Pair of Ear Ornaments (150–200 CE): Art, History and Details

Pair of Ear Ornaments (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 small temple gorgeously ornamented with green-feathered serpents, symbols of the earth's fertility. Beneath the temple lie at least 120 human sacrifices, most men, many warriors, and some wearing greenstone ornaments like these, perhaps a set. The sacrifices, apparently laid out to mark the cardinal directions, may have consecrated the temple or a ruler's tomb, or both.

Object facts

• Title: Pair of Ear Ornaments
• Date: 150–200 CE
• Culture: Central Mexico, Teotihuacán style, Classic period
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: jadeite-albitite(?)
• Dimensions: Diameter: 5.6 cm (2 3/16 in.); Overall: 2.4 cm (15/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1990.264

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 (1992): 234-75.

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.