The Fabergé Museum opened a special exhibition of his collection of gold objects from Central and South America pre-Columbian times. We provide the unique gold objects from different American cultures of the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs from the period of 400 years before Christ until the time of the conquest of America by the Conquest in 1500. Besides 45 gold artefacts, we present 44 objects from semiprecious stones - jade and nephrite.

Step into the windswept world of Ice-Age mammoth hunters. Walk through a replica of an 800-year-old pueblo dwelling and imagine your entire family cooking, eating, and sleeping in one small room. Explore the Aztec empire and its island capital, Tenochtitlan, a city of more than 200,000 people and an extraordinary feat of engineering for any era. Discover what Field Museum scientists and others have learned about the Americans who lived here before us, and how it's changing nearly everything we thought we knew!

The Field Museum's ground-breaking new exhibition, The Ancient Americas, takes you on a journey through 13,000 years of human ingenuity and achievement in the western hemisphere, where hundreds of diverse societies thrived long before the arrival of Europeans. In this 19,000-square-foot permanent exhibition you'll live the epic story of the peopling of these continents, from the Arctic to the tip of South America. Discover how and why the early Americans developed farming, created new forms of artistic expression, and forged mighty empires. See more than 2,200 artifacts, amazing reconstructions, and dozens of videos and interactive displays, and come to understand the ingenuity with which ancient peoples met the challenges of their times and places as we meet ours today.

Located in Golden Gate Park, the de Young is San Francisco's oldest museum. On October 15, 2005, the de Young Museum re-opened in a state-of-the-art new facility that integrates art, architecture and the natural landscape in one multi-faceted destination that will inspire audiences from around the world.

A walk through the de Young's collection of over 2,500 objects from Mesoamerica, Central and South America, as well as the West Coast of North America reveals the richness and complexity of art that links the Americas. Notable treasures include the largest group of Teotihuacán wall murals outside of México, a rare Lowland Maya stela dating from the 8th century A.D., a Peruvian mouth mask of hammered gold from the Nazca culture, and a ten-foot totem pole from Alaska.

This exhibit draws on the William P. Palmer III Collection, a collection of 2,228 Precolumbian ceramics, lithics, and gold work dating from 2,000 B.C. to the time of the Spanish Conquest and is one of the finest collections of its type in the nation. The exhibit includes many Maya pieces, including a stela, glyph panel, cylindrical vases, figurines, shell, bone and antler carvings, and jade pieces. It explores cultures of México and Central America ranging from Olmec to Aztec.

The Hudson Museum also features the following Online Exhibits:

"Worldviews: Maya Ceramics from the Palmer Collection" - explores the wealth of information about religion and beliefs important to the Maya and captured by artisans. Some of the internationally known pieces in this exhibit were published in The Maya Vase Book, vol. 5, by Justin and Barbara Kerr, and Hidden Faces of the Maya, by Linda Schele.

"Images for Eternity: West Mexican Tomb Figures" - discusses the progress being made by modern scholars in understanding West Mexican tomb figures that have lost their original context.

The Library of Congress presents The Cultures and History of the Americas, an online exhibition featuring fifty highlights from the more than 4,000 rare books, maps, documents, paintings, prints, and artifacts that make up the Jay I. Kislak Collection.

This exhibition explores several themes, including the pre-Columbian cultures of Central America and the Caribbean as revealed in sculpture, architecture, and language; encounters between Europeans and the indigenous peoples; the growth of European Florida; and piracy and trade in the American Atlantic.

This exhibition is a preview of the permanent Kislak space to open in the Northeast Galleries of the Thomas Jefferson Building in 2006.

The ancient Maya are one of the most complex and advanced civilizations of the ancient world, well known for their monumental architecture and distinctive art styles, their intricate knowledge of astronomy and time-reckoning, their complex political organization headed by royal dynasties, and their writing systems, some of the most sophisticated in the ancient world. Although much is known about the Maya elite, popular information about their working classes is less accessible. Recent archaeological discoveries have begun to shed more light on everyday domestic life and the relationships of non-elites to the ruling class.

Maya: Hidden Worlds Revealed explores the fascinating social, natural and spiritual realms of the ancient Maya through the eyes of powerful kings and queens and the lesser-known people who were the backbone of Maya society. It features immersive environments, authentic artifacts, and hands-on activities that tell the story of the ancient Maya and their modern descendants.

