Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 1
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 1" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
The ancient cultures along the Gulf Coast of Mexico produced some of the most significant sculptural traditions of Mesoamerica. The types of sculptures range from colossal heads, figurative statues, carved and plain stelae, large-scale terracotta sculptures, relief-carved ball-court panels, to yokes, hachas, and palmas decorated with intricate entrelaces. Although some traditions have received a lot of scholarly attention, others have not—and few studies have attempted to understand the relationships of these diverse sculptural traditions over time and space. The cultural-historical approach to the region has led to its conceptual segmentation as well as of its artistic developments, resulting in an oversimplified cultural and by extension sculptural sequence that proceeds from south to north: the Preclassic Olmec in the south, Classic Veracruz along the central Gulf Coast, and the Postclassic Huastec culture in the north. In this session, archaeologists and art historians working in the Mexican Gulf lowlands will examine sculpture relative to issues such as interregional and intraregional connections, continuity and disjunction, cross-media relationships, and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Participants will consider social memory, reuse, and ritual destruction, as well as the visual references in cultural dispersal, with an eye toward creating a new synthesis of ancient Gulf Coast sculpture.
Other Keywords
Olmec •
Iconography and epigraphy •
Iconography and Art •
Formative •
Social and Political Organization •
Material Culture and Technology •
Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology •
Ideology, Ontology, and Memory •
stones figurines •
Gulf Coast, Huasteca, Sculpture
Geographic Keywords
United Mexican States (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
Puebla (State / Territory) •
Tlaxcala (State / Territory) •
Veracruz (State / Territory) •
Yucatan (State / Territory) •
Corozal (State / Territory) •
Quintana Roo (State / Territory) •
Campeche (State / Territory) •
Mesoamerica: Gulf Coast
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)
- Documents (7)
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Esculturas monumentales como herramientas políticas en la sociedad olmeca: Una perspectiva desde el sitio Estero Rabón (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Las esculturas olmecas muestran un alto desarrollo estético desde su aparición. Sin embargo, estas esculturas no fueron sólo obras del arte sino también tenían una gran importancia socio-económica en la sociedad olmeca. Por ello, se piensa que estas esculturas monumentales fueron distribuidas por las elites olmecas. El sitio...
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Finding the Right Niche: Altar, Throne, Stela, Sarcophagus? Overlap and Ambiguity in Olmec Large Stone Sculpture (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Among the most diagnostic sculptures made by the Gulf Coast Olmec is the tabletop altar/throne. This sculpture is best known for its most common features: a wide, heavy cornice; a generally rectangular structure; and often, a niche in the front. Given the tabletop form, scholars originally interpreted these sculptures as altars, but...
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The Meanings and Uses of the Past in the Present: A Case Study of the San Martín Pajapan Monument (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. This presentation addresses the relation between archaeological patrimony and collective memory using the San Martín Pajapan (SMP) monument as a case study. The SMP monument is an Olmec monument found on the top of the San Martín Pajapan volcano of Los Tuxtlas region. According to ethnographic research done in the 1960s, the local...
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Out of Olmec: Continuity and Disjunction in Veracruz Stone Sculpture (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Gulf Olmec sculpture is renowned for the cultural, political, and aesthetic precedents it helped to establish in preconquest Mesoamerica. Often its legacy is discussed in relation to the artistic traditions of succeeding civilizations that emerged to the south and west of Olman. However, there has been little recognition of the impact...
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Stone Figurines of the Middle Formative in Mesoamerica (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
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The “Tamtoc Venus”: An Early Huastec Sculpture and Its Connections to Gulf Coast Sculptural Traditions (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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. Although the Huasteca belongs to the Mesoamerican culture area and the Gulf Coast region, some scholars have asserted that its culture, emblematized by its sculptural tradition, was isolated. The examination of Huastec stone sculptures from different periods reveals not only its links to other artistic traditions in Mesoamerica but...
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The Tenaxpi Egg: Ecology, Representation, and Conceptual Convergence in Olmec Art (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...