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Mesoamerican
Archaeology
Theory and Practice
Edited by
Julia A. Hendon and
Rosemary A. Joyce
Blackwell
Publishing
BIBLIOTECA LUIS GONZALEZ
ELCX>LBG10DMK3*CN
Shared Art Styles and
Long-Distance Contact
in Early Mesoamerica
Richard G. Lesure
The new theoretical interest in agents embedded in structures is prompting archae
ologists to rethink the first 1,200 years of settled life in Mesoamerica, from approx
imately 1600 B.C. to 400 B.C. A particular concern involves the relationships that
linked communities together across quite large distances. This topic has been
explored for over 50 years, ever since it became clear that one Mesoamerican art
style was remarkably early compared to other widespread style horizons and in fact
dated to the epoch of interest here. The art style has been called Olmec, a label
chosen rather arbitrarily by archaeologists.
Use of a common art style in communities separated by hundreds of kilometers
implies significant connections between them, but what was the nature of those
connections? One answer has set the tone for successive generations of debates on
this issue. The proposal was that people living in one part of Mesoamerica - speci
fically, the southern Gulf Coast, comprising parts of the modern states ofVeracruz
and Tabasco, Mexico - created the Olmec art style and that from there it spread to
other areas. The peoples of the southern Gulf Coast during the period 1200-400
B.C. became known as the Olmecs, leading to a confusing dual usage for this term.
Their culture was identified as the mother culture of Mesoamerica, a complex of
beliefs from which all subsequent Mesoamerican cultures descended. Over the
years, scholars have proposed a variety of models detailing just how the culture of
a set of Gulf Coast peoples might have become the progenitor for subsequent
Mesoamerican civilizations (Diehl and Coe 1996). Critiques of mother culture per
spectives have been synthesized as sister cultures models.
That the anthropological notion of a mother culture is so outdated as to seem
ridiculous has been recognized for some time. One response has been to ignore the
claim and the issues of cultural history it raises, to turn instead to general anthro
pological theory concerning the origins of socio-political complexity. That response
aligns itself with a wider movement, prominent in North American archaeology
since the 1960s, in which a particular ancient culture is studied not as an end in
itself but rather as a test case for general theories applicable world-wide. It is pos
sible to make some headway toward an agency perspective by following that path.
Attention focuses on seemingly universal dimensions of agency, such as the ways
people manipulate social relationships to gain power and prestige. But this approach
necessarily views people as autonomous agents only minimally constrained by struc
tures. To investigate the structures in which agency was embedded in ancient
Mesoamerica, archaeologists have to leave the ramparts of general theory and
plunge into cultural history. Ancient art provides a particularly important body of
evidence. But when we turn to art from early Mesoamerica, we are immediately
confronted once again with the long-standing debate over the source of the Olmec
style. If we are to successfully inject contemporary theoretical interests into the
study of early Mesoamerica, we need to confront (not ignore) this debate, identify
its important contributions, and redirect its future course.
The Olmec Style
The term Olmec is problematic because its dual usage - for both a people
living in one part of Mesoamerica and an art style characteristic of a wider region
- actually privileges the claim that people in the Gulf Coast created the style and
spread it across the rest of Mesoamerica. If, however, that claim is actually the
subject of debate, then we really should not use the term in this dual fashion
(Flannery and Marcus 1994:385-390; Grove 1989). Here I will use Olmec as a
descriptive label for the widely shared art style; in my usage, there were no people
called Olmecs. (Other authors cited here make different choices with regard to
this term.) I will speak of Olmec style and Olmec iconography interchangeably. For
this early period, we do not know what different groups of people called themselves;
I will use labels from modern geography to refer to the people of different regions
(Fig. 3.1).
From 1200 to 400 B.C., Olmec iconography was widely but unevenly distributed
across Mesoamerica. In some periods and places it seems very pure; in others, it
is mixed with more localized themes and styles. The artistic media used are also
diverse. They include monumental stone sculptures, portable stone objects,
modeled ceramic artifacts, and pottery vessels.
Four points concerning the Olmec style deserve emphasis here. First, it com
prises a cluster of readily identifiable motifs and themes. Some of these are illustrated
in Figure 3.2 (see also Joralemon 1971). Second, the limited set of themes suggests
a coherent subject matter. Pohorilenko (1996) identifies three distinct subjects: a crea
ture with the face of a human baby but supernaturally transformed (Fig. 3.2(a)); a
reptilian creature, also with plenty of imaginary elements (Fig. 3.2(c)); and a human
form with supernatural and animal modifications of the face (Fig. 3.2(f)). Other
analysts reconstruct subject matter in very different ways, but common threads in
these accounts are an identification of subjects as imaginary creatures and a sense
that people in different areas were depicting the same creatures (Joralemon 1976;
Marcus 1989;Taube 1996). Third, there are both naturalistic and stylized ways of
Figure 3.1. Map of Mesoamerica with locations of regions discussed in the text. Archaeological
sites to be mentioned are also located and labeled with letter codes. Highland regions are shown
in gray
representing these subjects. In particular, on pottery vessels images can be so
stylized that only detailed comparative analysis reveals them to be representations
rather than simply abstract designs (Fig. 3.3).
Fourth and finally, all lines of evidence point to Olmec art as being an indige
nous creation of the Native American inhabitants of Mesoamerica, without any influ
ences from Old World regions such as Africa or China. Claims of such contacts are
not based on serious scholarship. They ignore context; they often also make grave
anthropological errors, by, for instance, using stereotypical concepts of what African
facial features should look like and simplistically attempting to identify such fea
tures in Olmec art. Haslip-Viera et al. (1997) provide a good review and critique
of claims concerning an African source for Olmec art.
Chronology
In the study of early Mesoamerica, it is useful to divide the span of time from 8000
B.C. through a . d . 100 into five successive periods. The Archaic period (8000-
1600 B.C.) is the epoch of hunter-gatherer life preceding the appearance of settled
villages. The domestication of important Mesoamerican crops, including maize,
beans, and squash, occurred during this time and led, after 1600 B.C., to the rapid
(d)
ill
Figure 3.2. Some important themes and motifs in Olmec iconography. Note the supernaturally
transformed babies (a); the snarling mouths with flaring upper lips (b, c, e, f); the clefts at the tops of
many heads (esp. a, b, e, f, g); the maize sprouting from the cleft in one case (g); the fame eyebrows
(c, e); and the crossed bands, a motif shaped like an X in the eye of (b) and on the chest of (f)
The images are of: (a) La Venta Altar 5 side panel; (b) San Lorenzo Monument 30; (c) La Venta
Monument 6; (d) La Venta Altar I; (e) celt from a La Venta offering; (f) San Lorenzo Monument 52;
(g) incised design on celt from a La Venta offering. Redrawn by R. Lesure (modified and not to scale)
from: (a) Drucker 1952: fig. 52; (b-g) Joralemon 1971: figs 8, 145, 99, 164, 2 11, respectively; (g)
Drucker et al. 1959: fig. 35
Figure 3.3. Naturalistic and stylized representations of supernatural creatures on pottery from
the Basin of Mexico.Top: naturalistic rendering of what appears to be the same monster depicted
in Fig. 3.2(d). Compare the paw-wing motif on left part of top image with the side panels in 3.2(d).
