Each season we will be looking closely at an object from the Sainsbury Centre collections. This summer we are focusing on the 'eccentric' flint, an object thought to have been shaped in what is now Guatemala over 1,000 years ago.

Elaborately worked flints, known as 'eccentric' for their curious shapes, have been recovered throughout the Maya region of South America, but this one is a particularly rare example. The complex profile heads which decorate it are extremely difficult to shape and would have been cut by a specialist craftsman.

To find out more about this fascinating object, why not come to our Object in Focus Talk on 23 July 2011