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All auctions / Asian Art / Costa Rica Stone Mano and Pestle, Volcanic Rock Grinding Tools
Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica. A pair of hand-held ground stone implements, each shaped from dense gray volcanic rock into an elongated cylinder with rounded terminals. The larger is a loaf-form baton, pecked overall and polished to a soft sheen along one face where repeated contact wore the granular surface smooth. Its companion tapers toward a flared, slightly bulbous end, the narrowed midsection falling naturally into the grip. Both are likely pounders or manos, used against a metate or a flat working stone to crush maize, pigment, tubers, or temper for pottery. Tools of this kind were domestic rather than ceremonial, made from river cobbles selected for weight and toughness, then reduced by pecking until the mass sat comfortably in the hand. Their wear patterns, not their ornament, record the work they did. Ground stone technology is among the most conservative in the Americas: the mano and metate pairing remained essentially unchanged in Costa Rica from the Early Formative through the Spanish contact period, which is precisely why isolated examples resist close dating. In the Greater Nicoya and Atlantic Watershed zones, the finest metates were elaborated into tripod and effigy forms carved with jaguar and avian heads, and those pieces moved into elite and funerary contexts. The working stones that accompanied them, however, stayed plain, their value measured in density and balance rather than decoration. Volcanic andesite and basalt cobbles, abundant in the rivers draining Costa Rica's central cordillera, supplied nearly all of it. Item # 203383
Estimate:$200
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorAsian Art
Estimate:
$200
Mexican Huichol Mahjrah, Jaguar Head and Mask, with Nigerian Yoruba Sash
08/15/2026
$75
Est: $30
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