon and an emblem of a warrior's standing. The ball head club is the signature weapon of the Northeastern Woodlands and predates European contact, appearing in some of the earliest European depictions of Haudenosaunee and Algonquian warriors. Carved from a single billet, ideally from a root burl or the crook of a hardwood trunk so the grain ran continuously into the head, the form married mechanical efficiency to iconographic force: the swollen knob concentrated the whole mass of the club at the point of impact. Examples remained in use well into the nineteenth century, though the spread of trade muskets steadily reduced them from battlefield arms to objects of rank, ceremony, and presentation. Item # 73268

Lot: 312 - Navajo Germantown Eye Dazzler Blanket, Serrate Diamonds

Native American, Southwestern United States, Navajo (Dine). A Germantown wool blanket in the "Eye Dazzler" style, woven with concentric serrated diamonds radiating from the center and flanked by zigzag lightning bands in red, gold, sage green, dark maroon, and cream, with small cross and stepped motifs scattered across the field. Germantown wool, commercially spun and aniline-dyed, was widely used by Navajo weavers beginning in the late 19th century, enabling the bold, saturated colors and intricate serrate patterning characteristic of the Eye Dazzler style. Fringed selvage edges throughout. Item # 204013

Lot: 313 - Salish Coiled Cedar Root Storage Basket, Imbricated Design

Native American, Northwestern United States / Canada, Salish. A rectangular coiled storage basket built from cedar root, with walls rising in tight, even slats to a flat fitted lid set between two looped carrying handles. The exterior carries imbricated lozenges in the surface-folded technique characteristic of Salish coiling, with strips of bear grass and dyed cherry bark caught beneath each stitch, the pattern visible only on the exterior surface. Baskets of this type served domestic storage purposes, including dried foods, wool, clothing, or trade goods, and were later produced for sale. Item # 203342

Lot: 314 - Pair Navajo Silver Turquoise Cuff Bracelets (Victor Hicks)

Native American, Southwestern United States, Navajo (Diné), ca. mid to late 20th century CE. Both stamped with Victor Hicks maker's mark "V. HICKS" on the interior of the band. A pair of Navajo silver and turquoise cuff bracelets by Victor Hicks. The first bracelet features five oval green turquoise cabochons, with mottled golden-black matrices, each stone framed in silver bezels and separated by polished silver drops; the inner band is stamped with rope and sunrise motifs. The companion bracelet displays four large golden-hued stones, likely Royston or Pilot Mountain turquoise, set within smooth silver bezels along a triple-bar cuff. Size of opening (green): 1" W (2.5 cm); of opening (brown): 1.4" W (3.6 cm); of larger cuff (greenstone): 3.2" L x 2.1" W (8.1 cm x 5.3 cm); silver quality: 93.8%; total weight: 165.7 grams Victor Hicks is known for his silversmithing and his attention to the natural character of turquoise. His work reflects the Navajo tradition of incorporating landscape motifs into wearable silverwork. Item # 196909

Lot: 315 - Large Yokuts Polychrome Coiled Basket, Rattlesnake Motif

Native American, Western United States, California, Yokuts culture. A large Yokuts polychrome coiled basket, measuring 20 inches (50 cm) in diameter. The basket is coiled to the right on a foundation of bundled deergrass, sewn with sedge root for the light tan ground, redbud for the reddish brown, and bracken fern root for the black. The walls display vertical columns of stacked hourglass and alternating diamond motifs, a pattern associated with the diamond markings of rattlesnakes native to the region. The basket shows even stitching and a consistent, flaring form. Item # 203589

