BOULDER, COLO.- Artemis Fine Arts and Arte Primitivo are bringing their expertise together for a two-day auction on September 15 and 16, 2026, offering a wide-ranging selection of Pre-Columbian, Native American, fossil, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Near Eastern, African, Tribal and Asian material. The sale opens with Pre-Columbian, Native American and fossil works on September 15, followed the next day by antiquities and works from Africa and Asia.


Teotihuacan Obsidian Ceremonial Mask, Ritual Use. Estimate: $22,500 - $35,000.

Among the most striking works on the first day is a Teotihuacan ceremonial mask carved from obsidian, dating to around 450–650 CE. With its broad brow, heavy-lidded eyes and idealized features, the mask belongs to a type long associated with ritual and funerary contexts. Its small eye openings suggest it was not intended to be worn, but rather attached to a mortuary bundle or wooden support. Pale residues in the recessed eye channels may be traces of lost shell or stone inlays. Estimated at $22,500–35,000, the piece comes from a private Florida collection and was acquired in 1968–69.

Obsidian held both practical and symbolic importance at Teotihuacan, whose inhabitants controlled access to important volcanic-glass sources and worked the material into tools, ornaments and sculpture. While stone masks are among the city’s most recognizable artistic forms, their exact ritual role remains a subject of debate because none has yet been found in a securely documented burial context. Their distinctive symmetry and impersonal expressions nonetheless fit closely with Teotihuacan’s larger visual culture.


Uraba Gold Shamanic Mushroom Deity Pectoral (100 gr). Estimate: $35,000 - $45,000

Another highlight is a heavy gold pectoral from Colombia’s Urabá region, cast in the form of a semiabstract figure crowned with what appear to be three mushroom-like forms. The pendant, estimated at $35,000–45,000, combines spirals, braiding and geometric forms and would likely have been worn at the chest as an emblem of status or ceremonial authority. XRF testing identified the alloy as 19.3-karat gold, composed of 80.5 percent gold, 16.3 percent copper and 1.5 percent silver.

Its imagery reflects the highly sophisticated metalworking traditions that flourished in the region connecting Colombia and Panama. The object was made using the lost-wax process, and the interpretation of its three domed forms as mushrooms has led some scholars to associate the pendant with shamanic transformation and entheogenic ritual, although that reading remains a matter of scholarly interpretation rather than certainty.


Remojadas Seated Woman, Monumental Ceramic Figure. Estimate: $15,000 - $25,000.

A monumental ceramic seated woman from the Remojadas tradition of Veracruz is another major work in the sale. Measuring 22 inches high, the sculpture depicts a woman seated cross-legged, wearing a hooded cape, jewelry and bracelets, with traces of red pigment surviving over a white ground. The figure was reconstructed from approximately 30 ancient fragments and is estimated at $15,000–25,000.

Large hollow ceramic figures such as this were among the most ambitious sculptural achievements of ancient Veracruz. Many are found deliberately broken, suggesting that fragmentation could have been part of ritual deposition rather than simply the result of accidental damage. Seated female figures of this type have sometimes been interpreted as maternal or generative deities, linking them to broader Mesoamerican ideas surrounding fertility, childbirth and sacred female power.

The auction also includes a large Costa Rican jade pendant carved with a raptor grasping a rabbit, estimated at $9,500–12,500. Worked in a deep blue-green stone, the pendant combines bird, serpent and mammalian imagery in a compact composition that would have functioned as an elite chest ornament. Its reverse preserves evidence of the abrasive cord-cutting technique used by ancient lapidaries, who shaped hard greenstone without metal tools.


Costa Rican Jade Pendant | Condor and Rabbit. Estimate: $9,500 - $12,500.

Jade carried associations with water, fertility, rank and supernatural power throughout much of ancient Central America. In this example, the raptor’s predatory identity is reinforced by serpent-headed extensions and the captured rabbit, creating an image of authority that combines creatures of the sky and earth.

From the north coast of Peru comes a long Chimu gold crown band, estimated at $12,000–15,000. Made from hammered sheet gold, the band depicts twelve hybrid fish-human figures riding waves aboard caballitos de totora, the reed watercraft still used today along Peru’s northern coast. Each figure holds a seabird, tying the ornament closely to the maritime environment that sustained Chimu society.

The crown band once belonged to the Nora and John Wise collection, whose holdings of South American Pre-Columbian art were shown and donated to major American institutions including the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.


Chimu Sheet Gold Crown Band | Caballito de Totora Wave Riders. Estimate: $12,000 - $15,000.

Taken together, the September sale ranges from objects of intimate ritual use to large-scale sculpture and elite regalia, offering a broad view of the materials, technologies and belief systems that shaped ancient societies across the Americas. The collaboration between Artemis Fine Arts and Arte Primitivo brings these works into a single auction format while retaining the specialist focus both galleries have developed over decades.