The Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) culture, forerunner to modern Pueblo peoples, developed some 2,000 years ago in northern New Mexico and the Four Corners area, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. This vessel features a red background and interlocking hatched and solid figures.

Navajo weaving, performed by women with upright looms, is the most distinguished of modern southwestern textile traditions.

This pectoral or chest ornament is an extremely rare object from the Olmec tradition and one of the largest known examples. The concave surface is intricately carved with eight flanges spaced around the outer edges of all four sides and may represent foliage.

The carved stone images Olmec kings wore on their foreheads and chests projected supernatural power. This pendant carved in the shape of a hummingbird would have originally been suspended from a necklace by the two smaller drilled holes at the neck of the figure.

The carved stone images Olmec kings wore on their foreheads and chests projected supernatural power. It is unknown if this small jadeite mask would have been worn, but it may have been suspended from a necklace or brooch by the smaller drilled holes at the earlobes of the figure.

The carved stone images Olmec kings wore on their foreheads and chests projected supernatural power. A great king also possessed small sculptures, such as this carved serpentine figurine that depicts a crouching or kneeling man with both hands resting on the front of the knees.

Ground stone axe heads, or celts, were tools for clearing wood and brush from land to be farmed. Celts made of precious jadeite and serpentine were important in Olmec ritual and may have constituted a form of wealth. Great numbers of them were placed in caches.

The sages of Olmec civilization etched their creed on polished stone artifacts and then rubbed red paint into the patterns. This small, carved greenstone tablet has been called the earliest example of Olmec hieroglyphic writing, but its incised symbols are not actually writing but represent the only known image of the Olmec concept of the cosmos.

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