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ix Theoretical Approaches to Problems is the fourth volume in the Carnegie Maya series, a publishing initiative by the University Press of Colorado to reissue the results of archaeological and anthropological investigations by the Division of Historical Research, Carnegie Institution of Washington, in southern Mesoamerica. Titles previously published in the series include excerpts summarizing the annual reports of the Division of Historical Research from 1913 through 1957 (Carnegie Maya I), the Current Reports that summarize the results originally published from 1952 to 1957 of the final CIW excavation program at Mayapan in northern Yucatan, Mexico (Carnegie Maya II), and Notes on Middle American Anthropology and Anthropology, a collection of various reports originally published from 1940 to 1957 (Carnegie Maya III). The fifth and final title in the series will republish the Contributions to American Archaeology. The history and many accomplishments, and criticisms as well, of the Carnegie Maya program are presented elsewhere (Weeks and Hill 2006) and need not be repeated again. From 1914 to 1958 the Carnegie Institution of Washington sponsored archaeological and other investigations throughout the Maya region of southern Mexico and northern Central America. During these four decades the Carnegie Institution was the leader in the field, with monetary and human resources that no university or other research program could match, then or since. The more than 300 publications produced by Carnegie-supported researchers remain an important , indeed essential, resource for modern scholars. The Carnegie Institution of Washington program is no more, although its framework has been modified, expanded, and replaced by several generations of new scholars. Its legacy stands as a firm foundation on which an entire discipline has been constructed. The goal of the Theoretical Approaches to Problems series was clearly not to present final papers approaching a complete synthesis of Mesoamerican archaeology and anthropology as a result of the Carnegie Institution program. Rather, as the editor J. Eric S. Thompson (1941:i) states in his General Preface, the purpose of the series was to “outline tentative solutions which conform to information now at hand, with the purpose not of supplying final answers but of stimulating interest in these problems,” and to offer a “platform for such reconstructions and they are so clearly labeled as tentative that their authors will not be called on to stand by the ideas they advance.” The intention was simply to publish preliminary conclusions that “may later be reissued in modified form as a result of the flow of information that will, it is hoped, be stimulated by their publication.” Finally, Thompson makes clear that the series will serve to counterbalance the overspecialization that was replacing the broad comprehension of earlier generations. By the 1930s, scholars generally recognized the Gulf Coast of southern Mexico as the heartland of the art style known as “Olmec” (Marcus 1976). Systematic excavation did not begin until 1939 when archaeologist Matthew Stirling conducted long-term Introduction INTRODUCTION x field investigations of Olmec sites with support from the Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic Society. These included Tres Zapotes in 1939 and 1940, Cerro de las Mesas in 1940, La Venta in 1942 and 1943, and San Lorenzo in 1945 and 1946 (Stirling 1943). The site of Tres Zapotes includes about fifty mounds and extends for three kilometers along the Arroyo Hueyapan near Chacalapa in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The mounds are separated into four plaza groups. Immediately in front of the principal mound of Group C, the easternmost cluster, was found Stela C, with a flat stone altar set in front of it. On the front of the monument was a “jaguar mask” panel, and on the back was a column of bars and dots placed horizontally. The numbers are not accompanied by period glyphs, but on the basis of position-value notation, Stirling reconstructed the Long Count date as [7].16.6.16.18. He predicted that the top half would include the Initial Series Introducing Glyph and the number 7, for Baktun 7, and the date would correlate to 32 BCE. He argued further that the Olmec was the mother culture for Mesoamerica, far earlier than the Maya civilization (Stirling 1939, 1940b). There was great opposition to this position, especially by the Mayanists Sylvanus G. Morley and J. Eric S. Thompson, who regarded Olmec culture as a Classic period derivative of Maya civilization. The date was, however, accepted by the Mexican scholars Alfonso Caso, Miguel Covarrubias, and Roman Piña Chan, who argued that the Olmec represented the earliest civilization in Mesoamerica...

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