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COMPLEXITY, INTERACTION, AND EPISTEMOLOGY: MIXTECS, ZAPOTECS,

AND OLMECS IN EARLY FORMATIVE MESOAMERICA

Jeffrey P. Blomster

Ancient Mesoamerica / Volume 21 / Issue 01 / March 2010, pp 135 - 149DOI: 10.1017/S0956536110000039, Published online: 22 September 2010

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0956536110000039

How to cite this article:

Jeffrey P. Blomster (2010). COMPLEXITY, INTERACTION, AND EPISTEMOLOGY: MIXTECS, ZAPOTECS, AND OLMECS INEARLY FORMATIVE MESOAMERICA. Ancient Mesoamerica, 21, pp 135-149 doi:10.1017/S0956536110000039

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COMPLEXITY, INTERACTION, AND EPISTEMOLOGY:

MIXTECS, ZAPOTECS, AND OLMECS IN EARLY

FORMATIVE MESOAMERICA

Jeffrey P. Blomster

Department of Anthropology, George Washington University, 2110 G. St., NW, Washington, DC 20052

Abstract

Interaction between the Gulf Coast Olmecs and various regions of Early Formative Mesoamerica remains debated and poorly understood.

In Oaxaca, models have been dominated by neoevolutionary epistemology; interaction between the Valley of Oaxaca and San Lorenzo has

been characterized by emulation or peer polity models. Data from the Valley of Oaxaca, the Nochixtlán Valley, and the Gulf Coast

demonstrate that San Lorenzo was at a different level of sociopolitical complexity than its contemporaries. Previous comparisons betweenOlmec-style pottery in the Gulf Coast and Valley of Oaxaca are found to be problematic, and have led to the impression that Oaxaca

villagers produced more of this pottery than did the Olmecs. Neutron activation analysis demonstrates the Gulf Coast Olmecs exported

ceramics to Mixtecs and Zapotecs in Oaxaca, while receiving few if any pots in return, suggesting that new models and theoretical

perspectives must be applied to understanding the relationships between Oaxacan chiefdoms and the nascent Olmec state at San Lorenzo.

An agency perspective explores what Mixtec, Zapotec, and Olmec groups may have taken from these interactions and relationships and

acknowledges both local and Gulf Coast understandings of “Olmec.” Such relationshipsmay be characterized more by acquisition between

regions, with San Lorenzo as a superordinate center.

Crucial transformations of power relations and sociopolitical

organization emerged across Early Formative Mesoamerica. Rank

societies developed in areas formerly characterized by small auton-

omous villages. Autonomy both within and between villages eroded

as defined leadership roles materialized within larger villages;

regional site hierarchies, elite culture, and aspects of ideologyappear in the archaeological record. The largest and most complex

of these societies developed on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, the

Olmecs. The emergence of more sociopolitically complex societies

during the Early Formative period across Mesoamerica correlates

with transformations in exchange and interaction, on both local and

interregional levels. Beginning by 1150 b.c. (uncal), select sites

across Mesoamerica display distinctive ceramic vessels that share a

common symbolism and iconography. Unlike earlier shared styles,

such as the preceding “red-on-buff ” ceramics that occur throughout

much of the highlands of Mexico (Winter 1984, 1994), the ceramic

vessels display a consistent and complex iconography that often con-

trasts with local pottery traditions, occurring on certain types of cer-

amics or with specific vessel forms. These ceramics, often referred to

as “Olmec-style” or “Olmec pottery,” exhibit symbols that may rep-resent iconic elements of developing religious beliefs and cosmol-

ogy. While fundamental principles of this emergent religion and

cosmology existed in Mesoamerica prior to 1150 b.c., Olmec monu-

mental art and portable objects synthesized and abstracted these con-

cepts on durable material. Interaction with the Gulf Coast Olmecs,

and local understandings of the Olmec style, remain deeply contested

topics and are the subjects of this paper.

The nature of these widespread symbols and the implications in

terms of interaction represented by the use of this common icono-

graphy during the so-called San Lorenzo (or Early) horizon, from

1150–850 b.c., remain poorly understood. Entwined in elucidating

the nature of the San Lorenzo horizon across Mesoamerica are two

major issues: the comparative sociopolitical complexity betweencontemporaneous Early Formative period Mesoamerican societies

and what materials if any were actually exchanged as part of this

interaction. Understanding the nature of San Lorenzo horizon inter-

action impacts both larger issues of interregional interaction as well

as the rise of societies more complex than the early (circa 1400 b.c.)

