gems, jade, Mesoamerica, early art, Maya, Olmec, Aztec

Several Costa Rican-style artifacts have been found at the sites of Cerro de las Mesas and Tres Zapotes in Veracruz, Mexico. Easby (1963: 104, fig. 49) first recognized the presence of an avian axe-god pendant in the jade cache from Cerro de las Mesas (Drucker 1943:pl.52a), seen in Figure 1a. Stone (1972: 216) also recognized it as such, in addition to recognizing a Diqufs-style (Pacific Southwest) peg-based statue, with a height of 40.5 cm, fromthe same cache (Drucker 1955:34-35, pl. 30), seen in Figure lb.