by Deb Harding
The people of ancient Costa Rica put a lot of bird and animal imagery in their pottery, both painted and in the form of three-dimensional figures. This little bird dates from about 300-800 AD and sat on the shoulder of a large jar from the Guanacaste Peninsula in northwestern Costa Rica.
Deb Harding is a collection manager in Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Section of Anthropology. She frequently blogs and shares pieces of the museum’s hidden anthropology collection, which is home to over 100,000 ethnological and historical specimens and 1.5 million archaeological artifacts.