Mokaya chiefdoms of Soconusco (Clark and Pye 2000).

To explore these issues, I focus on three contemporaneous

societies: the Olmecs of San Lorenzo, Veracruz; the Mixtecs of the

Nochixtlán Valley; and the Zapotecs of the Valley of Oaxaca —the

latter two groups both in the modern Mexican state of Oaxaca

(Figure 1). In terms of the Olmecs, I focus on San Lorenzo; but

recent research—such as that reported by Pool et al. (2010) on the

Early Formative period at Tres Zapotes—suggests that several con-

temporaneous Early Formative Olmec polities existed withinOlman (“the land of the Olmecs” of eastern Veracruz and western

Tabasco), each potentially engaging in different networks of

interaction within and outside of the Gulf Coast. In addition to

comparative political organization, I explore the Olmec-style cer-

amics each region produced, what materials may have moved

between these regions, and the differing impacts of interregional

interaction on early ranked societies. I also examine epistemology

and methodology and how classifications have been used and

abused in previous comparisons of pottery between Oaxaca and

the Gulf Coast. I discuss material from three contemporaneous

135

E-mail correspondence to: [email protected]

Ancient Mesoamerica, 21 (2010), 135–149Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2010doi:10.1017/S0956536110000039



ceramic phases during the San Lorenzo horizon: the San Lorenzo

phase, the San José phase in the Valley of Oaxaca, and the Cruz B

phase in the Nochixtlán Valley.

As a caveat, I note the term “Olmec style”—initially developed

based on objects in museum collections before the exploration of the

archaeological Olmec culture—has often been applied uncritically

to many artifact categories that may have nothing to do with the

Gulf Coast Olmecs (Blomster 2002; Grove 1996). A more robust definition of the Olmec style must be applied to specific artifact

types in order to determine if any connection existed in conception

or execution with the material culture of the Gulf Coast Olmec. By

applying a definition of Olmec style based on Gulf Coast materials

to one such object category—so-called “hollow baby” figurines—it

was possible to purge the literature of many figurines that bore no

resemblance to the Olmec style, which clarifies where and in

what frequencies these objects actually occur (Blomster 1998b,

2002). Furthermore, Olmec style objects should not be assumed

to have been produced on the Gulf Coast, but rather may be regional

variants of this style. Such assertions should be supported by com-

positional data, which has recently been applied to San Lorenzo

horizon ceramics (see below).

COMPARATIVE SOCIOPOLITICAL ORGANIZATION

IN EARLY FORMATIVE MESOAMERICA

By 1150 b.c., rank societies or chiefdoms appeared in Oaxaca, with

major centers, San José Mogote in the Valley of Oaxaca and

Etlatongo in the Nochixtlán Valley, positioned atop two-tier site

hierarchies in their respective valleys. An additional important

Oaxacan Early Formative period center with Olmec-style materials

is located near the Pacific Coast of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec—the

site of Laguna Zope (Zeitlin and Zeitlin 1993). In the Etla branch of

the Valley of Oaxaca, where most small villages (such as Tierras

Largas) covered only 2 to 5 ha, the village of San José Mogote

had a 20-ha core area of public structures and higher status houses

that contrasted slightly with the majority of houses in terms of

quality of construction and plaster, as well as the presence of an out-

building or ramada. Inclusion of outlying barrios would extend San

José Mogote’s size to 60 to 70 ha but this maximum extent does not

represent continuous occupation (Marcus and Flannery 1996:106).In addition to slight differences in house construction, higher-status

individuals at San José Mogote are associated archaeologically with

better access to deer meat, magnetite mirrors, imported ceramics,

marine shell, and jade. Higher-status individuals may also have

organized some craft production, such as magnetite mirrors, with

one group of families controlling mirror-polishing (Marcus and

Flannery 1996:103; Winter 1994).

In the Nochixtlán Valley, Etlatongo’s own core area grew to

approximately 26 ha during the Cruz B phase, with some evidence

of outlying barrios that could extend the size of the site similar to

that of San José Mogote and its barrios (see above); in both cases,

however, I prefer the figure for the main village, not adding outlying

settlements not necessarily connected with the main sites. No

primary evidence of a substantial pre-Cruz B occupation has been

recovered (Blomster 1998a, 2004; Zárate Morán 1987); however,

scattered earlier materials suggest the presence of a small hamlet

at this location prior to the Cruz B phase. Excavations through

both test units and larger horizontal exposures at Etlatongo revealed

that some higher status individuals lived in houses on small plat-

forms (generally less than half a meter), made up of redeposited

middens and fill, elevating them above surrounding houses; at

least one such house may have had decorated interior plaster.