The face on the right seems to be a profile view of the face we see frontally in the center panel
of 3.2(d). Middle and bottom: these are stylized representations of the same image as appears in
Fig. 3.2(a). Redrawn by R. Lesure from Covarrubias 1957: fig. 9
appearance of sedentary communities committed to an agricultural lifestyle. The
period 1600-1200 B.C. is the initial Early Formative. It was a time of settled village
life prior to the appearance of the Olmec style and is known for the first appear
ance of pottery. Unfortunately, in most areas this period is poorly understood.
The Olmec style appeared during the late Early Formative, 1200-900 B.C. During
this time, there was a rather striking difference in the distribution of media incor
porating Olmec iconography. Olmec pottery and molded ceramic artifacts were
widespread, but monumental stone sculptures with Olmec themes were carved only
on the southern Gulf Coast, notably at San Lorenzo and a few other sites imme
diately surrounding it. During the Middle Formative, 900-400 B.C., monumental
sculpture was more widely distributed and in numerous cases conforms to the
Olmec style. Particularly prominent among artifacts with Olmec themes from this
time are portable objects in jade and other materials. By this period designs on
pottery tended to be very abstract, and in many regions it no longer seems useful
to refer to them as Olmec. By the Late Formative, 400 b . c . - a . d . 100, Mesoameri-
can art styles in all media had changed so much that Olmec ceases to be a helpful
term.
Debat e over t he Source of t he Style
The late Early Formative is the time in which Olmec iconography on ceramics was
widespread, but significant numbers of monumental Olmec sculptures were carved
only in the Gulf Coast region. That rather simple observation forms the basis for
claims that people on the Gulf Coast created Olmec art, which was then adopted
by neighboring groups. Different authors have suggested various mechanisms for
the spread of the style, including conquest, migrations of elite groups, religious pros-
elytization, or simply a process of emulation in which people chose to adopt what
they saw as desirable ideas and practices (Clark 1997; Diehl and Coe 1996). A
common thread among these arguments is the idea that Gulf Coast societies were
ahead of their neighbors in institutionalizing social stratification and political com
plexity. For the late Early Formative, such claims are based fundamentally on the
sculpture from San Lorenzo, which seems to concern the glorification of rulers and
which required a degree of organization and centralization of decision-making to
achieve. According to this argument, other Mesoamerican societies did not produce
much or any sculpture at this time because they were not yet so complexly
organized.
As evidence has accumulated in areas outside the Gulf Coast, scholars have
increasingly voiced objections to the idea that the Gulf Coast was the source of
Olmec style. They show how self-fulfilling many versions are: everything deemed
artistically interesting across Mesoamerica is labeled Olmec and then ascribed to
the Olmecs of the Gulf Coast. Numerous elements of Mesoamerican material,
culture were instead probably invented in highland Mesoamerica, and some impor
tant themes in the ceramic art are part of regional styles that should not be labeled
Olmec. Even when Olmec iconography is defined more carefully, it is clear that
people in different regions chose different vessel forms on which to inscribe Olmec
motifs, and the sets of motifs used in different areas overlapped only partially (Grove
1989). The most abundant ceramic expressions of the style were in the highlands
of Central Mexico rather than the Gulf Coast lowlands (Flannery and Marcus
2000). Finally, no one has yet been able to prove that the Olmec style was invented
in the Gulf Coast before it appeared in other areas.
The claim that social and political complexity had a head start in places like San
Lorenzo is likewise debated. Large communities with public architecture (but little
in the way of sculpture) did appear outside the Gulf Coast during the late Early
Formative in places like the Basin of Mexico and the Valley of Oaxaca. In many
ways, the crucial question is what was going on at Gulf Coast centers from 1600
t o 1200 B. C. , before the widespread occurrence of the Olmec style. Unfortunately,
evidence from that early period remains elusive.
Scholars objecting to the notion that cultural innovations in early Mesoamerica
came from the Gulf Coast have proposed two alternative sister cultures explana
tions for the sharing of Olmec iconography. First, the style and the beliefs behind
it might already have been shared across Mesoamerica during Archaic times
(8000-1600 B. C. ). We find them archaeologically only after the invention of pottery,
when at long last they were placed on durable media. Second, the sharing might
have been the result of interactions during the late Early Formative; groups from
all over Mesoamerica could have contributed to the creation of the style. Accord
ing to such arguments, late Early Formative peoples outside the Gulf Coast were
perfectly capable of producing Olmec sculptures had they so wished. Instead, each
region gave its own inventive spin to the expression of the shared iconography.
Sculptures in places like San Lorenzo reflect different choices rather than greater
complexity.
Its Time to Shelve That Debate
An important realization in recent years has been that it is not only the mother
culture concept that is flawed, but, in addition, much of the debate concerning it.
The underlying problem was that the options being debated were impressionistic,
overly general, and not actually mutually exclusive. For one thing, it seems impos
sible that the sister cultures notion could be completely wrong. Wherever or however
the Olmec style arose, there were surely lots of influences, interactions, and inven
tions in early Mesoamerica that did not involve the Gulf Coast. On the other hand,
renewed work by Ann Cyphers at the Gulf Coast site of San Lorenzo has re
emphasized the spectacular character of its late Early Formative settlement.
Debate continues, but the implication of recent research is that political com
plexity likely did begin earliest on the Gulf Coast. Formative developments in the
region therefore affected the rest of Mesoamerica, but the effects varied greatly from
place to place and were quite ephemeral in some areas. Mesoamerican art of the
Early and Middle Formative is a complex combination of borrowings and local
inventions, significantly impacted by certain syntheses of ideas that emerged first
on the Gulf Coast.
In a loose sense, then, both sides in the previous debates were right. Whether or
not that compromise view holds up to critical scrutiny, an additional recent real
ization is that the source of innovations should not be the question that organizes
all others. Archaeologists need to reject the rhetorical urge to collapse everything
together in an either/or debate with its familial vocabulary of mothers and sisters.
Instead, they should identify the good ideas and intriguing questions raised over
the last several decades and start investigating each one separately. Why might an
iconographic complex such as Olmec be shared so widely? What kinds of connec
tions between people did that sharing involve? How stable were these connections?
Could it be that a variety of different kinds of connections operated simultaneously?