The collection of art of the ancient Americas is substantial, consisting of more than 1,900 pieces. The Museum is fortunate in the breadth and depth of the collection as a whole. All three principal cultural centers of the Americas are represented: Mesoamerica, Central America, and the Andes. Most of the important art-producing cultures - from the West México to the Maya and Aztec, from Honduras to Panama, from the Chavín to the Inca - can be appreciated during a visit to the permanent collection galleries.

Ancient America refers to regions in Mexico, Central America and South America at a time prior to the arrival of Europeans. The diverse artistic traditions of the prehistoric people can be traced as far back as 4,000 years. The museum collection includes many examples of pottery and stonework as well as elaborate, hand-woven textiles and costumes. Large burial urns, figurines and jewelry provide a unique insight into these advanced cultures.

The permanent exhibit includes representative objects from all the archaeological regions and time periods in Pre-Columbian Guatemala. The exhibition is organized in chronological sequence, from the earliest traces of human presence in the modern territory of Guatemala, until the Spanish conquest. Three major geographic regions may be distinguished in the study of the ancient peoples of Guatemala: The Pacific Coast, The Highlands, and The Lowlands.

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century in both the Old World and the New, chocolate remained an elite drink, too expensive for ordinary folk to enjoy, and often forbidden to them. But the invention by a Dutchman of a method to extract the fat in cacao paste led to the mutation of chocolate from drink into a solid confection that could be enjoyed by the masses. Chocolate now became "big business" and the cultivation of the cacao tree was spread all across the globe.

The present exhibit: "Kakaw: Chocolate in Guatemalan Culture" brings together many lovely objects that celebrate the mysteries and rituals that surrounded the chocolate drink among the early Maya, as well as the vessels that were made in colonial times so that a new, Creole elite could indulge their new-found taste for this prestigious beverage.

Organized by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the exhibition offers a panorama of Olmeca civilization, starting from invaluable pieces found in different archaeological sites in the Gulf of Mexico area, where the civilization addressed as "mother culture" of Mesoamerica flourished 4,000 years ago.
Archaeologist Erika Gomez, exhibition project coordinator at INAH, commented that the show is divided in 4 parts: The first one is about the splendor of the Olmecas (1800-400 BC); the second part is related to sculptures that represent hierarchy and power; the third one refers to regions influenced by the Olmecas and the last one, to the legacy of this culture.
Curated by the recently departed Virginia Mary Fields, who was a specialist in Ancient American Art at LACMA, this great exhibition is composed by pieces from museums that are part of the INAH network as well as independent museums such as Xalapa Anthropology Museum and Museo Amparo of Puebla.

The NMSU Museum is now home to a unique and comprehensive collection of both prehistoric and historical pottery. This permanent exhibit includes almost 600 pottery vessels that reflect the vibrant artistry and beauty of Southwestern and Mesoamerican ceramics. There is also an extensive type collection of sherds from New Mexico and Chihuahua to be explored, as well as other educational materials. The NMSU Museum proudly invites you to view this important and historic cultural collection.

Aztec to Zapotec: Selections from the Ancient Americas Collection features more than 180 works made prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the Europeans during the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Representing a time period of more than 3,000 years, the exhibition is drawn from the OMA’s comprehensive Art of the Ancient Americas Collection and gives a rare glimpse into the life and culture of numerous civilizations from the North, Central and South American regions. Significant ancient works of gold, silver, jade, ceramic, shell and wood are included from the cultures of the Aztec, Maya, Moche, Nasca, Inca and Zapotec.
The OMA’s Ancient Americas Collection is considered to be the broadest and most representative collection of its type in the Southeast, by Dr. S.J.K. Wilkerson, the director of the Institute of Cultural Ecology of the Tropics, Veracruz. Regarding the Collection, renowned University of Florida scholar Michael Moseley has stated, "…the Collection is magnificent. There are many very superb pieces … in conjunction with your other holdings it will put the museum on the map for Andean scholars."

Explore objects from various areas of the Art Institute of Chicago's permanent collection to enrich visitors' understanding of their content, style, and historical context. The collection includes sculpture, ceramics, metalwork, and textiles created by Native Americans, the inhabitants of Teotihuacan, and the Olmec, Maya, and Aztecs of ancient Mesoamerica - the geographical area comprising New Mexico, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. Includes lesson plans for the classroom, maps, glossary, books, and art projects for the home.

