CHAPTER 1 ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF MESOAMERICAN CIVILIZATION 51The Olmecs were not the only complex society in Middle Formative Mesoamer-
ica. Chiefdoms emerged in various areas, and a network of trade and interaction
linked the Olmecs with their contemporaries in Oaxaca, the Basin of Mexico, and the
Soconusco. Olmec-style iconography appears at sites from El Salvador to the Valley
of Mexico, and this distribution has generated a number of interpretations. For-
merly, many scholars thought that the widespread distribution of these symbols in-
dicated that the Olmecs had conquered or somehow controlled contemporaneous
cultures in other parts of Mesoamerica. Recent fieldwork at sites that were suppos-
edly Olmec “colonies” or “subjects” has produced a different view of these Formative
cultures and the type of interactions among them.
During the last centuries of the Early Formative period, elites of several chiefdoms
were in contact with one another through trade networks and personal visits, and the
participants in this network used a common system of emblems and religious sym-
bols to proclaim their positions and power. The Gulf Coast Olmecs were the most
complex and powerful polity at the time and were emulated by elites across
Mesoamerica at the time. Discrepancies in political organization were most evident
during the late Early Formative when no other polity in Mesoamerica could com-
pare with San Lorenzo in terms of the quantity of labor marshaled to fill in the mas-
sive plateau on which the site was built or to transport and carve huge stone
monuments. During the Middle Formative, discrepancies were less obvious, not be-
cause La Venta was less impressive than San Lorenzo but because of the dramatic de-
velopments in other regions of Mesoamerica.
Two well-studied chiefdoms in the Mexican highlands were centered at San José
Mogote in the Valley of Oaxaca, and at Chalcatzingo in Morelos. In these areas, im-
portant changes began to occur in the last centuries of the Early Formative period.
These include the construction of public structures, the relatively rapid growth of vil-
lages, the development of craft specialization, increases in long-distance exchange,
and the emergence of social stratification.
By the Middle Formative period, a hierarchy of settlements existed in the Valley
of Oaxaca that consisted of the primary center of San José Mogote, a series of sec-
ondary centers with public architecture, and small villages with no public architec-
ture represented the third, lowest tier in the regional system. Elites had access to
valuable trade goods, they lived in larger houses than did the common people, and
they were buried in more elaborate graves.
Chalcatzingo, a center in what is today the state of Morelos, is notable for its
large civic-ceremonial precinct and its Olmec-style monumental stone art. Archae-
ologist David Grove argues that by the Middle Formative period, Chalcatzingo was
ruled by a chief with close connections to the Gulf Coast Olmecs and other con-
temporary chiefdoms in the highlands. These connections included the exchange of
goods, stylistic emulation, and perhaps marriage alliances. Variations in burial treat-
ment at Chalcatzingo suggest significant levels of social stratification and hereditary
social status.
The Soconusco region provides another example of cultural developments out-
side the Gulf Coast where the Locona Tradition had developed in earlier times. In