Olmec, Chavin, and Things in Between: A Comparative Approach to Emergent Complex Societies

The goal of this session is to revisit the Formative Americas as an integrated field of study, and consider its role in nomothetic interpretations of emergent social complexity. Over the last two decades, our refined understanding of early Pre-Columbian cultures has given us new tools to enable these cross-cultural analyses. Integrating this growing dataset with new approaches such as hybridity, neo-diffusionism, and cognitive anthropology, facilitates the exploration of the independent, yet related, social organizations of North and South America. As a first step toward exploring these opportunities, this session asks a diverse set of participants to interpret their scholarship on emergent complexity through an explicitly comparative lens. These objectives extend beyond particularist approaches to cultural horizons like Olmec and Chavin, and enable a meaningful consideration of heterogeneity in emergent Pre-Columbian social structures. By comparing Mesoamerica and the Andes as test beds of emergent social complexity, this session aims to interrogate universalist explanations, and guide continuing research on these phenomena worldwide.