This latest title in a strikingly beautiful series of collectable books turns our attention to the rich variety of art from the Ancient Americas. We gain fascinating insights into the design and production of a wide range of objects from Mexico and Central and South America. Enlarged details chosen to inspire, illuminate, and surprise bring us close to the world of the Olmecs, Mayans, Mixtecs, Aztecs, and Incans.

Beginning by asking what constitutes Ancient American art, Colin McEwan contextualizes this art in its complexity of form and meaning. The close-ups provide the reader with insights that even a behind-the-scenes museum tour cannot offer. As we move across a range of cultures and media, we understand larger issues within which these works of art are embedded: What is the relationship between art and nature in the Ancient Americas? How were these objects used in ritual and religious practices? What is the role of masks? How do the practices of ancestor deification, sacrifice, and rituals related to fertility and procreation shape the visual and material culture of the Ancient Americas?

Jade, turquoise, featherwork, metalwork, wood, stone, ceramics, textiles, and illustrations—each beautifully photographed object is part of the extraordinary Ancient American collection of the British Museum. The beauty of the smallest details is magnified and contextualized through accompanying essays written by experts in Ancient American art.

The final installment in the definitive series of catalogues of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection, Pre-Columbian Art from Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks examines a comprehensive and expertly curated collection of jade and gold objects from Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia. This lavish catalogue provides over two hundred detailed and illustrated descriptions of objects that span approximately two millennia. Illustrated in detail with hundreds of high-quality photographs in full color and with stunning clarity, these breathtaking works of art reveal the ingenuity, skill, and vision of Indigenous artists and artisans.

With a dozen accompanying chapters by thirty contributors from the United States, Europe, and Latin America, this landmark publication describes the objects in the context of a history of the collection, production techniques, technical analyses, iconographic interpretations, and evaluations of material from specific archaeological sites. Pre-Columbian Art from Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks is a major watershed in the archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, representing an essential contribution to scholarship on fascinating cultures from an area located between Mesoamerica and the Andes, with ties to the Antilles and Amazonia, in the center of the Americas.

Archaeologists, art historians, ethnohistorians, and ethnographers have long been captivated by the expressive material culture of the prehispanic indigenous peoples in the lands between Mesoamerica and the Andes. Interconnected communities of practice that were active from central Honduras in the north to coastal Ecuador in the south, with networks of interaction that included the Antilles and Amazonia, made this area essential for understanding long-term culture change.

Pre-Columbian Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador: Toward an Integrated Approach presents twenty chapters on current research in this central area of Latin America. Over two dozen specialists have contributed to this lavishly illustrated book, on topics ranging from historical and theoretical perspectives to analytical studies, reports on recent excavations, and evaluations of material such as ceramics, stone sculpture, gold artifacts, and ceremonial seats from various contexts in Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador. Edited by Colin McEwan and John W. Hoopes, this book is an essential addition to the library of any scholar fascinated by the diverse indigenous peoples of the Americas.

The Pacific Coast of the Americas linked Pre-Columbian complex societies from Mexico to Peru, facilitating exploration, communication, and transportation in a way that terrestrial routes could not match. Yet West Mexico, the Isthmo-Colombian Area, and Ecuador, with their great stretches of coastline, were marginalized by the definition of the Mesoamerican and Andean culture areas in the 1940s. Waves of Influence seeks to renew the inquiry into Pacific coastal contacts and bring fresh attention to connections among regions often seen as isolated from one another.

This volume reassesses the evidence for Pre-Columbian maritime contacts along the Pacific Coast, from western Mexico to northwestern South America. The authors draw upon recent models of globalization, technological style, and ritual commensality alongside methods such as computer simulation, iconographic analysis, skeletal studies, and operational chains. No single model can characterize the coastal network over 4,000 km of coastline and over 4,000 years of interaction, and authors present individual case studies to demonstrate how each region participated in its own distinct networks. Essays address the difficulty of maritime movement, the transfer of crops, technology, and knowledge, the identification of different modalities of contact, and the detection of important nodes and social actors within the coastal network.