What did use of shared symbols mean to people in different regions? To what extent
was the subject matter of Olmec art shared along with the motifs and styles of rep
resentation? Did shared symbols acquire unique local meanings? Were they associ
ated with elites? What role did Olmec symbols play in ideologies of hierarchy and
inequality? Did that role vary across Mesoamerica? For some inspiring recent exam
ples of such work see Clark and Pye (2000a), Grove and Joyce (1999), and Marcus
and Flannery (1996).
Toward an Agency-Structure Perspective
Archaeologists today thus seek to answer a whole variety of questions about early
Mesoamerica. For the topic of concern in this chapter - the implications of the
sharing of Olmec art across Formative Mesoamerica - two general areas of
investigation are particularly significant. The first, emphasizing agency, comprises
research seeking to document actual contacts between people and to explore the
ways that objects and symbols associated with those contacts were used, manipu
lated, and interpreted in local settings. In other words, the studies concern the social
contexts of shared symbols. Art is seen as a medium through which people inter
pret, manipulate, and transform their worlds. People use art, and we are led to ask:
Why? How? Under what circumstances?
The second area of investigation emphasizes the importance of structures. People
grow up within frameworks of beliefs and practices that help to create different
kinds of agents and to distribute powers and constraints among them. Children,
wives, husbands, mothers-in-law, chiefs, and farmers are all both constrained and
empowered by structures of belief and routine. Was Olmec iconography part of such
structures? Did art use people? In the sections that follow, I consider each of these
areas of investigation separately before finishing with an attempt to put the two
together.
Social Contexts of Exotic Goods and Olmec Iconography
An investigation emphasizing agency and the social contexts of Olmec imagery
needs to be anthropological in the sense of being informed by a comparative under
standing of contemporary societies. That realization derives from some of the ear
liest expressions of dissatisfaction with those mother culture models that fancifully
ascribed the spread of the Olmec style to Gulf Coast religious missionaries or armies
of invaders. An early article by Kent Flannery (1968) was particularly influential,
though it now should only be read alongside his more recent views (Flannery and
Marcus 1994, 2000).
Flannery and other archaeologists imagined the late Early Formative as the time
in which elite groups first formed in Mesoamerica - when inequalities among
people became institutionalized and hereditary. If this claim was correct, they
pointed out, then we might be able to predict some very general features of Early
Formative societies based on comparisons with other small-scale societies where
elites were emerging. A variety of insights followed. If inequalities began to be per
petuated across generations, then ideologies must have appeared that justified that
perpetuation by reinforcing the distinctiveness of the elite. Often, for instance, high-
status people claim a special relationship with supernatural forces. They mediate
between the human and supernatural worlds, overseeing ritual activities that main
tain balance in the universe.
Flannery noted such widespread patterns, and went on to link them to the objects
archaeologists find in their excavations. Particularly intriguing is the importance to
early elites ot exotic materials and the objects made trom such materials. Such high-
starus paraphernalia include items of economic value, costume components, and
special ritual objects used in ceremonies. At Formative Mesoamerican sites, archae
ologists consistently found things imported from great distances: iron ore polished
to form mirrors, shells fashioned into ornaments, jade worked into jewelry or ritual
implements. Flannery argued that these were status paraphernalia essential to the
legitimation of Formative elites. Because the sources of such objects were rare and
widely scattered across Mesoamerica, the rise of elites would have created incen
tives for people to engage in trade over long distances. Comparative anthropology
suggested that this trade probably had a significant social dimension involving long
term relations between elite trading partners and the exchange of women or men
in arranged marriages between distant groups.
Whatever the specifics of how trade was conducted, Flannery suggested, it was
through such far-flung contacts motivated by the exchange of luxury items that
Olmec iconography came to be spread across Mesoamerica. Using this basic frame
work, scholars have pursued a variety of specific lines of inquiry. I consider two.
First is the problem of documenting the contact of people from different regions.
Second is that of ascertaining the uses of objects bearing Olmec imagery. The rela
tion of Olmec art with status competition forms a backdrop to both those issues.
It may eventually be possible to consider movements of people in Mesoamerica
based on specialized analyses of skeletal remains, but thus far most studies focus
on the movements of objects that can be traced to their source. For instance,
seashells appearing in highland sites must have been carried there, and modern
species distributions can be used to assess whether they derive from the Gulf of
Mexico or the Pacific. Rocks and minerals can in some cases be traced more pre
cisely by matching the chemical composition of archaeological discoveries to mate
rials from known sources. The success of such studies varies by material. Obsidian
- a volcanic glass used for tools and thus primarily of economic importance - has
been most amenable to source identification, but researchers have had success also
with iron ore. Unfortunately, the sources of jade have proven more difficult to pin
point, though the usual suspects are eastern Guatemala and Guerrero (see Fig 3.1).
With information about where items originated and where they ended up, it is
possible to make significant headway in reconstructing networks of interaction in
early Mesoamerica. It is clear that certain goods did indeed move from distant areas
to the Gulf Coast; however, status paraphernalia moved among other regions
as well. In Christine Niederbergers (2000:187) reconstruction, the full range of
imports to the Basin of Mexico included pottery and special clays, pigments, rock
crystal, mica, iron ore, jade, serpentine, cotton, sea turtle carapaces, seashells of
various kinds, and possibly exotic lowland birds. Primary links beyond Central
Mexico may have been to Oaxaca, Guerrero, and the Pacific coast, rather than to
the Gulf Coast.
Analyses of such interactions become more interesting when they involve detailed
consideration of everything from the collection of raw materials to the arrival of fin
ished products at their destinations. The production of iron ore objects provides
two examples. At the large site of San Jose Mogote in Oaxaca, survey and excava
tions revealed that, duri ng the late Early Formati ve, people living in one part of the
site collected lumps of iron ore from local sources and polished them into small,
flat mirrors (Flannery 1968). Mirrors produced in San Jose Mogote made their way
to the Gulf Coast, the Basin of Mexico, and probably other places as well, where
they were used in jewelry, clothing, or headdresses.
Exchange of a second, rather bizarre, type of iron ore object seems to have been
more restricted, focused on the Gulf Coast (Di Castro Stringher 1997). The objects
are small, roughly shaped rectangular blocks with multiple holes drilled through
them. No one has been able to show conclusively what these were used for;
one possibility is that they were important in stoneworking. Debris from the
production of these artifacts has been found at the late Early Formative site of
Mirador-Plumajillo, near iron ore sources in the Central Depression of Chiapas.