Such individuals also had access to large storage facilities, more

exotic and imported goods and displayed relatively large items of

Figure 1. Location of the Valleys of Oaxaca and Nochixtlán in Early Formative period Mesoamerica, with sites indicated that are

mentioned in the text.

Blomster136



ritual paraphernalia (Blomster 1998b, 2004). One area of probable

public space has also been defined in the southern portion of the

site, a mound elevated by depositing construction fill, in one case

with a disproportionately large amount of figurine fragments.

The location of San Lorenzo, on an artificially modified salt

dome above the surrounding floodplain, allowed control of river

transportation networks. Before 1150 b.c., San Lorenzo was

similar to what the Oaxacan chiefdoms would become during the

San Lorenzo horizon, a roughly 20-ha site atop a two-tier settlement hierarchy (Symonds et al. 2002:56). By 1150 b.c., San Lorenzo

grew to nearly 700 ha, dwarfing all contemporaneous settlements

in Mesoamerica (Cyphers and Di Castro 2009:23). The San

Lorenzo Tenochtitlan Archaeological Project (SLTAP) has docu-

mented at least a three-tier “central place” hierarchy dominated by

San Lorenzo, which housed 40% of the region’s population (see

Symonds et al. 2002: 124, 126); the hierarchy would be four-tier

if smaller villages and hamlets which would have had no adminis-

trative functions are included. In other parts of Mesoamerica, such a

settlement hierarchy would generally be consistent with state-level

political organization, as clear control and administration over the

San Lorenzo hinterland are indicated (Clark 2007). San Lorenzo’s

builders organized internal urban space to delimit zones of public

space as well as residential areas, with a massive ramp connectingSan Lorenzo to a dock associated with one of the rivers that sur-

rounded the site (Cyphers 1997). In terms of social organization,

San Lorenzo elites controlled a basalt workshop and lived in what

the SLTAP (Cyphers 1997) refers to as the “Red Palace,” estimated

to cover some 400 m 2.

Recent data from Olman and Oaxaca indicate substantial differ-

ences in sociopolitical organization. The ability of Olmec leaders

to commission the first monumental art in Mesoamerica in the

form of multiton portraiture (the famous colossal heads) and

“altars” or thrones attests to a magnitude of power greater than any-

where else in contemporaneous Mesoamerica. Throughout Early

Formative Oaxaca, status differences clearly lay along a continuum,

without the displays of personal power and regional settlement inte-

gration noted for San Lorenzo. SLTAP archaeologists have referredto San Lorenzo as the center of an incipient state (Symonds 2000),

while John Clark (2007:42) refers to San Lorenzo as Mesoamerica ’s

first and only pristine state, based on both its four-tier regional

settlement pattern and evidence of foreign hegemony at Cantón

Corralito in the Mazatan region, both of which are indicators of

the state at the later Valley of Oaxaca Zapotec center of Monte

Albán. The political classification of San Lorenzo reveals the

limitations in underlying epistemologies, as it invokes problematic

neoevolutionary stages and typologies (see Yoffee 2005), with

the result being for some scholars the flawed assertion that

if the San Lorenzo Olmec can be placed into the same general

“chiefdom ” category as other contemporaneous societies, even as

a more “complex” chiefdom, it could not have had an impact on

them (Flannery and Marcus 2000). Current evidence indicates that

whatever classification scheme we deploy, the San Lorenzo Olmec

were sociopolitically more complexly organized than their contem-

poraneous Early Formative neighbors throughout Mesoamerica.

WHAT MATERIALS EXHIBIT OLMEC STYLE IN EARLY

FORMATIVE PERIOD MESOAMERICA?

Gulf Coast Olmec art includes naturalistic images often combined

with iconography that abstracted important concepts of Olmec reli-

gion and cosmology (Coe 1965; de la Fuente 1992). In terms of

objects that show Olmec style and iconography, in Oaxaca these

are confined to ceramic objects—pottery vessels and figurines.