Lot: 316 - Stegodon Fossil Skull with Tusks and Mandible, Pleistocene, Java

Pleistocene, Solo River, Central Java, Indonesia. A monumental fossil skull of the extinct proboscidean Stegodon, tall in the cranium and short in the face, its paired tusks projecting forward almost parallel and nearly touching, so the trunk would have rested atop them rather than hung between. The mineralized bone carries a deep brown, lustrous surface, with the plate-ridged molars still visible in their sockets, the dental trait that gave the genus its name. An associated mandible preserves the heavy horizontal ramus and both condyles, tooth rows exposed along the occlusal margin. Assembled from original fossil elements with areas of made-up fill, the whole presenting as a mounted display specimen of a Javanese Pleistocene giant. Stegodon, named for the ridged lophs of its molars, belongs to the extinct family Stegodontidae, long grouped with true elephants but now recognized as a separate proboscidean lineage descended from the more archaic Stegolophodon. The genus first appears in Late Miocene strata in Asia, spread into Africa where it died out during the Pliocene, and persisted across South, Southeast and East Asia into the Late Pleistocene, reaching as far southeast as Timor.\n\nThe Solo River terraces of Central Java are among the richest proboscidean fossil grounds on earth, the same deposits that yielded the earliest Homo erectus finds. Through the Pleistocene, fluctuating sea levels repeatedly joined and severed the Sundaland landmass, and Stegodon remains recovered from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines trace those drowned corridors. Island populations of the genus are also famous for dwarfing, most notably on Flores, where small-bodied Stegodon shared the landscape with Homo floresiensis. **Shipping charges shown are for sculpture only, shipped in cardboard boxes. We recommend a wooden crate for safety. Additional cost for crate: $400. The custom pedestal base will cost an additional $850 domestic, $1,750 non-USA, plus $450 for a wooden crate.** Item # 73269

Lot: 317 - Dinocrocuta "Terrible Hyena" Fossil Skull, Central Asia

Central Asia, Miocene Period. A fossilized skull of Dinocrocuta, meaning "terrible hyena," a large carnivore of the Miocene grasslands of Central Asia. The cranium and mandible are preserved in creamy white and pale beige mineralized bone, with molars and canines nearly 2 inches long. Dinocrocuta weighed up to 550 lb., comparable in size to a black bear, and is understood to have been capable of preying on large mammals. The skull is mounted on a custom stand with the jaw positioned open. Fossil remains of this percrocutid family member are uncommon in the market. Item # 203058

Lot: 318 - Rare Dinocrocuta "Terrible Hyena" Fossil Skull, Central Asia

Central Asia, Late Miocene Epoch, Tortonian to Messinian, ca. 11.6 to 5.3 million years ago. A fossilized skull from Dinocrocuta, meaning "terrible hyena," a large mammal with hyena- or dog-like features. The bone has fossilized with a white and beige hue, and the teeth are well preserved; the canines measure nearly 2 inches in length. The lower mandible is mounted to hang slightly open, displaying the dentition. Dinocrocuta weighed up to 550 lb. (250 kg), comparable in size to a black bear, and is understood to have been capable of preying on large mammals including rhinos. Fossil remains of Dinocrocuta are uncommon in the market. Size: 12" W x 14.1" H x 14" D (30.5 cm W x 35.8 cm H x 35.6 cm D); on included custom stand: 16" H (40.6 cm H); canine tooth: 1.8" L (4.6 cm L) Item # 202083

Lot: 319 - Mosasaur Skull Fossil, Juvenile, Upper Cretaceous

North Africa, Upper Cretaceous, ca. 80 to 66 million years ago. A fossilized mosasaur skull with articulated jaws and teeth, likely from a juvenile individual. The elongated snout and hinged jaws are lined with conical teeth, with additional pterygoid teeth visible along the palate that aided in gripping prey. These marine reptiles possessed streamlined bodies, laterally flattened tails, and paddle-like limbs, and moved through warm shallow seas in pursuit of fish, sharks, and other prey. During the Late Cretaceous, mosasaurs achieved a broad global distribution across ancient oceans and inland seaways. Size: 9.5" L x 3.5" W (24.1 cm x 8.9 cm); 9.5" H (24.1 cm) on included custom stand. Item # 202222

