This volume contains three monographs from the series of Collected Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archeology. Johannes Wilbert looks at the use and decoration of spindles, focusing on those from Ecuador. Peter Roe examines the Chavin seriations, with numerous illustrations and a pullout chart, and Elizabeth Benson considers the motif of felines and men in Mochica art.

Since Columbus first called the natives of the Americas “Indians,” the sources of their art and culture have been a puzzle. The strange mixture of objects of Asian appearance with those decidedly un-Asian has provided fuel for controversy between those who see the American cultures as products of diffusion and those who see them as independent inventions. Origins of Pre-Columbian Art cuts through this old dispute to provide a fresh look at ancient cultural history in the Americas and the Pacific basin.

Using evidence from archaeology, ethnology, and psychology, Terence Grieder suggests that contact between individuals across cultural borders is the root of both invention and diffusion. By tracing the spread of early symbolic techniques, materials, and designs from Europe and Asia to the lands of the Pacific and to the Americas, he displays the threads woven through humanity’s common cultural heritage.

While archaeology provides examples of ancient symbols, ethnology reveals widely separated modern peoples still using these symbols and giving them similar meanings. Mapping these patterns of use and meaning, the author describes three waves of migration from Asia to the Americas, each carrying its own cluster of ideas and the symbols that expressed them.

First Wave cultures focused on their environment and on the human body, inventing symbols that compared people and nature. Second Wave symbolism emphasized the center and the periphery: the village and the horizon; the tree or pole as world axis; and the world’s rim, where spirits exist. These cultures created masks to give form to those beings beyond the horizon. The heavens were finally incorporated into the system of symbols by Third Wave peoples, who named the celestial bodies as gods, treasured heaven-colored stones, and represented the world in pyramids.

Emphasizing the interpretation of art in its many forms, Grieder has found that such seemingly minor decorations as bark cloth clothing and tattoos have deep meaning. Ancient art, he argues, was the vehicle for ancient science, serving to express insights into biology, astronomy, and the natural world.

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.