CHAPTER 1 ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF MESOAMERICAN CIVILIZATION 49used as burial offerings. In the absence of excavations of houses and settlements,
however, it is difficult to reconstruct the nature of Early Formative society in the area.
In the Valley of Oaxaca a long-term interdisciplinary archaeological project di-
rected by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus has provided extensive information on
Early Formative villages. A number of these sites have been excavated, revealing the
rapid expansion of farming villages throughout the Valley. At the end of the Early For-
mative period, evidence for social complexity began to appear in Oaxaca, including
large residences, public ceremonial buildings, and the beginnings of craft special-
ization.
In the last centuries of the Early Formative period and throughout the Middle
Formative, the Olmec culture flourished along the Gulf Coast. At the site of San
Lorenzo, a small farming village existed as early as 1500 B.C. In its early years the vil-
lage at San Lorenzo was similar to villages elsewhere in the region, and its inhabitants
used Locona-tradition pottery. Beginning around 1300 B.C., however, there is evi-
dence for increasing cultural complexity at San Lorenzo. Most striking are the mas-
sive public works projects begun at this time, which involved the reshaping of the
natural hill upon which the site of San Lorenzo rests. Large quantities of fill were used
to turn the hill into a level plateau, and construction was begun on a symmetrical sys-
tem of ridges that jut out from the main plateau. The investigations by Michael Coe,
Richard Diehl, and Ann Cyphers have documented the tremendous labor mobilized
by San Lorenzo rulers in constructing Mesoamerica’s first major political center,
which emphasized landscape modification rather than pyramid temples known from
later periods.
By 1200 B.C. most of the features that characterized the fully developed “Olmec
civilization” were present at San Lorenzo. These include colossal stone heads—
thought to be portraits of rulers—for which the Olmec are most famous (Figure 1.7),
as well as other stone sculptures, hollow ceramic figurines with baby faces (see Figure
1.6), ceramic vessels decorated with iconographic motifs, and a series of stone drains.
These characteristics indicate that by as early as 1200 B.C., a level of sociopoliti-
cal complexity was reached at San Lorenzo far beyond that which had previously ex-
isted. An elite group had emerged with the power to mobilize the labor force
necessary for major public works projects and for the transport of stone for monu-
mental sculpture. Although we do not know a great deal about these earliest Olmec
leaders, the iconography on Olmec sculpture indicates that they were considered to
be of divine descent and were imbued with supernatural powers (see Figure A.13 in
the Introduction).
The Middle Formative.
San Lorenzo dominated the Olmec heartland for several hundred years, but by 900
B.C. its importance had faded, and the site of La Venta became a major Olmec cen-
ter. Other Gulf Coast centers that may have been contemporary with La Venta were
Laguna de los Cerros and Tres Zapotes, but less work has been done at these sites.
At La Venta large quantities of stone sculpture as well as smaller portable artifacts such