Pre-Columbian art from Mexico and Central America displayed in a series of galleries communicates the power and sophistication of the mysterious cultures that rose and fell in ancient America. Emphasis is placed on the ceramic and stone arts of West Mexico, Costa Rica and Panamá. A gallery devoted to the famous "Limestone Tomb of Lord Pacal" includes a lifesize reproduction of the elaborately decorated and highly symbolic limestone sarcophagus excavated at the pyramid in the Mayan City of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. Other works of art from the ancient Mayan civilization complete the exhibit.

The Dayton Art Institute's permanent collection contains more than 26,000 objects, spanning 5,000 years of art history. At any given time, The Dayton Art Institute's galleries display about 1,000 works from the permanent collection.

The museum is divided into three main wings: the Berry Wing of European Art, the Dicke Wing of American Art and the Patterson/Kettering Wing of Asian Art. The Dayton Art Institute also features galleries devoted to African Art, Oceanic Art, Pre-Columbian Art, Native American Art and Glass.

The Fabergé Museum opened a special exhibition of his collection of gold objects from Central and South America pre-Columbian times.
We provide the unique gold objects from different American cultures of the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs from the period of 400 years before Christ until the time of the conquest of America by the Conquest in 1500.
Besides 45 gold artefacts, we present 44 objects from semiprecious stones - jade and nephrite.

Journey through history to get the complete story behind the tasty treat that we crave in Chocolate, an exciting new exhibition developed by The Field Museum.

You'll begin in the rainforest with the unique cacao tree whose seeds started it all. Visit the ancient Maya civilization of Central America and discover what chocolate meant nearly 1,500 years ago. Then travel forward in time and northward to the Aztec civilization of 16th-century Mexico, where cacao seeds were so valuable they were used as money. Discover chocolate's introduction into the upper classes of European society and its transformation into a mass-produced world commodity.

Inaugural exhibit of the renovated Middle American Research Institute that celebrates the development of the Maya civilization from its beginngings in 1000 BC to the present.
Displaying objects from MARI's collection that have never been seen before, this exhibit attempts to dispel erroneous notions of the Maya civilization that have recently gained currency due to the "2012 frenzy."

The objects in this gallery are from "Mesoamerica," the area encompassing most of southern Mexico, all of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. In parts of this culture area farming villages grew into towns and cities, tribal chiefs were made kings and emperors, trade networks became more complex, stone monuments and pyramids were erected, a calendar and writing-system developed, and devotion to nature spirits developed into state ceremonies in honor of the gods and ancestors.

This online exhibit and bibliography is a collaborative project of Tarlton Law Library and the Benson Latin American Collection at The University of Texas. A detailed overview of Aztec and Maya law as it existed at the time of the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica is supplemented by an annotated bibliography of resources on Mexican legal history, Aztec and Maya law, and related works on Aztec and Maya history, archaeology, and cultural studies. To limit the scope of the exhibit and the bibliography, the sections on Maya law will principally focus on the Maya who inhabited what is now the country of Mexico. In following the preferred terminology of Mayanist scholars, "Maya" will be the standard term used to refer to the Maya people and their legal system. The term "Mayan" will refer solely to the diverse group of languages spoken by the Maya people.

Hundreds of earthenware pots and other Precolumbian artifacts from ancient West Mexico are now part of the collections of Wake Forest University's Museum of Anthropology.

The objects, most dating from 300 B.C. to 400 A.D., were donated to the museum in May. The collection of 1,040 pieces includes 162 complete ceramic vessels, ceramic figurines, greenstone beads and necklaces, obsidian spear and arrow points, knives, and grinding stones.

Among the collection are outstanding Jaina terra-cotta figurines from the Maya period, striking figures and house models from western México. Particularly important and rare is the clay model of a ball game, which is complemented by a yoke, hachas, and additional items related to this ancient sporting activity. South American cultures are represented by a small number of vessels, sculptures, and other objects, including textiles. The exhibit also includes a painted Maya vase and the largest carved Maya femur known, along with a notable selection of Olmec and Maya pieces.

