Costa Rican Jade Axe God Pendant with Celt Blade

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. An axe god pendant carved from translucent sea-green jade. The upper half is a frontal figure in low relief, its form cut with sure, grooved lines. A tall flat-topped headdress sits above a broad face with a heavy brow, a wide nose, and a mouth drawn as a crescent band. The arms bend in toward the chest, and a belt crossed by short vertical incisions closes the torso. Below the belt the stone widens into a smooth, polished celt blade with a gently curved edge, so the old shape of the stone axe stays visible under the figure. In ancient Costa Rica these pendants were prestige ornaments, probably worn by people of high rank. They combined the useful form of the celt with a human or supernatural image, and the green stone was probably valued for links to water, fertility, and life. The axe god is one of the defining forms of ancient Costa Rican lapidary art. It was made mainly in the Guanacaste Nicoya region and the Atlantic Watershed during the centuries around the turn of the era. Costa Rica has no confirmed local source of jadeite. Scholars generally believe the raw stone came through exchange with the Motagua Valley in Guatemala, and some of it may have been recut from older Olmec and Maya heirlooms. Craftsmen sawed the stone with string and abrasive sand, drilled it with bone or cane, and polished it slowly with grit. Around the middle of the first millennium CE, gold took over from jade as the main prestige material in the region, which ended this lapidary tradition. Item # 205749

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