Although a scattering of these objects has long been known from the Gulf Coast,
those findings in no way prepared investigators for the discovery at San Lorenzo of
6 metric tons of these small blocks. The ancient inhabitants had dumped thousands
of them into pits; the drilled blocks in two of these pits were still whole, while in a
third they had been broken in half. Whatever the actual use of these strange arti
facts, current evidence suggests that the production and distribution system for
drilled iron ore blocks was distinctly different from that for iron ore mirrors. The
blocks did not make their way across all of Mesoamerica. Instead, they were pro
duced in central Chiapas specifically for export to the Gulf Coast.
Of the exchange patterns found for mirrors and drilled blocks, the first appears
to fit a sister cultures model for contacts in early Mesoamerica, while the second
seems appropriate for a mother culture model. These two examples thus reinforce
my claim that it is time to move beyond that oversimplified debate. What scholars
are trying to do now is collect as much information as possible on production and
exchange to build a detailed picture of trade in Formative Mesoamerica. Some are
attempting also to move further to consider the social relationships involved in
transactions. Did those include barter or reciprocity? Or were unequal relations
such as that of patron and client involved? These issues were raised by Flannery
back in 1968 but have proved extremely difficult to resolve.
My second line of inquiry concerns the ways different peoples across Meso
america actually used Olmec art. An obvious question to ask here is whether Olmec
iconography itself might have been a symbolic expression of the elite, directly asso
ciated with status paraphernalia. The answer turns out to be complex since the rela
tion of Olmec iconography to status shifted over time. From 1200 to 900 B.C., the
imagery appeared most abundantly on ceramics, which were widely available to
many people. By the Middle Formative, clear Olmec iconography typically disap
peared from ceramics and became most common on objects with much more
restricted distributions. It thus seems possible that Olmec iconography became
more exclusively associated with status paraphernalia and the elite during the
Middle Formative (Grove and Gillespie 1992).
Pottery vessels bearing Olmec iconography in the late Early Formative were used
to serve food and beverages. Now, when people get together to share food, they are
doing more than simply filling their stomachs. Some meals are formal events in
which social rules concerning how people should interact with each other can be
reinforced or, occasionally, subverted. Imagine, for instance, our stereotypes of dad
carving the turkey or parents telling the kids to sit still in front of guests. When
actual events mirror those stereotypes, they tend to reinforce traditional notions of
the relations between men and women, or adults and children. The sharing of food
can also build bonds of community far beyond the family - one doesnt break bread
with ones enemy. Finally, because food can be expensive in terms of resources or
labor, sharing food on an ambitious scale - sponsoring community feasts, for
instance - can be a route to political power open only to a few. Comparative anthro
pology is again enlightening: elites often seem to establish their authority over others
through their ability to be generous with food.
Thus a variety of important social interactions may take place at meals. Rela
tions of both equality and inequality are involved, and those relations can be
strengthened, reproduced, or subverted based on actions people take. Anthropolo
gists sometimes sum up all those possibilities by saying that the sharing of meals is
an important context for the negotiation of social relations. It is thus of anthropo
logical interest that, when people shared food in the late Early Formative, they
regularly displayed dishes that were prominently - even spectacularly - emblazoned
with Olmec iconography. Was the decorated pottery linked to the social dimensions
of meals, in which people negotiated divisions of power and prestige?
One approach to this question is to look carefully at the distribution of deco
rated ceramics within or between communities to see if their use marked out dif
ferences among people. It is clear that, from 1200 to 900 B. C., many people had
access to ceramics bearing Olmec iconography. Did elite families use more deco
rated pottery than others? We might have grounds for making such an argument if
we found that decorated ceramics clustered around the remains of larger, fancier
houses and/or houses with high frequencies of imported exotics (iron ore, jade,
shell, etc.).
For most regions, archaeologists working on the late Early Formative have
not been able to demonstrate such a pattern convincingly. One interesting recent
discovery on the Chiapas Coast concerns the distribution of decorated ceramics
between communities rather than houses. In most communities, 4 to 7 percent of
the bowls in late Early Formative trash deposits bear Olmec iconography. But at
Canton Corralito, which John Clark (1997) identifies as a local political center and
possibly the home of some immigrants from the Gulf Coast, a stunning 24 percent
of bowls were decorated. At first glance, this is the kind of pattern we might expect
to see if elites had more decorated ceramics than others, but Toms Prezs recent
excavations indicate that high frequencies of decorated ceramics may have charac
terized the whole Corralito community rather than just a few (elite) households. It
is as if the inhabitants of Corralito collectively held a special status in their region.
If so, what was special about this community? Could a special link to the Gulf Coast
explain the ceramic patterns? Much more work will be necessary to answer that
question with any assurance.
Some of the most detailed evidence of house-to-house variation during the late
Early Formative is available from the Valley of Oaxaca. At the large site of San Jose
Mogote - the most populous village in the valley at that time - Flannery and Marcus
(1994) identify a continuum of status differences between houses, based on
criteria such as the care and effort expended in construction and the presence of
imported exotics. They find that there is a tendency for higher-status houses to have
more decorated ceramics or a greater variety in decoration.
Marcus (1989) argues that underlying the decorative variation are two basic
designs that depict distinct imaginary creatures. She further argues that, to ancient
Oaxacans, those imaginary creatures stood for important supernatural forces that
we might label Earth and Sky. A rather interesting pattern appears when the dis
tributions of these two designs within the valley are analyzed. At small communi
ties, one or another of the motifs predominates, while at the large village of San
Jose Mogote, the frequencies of motifs differ significantly by neighborhood. It thus
seems possible that the two motifs marked membership in social groups of some
sort: some people were members of a group associated with Earth, others of a group
related to Sky.
Marcus and Flannery (1996) elaborate on this idea by turning to another impor
tant context in which archaeologists find pottery: as offerings accompanying human
burials. Careful analyses of such mortuary remains have proven important to
archaeologists since the treatment of people at death often reflects the social posi
tions they held in life. In late Early Formative Oaxaca, pottery bearing Olmec
iconography appears predominantly with burials of men, or with infants and chil
dren whose sex is unknown. It seems possible that these children were males, too,
and that the Earth and Sky motifs marked membership in one of two patrilin
eal descent groups. Men passed their group membership on to their children, while
women tended to move between the groups at marriage.
In the Basin of Mexico, hundreds of graves dating to the late Early Formative
and the beginning of the Middle Formative appeared at the site of Tlatilco. Tolstoy
(1989a) found evidence of significant status differences among the graves. Iron
ore mirrors appeared in the graves of only the most prominent individuals, but
Olmec-style objects were not strongly clustered in the richest graves. Instead, the
display of Olmec imagery may have marked other kinds of social differences. That
would be generally similar to what has been found in Oaxaca, but the details here
differ significantly. Among the graves, Tolstoy identified two sets distinguished by
orientation of the body. He tentatively suggests that these were intermarrying
groups based on matrilineal descent (distinct from the patrilineal pattern suggested
for Oaxaca). Interestingly, objects with Olmec iconography appear mainly in graves
of just one group (the richer of the two) and are more common among females
than males. Tolstoy suggests that if descent groups at Tlatilco competed for wealth
and prestige in the community, one group might have established marriage rela
tions with peoples on the Gulf Coast and claimed these foreign contacts as a source
of prestige. Display of Olmec symbols on pottery serving vessels could have adver
tised that link within the community.
