On view
Pendant face with a duck bill,
1000–400 BCE
Olmec Stone-carving from the Era of La Venta
Concurrent with the shift of Olmec political power from San Lorenzo, Veracruz, to La Venta, Tabasco, around 1000 B.C., widely distributed Olmec-style ceramics fade from the archaeological record, to be replaced by fine, small-scale carvings in stone, especially blue-green jadeite and serpentine. Incised jewelry, so-called “spoons,” masklike faces, and complexly modeled animal, human, and supernatural figures, all of Middle Formative date (1000–500 B.C.) and carved in Olmec style, have been discovered throughout most of Mesoamerica, from Costa Rica to the central Mexican Highlands to the southwest Mexican coast in the present-day state of Guerrero.
More Context
Didactics
This carving of a human head wearing a duck bill mask is pierced through the sides of the head to be worn as a pendant. The turbanlike headdress, arranged in receding, diagonal rows flanking a band of concentric inverted chevrons, is separated from the face by a soft groove, which, since it is unpolished, may have been wound with additional decoration. Almost certainly originally inlaid, the large oval eyes slope to the finely-shaped nose, providing a fluid transition to the duck bill. The curved, raised edge that conforms to the shape of the face is echoed by incised lines that converge on the raised spine of the bill. As a creature of the land, water, and sky of the natural world, the duck is often represented in ritual objects. The pendant perhaps depicts a shaman wearing the mask of his animal spirit companion. (after The Olmec World, p. 266)
Information
1000–400 BCE
North America, Mexico, Veracruz, Gulf Coast
February 27, 1960, Matthias Komor (1909-1984), New York, sold to Gillett G. Griffin (1928-2016), Princeton, NJ [1]; 1995, gift of Gillett G. Griffin to the Princeton University Art Museum.
Notes:
[1] According to an invoice in the curatorial file, as well as Gillett G. Griffin index M11.
- Michael D. Coe et al., The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership (Princeton, Princeton University Art Museum, 1996), cat. no. 136, p. 238 (illus.)
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1995," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 56, no. 1/2 (1997): p. 36-74., p. 55
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 396
