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Jama-Coaque roller stamp

Price: on request
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Object number
AR3053A
Object: Roller stamp for body decoration from the Jama-Coaque culture

Material: Clay.

Period: 355 BC to 400 AD.
Earliest phase of the Jama-Coaque culture in Ecuador.

Description:    Cylindrical stamp with deep relief on the outer surface. When unrolled, the stamp creates a rich ornamental decoration. Two indentations at the ends were used to better guide the seal when rolling. Members of the Ecuadorian Jama-Coaque culture applied skin decoration with this roller stamp.

Dimensions: 8.8cm length, 2.4cm diameter.

Condition: Good condition. Slight wear, some of it surely ancient. Small chip at one end. Two tiny drill holes from the sampling for a thermoluminescence analysis. Numerous other objects from the Westermann collection were examined and dated by Kotalla laboratory. Unfortunately, the report for this object has not been passed down.

Provenance: Acquired by us in 2020 on the German art market. Sold at Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger auction 330 of 2017 September 19th, lot no. 87 (low estimate of 300 Euro excl. fees). Previously in the German private collection H.-J. Westermann, acquired for the collection in the 1960s.
Hans-Juergen Westermann developed an interest in the ancient cultures of America during his business trips to Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s. He built an extensive collection in the 1960s based on purchases of smaller collections from Ecuador and Costa Rica, as well as an important Costa Rica collection in Germany. Between 1991 and 1995 the Westermann Collection was loaned to Dresdner Bank in Frankfurt am Main Germany and afterwards contractually curated by the bank. In 2017, the collection was returned to the art collecting community by Muenchen (Germany) based auctioneer Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger.

References: Cf. Johnson Musuem of Art der Cornell University, object no. 2006.070.098.

Literature: E. Estrada, Prehistoria de ManabĂ­.
C. Evans und B. Meggers, Mesoamerica and Ecuador, in Handbook of Middle American Indians.

Authenticity: We unconditionally guarantee the authenticity of every artefact, all items are subject to our lifetime return policy on authenticity.