Mesoamerican Figurines: Small-Scale Indices of Large-Scale Social Phenomena

6. Early Olmec Figurines from Two Regions: Style as Cultural Imperative

6 Early Olmec Figurines from Two Regions Style as Cultural Imperative David Cheetham Olmec style—among Mesoamerican archaeologists the mere mention of this phrase can incite heated debate and intense posturing. At stake is its meaning in terms of early Mesoamerican peoples and cultures. After all, as the first widespread art style, it is tied to the birth of Mesoamerica itself. Of this there is little disagreement. But is this distinctive style ultimately attributable to a single archaeological culture, the Gulf Olmec (Clark 1990; Coe 1968a; Piña Chan 1989)? When portable Olmec-style objects such as figurines occur beyond the Gulf Coast, can they be linked to the migration of Gulf Olmecs, local emulation, or both scenarios? Or is the Olmec style, as one distinguished group of Mesoamerican scholars asserts, the product of disparate yet politically equivalent cultures—peer polities—that drew upon a preexisting Mesoamerica-wide belief system for inspiration, resulting in similar-looking objects with no single artistic point of origin (Flannery and Marcus 2000; Grove 1989, 1993)? Most important, can these and other notions be rigorously and objectively tested? Through stylistic comparison, I aim to demonstrate that Olmec-style figurines—one of the two major classes of Olmec-style portable objects, along with pottery—were a creation of Gulf Olmec peoples and that their appearance in regions beyond the Gulf is in one way or another tied to Gulf Olmecs. In the case I present in detail, these ties appear to be directly related to colonization: a rather extreme case, to be sure, but one that necessarily injects people into the equation and permits an assessment of the thematic elements that were meaningful to the originators of these objects and their descendants. This unusual case also provides a yardstick with which to consider the occurrence of Olmec-style figurines in regions of Mesoamerica where outright colonization is not evident. 150 David Cheetham San Lorenzo and Cantón Corralito Cantón Corralito is located about 400 kilometers southeast of San Lorenzo, Veracruz, along the Pacific coast of Chiapas (figure 6.1). The excavated collections I use in this study date between approximately 1150 and 1000 bc1 in radiocarbon years, an era archaeologists call the “San Lorenzo horizon” or “Early horizon.” Throughout this discussion, I call it the “Early Olmec horizon.” It is the time frame in which the Olmec style appeared in Mesoamerica . The site of San Lorenzo is famous for colossal sculpture and other monumental works (Coe 1968b, 1981; Coe and Diehl 1980; Cyphers 1994, 1997; Fuente 1994; Velson and Clark 1975). It is also the geographic and cultural nucleus of all scenarios attributing the Olmec style to Gulf Olmec peoples (for example, Blomster et al. 2005). San Lorenzo was a massive settlement between 1150 and 1000 bc and the likely birthplace of state political structure in the Americas (Clark 1997, 2007; Diehl and Coe 1995). Despite claims to the contrary, current evidence indicates that San Lorenzo had no political rivals in Mesoamerica during its heyday. Cantón Corralito is located in the heart of Mazatan, a small but incredibly fertile zone where some of the earliest chiefdom societies in Mesoamerica emerged (Blake 1991; Clark 1994; Clark and Blake 1994). The site was first explored in 1997 (Pérez Suárez 2002) after local residents discovered Olmec-style objects while digging wells and trash pits. Test pits subsequently yielded a large number of striking Olmec-style pot sherds and artifacts, prompting John Clark to propose that Mazatan was conquered and subsequently reorganized by Gulf Olmec peoples circa 1150 bc, with Cantón Corralito serving as the administrative hub of this acquired territory (Clark 2007; Clark and Pye 2000). Key to Clark’s view is the abandonment of Paso de la Amada, the area’s largest and most influential center before 1150 bc. The Cantón Corralito Project was initiated in 2004 under the auspices of the New World Archaeological Foundation. The immediate objective was to determine the extent of the site, now buried under a thick blanket of river sand, and the distribution of Olmec-style objects within it. Over 6,000 Olmec-style figurine and pottery fragments were recovered from pits and trenches across Cantón Corralito. Based on site size (more than twentyfive hectares) and data from excavations, it is conservatively estimated that Cantón Corralito contains 2–4 million more Olmec-style objects. The second objective and ultimate goal of the project was to test the identity [3.21.106.69] Project MUSE...