The consistency in representation and the particular use of images

in the Olmec style at select sites throughout Mesoamerica suggests

the presence of a symbolic code that reinforced social and cosmolo-

gical structures, beliefs, and values—a not uncommon feature of

pottery decoration (Rice 1987:251). Although some researchers

(Grove 2007:222) seize on the apparent absence of monumental

art in regions such as Oaxaca as evidence for a lack of Gulf Coast influence, such an observation ignores the sociopolitical context

of Oaxacan ranked societies and the complex and nuanced nature

of San Lorenzo horizon interregional relationships, which do not

signify Olmec political or economic domination in Oaxaca. As

opposed to the sociopolitically more complex Olmec center of

San Lorenzo, monumental stone sculpture was simply not a

feature of early Oaxacan ranked societies. Indeed, multi-ton por-

traits of rulers, such as the Olmec colossal heads of San Lorenzo,

are not artifacts normally associated with ranked societies.

Although a fired clay paw, approximately life-size and part of

a larger sculpture, was found at Etlatongo (Blomster 2004:

Figure 8.2), both the paw, and slightly later bas-relief sculptures

from San José Mogote (Monuments 1 and 2; see Marcus and

Flannery 1996:Figure114), all reflect supernatural imagery—not portraits of leaders. With some possible examples in the Mazatan

region (see Clark and Pye 2000), monumental art does not appear

outside of Olman until the following La Venta horizon. Instead,

Olmec-style imagery appeared on portable objects, which could

be easily imported and locally imitated.

Generally in Oaxaca there are both objects that exhibit the Olmec

style as defined for Gulf Coast monuments and ceramics and others

that only approximate this style; the distinction between these two is

important and may be supported by compositional data. While I

focus here on ceramic vessels, solid Olmec-style figurines have

been found in both the Valley of Oaxaca and the Nochixtlán

Valley. In addition to solid figurines, so-called “hollow baby” figur-

ines (what I have referred to as Group 1) exhibit the Olmec style,

while Group 2 hollow figurines are local reinterpretations(Blomster 2002). While none of the published hollow examples

from the Valley of Oaxaca (Marcus 1998) correspond with a

robust definition of Olmec-style, Group 1 figurines—both fragmen-

tary and nearly intact —have been found at Etlatongo, although they

are outnumbered by Group 2 figurines (Figure 2). While Flannery

and Marcus (1994:386) claim that hollow babies are a central

Mexican phenomenon rather than associated with Olman, they are

incorrect, as their interpretation is based on counting the many

looted hollow figurines—some of them in Olmec style, some of

them not (thus the importance of carefully defining Olmec style)—

reportedly from sites such as Tlatilco, Tlapacoya-Zohapilco, and

Las Bocas (Blomster 2002). Their model is also flawed by being

overly focused on intact objects, ignoring the archetypal Olmec-

style examples of hollow baby head fragments excavated at San

Lorenzo (Coe and Diehl 1980:267). In terms of the origins of the

Olmec style applied to the human form, solid figurines in this style

first appeared at San Lorenzo before the time of the San Lorenzo

horizon, during the Chicharras phase (Coe and Diehl 1980:263).

San Lorenzo Pottery

Some ceramic types associated with the San Lorenzo horizon actu-

ally first appear in the earlier Chicharras phase (1250–1150 b.c.) at

San Lorenzo, including several of the white paste ceramics, such as

Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Olmecs in Early Formative Mesoamerica 137



Xochiltepec White, as well as white-slipped ceramics, such as La

Mina White, with its distinctive orange to red paste (Coe and

Diehl 1980:150–159). Two types of differentially firedblack-on-white pottery also appear in the Chicharras phase.

Iconographic elements that may represent earth and sky, such as

volutes and fine incising similar to decoration on later Limón

Incised pottery, occur in the Bajió phase (1350–1250 b.c.) on

ceramic vessels, before their appearance on monumental art (Di

Castro and Cyphers 2006:52).

