**Originally Listed At $500**

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Guanacaste / Nicoya region, ca. 250 to 800 CE. A lovely pair of avian axe god celt pendants - the lighter green celt finely carved from jade, the darker green celt finely carved from greenstone - both depicting a bird or bird-shaman figure with abstract beaked visages topped by banded headdresses or crest feathers. In the Pre-Columbian World, birds were regarded as animals of the celestial realm that served as messengers between humankind and their deities. Both are also drilled through the headbands for suspension. Two fine examples from the ancients of Costa Rica. Size of largest: 0.625" W x 2.125" H (1.6 cm x 5.4 cm)

The value of jade in the Pre-Columbian world lay in its symbolic power; scholars believe its color was associated with water and vegetation. Costa Rica, along with Mesoamerica, is one of the two regions where jade was extensively carved in the Pre-Columbian world. The earliest example of worked jade, a pendant excavated from a burial site on the Nicoya Peninsula, dated to the mid-first millennium BCE. It appears that jade continued to be carved into personal ornaments, usually depicting anthropomorphic deities or animals such as birds, monkeys, or frogs, until approximately 700 CE when gold became the favored material to fashion such ornaments.

Provenance: ex Craig Hendrix collection, South Carolina, USA; ex Charles Craig Jr. collection, Costa Rica, acquired in the 1960s and 1970s

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#154115

Both items have minor abrasions to faces and bodies, otherwise intact and very good. Light earthen deposits and smooth surface textures throughout.