Costa Rica Pre columbian Museo De Jade
Trip Start
Jun 13, 2008
1
18
Trip End
Dec 2008
San Jose, Province of San Jose, Costa Rica
Friday, July 1, 2011
The earliest evidence for worked jade, a is dated to the mid-first millennium B.C., and jade continued to be carved into similar personal ornaments until approximately 700 A.D., when its use appears to have died out and/or been replaced by a fashion for ornaments of gold which was plentiful and easier to work with.. The irony of this story is, to date, no native or natural sources of jade have been traced to Costa Rica, suggesting a trade route between Northern Meso america as an imported source of raw material. The the local stone carvers performed the transformations into sacriligious jewelery. The early pendant was made in the shape of a celt, ax, or amulet pendant with a top worked into a bird head and torso. Circular eyes and a wide downturned beak define the head above folded wings, in a basic version of what would be the classic Costa Rican bird pendant in jade. The bird-celt pendant would undergo many elaborations during subsequent centuries, all the while retaining these essential features. The axe pendant was made of avian figures or Godly human figures. The amulet pendants were usually of bats with crocodile jaheads for wings.
Most of the jade found was ‘’’Buried Jade’’’ that was ever buried into the earth due to war, death of owner, mismanagement, abandon of the ancient city,…etc. and usually was found after several hundreds or thousands years’ burying in the deep ground by coincidence or tomb raiders. Although the museo is a excellent representation with thousands of pieces on view. Many more thousands have been lost to looting and balck market trade throughtout the last 100 years because of a lack of regulation and enforcement mechanism, But, somehwere around 1973 the country made a dedicated effort to conserve the past with intensive archeoligical excavations and the purchase from private collections.
My fascination and main impression was how they could cut such super hard stones without modern cutting and grinding machines with such presicion??? But, nevertheless, the prooof is inthe proverbial pudding. If these rocks could talk what a wondeful story they could tell.
From Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Rican_jade_tradition
Most of the jade objects recorded are from looted context, but when found in situ the objects are primarily in graves. The bulk of Costa Rican jades contain drilled holes so they can be utilized to decorate the body in bead and pendant form. There are three main types of objects listed here.
1. Axe Gods: Generally they are stylized figure pendants that look like they were made from axes or celts. They are two-dimensionally decorated on the front with three main segments. The first being the top of the head to the top of the shoulders, where holes are drilled to suspend the object. The second is from the top of the shoulders to the bottom of the wings or arms. The third section is the blade of the pendant, it goes from the bottom of the wings or arms to the base, which consists of 30-40% of the entire pendent. There are two types of Axe god figurines, Avian and Anthropomorphic. The earliest known jade work is the Avian axe god celt found at the site of La Regla, dated at 500 BC.
2.Beak Birds: They are characteristic for their large, stylized beak. All were drilled through their neck so when strung to hang the beak would be projecting. The figures are very diverse in size and shape. The beaks are either straight, or curved pointing up or down. Some of the beaks are curved into a spiral, and attached to the body presenting the string saw technique.
3. Bar Pendants: These are horizontal and usually winged. They are drilled with two holes through the length of the pendant or drilled parallel to each other through the width of the pendant. Examples of this type are open-winged bats, double headed winged bats, double headed bar with reptile heads at either end, opened winged bats with reptile heads at both ends, or plain with no incised decoration. Examples are below in Figures