The sculptural nature of Olmec-style art is fully expressed in San

Lorenzo phase pottery, in which one of the important types,

Calzadas Carved (Fig. 3a, b), features excised designs and

symbols, some of which appear on monumental Olmec art, such

as Loma del Zapote Monument 2 (Cyphers 2004:235–237). Di

Castro and Cyphers (2006:34–35) have recently defined four

basic designs and associated compositions at San Lorenzo, the

first three of which consist of symmetrical designs, elements of which may be combined for the fourth (asymmetrical compositions

of fantastic creatures). Individual motifs on Calzadas Carved

pottery, which may combine excision and incision, include: star-

burst, “ jaguar-dragon-paw-wing,” crossed bands/St. Andrew’s

cross, cross-hachure, brackets and upside down U-shaped lines,

some of which combine to form a profile view of a creature with

flaming eyebrows (Coe and Diehl 1980:162–171). These designs

appear mostly to represent a creature often referred to as a “fire-

serpent ” or dragon rather than the cleft-headed “were-jaguar ” so

prevalent on monumental architecture (Stark 2007:53), although

these may be profile and frontal views of the same creature, as

shown on a pot from central Mexico (Blomster 2004; Winter

1994). Potters executed the majority of Calzadas Carved designs

on the exterior of bowls, where they are oriented either horizontally

or vertically, although a small amount are oriented diagonally.

In addition to Calzadas Carved, Xochiltepec White and La Mina

White pottery, the San Lorenzo phase includes other types found

elsewhere in Mesoamerica: Limón Incised (Figure 3c), which has

a variety of incised designs, but are often curvilinear and diagonal

lines combined with opposed volutes, curved brackets, and/or

other motifs (Coe and Diehl 1980:171), and Conejo

Orange-on-White (Figure 3d), essentially the same paste as

Xochiltepec White but with an orange slip on the surface through

which decorations may be incised and/or excised (Coe and Diehl

1980:179). While a variety of designs can be included under

Limón Incised,I use thisterm here solely forcurvilinearand diagonal

lines that may be associated with opposed volutes or curved arches/

brackets. Both Calzadas Carved and Xochiltepec White have been

identified as evidence of Olmec-style artifacts at sites throughout

Mesoamerica, Limón Incised and Conejo Orange-on-White,

however, are extremely rare and restricted in their distribution.

Pottery in the Valley of Oaxaca and the Nochixtlán Valley

Pottery forms and types increased around 1150 b.c. in the Valley of

Oaxaca, with red, white, yellow, and pink slip colors appearing

(Flannery and Marcus 1994; Winter 1994). Black-on-white

pottery, white or white-slipped vessels with contrasting zones of

black, through fire-clouding and/or reduction, occur as well—at

least 100 years after such pottery was produced during the

Chicharras phase at San Lorenzo. Gray ware pottery vessels, some-

times fired in a reducing atmosphere or smudged, and occasionally

slipped, also make their first appearance, as do vessels made of

white paste, visually similar to Xochiltepec White. Flat-based

conical and cylindrical bowls become frequent and are the most

Figure 3. Pottery types defined at San Lorenzo: (a) and (b) Calzadas Carved,

(c) Limón Incised, and (d) Conejo Orange-on-White. Sherds not at samescale. Redrawn from Coe and Diehl 1980:Figures 138g, i; 144i; 150e.

Figure 2. Hollow figurine face fragments recovered during excavations at

Etlatongo. The top two are Olmec-style, or Group 1, while the bottom

three are Group 2—local reinterpretations of Group 1.

Blomster138



common setting for both local and Olmec-style designs. Some San

José phase motifs appear to be purely local Valley of Oaxaca

designs and include large shapes with hachure, nested triangles

(usually with only two lines; see Flannery and Marcus 1994:

Figure 12.15), zoned designs, and paired jabs. Olmec-style designs

usually are expressed as free-standing abstractions of a composite

zoomorphic being(s) and include elements such as flame eyebrows,

U-shapes/brackets (that may represent gums), the St. Andrew’s

cross, music brackets, cleft-related elements, and other excisedbands, organized in various configurations (Flannery and Marcus

1994:135–149). Designs are oriented diagonally or horizontally

and usually placed on the outside of bowls (Figure 4) but may

also be found on the interior.

Similar changes and expansion in the ceramic assemblage occur

as well in the Cruz B phase of the Nochixtlán Valley (Blomster

2004). The vast majority of pottery consists of a coarse brown

paste. Unrestricted vessels are almost invariably slipped with

colors, sometimes modified by firing—including white, red,

brown, orange, gray, and black. As with the Valley of Oaxaca and

Gulf Coast, differential firing is used to achieve contrasting zones

of white/yellow and gray/black. A finer brown paste (“café

fino”) is used almost exclusively for bowls that feature an orange

slip burnished to achieve a waxy surface; while rarely decorated,some examples have a starburst design on the interior base, which

is one element that distinguishes Etlatongo vessels from contem-

poraneous Valley of Oaxaca pots. Gray ware vessels, some of

which were fired in a reducing atmosphere, also first appear

during the Cruz B phase and may be differentially fired to

produce a white band on the vessel’s rim (Figure 5).

