In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

199 Chapter 7 A Processional Visual Narrative at La Venta Finally it is time to discover how, in its final phase, La Venta’s builders organized the visual landscape to create a complex message. The previous chapter introduced the small and large, buried and visible sculptures at La Venta in their chronological contexts. By interrogating their subject matter (a first-level analysis) and their syntactical arrangements as they were deliberately juxtaposed to other sculptures (a second-level analysis), we have been able to significantly enhance existing identifications . For one thing, due to Billie Follensbee’s work (2000), we know that the subject matter of La Venta’s sculptures includes several female agents. The female subjects—as well as pre-birth humans, infants, sweatbaths, and umbilical cords-suggest a major thematic focus on gestation, birth, and related topics. A better grasp of the subject matter and its syntax provides a more secure, internally consistent basis for an interpretive (third-level) analysis. For example, a more detailed knowledge of the design, numerical associations, and offerings associated with the massive offerings and mosaic pavements allowed me to propose their similarities to Mixe ritual practice. This culminated in the hypothesis that the mosaic pavements functioned as giant altars to (or effigies of) a Mother Earth Surface supernatural, and the massive offerings as altars/effigies of a female Midwife-Lake supernatural . In turn, this allows us to consider new ways in which shamanistic beliefs and practices might have been portrayed in the Formative period. Furthermore , we have seen that narrative content pervaded the sculptures as groupings of single-subject pieces as well as in complexly carved individual sculptures . In this chapter, bearing all this in mind, we will consider how the monuments were arrayed at the site and what the arrangement meant. This chapter proposes that five sets of visible sculptures, along with the buried offerings of Com- 200 Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture every individual and every society—those about the mysteries of life, origins, how to feed a growing population, how humans can contribute to the balance of natural forces and take advantage of their cycles, how to strive for individual power and recognition, how to govern and protect one’s polity, and how to obtain goods and materials that are either utilitarian or status-reinforcing. It seems that one response of Middle Formative people was to develop new visual forms and arrangements with which they could communicate and codify their changing bases of knowledge. We saw this process as we examined the variety of configurations for buried offerings during the modifications of Complex A, including the massive offerings and mosaic pavements. Similarly, the stela format seems to have developed in the Middle Formative, possibly at La Venta. The massive offerings and mosaic pavements are also examples of such formal innovations. La Ventans continued to develop the syntactical arrangements of forms, as had been done previously, for example, at San Lorenzo. Previous Investigations of Olmec Creation Narratives In Chapter 4 I discussed several studies that dealt with narrative in two-dimensional and low-relief art, and extended their observations to the more three-dimensional formats of Olmec monuments. Olmec sculptors employed several strategies— including wraparound compositions, stacking of locative symbols, slight asymmetries, dynamic poses, and figural interactions—to suggest temporal displacement, cosmic spatial frameworks, and narrative action. In addition to suggesting narrative through composition, Olmec sculptors used symbols that prefigured those in later Mesoamerican narratives of creation and origin. Beatriz de la Fuente (1981:90)pointed to particular Olmec sculptures as “petrified incarnations of a creation myth: the possession of the earth, the fertilization of the earth, the supernatural union that is established as the paradigm of all unions, the sacred origin of man.” She also saw the thrones on which a figure emerges from a cave as reproductions of an origin myth in which the cave within the earth is the generatrix of man: his womb. She plex A, formed six stations of a processional visual narrative of creation and origins that stretched across the entire site. In its sculptural form, the creation narrative consisted of a series of episodes or ritual contexts. Probably those who orated the narrative or performed the rituals filled in the gaps. Each narrative station provided a plethora of visual symbols to which performers could refer as they enacted a version of the story. It may be that much of La Venta’s wealth and importance stemmed from its role as the place that orchestrated the production of...

Share