gems, jade, pyroxene jade, fei cui, Guatemala, Mesoamerica, Nicaragua, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, archaeogemology, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Olmec, Mayan, Aztec, Mixtec, Toltec, Zapotec

The Dumbarton Oaks Conference on the Olmec, held in late October 1967, was pervaded by the generous and gentle spirit of the “grandfather of Olmec studies,” Matthew Stirling. It was my first conference on a Pre-Columbian theme and my first sight of the great man. He and his wife, Marion Stirling, invited the participants and those associated with Dumbarton Oaks to their home for dinner on Saturday night. It was there that I found myself sitting at the feet of all of the North American archaeologists who had been present at the actual excavation of the great Offering 4 at La Venta—the famous group of thirteen stone figures and six halved celts arranged as a ritual group. They described how it all had to be recorded, photographed and removed in the same day for fear that it might be stolen that night. Robert Heizer told how the next day they were able to pinpoint exactly the balancing offering, which appeared to be wizardry to the laborers. But the most moving part of that conference was Matthew Stirling, the man who had excavated all the important Olmec sites and had unerringly called attention to most of what we still know about that mysterious civilization. His love affair with the Olmec sites began with a blue-jade masquette in the Berlin Museum which he had gone to see in 1920. What attracted Matthew Stirling and all olmecistas from José Melgar through Miguel Covarrubias to the present generation is the remarkable conception and mastery of form and technique in the working of materials—especially the working of hard stones such as jade and serpentine. It might be said that no other lithic culture in world history has been as precise in its choice of stones and as accomplished in the working of them as the Olmec. I would like to discuss Olmec forms and materials from the highlands of Mexico—especially north-central Guerrero.