Along with local decorations, a small amount of vessels at

Etlatongo exhibit Olmec-style designs, where they appear on gray

ware vessels and coarse café pots, only rarely occurring on café

fino pots (see Figure 6). Olmec-style designs, expressed in both sym-

metrical and free-standing asymmetrical compositions, include

crossed bands/St. Andrew’s crosses, U-shapes and brackets, piano

keys, L-shaped excised and incised lines, wavy “flame” lines, star-

bursts, and other designs that could be elements of “paws”or “flame eyebrows” both similar to and different from examples

in the Gulf Coast and Valley of Oaxaca. At Etlatongo, designs are

usually excised or incised on the exterior of cylindrical (and

occasionally conical) bowls. Only rarely do designs appear on the

interior of conical bowls; interior placement appears to be more

common in the Valley of Oaxaca. Olmec-style motifs appear on

these vessel either horizontally or diagonally placed (Figure 6);

vertical orientations appear confined to large motifs and cover less

of the surface of the pot, not the typical composite design of

Calzadas Carved that wraps around much of the vessel.

A fundamental difference between Olmec-style pottery in the

Nochixtlán Valley and in the Valley of Oaxaca is the appearance

at Etlatongo of crossed bands, arranged symmetrically in horizontal

bands, similar to the first composition defined for San Lorenzo by

Di Castro and Cyphers (2006:34); while an “X” or crossed bands

is Motif 7 in the Valley of Oaxaca, a symmetrical composition

solely of crossed bands has not been illustrated for the Valley of

Figure 4. Delfina Gray bowl, with diagonal “fire-serpent” carved design

(filled with red pigment) found at San José Mogote but imported, as

shown through INAA, from San Lorenzo (MURR sample SLN287). See

drawing in Flannery and Marcus 1994:Figure 146b.

Figure 5. Differentially fired gray ware pottery from Etlatongo with white

interior rims.

Figure 6. Examples of Olmec-style exterior carved designs from Etlatongo:

(a) horizontal design on a red-slipped bowl; (b) diagonal designs on gray

ware bowls; (c) combination of diagonal and horizontal elements on a

gray ware cylindrical bowl, shown by INAA (MURR sample BLM003) as

a San Lorenzo import.




Oaxaca, except for some “cross-hatching” on a spouted tray from

San José Mogote (Flannery and Marcus 1994:Figure 12.71).

Valley of Oaxaca pottery may exhibit large, bounded areas of

hachure, often identified with the “were-jaguar ” or “earth”

designs, that appear to be virtually absent at Etlatongo. Bounded

hachure appears to be a Valley of Oaxaca innovation, incorporated

both into local expressions of Olmec-style compositions and purely

local designs. Indeed, the presence of such a design on one cylind-

rical bowl fragment at Etlatongo is suggestive of a Valley of Oaxaca origin, although INAA on this sherd was not conclusive (Blomster

2009). In terms of the problematic dichotomy between fire-serpent

and were-jaguar concepts discussed below for the Valley of Oaxaca,

it does appear that the majority of Olmec-style designs at Etlatongo

fall within the fire-serpent /dragon category; were-jaguar imagery,

usually incised, appears on café fino vessels, which are rarely a

medium for Olmec symbols.

In addition to other potentially Olmec-related types of pottery

(Xochiltepec White and La Mina White) found in the Valley of

Oaxaca, two types of pottery defined at San Lorenzo are present

at Etlatongo but virtually absent in the Valley of Oaxaca: Conejo

Orange-on-White (Figure 7) and Limón Incised (Figure 8).

Indeed, despite the larger Valley of Oaxaca sample, only one defini-

tive example of what I define as Limón Incised (see above) has beenpublished, included with a burial at Tomaltepec (Whalen 1981:

130); perhaps this Limón Incised cylinder came from the

Nochixtlán Valley, where chemical sourcing shows potters pro-

duced local versions, as this type does not appear to have been pro-

duced in the Valley of Oaxaca.

