Materiality and Meaning in the Formative Gulf Lowlands

Summary

In Formative Mesoamerica the built environments of San Lorenzo and La Venta became unique topographic assemblages combining local and regional materials drawn from riverbeds, salt domes, nearby hills, and distant volcanic peaks. These sites can be viewed as microcosms of their regional landscapes, incorporating natural forms and geographic referents as a way to manifest elite authority over the natural and human worlds. Integrated into these architectural settings were large-scale sculptures crafted of various stone types and sources. The material properties of these sculptures served to connect Olmec centers with the regional sacred landscape while simultaneously harnessing and transforming its spiritual power into political authority. In the ephemeral environments of earth, sand, and clay that comprised most Olmec site architecture, the stones imported to these centers persisted through time and space to reify and naturalize the histories of the Olmec elite. The materiality of Olmec sculptures and their settings will be explored in this paper to demonstrate how Gulf lowland elites manipulated the ideological and phenomenological properties of stone as a means of exercising their control over the landscape and its inhabitants.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Understanding Visual Culture Without Textual Sources: What Are the Possibilities for Analysis?

Keywords

Spatial Coverage