Dish with Monkey Motif, A.D. 1000-1500. Veraguas Province, Panama. Polychromed earthenware. Lent by Margarita Ruffer						Physical Religious Artistic Economic Social
	ARTISTIC ENVIRONMENT he artistic environment of this period showed production in a variety of media: stone, ceramics, fabrics, and metals. A gold cult was especially significant in Central America. Elaborate jewelry was fashioned for the living elite and for the dead as funerary offerings. Other ornaments that served as expressions of personal power were fashioned from ceramic pieces, animal teeth, and shell. Pre-Columbian Central Americans, like their neighbors to the north and south, portrayed the great diversity of animal life that surrounded them on ceramic vessels, textiles, stone sculpture, and jewelry. Common animal motifs included the jaguar, alligator, monkey, frog, and buzzard.