Discovered by Marcus Winter in a recent salvage project at

Etlatongo, a small rim sherd from a cylindrical bowl exhibits a

fully-realized Olmec-style profile incised on the vessel’s exterior

(see Figure 9). The sherd comes from a café fino bowl, with an

orange/red slip distinctive of this ware. While the archaeological

context does not provide an exact chronological placement, the clay

and surface treatment of this ware are distinctly Cruz B. At some

point, perhaps after the vessel was no longer used, the eye was

gouged out and much of the slip removed,perhaps similarto the ritua-lized destruction of some examples of Olmec paraphernalia elsewhere

in Mesoamerica. Naturalistic images such as this are virtually

unknown in any part of Oaxaca; more elaborately incised profiles

designs are associated with Tlapacoya-Zohapilco, with one example

from that site sourced by INAA as a central Mexican product.

Unlike the Valley of Oaxaca, double-line break designs do not

occur until after the Cruz B phase, and do not feature the abstract

cleft-headed elements as do the slightly earlier examples in the

Valley of Oaxaca (Figure 10). Indeed, many of the more abstract

and geometric double-line breaks from the Valley of Oaxaca prob-

ably come from post-850 b.c. contexts. The placement of this

double-line/extended bracket below the interior rim of conical

bowls is fundamentally different from the Olmec-style inverted

U’s/brackets placed on the exterior of cylindrical bowls.

Figure 7. Conejo Orange-on-White vessel, excavated at Etlatongo but

sourced through INAA (MURR sample BLM011) as a San Lorenzo import.

Figure 8. Two examples of Limón Incised vessels excavated at Etlatongo;

INAA shows the top pot was made at Etlatongo (MURR sample SLN266).

Figure 9. An Olmec-style profile face on the exterior of a café fino

cylindrical bowl, excavated at Etlatongo; stippling indicates red slip.

Drawn by Juan Cruz Pascual.

Blomster140



STYLE AND INTERACTION: EPISTEMOLOGY AND

METHODOLOGY IN CERAMIC COMPARISONS

The appearance of pottery that features Olmec-style designs at sites

in both the Gulf Coast and various regions of Oaxaca presents

numerous epistemological and interpretive challenges. The move-

ment of Olmec-style pots, with decorative motifs invoking abstract

religious beliefs and cosmology, implies “the dissemination of theseideas” (Clark 2007:31). Are these actual Gulf Coast imports in

Oaxaca, or are all Olmec-style vessels the result of local Zapotec

and Mixtec production?

Different epistemologies lie behind the models that have been

proposed for this interaction, ranging from systems theory to

agency perspectives. An outgrowth of processual archaeology,

systems theory has become a core element of the neoevolutionary

paradigm that focuses on how culture (viewed as a system of inter-

communicating networks) adapts humans to the local environment,

both natural and social (Binford 1962). Despite the focus on open

systems detailed in James Miller ’s Living Systems (1978), which

epitomizes the organic analogy utilized by its proponents, systems

theory rejects significant external contributions to the developmen-

tal trajectory of a given society (Flannery 1972). Outright conquest and incorporation of a region, however, are invoked by systems

theory explanations for the later Zapotec Monte Albán state’s

spread through domination and control of adjacent regions

(Marcus and Flannery 1996). Essentially a functionalist paradigm,

many examples of systems theory focus on how different feedback

mechanisms maintained an ancient system in a state of equilibrium

or homeostasis. In terms of explaining change, although ostensibly

concerned with internal processes (such as demographic increases),

“deviation amplifying” positive feedback often was introduced

externally through random change, such as the genetic mutation

in wild grass that provoked systematic changes leading to the devel-

opment of agriculture in Mesoamerica (Flannery 1972).

Agency perspectives (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1984; Ortner

1984), in contrast, explore social identities and negotiations of status and power. Material culture is central to such a perspective,

as it may reproduce, promote, and/or challenge agency while

actual social negotiations produce political relations. Such a per-

spective views agents as socially embedded and imperfect,

engaged in an interactive and recursive relationship between struc-

tures that both constrain and enable them. Much debate exists

among scholars surrounding motivations and the amount of inten-

tionality of agents (see Dobres and Robb 2000), but the goal is

not to recreate the lives of specific past individuals. Another possi-

bility considers culture as existing between ideological (expressed/

possessed by a particular social group) and hegemonic (shared and

naturalized conventions) poles, where individual behavior positions

itself somewhere between these two poles (Comaroff and Comaroff

1991:21-24)

