Six Pre-Columbian & Native American Artifacts - Obsidian, Pottery, Flint

Pre-Columbian, Mexico and Ecuador, Tlatilco and Manabi; Native American, Woodland period. A group of five ancient American artifacts spanning two continents and three millennia. A long obsidian blade fragment, knapped from glassy black volcanic stone, tapers to a lanceolate point with a ridged dorsal spine. Beside it lies a moldmade terracotta figure fragment, legs splayed and torso truncated, with traces of red pigment clinging to the buff clay, in the manner of Tlatilco Valley of Mexico figural work. A small eccentric point of honey-toned flint, chipped into a serrated, tree-like silhouette, represents Woodland period North American ceremonial knapping. Completing the group are three earthenware spindle whorls, one broad and discoidal, two domed and biconical, each centrally perforated for a wooden shaft, probably Manabi work from coastal Ecuador. Domestic tools and ritual objects together, in miniature scale. Spindle whorls (malacates) are among the most abundant surviving artifacts of the ancient Americas, and their ubiquity is a direct index of the labor of women. Slipped over the base of a wooden spindle, the perforated disc supplies the flywheel momentum that twists loose cotton or camelid fiber into thread. Coastal Ecuadorian examples from the Manabi region are often stamped or incised with geometric motifs, and the weight of each whorl was matched to the fineness of the yarn intended, so a workbasket typically held several. Eccentric flints, chipped into silhouettes rather than functional blades, occur across the Americas and are consistently recovered from caches, mounds, and burials rather than habitation debris. The form was a display of knapping virtuosity: every notch risks shattering the piece, and the maker's skill was itself part of the offering. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 191377

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