Costa Rica Volcanic Stone Effigy Head, Lobed Headdress

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Costa Rica. A blunt, boulder-like head worked from a coarse, pale volcanic stone, its features reduced to the barest essentials: a broad wedge of a nose in high relief, shallow lenticular hollows for eyes, and a mouth incised as a single horizontal groove. Deep vertical channels ring the crown and sides, dividing the mass into lobes that likely render a banded coiffure or headwrap, and a rectangular slot is cut into the flattened top. The base is smoothed and slightly convex, wear consistent with a working surface, so the piece may have doubled as a grinding stone or handstone as well as an effigy. The vesicular, granular matrix has taken a soft earthen patina throughout, its high points burnished where handling and use abraded the tuff. Costa Rican lapidary traditions worked overwhelmingly in local volcanic rock, and the boundary between sculpture and ground-stone tool was porous. Metates, manos, and mace heads were routinely given anthropomorphic or zoomorphic terminations, so a functional implement could carry an effigy face without ceasing to be an implement. Effigy manos and pestle-form heads of this compact scale are documented across the Atlantic Watershed and Central Highland zones, where they occur in both domestic middens and burial contexts, a reminder that grinding maize was itself an activity dense with symbolic weight. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 203640

Estimation:€266.96

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