Seeing With New Eyes: Highlights of the Michael C. Carlos Museum Collection of Art of the Ancient Americas

The arts of the ancient Americas are diverse, visually arresting, and sometimes enigmatic. In this wide-ranging catalogue, nearly six hundred works of art from Mesoamerica southward are presented, with particular emphasis on the lesser-known area of ancient Costa Rica. Included are works from Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, created in clay, stone, metal, wood, fiber, bone, and shell. Important pieces receive in-depth treatment -- a two-thousand-year-old Costa Rican female shaman effigy, the earliest known sculptural rendition of the Maya hieroglyph for the animal spirit, and gold earspools probably worn by a high official in the ChimÖ Empire of Peru.

A major emphasis is placed on the shamanic experience of transformation into animal selves, since this subject preoccupied artists throughout the ancient Americas. New and exciting research, including ground-breaking geological analyses of greenstones (ìjadesî) by William B. Size, makes this catalogue an act of discovery.