Famous pre-Columbian artifacts: 15 works and where they are

What makes an object famous

A famous object is usually one that a person found and wrote down. The three great Mexica stones came out of the ground during the paving of Mexico City's main square in 1790 and 1791, and the date of each find is on record. The tomb of the Lord of Sipán was found by named archaeologists on 20 July 1987. The Muisca raft was bought by the Bank of the Republic in April 1969, within months of its find. An object with a place, a date and a keeper is an object that others can study, publish and compare, which is how it comes to be known.

The list below is a selection, not a ranking. The dots on the three maps mark where an object or a monument was found, and the key under each map says where the object is kept now; an object kept far from its find, such as the codex in Dresden or the serpent in London, has no dot. The map of the cultures shows where each tradition lived, and the timeline when. What pre-Columbian art is explains the term itself.

Mexico and the Maya region

Seven works from the Mexica, Olmec and Maya worlds, three of them found within two years of one another under the main square of Mexico City.

• The Stone of the Sun (Piedra del Sol). A basalt disc about 3.6 metres across that weighs about 24 tonnes, found in December 1790 on the south side of the main square of Mexico City. It shows the myth of the five suns around the face of the sun god Tonatiuh, and carries the date 13 Reed, which the National Institute of Anthropology and History reads as 1479, the year the carving was finished; other scholars date it to the early 1500s. It is often called the Aztec calendar stone, and it stands in the National Museum of Anthropology.
• Coatlicue. A monumental andesite statue found in August 1790 while the same square was levelled. The goddess wears a necklace of hearts and hands with a skull at its centre, a belt of a two-headed serpent and a skirt of serpents; the back shows Tlaloc and Tlaltecuhtli. Scholars have debated whom it shows, and the general view is Coatlicue, mother of the patron god Huitzilopochtli. It is in the National Museum of Anthropology.
• The Stone of Tizoc. An andesite drum about 2.65 metres across, carved between 1481 and 1486 in the reign of Tizoc. Fifteen scenes run round its side, each a warrior gripping a defeated man by the hair, with the captive's town named by a sign; the towns are not only conquests of Tizoc's own reign. The sun on top has a round hollow 46 centimetres across, read as the bowl of a vessel for offerings, though its use has been debated since its find on 17 December 1791. It stands in the National Museum of Anthropology.
• Olmec Colossal Head 1, known as El Rey. A basalt head more than 2.5 metres tall, found at San Lorenzo, Veracruz, in the mid-1940s by Matthew Stirling of the Smithsonian Institution; it was the first head found there. Its stone came from quarries in the Tuxtla Mountains, up to 60 kilometres away, and the sculptors used stone tools. Of the 17 colossal heads known, it is one of the seven in the Museum of Anthropology of Xalapa. The Olmec guide says more.
• The mask of Pakal. About 200 pieces of jade, with eyes of shell and irises of obsidian, found in 1952 by Alberto Ruz Lhuillier in the crypt under the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque. The burial is that of the Maya ruler K'inich Janaab' Pakal, whose inscriptions give his birth as 603 and his death as 683. The mask had slipped beside the head and was rebuilt from its pieces; it is 24 centimetres long and shows the maize god, whom the dead ruler stood for. It is in the Maya Hall of the National Museum of Anthropology.
• The double-headed serpent. Cedar wood covered in turquoise mosaic, with red spiny oyster shell around the snouts and conch-shell teeth, 43 centimetres wide, made between 1400 and 1521 and probably worn on the chest at ceremonies. The British Museum bought it in 1894 through Lord Walsingham from the Duchessa Massimo, whom its record names as the earlier owner, and shows it in Room 27. The Aztec guide gives its setting.
• The Dresden Codex. A Maya book of folded bark paper, one of four that survive: the others are in Madrid, Paris and Mexico City, and the Saxon State and University Library in Dresden keeps this one. The library dates it to the late Postclassic, about 1300 to 1521, probably made in northern Yucatán after a Classic model, and finds six scribes' hands in it. The fourth, the Maya Codex of Mexico, was long doubted; studies from 2015 to 2018 dated it to between 1021 and 1154, which the library says makes it the oldest book of America. The Maya guide places the writing.

Colombia and Costa Rica

Two works from the lands between Mexico and Peru, one of gold and one of stone.