In communities across Mesoamerica, pottery bearing Olmec iconography was
important in the negotiation of differences among people. Status differences may
in some cases have been involved, but Olmec iconography was not strongly associ
ated with emerging elites during this period, at least in Oaxaca and Central Mexico.
Places like San Lorenzo on the Gulf Coast, however, with large bodies of sculpture
in Olmec style, had probably already moved toward the Middle Formative pattern
at this time.
Instead of status differences, it seems possible that, in the central and southern
highlands, Olmec imagery marked membership in lineages or other kin groups.
Display of the imagery was probably more inclusive than exclusive, symbolizing
bonds of community within the group. It also legitimized the existence of the
groups themselves by linking them to mythological creatures or supernatural forces.
Perhaps that is why in Oaxaca we find a tendency for higher-status households to
have more serving vessels with Olmec imagery: high-status people were more inter
ested in emphasizing the bonds that linked them to others than in dwelling on their
own privileges. Such a claim is admittedly quite speculative; something that seems
rather more certain is that the details of how people used Olmec iconography as
they negotiated social relations differed quite a bit from region to region during the
Early Formative.
During the Middle Formative (900-400 B. C. ), Olmec iconography was more
likely to appear in public ritual contexts or exclusively associated with elite indi
viduals. The organization of many Mesoamerican communities had been signifi
cantly altered by this time, establishing patterns of public ceremonial life that would
persist until the Spanish Conquest, some 2,000 years later. Special ceremonial areas
were established in communities, formed by arranging large, rectangular platforms
around open plazas. Atop the platforms, raised high above any onlookers, stood
temples or administrative buildings - and sometimes residences of the elite.
Particularly important platforms were built high enough to become pyramids. On
top of or beside the platforms, elaborately carved stone monuments were displayed,
including, most characteristically, vertical stone slabs called stelae. The monuments
depicted rulers, supernatural or mythological creatures, and important historical
events.
The appearance of these features during the Middle Formative marks the emer
gence of well-developed elites whose hereditary privileges were legitimized through
association with supernatural forces. Rulers quite literally portrayed themselves as
the center of the universe (Reilly 1996). Archaeologists have made a number of
observations linking Mesoamerican elites to ceremonial areas with platforms and
plazas. For one thing, building all this required significant resources, including the
recruitment and organization of vast amounts of labor. The impressive construc
tions that rose in the downtown areas of Mesoamerican communities would have
been impossible without the existence of powerful decision-makers who could force
people to work and direct their activities. Thus, to the extent that a broad consen
sus favored elaborate downtown areas, the mere construction of such places would
have considerably reinforced the position of the elite.
But that wasnt all. There is evidence for all sorts of special activities in site cores,
including public ceremonies - in which a few officiants stood high atop temples
while the insignificant masses looked on - as well as more esoteric rituals that took
place out of public view. Love (1999) charts the development of formally arranged
spaces in communit ies on the Pacific Coast of Guat emal a and Chiapas from the
initial Early Formative to the end of the Middle Formative. He finds a progressive
trend toward more rigid organization of regional capitals and points out that
peoples activities became steadily less flexible. Perhaps, he suggests, the very spatial
organization of communities helped subjugate the emerging class of commoners in
these increasingly unequal societies.
At many important Middle Formative sites, a few people, apparently rulers or
others at the very summit of society, were buried in the ceremonial platforms. Joyce
(1999) compares costume elements from such burials to those of more common
graves in residences. She suggests that, during life, people used costume in a variety
of ways. In their daily lives, or on special occasions, most people wore individual
ized combinations of jewelry or other ornaments. Perhaps this was because the
unique ways individuals presented themselves to others were important in the daily
give and take of social relations. But the costumes of people buried away from their
homes, in ceremonial platforms and plazas, are different. While they are often more
elaborate and costly than those of people buried elsewhere, they are also more stan
dardized. For these people, costume did not mark them as unique individuals, but
as holders of offices that transcended the individual.
An important Middle Formative site that exhibits all these patterns is La Venta.
Located on the Gulf Coast, La Venta rose to prominence after 900 B. C. , as the
site of San Lorenzo went into decline. La Venta was, by 600-400 B. C. , a city (see
Gonzlez Lauck 1996; also Drucker 1952; Drucker et al. 1959). The whole
settlement covered 200 hectares and included a carefully planned ceremonial and
administrative core with a great variety of platforms, buildings, and monuments,
including an earthen pyramid that soared more than 30 m above adjacent plazas.
Stone monuments in a central area included gigantic stone heads (generally thought
to depict rulers), flat-topped rectangular blocks with carvings around the sides
(probably thrones), upright stelae, and a variety of other sculptures. A few elite
burials have been excavated. In one funerary chamber constructed of basalt
columns, the poorly preserved remains of two or three young individuals were asso
ciated with a rich array of imported jade objects. Numerous isolated offerings were
also found in the central part of the site. These included axe blades or celts made
of jade or other hard stones, deliberately arranged in patterns, and buried. In some
cases, the buried celts were associated with other objects, such as large iron ore
mirrors. The most astounding offerings were massive pits in which hundreds of
roughly shaped blocks of serpentine - a greenstone not of the hardness or quality of
jade but still quite highly prized - had been stacked together and buried. That these
features had a symbolic, offertory character is indicated by the fact that in several
cases the uppermost layer of blocks was arranged to form a mosaic design appar
ently related to Olmec iconography. These offerings become doubly impressive
when one considers that all of the stones were imported at significant expense, then
permanently removed from use through ceremonial burial.
Clearly, at Middle Formative La Venta we can point to the existence of a well-
established elite, able to command significant amounts of local labor and linked to
other Mesoamerican groups by exchange networks through which flowed large
amounts of cxotic materials. How did Olmec iconography fit into this picture? We
need to be careful here, since many scholars would simply label everything at La
Venta Olmec, whereas I am using the term in a much more restricted sense to
refer to elements of a shared art style not unique to the Gulf Coast.
Even when the term is used in this restricted sense, the patterns at La Venta seem
very clear: Olmec iconography was closely associated with an elite class and it was
the style chosen for illustrating deities or supernatural forces worshiped in the cer
emonial areas. A few examples will suffice to make these points. The iconography
of the thrones, in which a human figure emerges from a cave or the mouth of a
monster, sometimes holding a supernaturally transformed baby, is shared with quite
distant regions at this time. Excavations at the base of La Ventas massive pyramid
revealed stone slabs, several still set where they had been placed in late Middle
Formative times, depicting supernatural creatures in unmistakable Olmec style.
