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Jade: Carving Cosmos in Mesoamerica

Angelica Aguirre

Located in the vibrant city of San Jose, in Costa Rica the museum of jade features one of the largest jade collections in the Americas. At the entrance is a large, brown, uncut jade boulder which visitors can touch. Made up of four different rooms: the jade room, night room, day room, memory room, and the collection room. This museum does not solely focus on jade, but instead on the quotidian lives of the Olmec people of Costa Rica. From ceramic pots, gold rattles, jade necklaces, and clay artifacts, the exhibit displays an array of pre-Columbian life that humanizes the Olmecs as historical subjects that have long been dismissed as ancient bygones. The exhibition on jade includes beautiful pendants, jewelry and mace heads. While museums have typically called attention to chronological order in history, the curators of the museum have designed the exhibit that does not have a chronological order and instead emphasizes the social imaginaries that the Olmecs depicted through jade.

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What today look like simple and inanimate objects made of jade, in 500 BCE were highly revered pendants. This exhibit contains numerous pendants in the shape of animals. Some are vertically divided in half; the upper half carved into the shape of an animal, and the lower half into a hatchet like object. Others are just entire depictions of animals. Most amulets were carved in the shape of frogs, parrots, owls, parakeets, and jaguars. It was believed that when one held these amulets with them, they possessed the power of the animal depicted.

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A distinctly interesting object in this exhibit is a frog amulet, rhinella horibis. Due to frogs being amphibians relative to water, they represented fertility. Thus, this carved pendant embodied fertility and those who carried it possessed its powers. Not only is this deified object a reality of jade as a luxury commodity, but it depicts the realities of quotidian life in Costa Rica during the Mesoamerican era. The use of water to carve jade most likely meant that frogs were in the vicinity of production centers. The creation of this frog pendant not only reflected the religious and institutional significance of frogs in this region, but also the prevalence of their existence and the proximity of the carvers to bodies of water. The quotidian life of Olmecs is revealed in these jade amulets that reflect a cosmology in which animals are powerful actors.

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Jade Pendants resembling animals and humans

Jade signified power and high-ranking class. Although the focus on this exhibit is on Costa Rica, this commodity puts southern Mexico and Central America into contact. Not only is crafted jade found in Costa Rica, but it has been found in its raw and uncut form in the Motagua River in Guatemala. Additionally, the findings of jade in places like Soconusco and Palenque, Chiapas suggests that Mayans also valued jade and partook in the jade commodity chain. Scientists have concluded that jade is not a natural mineral in Costa Rica and cannot be sustained by the environment. Since jade has not been found in Costa Rica in its natural form but in carved form, it makes sense to think of Costa Rica as a site of production for jade, rather than a site of origin. Since carving jade required a vast body of water, it is assumed that the coast of Costa Rica was one of the predominant regions for jade carving. From pendants, to burners, to necklaces, earrings, and maces, these objects were then traded or used as personal relics alluding to the importance of this luxury commodity.

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Jade drilling instrument 

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Frog Pendant estimated to be made from 500 B.C.E to 800 C.E

This Costa Rican exhibit underlines that most of the jade pieces found were produced from 500 BCE to 800 CE. These were the years in which jade production was at its highest and it eventually subsides leaving a demand for a luxury commodity wide open. According to gold pieces in this exhibit, gold begins to make its way through Mesoamerica around 800 CE. This could mean that gold replaced the demand for jade as animal figures made out of gold begin appearing throughout the exhibit ranging from 700 CE to 800 CE. This marks an estimated end to the importance of jade in Mesoamerica.

 

There is insufficient information in this exhibit to craft a well-informed and detailed narrative on jade as a luxury commodity. In fact, this evidence brings forth proof of the

existence of jade in the Americas. Although jade is often a luxury commodity associated with China, it was once a vital part of Mesoamerican markets. This exhibit brought Mesoamerica into the limelight as a region that worked together to create realities through jade production. Much is still unknown, but this exhibit pushes audiences to seek answers and draw conclusions about small artifacts made from jade that existed over 2500 years ago.

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