Necklace and Nose Ornament (150–200 CE): Art, History and Details

Necklace and Nose Ornament (150–200 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Near Teotihuacán’s largest palace is a temple ornamented with green-feathered serpents, symbols of the earth’s fertility. Beneath the temple were at least 120 human sacrifices, most men, many warriors, and some wearing greenstone ornaments like these, perhaps a set. The sacrifices may have consecrated the temple or a ruler’s tomb, or both.

Object facts

• Title: Necklace and Nose Ornament
• Date: 150–200 CE
• Culture: Central Mexico, Teotihuacán, Classic period
• Type: Jewelry
• Technique: jadeite-albitite?, gold
• Dimensions: Overall: 40.3 cm (15 7/8 in.); Each bead: 2 cm (13/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1990.263

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Gruener

Further reading listed by the museum

• Young-Sánchez, Margaret. “The Gruener Collection of Pre-Columbian Art.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 79, no. 7 (September 1992): 234–275.

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.