Olmec (Other Keyword)
51-68 (68 Records)
The rock art of the Oxtotitlán and Juxtlahuaca caves are among the earliest known examples of Mesoamerican figurative wall painting. As part of the recent research initiative examining the Oxtotitlán cave paintings, re-illustration presents new images of the ancient artworks. Detailed field drawings are combined with multispectral imaging data and analysis of painting technology to precisely record the art, even when lines are no longer visible to the naked eye. Increased clarity of the...
Ritual Deposits at El Marquesillo, Veracruz: Examples of Long-Term Collective Social Memory (2016)
The settlement of El Marquesillo in Southern Veracruz was inhabited during the Mesoamerican Early Formative period, emerged as an Olmec center during the Middle Formative period, and remained occupied throughout the remainder of the pre-Columbian period. During the late Middle to early Late Formative period an Olmec monumental tabletop throne was ritually terminated and deposited. This interment was accompanied by two substantial offerings suggestive of a feasting event. More than a millennium...
Rock Art at Chalcatzingo, Morelos: Methodology and Techniques for Recording, Documenting and Elaborating Preservation Strategies (2018)
This presentation describes the process of recording and documenting the pictographs found at the site of Chalcatzingo, Morelos, in central Mexico. It shows the way in which state of the art technology is used for the first time at the site for this purpose. Iconographic analysis, landscape archaeology and the analysis of painting techniques and materials are as well employed to enrich the interpretation of rock art at the site. Upon this basis we elaborate a hypothesis about their relations...
The San Lorenzo Geospatial Project: Mapping the Olmec City and Landscape (2016)
For the past decade, we have applied a series of nested geospatial techniques to better understand the development and evolution of the Olmec city of San Lorenzo and the surrounding regional landscape. Built on a foundation of more than two decades of traditional archaeological excavation, settlement survey and artifact analysis, the geospatial project expands the coverage and confirms much of what is known about San Lorenzo’s evolution and settlement ecology. The project also provides...
Sketching in the Shadows: Re-illustration of the Olmec Paintings of Oxtotitlán, Mexico (2016)
Re-illustration of the well-known cave paintings at Oxtotitlán, Guerrero, Mexico has revealed important new iconographic details. The use of multispectral imaging, as well as direct observation following recent conservation work, contributed to re-visioning the artworks with increased clarity and accuracy to the originals. This paper will present new renderings of the Olmec-period paintings and summarize observations on artistic practice and iconographic significance that resulted from this...
Some Temporal Markers in Olmec Pottery from Los Soldados (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Los Soldados has been considered by many to be a secondary center with respect to La Venta due to its proximity to the capital; however, in the absence of a tuned ceramic chronology for the Middle Preclassic, this cannot be corroborated. Over a number of seasons, the Arroyo Pesquero Archaeological Project has carried out excavations at Los Soldados, and among...
Source Analysis of Obsidian from the Late Olmec Site of Los Soldados (2018)
Recent compositional analyses of obsidian from Formative Period Mesoamerican sites have been used to trace obsidian to a number of Highland Mexican and Guatemalan sources, and documented shifts in sources through time. In this presentation, we report the results of a study that analyzed 401 obsidian samples excavated from the Middle/Late Formative period habitation site of Los Soldados, located 11 km from the Olmec capital of La Venta. Using three high precision techniques (LA-ICP-MS, XRF, and...
State of Conservation of the La Venta Stone Sculpture Corpus (2018)
The stone sculpture corpus originally found in La Venta is one of the most important collections of Olmec art in Mexico. It is currently exhibited in five different museums in Tabasco and Mexico City. The state of conservation of the almost 50 sculptures (whole and fragments) at the Parque Museo La Venta in Villahermosa are of particular interest because they have been exhibited in an open air museum for the last six decades. A summary of a recent and detailed study of the state of conservation...
Stone Figurines of the Middle Formative in Mesoamerica (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 1" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The first reported green stone figurines from controlled excavations in Mesoamerica occur in Middle Formative (900–400 BC) contexts. Among the best known are those from Offering 4 at La Venta. Mid-twentieth-century excavations at La Venta, conducted by Mathew Stirling, Philip Drucker, and Robert Heizer, also produced the largest...