Were these supernaturals worshiped at the pyramid? Finally, a large stone sar
cophagus, found in a more cloistered precinct north of the pyramid, was sculpted
to represent the body of an Olmec monster (Fig. 3.2(c)); inside were jade and
serpentine objects that had apparently accompanied the remains of an elite person
buried in the coffin.
Numerous other sites across Mesoamerica show evidence of a similar complex
of elite and ceremonial activity. The distribution of Middle Formative sites with
Olmec-style monumental carvings seems actually to be patterned rather than
random and may reflect ancient trade routes (Grove 1996). One corridor extends
from the Gulf Coast into Morelos and Guerrero (Fig. 3.1) and includes two sites
with significant numbers of monuments in the Olmec style: Chalcatzingo and the
intimidatingly named Teopantecuanitlan. Another corridor extended from the Gulf
Coast to Chiapas and the Pacific Coast of Guatemala, then from there to El
Salvador, eastern Guatemala and western Honduras (see, for instance, Clark and
Pye 2000b). Portable objects in Olmec style were more widely distributed than
sculpture; unfortunately, our understanding of exactly how they were used is poor
because so few have been found in context.
We have perhaps more information concerning the use of larger sculptures,
though context is often a problem with these as well. Nevertheless, it is clear that
Formative period sculptures were in no way like the neglected, pigeon-fouled
statues of our own city parks. Instead, many Olmec sculptures appear to have been
continuously involved in activity (Cyphers 1999; Grove 1981). They were carved,
placed with other statues, moved around, worshiped through the burial of small
offerings, defaced, mutilated, broken, and, in at least the case of late Early Forma
tive San Lorenzo, taken to a walled yard where, awaiting recarving into new sculp
tures, they were nevertheless still treated with reverence. It is possible that there
were regular sequences to the recarving: close scrutiny has revealed that some of
the monumental heads were recarved from thrones.
So what did people actually do with Olmec imagery? First and foremost, the
Olmec style gave shape to a world beyond everyday experience: people used it to
represent mythological creatures, supernatural beings, and the interaction (or even
fusion) of humans with such entities. It seems quite likely that display of objects in
Olmec style occasioned reverence, respect, and dignity. But people also used these
things strategically, to make claims concerning their relations with other people. In
other words, display of Olmec objects was not simply a two-way relation between
an individual and his or her gods, but a three-way relation between an individual,
the gods, and other people. During the late Early Formative, display of Olmec
iconography on pottery vessels involved claims about membership in groups. With
the major exception of San Lorenzo, differences in status seem to have been a sec
ondary factor at that time, although exactly what these groups were seems to have
differed from region to region and it seems possible that the imagery could have
been used by one kin group to support claims of superiority over another. By the
Middle Formative, the social messages of Olmec iconography were everywhere
more emphatically ones of difference and status. Exclusion surpassed inclusion as
a principal theme. The imagery was inscribed on precious objects available only to
a few people. It appeared in architectural settings that controlled and divided
people, raising elite officiants high above the commoners who attended public
ceremonies.
Structural Implications of the Sharing of Olmec Iconography
Thus far I have emphasized agency by exploring the social uses of Olmec art from
1200 to 400 B. C., with particular attention to the way art was related to the activ
ities of an emerging elite. Such accounts, emphasizing the social strategies people
pursue rather than the ways culture shapes those strategies, can give the impres
sion that social and political changes were the result of conspiracies by elites who
manipulated the masses with cynical propaganda. Comparative anthropology
strongly cautions us against any such idea. Except perhaps in some very central
ized state societies, ideologies are never purely the cynical creations of those in
charge. Rulers, like everyone else, are enmeshed in cultural contexts that both con
strain and enable their actions. The investigation of structures seeks to address such
issues. How, it asks, did structures of belief and habit help determine what it meant
to be an agent in ancient Mesoamerica? Was Olmec iconography part of such
structures?
To claim that an art style was part of a structure is a rather complicated propo
sition, much more than an assertion that people carried around a set of designs in
their heads. Minimally, it is useful to distinguish between a representational system
(a set of designs, forms, and strategies of illustration) and its subject matter (what
the representations depict). Particular subjects may also have had further connota
tions - people would have associated all sorts of complex thoughts and feelings with
images of dragons or corn deities. We can refer to such thoughts and feelings as the
symbolism associated with the subject matter.
Archaeologists are still wrestling with the challenges of reconstructing the subject
matter and symbolism of Olmec art. The representational system itself is intricate
and complex, and the peoples of this time did not leave any written texts that would
help explain it to us. We instead rely on detailed analyses of the representations,
careful att ention to archaeological contexts, and attempts to link themes in Olmec
art to those of later, better-known periods - even to the time of the Spanish Con
quest over 2,000 years later. This last approach seems to hold particular promise
when done with care. Some Formative concepts of the cosmos do persist through
to the conquest, but there is ongoing discussion about whether the supernaturals
of Olmec iconography can be linked to specific conquest-era deities (Joralemon
1976; Marcus 1989; Reilly 1996).Taube (1996, 2000) has developed a fascinating
argument linking a Middle Formative corn deity to symbolism in later Meso-
america and even to groups as far away as the Pueblo societies of the American
Southwest.
An important question concerns what should be included in these kinds of analy
ses. A disturbing number of Olmec artifacts have been ripped from their original
contexts and sold on the international art market, creating analytical and ethical
dilemmas for archaeologists. Should we reject any consideration of a fabulous
Olmec-style jade that, smuggled illegally into the U.S., now graces the mantelpiece
of some Beverly Hills mansion? Or do we swallow our distaste and consider all
objects potentially relevant to understanding ancient Mesoamerica, no matter their
lack of context and tainted history in the present? There is no general agreement
on such issues, and they do affect investigators results.
Once we decide that Olmec iconography involved both a representational system
and a specific subject matter consisting of supernatural creatures, then my claim
that it helped structure human agency in Formative Mesoamerica should seem
reasonable. For example, if an Olmec motif illustrated the supernatural Sky, patron
of the Sky kin group, it is easy to imagine someone displaying the motif in pursuit
of practical social goals - for instance, appealing to group solidarity in convincing
relatives to contribute to a village feast. However, people would not have been able
to do anything they wanted with Olmec imagery. Their options were constrained
by conventions of action, beliefs concerning humans relations to the supernatural,
and so forth.