• The Muisca raft (Balsa Muisca). A votive raft of gold 19.5 centimetres long, cast in one piece by the lost-wax method from gold of more than 80 per cent with silver and copper. A chief sits at the centre with ten smaller figures round him, among them rowers. Farmers found it in 1969 in a ceramic vessel in a cave at Pasca, south of Bogotá, and the Bank of the Republic bought it in April of that year. It is tied to the El Dorado ceremony that Spanish chroniclers described, though it was found in a cave and not at Lake Guatavita; the bank dates it most likely to 1200 to 1500. It is in the Gold Museum in Bogotá.
• The stone spheres of the Diquís. Spheres of stone from 0.7 to 2.57 metres across, at four settlement sites in the Diquís delta of south-western Costa Rica, on the World Heritage List since 2014. The settlements date from 500 to 1500, and the World Heritage record calls the spheres' meaning, use and making largely a mystery; it notes that many still lie where they were placed. The largest single sphere found is at El Silencio. The Costa Rica and Panama guide covers the region.

The Andes

Five places and one cord, from the Moche coast to the Inca highlands and the desert of Nazca.

• The Lord of Sipán. The intact tomb of a Moche ruler, found at the Huaca Rajada mound in Lambayeque on 20 July 1987 by Peruvian archaeologists led by Walter Alva with Susana Meneses and Luis Chero Zurita. The Royal Tombs of Sipán Museum calls it the richest burial found in the Americas and the first of a Moche ruler. The first piece Alva found was a gold ear ornament whose central figure, only 6.2 centimetres tall, shows a Moche warrior chief in a turquoise tunic. The Moche guide covers the culture.
• The Raimondi Stela. A slab of granite about two metres high, carved with the Staff God of Chavín de Huántar, who holds a staff in each hand, the staffs bearing serpent designs. Peru's National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and History in Lima dates it to 400 to 200 BCE and names it one of the iconic pieces of the Chavín culture. It was in a farmer's house when Antonio Raimondi saw it in 1873. The Chavín guide shows the style.
• The Gate of the Sun. A doorway cut from a single slab of andesite of more than ten tonnes, three metres high and four wide, in the Kalasasaya temple at Tiwanaku, Bolivia. Above the opening a frieze shows a central deity on a stepped platform with a staff in each hand, flanked by rows of figures part human and part bird, read as an agricultural calendar. Tiwanaku was at its height between 500 and 900. The Wari and Tiwanaku guide covers its art.
• The Nazca Lines. Figures and lines scratched on the desert floor between 500 BCE and 500 CE over about 450 square kilometres, some 400 kilometres south of Lima, on the World Heritage List since 1994. The record counts about seventy figures of animals, plants and imaginary beings, among them a pelican of 285 metres, a guano bird of 280, a monkey of 55 and a spider of 46, with straight lines that run for kilometres. Their makers removed the dark weathered gravel to show the pale ground under it. The potters of the same people painted the same animals on their vessels: see Nazca pottery. How old the lines are and why they were made is in the Nazca Lines guide.
• Machu Picchu. A city of about 200 structures on a ridge 2,430 metres above the sea, built in the fifteenth century and abandoned when the Spanish conquered the Inca Empire in the sixteenth; it was made known to the outside world in 1911. The World Heritage record calls it probably the most amazing urban creation of the Inca Empire at its height and says many of its mysteries remain unresolved, among them its exact role. The Inca guide places it.
• An Inca khipu. The Inca kept their records on khipus, strings with knots that tallied tribute, population and trade. The Brooklyn Museum holds an administrative khipu of 1400 to 1532, made of cotton, 39 by 77 centimetres, with three khipus tied along one main cord. Its knots stand for numbers by their type and place; the meaning of the cord colours is not known today. Scholars are closest to reading the administrative khipus. A khipu has no single find place, and no dot.

From a famous object to the pieces in private hands

A famous object shows what a record can hold: where it was found, who kept it, which museum shows it. Most pre-Columbian objects that change hands are smaller: vessels, figures, textiles. They have a record only if someone kept one. The British Museum's entry for the double-headed serpent names an earlier owner, the Brooklyn Museum's for the khipu names the donor, and a published collection or an exhibition catalogue does the same for a vessel. What provenance means sets out which records count.

To see these objects, where to see the great collections lists twenty museums with three maps. If you hold a piece and want our view, what we buy says what we look at, and sending photographs takes a few minutes.

Cite this guide: Precolumbian.com, “Famous pre-Columbian artifacts: 15 works and where they are”, 2026, https://precolumbian.com/guides/famous-pre-columbian-artifacts.html