Subsurface Spatial Signatures of the Quotidian from the Olmec Heartland: Insights from Ground-penetrating Radar Surveys of the Los Soldados site, Veracruz. (2015)
Archaeological examinations of the Olmec civilization in the tropical lowlands of Mexico have focused largely on the elite and grandiose aspects of the society. Research conducted through the PAAP instead chose to explore non-monumental aspects of the Olmec. Investigations of the Los Soldados site in southern Veracruz included ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys of four areas. Although GPR is a geophysical method not often successful in tropical lowland settings, it proved successful in the...
The Tenaxpi Egg: Ecology, Representation, and Conceptual Convergence in Olmec Art (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 1" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through the lens of “conceptual convergence,” we examine the multiple symbolic strands that inform specific Gulf Coast sculptural images, focusing especially on the Tenaxpi Egg/Homshuk sculpture. This sculpture, excavated on Tenaxpi Island in Lake Catemaco, shows a figure sculpted on an egg-shaped stone. This image likely references...
Transformation of the Gods: Symmetry and the Construction of Mesoamerican Deity Systems in the Middle Formative (2018)
This paper explores theoretical and methodological issues associated with the etic conceptualization of Mesoamerican deity systems and the identification of individual supernaturals in cross–cultural contexts. It critically focuses on previous classificatory systems of Olmec deities. Iconographers often identify individual deities on the basis of defining attributes or material accoutrements, frequently extending these identifications across contexts (as in Covarrubias’ famous "evolution of the...
Un centro secundario Olmeca: Estero Rabón (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El sitio arqueológico de Estero Rabón fue uno de los centros secundarios de San Lorenzo y probablemente también de La Venta durante el Preclásico Inferior y Medio. Según los estudios previos de la cultura olmeca, los centros secundarios de estas capitales tenían su propia finalidad para sostenerlas. Así, Estero Rabón también se ubicó en un punto estratégico...
Vestigios de lo olmeca en la montaña. Contexto y contraste del depósito de hachas de piedra verde de Matacanela. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Olmec Manifestations and Ongoing Societal Transformations in the Tuxtlas Uplands: A View from Matacanela" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. En el año 2015, Venter dirigió un programa de excavación arqueológica en Matacanela. En la unidad 2, realizada al oriente del conjunto arquitectónico principal, se registró una secuencia estratigráfica que permitió documentar y distinguir dos momentos de ocupación en el área del...
Visualizing Speech: Unfolding the Narrative of the Papaloapan Stela (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Coffee, Clever T-Shirts, and Papers in Honor of John S. Justeson" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we examine the complex iconography of the Papaloapan Stela (originally labeled by Stirling as Cerro de las Mesas Stela 2) with a particular focus on the narrative integrity of the tableaux, the depiction of speech, and the relationship between the visualization of language and possible glyphic texts. Our...
Voted Off the Olmec Island: Remote Sensing and Regional Reconnaissance Surrounding La Venta, Tabasco, Mexico (2017)
This paper reports on the first stage of a regional settlement study initiated in 2016 by the Proyecto Arqueológico La Venta (PALV). Previous work beyond the primary site core of La Venta, Tabasco, Mexico has primarily focused on a limited subset of regional features. PALV’s inaugural season of field reconnaissance, alongside analysis of 5-meter resolution LiDAR and historic aerial photos, demonstrates that Formative and Post-Classic period occupations beyond the main La Venta "island" were...
Were-Jaguars, Birdmen, and Community Performance in the Rain Petition Ceremonies in the Caves of the Upper Balsas River, Eastern Guerrero, Mexico (2018)
In this paper, we address the role of leaders and their communities during the performance of ceremonies associated with rain petition in a network of caves located in the Mixtec-Tlapanec-Nahua region of Eastern Guerrero. We present newly discovered archaeological evidence in the caves of Pozo de Muerto, Casa de la Lluvia, Cauadzidziqui, Juxtlahuaca and Gobernadores de Techan, as well as ethnographic analogy to shed new light on the use of caves as arenas of ritual and political performance from...
Who Are the Olmec in Eastern Guerrero? From Grafitti to Monuments in the Caves of Guerrero (2017)
The caves of Cauadzidziqui and Techan offer contrasting views of how Olmec style appears in eastern Guerrero. Cauadzidziqui presents large-scale paintings of individuals with Olmec style symbols and objects plastered over what is believed to be local late Archaic paintings—essentially graffiti placed in a sacred locale along a primary route between the highlands and coast. The Cave of the Governors presents 3 or possibly 4 jaguar sculptures carved out of living rock, flanking the interior...