Now, there are many different directions we could take to investigate the role of
Olmec imagery in structures of belief, but most relevant for this chapter are impli
cations of the sharing of Olmec imagery among different regions. When people used
Olmec-style artifacts did they somehow refer to the fact that people in distant places
were using similar objects? It is important to use caution here, because it would be
easy to fall back into the mother culture/sister cultures debate. The solution, as I
have argued, is to explore specific questions in detail. I consider two questions here:
(1) To what extent were the ideas expressed in Olmec art shared already across
Mesoamerica before 1200 B.C.? (2) Can we specify the kinds of relationships that
existed between people from distant regions between 1200 and 400 B.C.?
Grove (1993) suggests that the subject matter of Olmec imagery, or even the
representational system itself, might have been shared across Mesoamerica long
before 1200 B.C. If so, then by the late Early Formative the sharing of Olmec imagery
was probably not very important to its meaning in any one area, since the people
there would have gotten it from their own forbears rather than other peoples. This
question turns our interests back to the initial Early Formative (1600-1200 B. C. ),
or even the Archaic period ( 8000- 1600 B.C.), and we immediately face the
obstacle of few excavated sites and scarce evidence.
Investigators have experimented with a variety of solutions to this problem.
One intriguing example is the holistic approach taken by Marcus (1989; see also
Flannery and Marcus 1983: topics 2, 9, 97). She proposes that archaeologists
should take greater advantage of historical linguistics, especially in places like
Oaxaca, where there is evidence of long-term continuity of neighboring populations
speaking related languages. Such languages have gradually diverged from a shared
protolanguage, in much the way that Spanish, French, and Italian have diverged from
Latin. Linguists can reconstruct elements of such protolanguages based on simi
larities between the modern languages; sometimes they can even estimate the timing
of linguistic divergence. Marcus draws on such work to argue that a belief in Sky
and Earth as two important supernatural forces is very ancient in Oaxaca, and prob
ably characterized Archaic peoples of the region. If during the late Early Formative
of Oaxaca Olmec motifs designated Earth and Sky, then the subject matter of the
art was not a recently adopted set of ideas, but rather one that had a long history
in the region.
Grove (1999) proposes that the placement of stone sculpture and important
buildings helped create a sacred landscape at Formative sites. He compares the
sacred landscape of Chalcatzingo in Morelos to sites in the Gulf Coast, and finds
that, while Chalcatzingo was strongly influenced by Gulf Coast canons, it was no
simple copy. Numerous details were of local origin, and there are hints that the
basic organizational plan of the site - and thus, potentially, some local concepts of
sacred landscapes - pre-dated any identifiable contact with the Gulf Coast.
Excavations in the southern Chiapas Coast have revealed that Olmec imagery
was preceded by a very different representational system in the initial Early
Formative. The earlier imagery appeared on ceramic serving dishes and involved
the modeling of a diverse array of animals from the local environment, including
dogs, peccaries, deer, toads, fish and a variety of birds. This earlier representational
system disappeared around the time of the appearance of Olmec imagery, and I
argue that the one replaced the other (Lesure 2000). If that is true, then in this case
we have evidence that, at the very least, the Olmec representational system was some
thing foreign, adopted by the peoples of coastal Chiapas during the late Early
Formative.
The results of this last study contrast with those of the first two, and it certainly
seems possible that the adoption of Olmec style followed distinct courses in differ
ent regions. Remember, however, that the Olmec style comprised a representational
system, a specific subject matter, and the further connotations people associated
with those subjects. When we investigate to what degree Olmec art expressed
beliefs already shared across Mesoamerica before 1200 B.C., we need to consider
each of these topics in turn. It seems likely that some of the subject matter and
symbolism of Olmec art was widely shared before the late Early Formative, or else
that people linked adopted ideas to long-standing local beliefs. Nevertheless, in
places like coastal Chiapas and the Basin of Mexico (Tolstoy 1989b) the designs
that depicted supernat urals and the cust om of placing those designs on pott ery do
appear to have been adopted by local peoples as a result of their contact with groups
in other areas.
Now, obviously someone can adopt something and then eventually forget that
he or she hasnt always had it; however, it seems likely that when people displayed
pots with Olmec imagery during the late Early Formative, they referred, either
implicitly or explicitly, to the network of exchange contacts that was growing up at
this time. The shared nature of the Olmec style was thus part of its symbolism.
Already during the Early Formative a set of associations was bundled together:
important supernaturals, precious objects derived from exchange, the conviviality
of shared meals, and the ability to be generous to others by giving them food or
status paraphernalia. The sharing of the Olmec style was, then, part of a structure,
both a resource for people as they negotiated relations with others and a factor in
shaping those relations. Symbolic links between the supernatural, exotic goods, and
social values such as generosity were surely an important backdrop to the emer
gence of elites, but Olmec iconography was not a self-serving instrument of the
privileged. Indeed, if, as I suggested in the last section, the imagery also signaled
group membership of some kind, it may actually have helped keep the ambitions
of high-status people in check.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to think of Olmec iconography not as part
of a structure, but as a component of structures, since its symbolism and use seem
to have differed quite a bit from place to place during the late Early Formative. I
have already discussed the different ways it may have been used to express group
identities in Chiapas, Oaxaca, and the Basin of Mexico. Were regional differences
in use widely perceived? When people in coastal Chiapas brought out a decorated
dish laden with local foods, was some sort of symbolic link to the impressive sculp
tures of San Lorenzo implied?
In other words, how much did the people of one region know about other parts
of Mesoamerica during the late Early Formative, and how did such knowledge affect
daily life? One promising approach is to take a careful look at the trade contacts
that linked people from different regions, since those were the circumstances in
which they gained knowledge of each other. Were these relations of reciprocity or
were they unequal in some way? I raised this issue briefly in the last section, noting
only that it is still very much unresolved. Nevertheless, some interesting work on
the exchange of obsidian deserves mention. Four aspects of obsidian make it a very
attractive item for analysis: it was widely distributed across Mesoamerica, it can be
accurately sourced, it is quite abundant at Formative sites, and the techniques
through which it was broken down into tools can actually be replicated and studied
by archaeologists.
During the Middle Formative, an important technological innovation appeared
in many parts of Mesoamerica. This was the manufacture of prismatic obsidian
blades, an extremely efficient and effective use of the resource, but one that required
specialized skills. Clark (1987) argued that the economics and organization of blade
manufacture meant that it was typically associated with well-developed elites, or
perhaps with a c t z v o r k s of elites in places like the Central Depression of Chiapas.
Since 1987, Clark has continued work on the idea that trade in obsidian was closely
related to politics and that by monitoring changes in different areas, including raw
material sources, amounts of obsidian traded, and manufacturing techniques, it
might be possible to reconstruct political relations between people from different
societies. On the Chiapas Coast, the appearance of Olmec iconography coincides
with a sharp drop in the amount of obsidian used by local villagers, leading Clark
to suggest that exchange relations between Chiapas and Gulf Coast peoples were
profoundly unequal. Thus, there would have been political connotations to any
display of Olmec imagery in Chiapas, a recognition of unequal relations between
leaders in the respective regions. Much more detailed comparative work is neces
sary, but these sorts of analyses are quite promising.
