**Originally Listed At $1800**

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chavin, Jequetepeque valley, ca. 700 to 400 BCE. A fantastic stone tablet or tray used in the ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs. The tablet is a long, ovoid shape with a shallow bowl; at its top, carved from the same piece of stone are two finials in the form of standing jaguars. Between the legs of each is a rounded perforation, and between the two animals is a third round perforation, all three used for suspending the piece as a necklace from the neck of a shaman. The animals have simple, slightly abstracted forms, and one is larger than the other. Size: 6" W x 3" H (15.2 cm x 7.6 cm)

Snuff trays were part of the elaborate battery of objects carefully manufactured by ancient Andeans in order to ingest a ground drug known as vilca or huilca, found in southern Peru and Bolivia, and obtained from the beans of the tree Anadenanthera colubrina. We know of these trays from burials, where they were placed as offerings and perhaps to provision the dead alongside inhalation tubes and other paraphernalia. Feline heads are some of the most iconographically important, and therefore common, artistic themes on snuff trays from this region. They are associated with the use of psychoactive substances that could "transform" a shaman or priest into a feline.

Provenance: private Hawaii, USA collection; ex-Westermann collection, Germany, acquired 1960s

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#123827

Repaired in center.