The Fabergé Museum opened a special exhibition of his collection of gold objects from Central and South America pre-Columbian times. We provide the unique gold objects from different American cultures of the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs from the period of 400 years before Christ until the time of the conquest of America by the Conquest in 1500. Besides 45 gold artefacts, we present 44 objects from semiprecious stones - jade and nephrite.

Step into the windswept world of Ice-Age mammoth hunters. Walk through a replica of an 800-year-old pueblo dwelling and imagine your entire family cooking, eating, and sleeping in one small room. Explore the Aztec empire and its island capital, Tenochtitlan, a city of more than 200,000 people and an extraordinary feat of engineering for any era. Discover what Field Museum scientists and others have learned about the Americans who lived here before us, and how it's changing nearly everything we thought we knew!

The Field Museum's ground-breaking new exhibition, The Ancient Americas, takes you on a journey through 13,000 years of human ingenuity and achievement in the western hemisphere, where hundreds of diverse societies thrived long before the arrival of Europeans. In this 19,000-square-foot permanent exhibition you'll live the epic story of the peopling of these continents, from the Arctic to the tip of South America. Discover how and why the early Americans developed farming, created new forms of artistic expression, and forged mighty empires. See more than 2,200 artifacts, amazing reconstructions, and dozens of videos and interactive displays, and come to understand the ingenuity with which ancient peoples met the challenges of their times and places as we meet ours today.

Located in Golden Gate Park, the de Young is San Francisco's oldest museum. On October 15, 2005, the de Young Museum re-opened in a state-of-the-art new facility that integrates art, architecture and the natural landscape in one multi-faceted destination that will inspire audiences from around the world.

A walk through the de Young's collection of over 2,500 objects from Mesoamerica, Central and South America, as well as the West Coast of North America reveals the richness and complexity of art that links the Americas. Notable treasures include the largest group of Teotihuacán wall murals outside of México, a rare Lowland Maya stela dating from the 8th century A.D., a Peruvian mouth mask of hammered gold from the Nazca culture, and a ten-foot totem pole from Alaska.

This exhibit draws on the William P. Palmer III Collection, a collection of 2,228 Precolumbian ceramics, lithics, and gold work dating from 2,000 B.C. to the time of the Spanish Conquest and is one of the finest collections of its type in the nation. The exhibit includes many Maya pieces, including a stela, glyph panel, cylindrical vases, figurines, shell, bone and antler carvings, and jade pieces. It explores cultures of México and Central America ranging from Olmec to Aztec.

The Hudson Museum also features the following Online Exhibits:

"Worldviews: Maya Ceramics from the Palmer Collection" - explores the wealth of information about religion and beliefs important to the Maya and captured by artisans. Some of the internationally known pieces in this exhibit were published in The Maya Vase Book, vol. 5, by Justin and Barbara Kerr, and Hidden Faces of the Maya, by Linda Schele.

"Images for Eternity: West Mexican Tomb Figures" - discusses the progress being made by modern scholars in understanding West Mexican tomb figures that have lost their original context.

The Library of Congress presents The Cultures and History of the Americas, an online exhibition featuring fifty highlights from the more than 4,000 rare books, maps, documents, paintings, prints, and artifacts that make up the Jay I. Kislak Collection.

This exhibition explores several themes, including the pre-Columbian cultures of Central America and the Caribbean as revealed in sculpture, architecture, and language; encounters between Europeans and the indigenous peoples; the growth of European Florida; and piracy and trade in the American Atlantic.

This exhibition is a preview of the permanent Kislak space to open in the Northeast Galleries of the Thomas Jefferson Building in 2006.

The ancient Maya are one of the most complex and advanced civilizations of the ancient world, well known for their monumental architecture and distinctive art styles, their intricate knowledge of astronomy and time-reckoning, their complex political organization headed by royal dynasties, and their writing systems, some of the most sophisticated in the ancient world. Although much is known about the Maya elite, popular information about their working classes is less accessible. Recent archaeological discoveries have begun to shed more light on everyday domestic life and the relationships of non-elites to the ruling class.

Maya: Hidden Worlds Revealed explores the fascinating social, natural and spiritual realms of the ancient Maya through the eyes of powerful kings and queens and the lesser-known people who were the backbone of Maya society. It features immersive environments, authentic artifacts, and hands-on activities that tell the story of the ancient Maya and their modern descendants.