Lot: 320 - Tyrannosaurus Rex Foot Claw Fossil, Late Cretaceous

North America, United States, South Dakota, Harding County, Hell Creek Formation, Late Cretaceous. North America, Western United States, Late Cretaceous, ca. 68 to 65.5 million years ago. A foot claw from Tyrannosaurus rex. The hind limbs of T. rex featured three primary toes with claws, along with a smaller rear dewclaw positioned behind the ankle. This curved claw likely comes from one of the main toes and measures 9.5 inches (24.1 cm) along the outer curve. The inner core and root retain original fossil material, with restoration added to complete the form of the specimen. Size: 9.5" L x 3.125" W (24.1 cm x 7.9 cm); 9.5" H (24.1 cm) on included custom stand. Item # 201882

Lot: 321 - Tyrannosaurus Rex Fossil Tooth Wear Facets, Late Cretaceous

North America, Western United States, Late Cretaceous, ca. 68 to 65.5 million years ago. A fossilized tooth from Tyrannosaurus rex. The tooth retains its conical form and serrated edge, and the tip exhibits wear facets, flat, polished surfaces created during the animal's life through bone-crushing and shearing while feeding. These wear patterns provide evidence of the bite forces and bone-processing behavior associated with T. rex. Size: 2.3" L x 0.9" W (5.8 cm x 2.3 cm); 6" H (15.2 cm) on included custom stand. Item # 201496

Lot: 322 - Megalodon Shark Tooth Fossil, 6.5 Inches, Otodus Megalodon

Ancient Seas, Middle Miocene to End of Pliocene Eras. A fossilized tooth of the extinct megalodon shark, Otodus megalodon, measuring 6.5 inches along the diagonal. The tooth displays a pale tan crown with a well-preserved enameloid surface, serrations along both cutting edges, and a defined bourlette above the root. Teeth of this size are uncommon relative to the range of megalodon tooth sizes typically recovered. Item # 204097

Lot: 323 - Jurassic Fossil Prawn (Antrimpos), Solnhofen Formation, Germany

Western Europe, Germany, Eichstätt, Solnhofen (Altmühltal) Formation, Jurassic Period, ca. 154 to 144 million years ago. A fossil prawn of the genus Antrimpos, preserved on an intact slab of limestone. The tail carapace is well mineralized, while the thorax shows areas of fragmentation. The original fossil impressions of the legs and antennae are present and have been lightly enhanced with pigment to improve visual contrast without obscuring the natural impressions. Measured along the curve of the body, the specimen is approximately eight inches from head to tail tip. Size of matrix: 14.5" L x 0.3" W x 13" H (36.8 cm x 0.8 cm x 33 cm); shrimp: 5" L x 3" W (12.7 cm x 7.6 cm) Item # 200462

Lot: 324 - Argentina Campo del Cielo Meteorite, Uncut, 29.2 lbs

Argentina, Campo del Cielo. South America, Argentina, Campo del Cielo. An uncut iron meteorite specimen from the Campo del Cielo strewn field, a significant meteorite fall site where approximately 100 tons of material have been recovered from around 26 impact craters. This specimen weighs 29.2 lbs (13,244 grams). 8" W x 6" H x 5" D (20.3 cm W x 15.2 cm H x 12.7 cm D). This piece has been tested for the presence or absence of particular elements via XRF elemental analysis and is consistent with meteorites from this fall. It is comprised primarily of iron and nickel. Item # 202189

Lot: 325 - Brazilian Amethyst Geode Slice | Large Display Specimen

South America, Brazil, ca. millions of years old. An amethyst geode slice with an open natural center, formed by concentric layers of lavender, lilac, and deep purple crystals. Mounted on a custom black metal stand. Both sides of the slice show crystalline texture. Size: 18.5" L x 3" W x 20" H (47 cm x 7.6 cm x 50.8 cm); 47.5" H (120.6 cm) on included custom stand. Item # 197656

