Lot 83A
Pre-Columbian, Ecuador, Valdivian people, ca. 3300 BCE. This is a light gray limestone slab with boldly cut lines delineating arrows and drilled dots forming a surface design. The edges of the stone have been smoothed to make it a rough parallelogram shape. This is an example of some very early stone art, from one of the earliest settled cultures recorded in the Americas. The Valdivia lived in communities that built their homes around a central plaza in a circle or ovoid shape; they were fishermen primarily who also did some subsistence farming and hunting to supplement their diet; in addition to stone objects, they also created some of the earliest known ceramic traditions in the world and possibly the earliest in the New World. Size: 11.3" W x 6.5" H (28.7 cm x 16.5 cm)
The meaning of decorated stone objects like these - although they commonly are called "star charts" - is unknown. Are they early forms of writing, roughly contemporary with cuneiform in Sumer and hieroglyphs in Egypt? Abstract designs? Decoration? To date, there have been very few scientific archaeological excavations of the Valdivian culture, leading to quite a few spectacular theories - including that the early pottery was influenced by shipwrecked sailors from the Jomon culture of Japan! Excavations at the Real Alto site in the 1970s and 1980s put that theory to rest, but this culture remains understudied; hopefully, future study will shed more light on the true meaning of this object and others like it.
Provenance: Ex-Private Maricopa County, AZ collection
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#118393
- Condition: Small areas of dirt staining, otherwise excellent
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Artemis Fine Arts
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