gems, jade, jadeite, fei cui, Mesoamerica, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mayans, Olmecs, Aztecs, archaeology, history, archaeogemology, Pre-Columbian jade; Costa Rica; Maya; exchange; iconography, lapidary, Incas, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia

Andean Art at Dumbarton Oaks presents the Andean portion of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art. The volume superbly illustrates all 133 Andean objects in color plates and includes numerous complementary and comparative black-and-white illustrations and drawings. The body of Pre-Columbian art that Robert Woods Bliss carefully assembled over more than half a century, between 1912 and 1963, and which has been expanded slightly since his death, constitutes a remarkably significant collection. These works rank among the finest examples of the visual arts produced by Andean cultures. This Andean volume is the first in a planned series of four catalogues devoted to the entirety of the Bliss Pre-Columbian collection. The remaining volumes were intended to focus on objects from eastern Mesoamerica (Olmec and Maya), western Mesoamerica (Teotihuacan, Veracruz, Mixtec, and Aztec), and Lower Central America. Andean Art is composed of five thematic essays, shorter studies on the Andean cultures represented in the collection, and detailed discussions of the individual objects. These contributions were written by specialists in Pre-Columbian art and present the latest scholarly perspectives on Andean cultures and the works themselves. All thirteen authors bring broad expertise in Andean cultural history, archaeology, and art history to their essays, while focusing primarily on the objects in order to provide meaningful contexts and to demonstrate how these artworks, created and used with specific purposes, reveal distinctive qualities of Andean civilization. The volume gives readers a strong sense of how the creators and original owners of the objects in the Bliss collection used and valued these works on many levels. The authors also place individual pieces alongside comparable examples whenever possible. An especially notable feature of the book is the technical analysis of the metal objects contributed by metals specialist Heather Lechtman.