Rare Olmec Jade / Greenstone Shaman's Kit

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Fine Ethnographic / Asian / Ancient Art

By Artemis Gallery

May 10, 2018

Set Reminder 2018-05-10 10:00:00 2018-05-10 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Fine Ethnographic / Asian / Ancient Art https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/artemis-gallery/fine-ethnographic-asian-ancient-art-3213
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• Lot Description
  Pre-Columbian, Southern Mexico to Guatemala, Olmec culture, ca. 1150 to 550 BCE. A group of four greenstone and one hard black stone objects, forming a shaman's tool kit for bloodletting. One is needle shaped, another an elongated, abstract avian form, and another a long rounded shape drilled through in two places. The other two are larger, one roughly trapezoidal, with sharply delineated edges, the other shaped like a bird's head with some drill marks and one complete perforation through the "neck." Shamans, in contrast with priests, seem to have had individualized rituals and performances of worship (i.e., no liturgy or ceremony), and a kit like this would have been a treasured collection of belongings for their owner, representing the choices that he or she made about how best to enter the altered mental states required to interact with the gods. Size of largest piece (bird head): 2" W x 1.05" H (5.1 cm x 2.7 cm)
  
  Bloodletting seems to have been a common ritual in Olmec society, although most of what we can surmise about it we know from the later Maya, who emulated the Olmec practice. We know that the Olmec used shark's teeth, stingray spines, obsidian blades, and other sharp items to perforate the skin, and they have been found at Formative period sites like La Venta, San Jose Mogote, and Chalcatzingo. There are also stone recreations of these items - for example, the jade effigy of a stingray spine found in a tomb at La Venta. As for the avian themes, Olmec artwork sometimes shows flying figures that seem to represent personified deities or powerful rulers who have aligned themselves with godly powers, traveling through the air accompanied by birds. Birds' ability to travel between the earth and the sky world made them powerfully symbolic figures, associated with the liminal, and therefore the breaching of boundaries accompanied by shamanism and death.
  
  Provenance: ex private Southern California, USA collection
  
  All items legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and are guaranteed to be as described or your money back.
  
  A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids.
  
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  #132248

  Condition

  All have patina and wear from touch and use. Tip of the needle is broken off.
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