In sum, to fully understand the Olmec style, we need to recognize that it was
not limited to a set of designs, but included, as well, a specific supernatural subject
matter and much complex symbolism associated with those subjects. It therefore
seems likely that this art style was part of the structures that shaped human agency
in Early and Middle Formative Mesoamerica. Further, the sharing of the imagery
was part of such structures. Between 1200 and 900 B. C. , when someone displayed
a decorated dish, its Olmec imagery elicited a variety of thoughts and feelings
among people present. One strand of that symbolism linked the conviviality of the
meal to supernatural forces as well as to the long-distance contacts through which
precious objects entered the community. Those kinds of symbolic links, in turn,
legitimized growing differences in social status within Mesoamerican villages by
tying social values such as generosity and the benevolence of supernaturals to the
kinds of access to foreign exchange partners that not everyone could afford to
maintain.
An issue of ongoing debate is the specific role that elites of the Gulf Coast played
in the sharing of Olmec iconography. At the moment, it seems likely that much of
the Olmec representational system, including its complicated approach to repre
senting supernatural subjects (see Figs. 3.2, 3.3), specific customs for using the rep
resentations in social interactions, and even potentially the supernatural subjects
themselves, were synthesized during the Early Formative in rapidly developing soci
eties of the Gulf Coast. If so, then for people in other parts of Mesoamerica, the
exchange relations they entered into with peoples of the Gulf Coast would have
been part of the connotations of Olmec iconography. The appearance of Olmec art
might in this view be rather crudely compared to a McDonalds in Paris or a Coke
bottle in Bangkok, which always to some degree refer to the economic clout and
world-wide prestige of the United States. Unfortunately, there has been far too
much wild speculation about the specific content of long-distance relations in early
Mesoamerica. Careful analyses of things like obsidian may eventually provide some
more reliable answers. Nevertheless, whatever specific role the Gulf played in the
symbolism of Olmec art, it is important to emphasize that the art did not form part
of a single unified structure across all of Mesoamerica. In each region, the sharing
of iconography was part of a local structure in which ideas borrowed from long
distance contacts were reworked and integrated with local traditions.
Researchers studying Formative Mesoamerica are increasingly trying to locate the
causes of social and political change in history. This involves searching for evidence
of the strategies different sorts of people pursued in their relations with others (i.e.
agency), but it also involves examining the way peoples possibilities for strategic
action were shaped by their place in culture and society (structure). Putting the
two of these together is my obvious final task here. The fundamental challenge is
to use the concepts of agency and structure to trace changes over time in early
Mesoamerica. As an example of such work, consider the emergence of greenstone
- including jade, but also serpentine and other green, metamorphic stones - as a
key valuable and symbol.
Greenstone objects have not yet been found in Archaic sites, but it seems likely
that the first stirrings of long-distance trade began at that time, since already by
1400 B.C. an offering of greenstone is known from Paso de la Amada on the Chiapas
Coast. During the initial Early Formative in that region, greenstone acquired some
symbolic importance (Lesure 1999). Used for both tiny, personal ornaments and
celts to work wood, greenstone was apparently only moderately valuable. Certainly
people regularly lost greenstone beads, suggesting that they treated such items with
a certain carelessness. Greenstone was probably of only limited strategic use to
people seeking to enhance their social status.
Exactly what was going on in other areas is not clear, but important finds at the
ceremonial site of El Manati on the Gulf Coast indicate that the emergence of
greenstone as a key valuable was further advanced in that area. Ortiz and Rodriguez
(1999) found three phases of ritual use of the site from initial to late Early
Formative. Offerings of jade and other items included, by late in the sequence,
astounding wooden sculptures in Olmec style, ceremonial staffs, and burials of chil
dren - all placed in and around a spring. In the earliest phase of ritual, greenstone
celts were tossed into the pool surrounding the spring; later, groupings of celts were
ranged in patterns and buried; later still, complex and elaborate sets of objects were
deposited, just at the time when sculptures were being carved in abundance just
10 km away at San Lorenzo. We can trace here the gradual elaboration of a set of
ceremonial activities linked to the growing network of long-distance trade, but we
dont yet have much information on the strategic uses of jade by people living at
San Lorenzo.
During the late Early Formative and Middle Formative, small greenstone objects
continued to be used as personal ornaments, but there was also an ever-expanding
variety of other uses. Ornaments varied from single beads and pendants to elabo
rate necklaces or belts. The color and quality of stone became important in distin
guishing objects. One implication is that greenstone provided increasing scope for
making distinctions among people. It was becoming a key element in the legitima
tion of elite power and authority.
That legitimation was lodged in the great variety of uses of greenstone, from the
practical and personal to the esoteric and ceremonial. By the Middle Formative,
when an ordinary person wore a greenstone pendant with the very simple goal of
being attractive and persuasive to others (Joyce 1999), the object would have had
a whole variety of connotations over which he or she had no control. It was part of
structures that made high-ranking people stewards of the universe. People across a
wide social spectrum used greenstone in ways that reflected their own interests.
For instance, in some places they buried family members with a jade bead in their
mouth (Marcus and Flannery 1996:97), presumably to ensure a loved ones well
being in the afterlife. Activities such as these, however, perpetuated structures that
legitimized social inequality, since they accepted the profound religious significance
of a material that was scarce and thus subject to control by a small segment of the
population.
The structural importance of jade was simultaneously economic and symbolic.
Taube (1996, 2000) explores the symbolic ramifications of greenstone and celts
during the Middle Formative and traces their legacy in later Mesoamerican
societies. Wealth items such as jade and the green feathers of the quetzal bird were
linked to maize, a staple of subsistence. Greenstone celts were ceremonially equated
with maize cobs. Officiants in some ceremonies strapped celts to their limbs, thereby
becoming the axis of the world, a vital conduit of divine power (Taube 1996:50).
Thus, wealth, power, maize, and agricultural fertility were all bound up in a complex
religious and ceremonial system. By this time, greenstone was deeply lodged in
structures of belief and routine; it helped shape what it meant to be a member of
society and provided a wide scope for the strategic activities of human agents. But
the possibilities for activity were unequally distributed in society, and small per
sonal acts - wearing a necklace, making an offering, placing a bead in the mouth
of a deceased loved one - helped perpetuate the larger system of beliefs and social
stratification.
I have dwelt here on just one example - greenstone - and have been brief and
schematic. Nevertheless, this illustrates the kinds of accounts of social and politi
cal development that scholars at work on agency perspectives hope to achieve as
they both build on and move beyond older debates concerning Olmec art and long
distance contacts in early Mesoamerica.
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