52 UNIT 1 PREHISPANIC MESOAMERICA
this region, intensification of contact with the San Lorenzo Olmec correlates with the
collapse of Paso de la Amada and the emergence of a new polity on the shores of the
nearby Coatan River. With the collapse of San Lorenzo around 900 B.C., this entire
part of the Soconusco was abandoned, and the polity of La Blanca emerged 50 km
to the southeast. The La Blanca site sprang up around a 25m-high mound that was
built during the first century of the Middle Formative (900–800 B.C.), making it the
largest pyramid mound documented in Mesoamerica at this time. This site was the
capital of a territory organized into a four-tiered settlement hierarchy.
In the Mayan lowlands, it is not until the Middle Formative period that the first
good evidence for sedentary village life appears. Excavations by Norman Hammond,
Patricia McAnany, and David Freidel at their respective sites of Cuello, K’axob, and
Cerros in Belize have shown that early Mayan villages were inhabited by maize farm-
ers who lived in pole-and-thatch houses with limestone plaster floors.
Toward the end of the Middle Formative period, population growth in the Mayan
lowlands was rapid, and at sites in the Petén, the Yucatán Peninsula, and Belize, ce-
ramics are quite similar, belonging to what is called the Mamon tradition. This uni-
formity in the pottery suggests that there was widespread contact across the region.
The first evidence for large public architecture in the Mayan lowlands occurs
during the Middle Formative period. A ceremonial structure, consisting of three
temples sitting atop a terraced platform, was constructed at the site of Nakbé in the
northern Petén, Guatemala. There is little evidence for social ranking at these early
Mayan sites. In the Mayan lowlands, very few Olmec-style artifacts have been recov-
ered, and most Mayan villages did not participate in the network of interacting Mid-
dle Formative societies that included the Gulf Coast, Soconusco, Oaxaca, and Central
Mexico.Late Formative Developments.
After the collapse of Chalcatzingo and other Middle Formative Central Mexican
chiefdoms, Cuicuilco and Teotihuacan became the preeminent polities. During the
final two centuries B.C., each began construction of huge temple platforms, the first
truly monumental buildings in Central Mexico. Cuicuilco, with its large circular-step
pyramid, grew into a city of perhaps 20,000 inhabitants by 0 A.D.. Then in the first cen-
tury A.D., a nearby volcano, Mount Xitle, erupted and buried the settlement under
20 feet of lava, leaving only the top of the pyramid visible. Archaeologists had to use
dynamite to excavate parts of Cuicuilco, most of which remains covered with vol-
canic rock in the southern part of Mexico City. The destruction of Cuicuilco in the
Late Formative period enabled Teotihuacan to become the dominant power in Cen-
tral Mexico by the beginning of the Classic period.
During the Late Formative period in the Valley of Oaxaca, the organization of
settlements underwent a major change as the hilltop settlement of Monte Albán was
established. This urban center would serve as a regional capital until late in the Clas-
sic period, around A.D. 700. According to Richard Blanton, Monte Albán may have
been established by a confederation of Valley chiefdoms. The site’s founders, who
probably came from many of the Valley’s communities, established an administrative