The collection of art of the ancient Americas is substantial, consisting of more than 1,900 pieces. The Museum is fortunate in the breadth and depth of the collection as a whole. All three principal cultural centers of the Americas are represented: Mesoamerica, Central America, and the Andes. Most of the important art-producing cultures - from the West México to the Maya and Aztec, from Honduras to Panama, from the Chavín to the Inca - can be appreciated during a visit to the permanent collection galleries.

Ancient America refers to regions in Mexico, Central America and South America at a time prior to the arrival of Europeans. The diverse artistic traditions of the prehistoric people can be traced as far back as 4,000 years. The museum collection includes many examples of pottery and stonework as well as elaborate, hand-woven textiles and costumes. Large burial urns, figurines and jewelry provide a unique insight into these advanced cultures.

The permanent exhibit includes representative objects from all the archaeological regions and time periods in Pre-Columbian Guatemala. The exhibition is organized in chronological sequence, from the earliest traces of human presence in the modern territory of Guatemala, until the Spanish conquest. Three major geographic regions may be distinguished in the study of the ancient peoples of Guatemala: The Pacific Coast, The Highlands, and The Lowlands.

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century in both the Old World and the New, chocolate remained an elite drink, too expensive for ordinary folk to enjoy, and often forbidden to them. But the invention by a Dutchman of a method to extract the fat in cacao paste led to the mutation of chocolate from drink into a solid confection that could be enjoyed by the masses. Chocolate now became "big business" and the cultivation of the cacao tree was spread all across the globe.

The present exhibit: "Kakaw: Chocolate in Guatemalan Culture" brings together many lovely objects that celebrate the mysteries and rituals that surrounded the chocolate drink among the early Maya, as well as the vessels that were made in colonial times so that a new, Creole elite could indulge their new-found taste for this prestigious beverage.

Organized by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the exhibition offers a panorama of Olmeca civilization, starting from invaluable pieces found in different archaeological sites in the Gulf of Mexico area, where the civilization addressed as "mother culture" of Mesoamerica flourished 4,000 years ago.
Archaeologist Erika Gomez, exhibition project coordinator at INAH, commented that the show is divided in 4 parts: The first one is about the splendor of the Olmecas (1800-400 BC); the second part is related to sculptures that represent hierarchy and power; the third one refers to regions influenced by the Olmecas and the last one, to the legacy of this culture.
Curated by the recently departed Virginia Mary Fields, who was a specialist in Ancient American Art at LACMA, this great exhibition is composed by pieces from museums that are part of the INAH network as well as independent museums such as Xalapa Anthropology Museum and Museo Amparo of Puebla.

The NMSU Museum is now home to a unique and comprehensive collection of both prehistoric and historical pottery. This permanent exhibit includes almost 600 pottery vessels that reflect the vibrant artistry and beauty of Southwestern and Mesoamerican ceramics. There is also an extensive type collection of sherds from New Mexico and Chihuahua to be explored, as well as other educational materials. The NMSU Museum proudly invites you to view this important and historic cultural collection.

Aztec to Zapotec: Selections from the Ancient Americas Collection features more than 180 works made prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the Europeans during the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Representing a time period of more than 3,000 years, the exhibition is drawn from the OMA’s comprehensive Art of the Ancient Americas Collection and gives a rare glimpse into the life and culture of numerous civilizations from the North, Central and South American regions. Significant ancient works of gold, silver, jade, ceramic, shell and wood are included from the cultures of the Aztec, Maya, Moche, Nasca, Inca and Zapotec.
The OMA’s Ancient Americas Collection is considered to be the broadest and most representative collection of its type in the Southeast, by Dr. S.J.K. Wilkerson, the director of the Institute of Cultural Ecology of the Tropics, Veracruz. Regarding the Collection, renowned University of Florida scholar Michael Moseley has stated, "…the Collection is magnificent. There are many very superb pieces … in conjunction with your other holdings it will put the museum on the map for Andean scholars."

