Reconsidering Kingship Among the Gulf Olmec

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For decades debate among Formative scholars has raged over whether to classify Gulf Olmec societies as archaic states or chiefdoms; yet scholars on both sides have assumed that these societies were governed by elites under the jurisdiction of a single hereditary ruler. Stone monuments in the form of altar-thrones, stelae, and—most particularly—colossal heads are cited as evidence of dynastic kingship at the primary sites of San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes. This model of single-ruler governance is often used to ideologically unite Olmec kings with their presumed counterparts in the later courts of the Classic Maya, while simultaneously disassociating the Olmec from Classic Gulf societies reliant on corporate models of power-sharing. However, such an interpretation overlooks key contextual information that undermines the theory of single-ruler governance. This paper will reexamine the contextual, stylistic, and iconographic evidence associated with monumental sculpture to suggest a possible model of dual rulership among the Gulf Olmec of the Early (1500-850 BCE) and Middle (850-350 BCE) Formative periods. In doing so, I propose to align the discourse of Olmec governance with later examples of Indigenous political organization found both in and out of Mesoamerica’s Gulf Coast.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38614.0