Lot: 326 - Petrified Wood Sequoia Trunk | Quartz Crystallization

North America, western United States, Eocene to Pleistocene Epoch, ca. 55 million to 11,700 years ago. A section of petrified Sequoia tree trunk, cross-cut and polished on one end to reveal black and gray mineralization with areas of quartz crystallization. The exterior retains the original bark form, with vertical grooves and texture preserved in stone. Sequoia-related species were widespread across North America during the Eocene, later retreating to their present range in California and Oregon as climates cooled during the Pleistocene Ice Age. Size: 11.5" Diameter x 13.25" H (29.2 cm x 33.7 cm) Item # 201887

Lot: 327 - 18th C. Mexican Colonial Painting, Christ Carrying the Cross

Spanish Colonial, Mexico. Oil on canvas depicting Christ carrying the Cross in three-quarter view, painted with a mastery of chiaroscuro that intensifies the drama of the scene. Christ wears voluminous robes and a Crown of Thorns, with blood dripping down his expressive face. Rather than a narrative Way to Calvary scene with other figures and setting, this is a devotional image, emphasizing pathos and emotion characteristic of the Baroque period, the suffering Savior weathered by the weight of the Cross yet with an upward gaze suggestive of salvation. Mounted in a carved giltwood frame. Of note: Both the painting and the gilded frame have been tested via x-ray florescence. Pigments are consistent with the period. Gilding is as high as 40% in areas. Item # 137586

Lot: 328 - R.H. Park Marble Relief Tondo, Neoclassical Veiled Bust

North America, United States. Carved white marble relief tondo, signed "R.H. Park / Sc." at lower left. A circular relief carved with the bust-length profile of a young woman facing right, veiled at the head and shoulders, the field recessed within a raised, canted border. The veil is drawn across the crown and falls in long, broken folds gathered at the shoulder, its weight conveyed through depth of carving. A lock of wavy hair escapes at the temple and curls before the ear. The profile follows the Neoclassical manner associated with Park's years in Florence: a straight nose continuous with the brow, a full lower lip, a firm chin, and a downcast gaze. Modeling moves from high relief at the face and veil's edge to a shallow ground at the drapery. The border retains its original claw-chisel tooling, unpolished, against the burnished field. Period frame included, probably original to the piece. Park trained in New York and maintained a studio in Brooklyn before establishing himself in Florence, where he worked from 1871 to 1890 and produced the portrait busts and idealized heads on which his reputation largely rests. He returned to the United States for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and settled in Chicago, where his bronze Columbus stands on the Drake Fountain and his Benjamin Franklin of 1896 in Lincoln Park. Signed marble reliefs by his hand appear on the market only occasionally. Item # 204213

Lot: 329 - Picasso "Vase Deux Anses Hautes" (A.R. 213), Edition 132/400

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973), Madoura Pottery, Vallauris, France. "Vase deux anses hautes" (A.R. 213, referring to its catalogue number in Alain Ramié's Picasso: Catalogue of the Edited Ceramic Works, 1947–1971), a white earthenware vase with two tall loop handles, painted in black slip with a stylized face on one side, framed by a floral headdress, and abstracted geometric and floral motifs on the reverse. Known as "The Queen," paired with its companion piece "The King" (A.R. 141). Stamped on the underside "EDITION PICASSO," numbered 132/400. 15.5" H. Item # 204102

Lot: 330 - Picasso Madoura Ceramic Plate | Taureau Marli aux Feuilles A.R. 394

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973). "Taureau, marli aux feuilles" (A.R. 394), red earthenware plate, conceived 22 January 1957, edition number 28 of 500. The underside is stamped, marked, and numbered: "Edition Picasso / Madoura Plein Feu / Edition Picasso / 28/500 / Madoura." A single bull is rendered in brushed black slip across the terracotta well of the plate, with a ring of leaf forms circling the marli. The design is composed of a small number of lines forming the horns, dewlap, hooves, and tail. The piece was issued by the Madoura pottery at Vallauris. Item # 204104