Explore objects from various areas of the Art Institute of Chicago's permanent collection to enrich visitors' understanding of their content, style, and historical context. The collection includes sculpture, ceramics, metalwork, and textiles created by Native Americans, the inhabitants of Teotihuacan, and the Olmec, Maya, and Aztecs of ancient Mesoamerica - the geographical area comprising New Mexico, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. Includes lesson plans for the classroom, maps, glossary, books, and art projects for the home.

Pre-Columbian art from Mexico and Central America displayed in a series of galleries communicates the power and sophistication of the mysterious cultures that rose and fell in ancient America. Emphasis is placed on the ceramic and stone arts of West Mexico, Costa Rica and Panamá. A gallery devoted to the famous "Limestone Tomb of Lord Pacal" includes a lifesize reproduction of the elaborately decorated and highly symbolic limestone sarcophagus excavated at the pyramid in the Mayan City of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. Other works of art from the ancient Mayan civilization complete the exhibit.

The Dayton Art Institute's permanent collection contains more than 26,000 objects, spanning 5,000 years of art history. At any given time, The Dayton Art Institute's galleries display about 1,000 works from the permanent collection.

The museum is divided into three main wings: the Berry Wing of European Art, the Dicke Wing of American Art and the Patterson/Kettering Wing of Asian Art. The Dayton Art Institute also features galleries devoted to African Art, Oceanic Art, Pre-Columbian Art, Native American Art and Glass.

The Fabergé Museum opened a special exhibition of his collection of gold objects from Central and South America pre-Columbian times.
We provide the unique gold objects from different American cultures of the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs from the period of 400 years before Christ until the time of the conquest of America by the Conquest in 1500.
Besides 45 gold artefacts, we present 44 objects from semiprecious stones - jade and nephrite.

Journey through history to get the complete story behind the tasty treat that we crave in Chocolate, an exciting new exhibition developed by The Field Museum.

You'll begin in the rainforest with the unique cacao tree whose seeds started it all. Visit the ancient Maya civilization of Central America and discover what chocolate meant nearly 1,500 years ago. Then travel forward in time and northward to the Aztec civilization of 16th-century Mexico, where cacao seeds were so valuable they were used as money. Discover chocolate's introduction into the upper classes of European society and its transformation into a mass-produced world commodity.

Inaugural exhibit of the renovated Middle American Research Institute that celebrates the development of the Maya civilization from its beginngings in 1000 BC to the present.
Displaying objects from MARI's collection that have never been seen before, this exhibit attempts to dispel erroneous notions of the Maya civilization that have recently gained currency due to the "2012 frenzy."

The objects in this gallery are from "Mesoamerica," the area encompassing most of southern Mexico, all of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. In parts of this culture area farming villages grew into towns and cities, tribal chiefs were made kings and emperors, trade networks became more complex, stone monuments and pyramids were erected, a calendar and writing-system developed, and devotion to nature spirits developed into state ceremonies in honor of the gods and ancestors.

This online exhibit and bibliography is a collaborative project of Tarlton Law Library and the Benson Latin American Collection at The University of Texas. A detailed overview of Aztec and Maya law as it existed at the time of the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica is supplemented by an annotated bibliography of resources on Mexican legal history, Aztec and Maya law, and related works on Aztec and Maya history, archaeology, and cultural studies. To limit the scope of the exhibit and the bibliography, the sections on Maya law will principally focus on the Maya who inhabited what is now the country of Mexico. In following the preferred terminology of Mayanist scholars, "Maya" will be the standard term used to refer to the Maya people and their legal system. The term "Mayan" will refer solely to the diverse group of languages spoken by the Maya people.

Hundreds of earthenware pots and other Precolumbian artifacts from ancient West Mexico are now part of the collections of Wake Forest University's Museum of Anthropology.

The objects, most dating from 300 B.C. to 400 A.D., were donated to the museum in May. The collection of 1,040 pieces includes 162 complete ceramic vessels, ceramic figurines, greenstone beads and necklaces, obsidian spear and arrow points, knives, and grinding stones.

Among the collection are outstanding Jaina terra-cotta figurines from the Maya period, striking figures and house models from western México. Particularly important and rare is the clay model of a ball game, which is complemented by a yoke, hachas, and additional items related to this ancient sporting activity. South American cultures are represented by a small number of vessels, sculptures, and other objects, including textiles. The exhibit also includes a painted Maya vase and the largest carved Maya femur known, along with a notable selection of Olmec and Maya pieces.