Bird Pendant (Buzzard or Vulture?) (c. 300 BCE–600 CE): Art, History and Details

Bird Pendant (Buzzard or Vulture?) (c. 300 BCE–600 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Before about AD 500, when gold-working technologies were adopted in Costa Rica, jade was the quintessential luxury material and it was masterfully carved into exquisite ornaments of many kinds. Ancient Americans did not use many metal tools, and artists carved jade, a tough stone, with implements of stone, bone, bamboo, or reed.

Object facts

• Title: Bird Pendant (Buzzard or Vulture?)
• Date: c. 300 BCE–600 CE
• Culture: Costa Rica, Atlantic Watershed region
• Type: Jewelry
• Technique: jadeite
• Dimensions: Overall: 4.3 x 3 x 4.9 cm (1 11/16 x 1 3/16 x 1 15/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Intermediate Region
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1954.148

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.