While specific applications of these models to the Early

Formative Oaxaca data will be detailed below, neoevolutionary per-

spectives have been central in developing models that categorize

Oaxacan societies and the San Lorenzo Olmecs as chiefdoms (see

above) and minimize direct contact or impact between theseregions (Flannery 1968; Flannery and Marcus 1994). A corollary

of such a neoevolutionist interpretation is that Valley of Oaxaca

potters produced more Olmec-style vessels than Olmec potters at

San Lorenzo, a view largely based on the supposed greater reper-

toire of Olmec symbols and designs at Valley of Oaxaca sites

(Flannery and Marcus 2000). Furthermore, because some of these

Olmec-style symbols appear on distinctive Oaxacan gray ware

pottery, it has been claimed that such pots produced in the Valley

of Oaxaca were exported to the Gulf Coast Olmec and other

regions of Early Formative Mesoamerica, such as Tlapacoya-

Zohapilco; Flannery and Marcus (1994, 2000) state highland

regions exhibit earlier and more frequent examples of Olmec-style

symbols than the Gulf Coast region. In addition to assessing the ear-

liest appearances of elements of this style, I challenge the supposedgreater variety and frequency of Olmec-style symbols in the Valley

of Oaxaca, critiquing three factors: definition of Olmec-style

pottery, classification and comparison of sherds from different

sites, and identification of opposed Zapotec forces.

First Appearance of the Olmec Style on Pottery

While it is possible that earlier examples of Olmec-style motifs

appeared on perishable materials, pottery provides a more perma-

nent medium to observe where this iconography first manifested

across Mesoamerica. Appearing as a well-defined and consistent

suite of symbols, Clark (2007:31) notes that “a long evolution in

other media appears unlikely.” As noted above for San Lorenzo,incised symbols appear more than one hundred years earlier than

the San Lorenzo horizon; volutes and fine incision appear around

1350 b.c. while inverted U’s ascend in popularity beginning

around 1250 b.c. in the Chicharras phase (Di Castro and Cyphers

2006:51). In both the Valley of Oaxaca and the Nochixtlán

Valley, Olmec-style iconography does not appear prior to the

phases (San José and Cruz B) contemporaneous with the San

Lorenzo phase. Di Castro and Cyphers (2006:47–48) have reana-

lyzed Christine Niederberger ’s (1976, 1987) Zohapilco excavations,

which have been cited by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus (2000)

as showing the “priority” of the highlands in many Olmec motifs;

Di Castro and Cyphers determine that some of the relevant stratigra-

phy is problematic, with one stratum cited as producing pre-San

Lorenzo horizon (Nevada phase) materials actually part of one

larger deposit, Strata 9–12, with a later (Ayotla phase) date.

Finally, in the well-documented pre-San Lorenzo horizon ceramic

inventories of different Mazatan sites, such as Paso de la Amada,

Olmec-style designs are not present (Clark 2007; Lesure 2000),

although identical incised geometric designs are present at both

San Lorenzo and Cantón Corralito prior to the San Lorenzo

horizon (Blomster and Cheetham 2008). Olmec-style figurines

also appear earlier in the Gulf Coast (see above). Thus, the San

Lorenzo Olmecs expressed many aspects of this style in ceramics

prior to other regions.

Figure 10. Double-line breaks—with incised circles—on the rims of white-

slipped conical bowls, from post-Cruz B contexts at Etlatongo.




Zapotec “Olmec-style” Designs, Frequencies, and Forces in

Oaxaca

For sherds in Oaxaca to be considered Olmec style, the designs

should minimally be excised; if incised, the design must comprise

a composition more complex than a single straight line, with

possible shapes and elements noted above. When applying such

standards to what Flannery and Marcus (1994) include as Olmec

style (or “pan-Mesoamerican;” see below) in Early Formativepottery from the Valley of Oaxaca, it becomes evident that

Flannery and Marcus have been overly inclusive.

Flannery and Marcus (2000) support the supposed priority of

Oaxaca in the creation of Olmec-style symbols by claiming a

greater frequency and variety of them in the Valley of Oaxaca,

where they refer to them as pan-Mesoamerican symbols, which

they define as excised or incised, and “include depictions of what

may be supernatural beings, great natural forces, or cosmological

beliefs” (1994:136)—essentially the basic definition of Olmec

style. Flannery and Marcus have never distinguished Olmec-style

symbols as discrete from how they conceive pan-Mesoamerican

designs, invariably referring to typical Olmec symbols—the

St. Andrew’s cross, for example—when discussing them. Indeed,

Flannery and Marcus (1994:140) note that in their typologyMotifs 15 through 18 are probably specific to Oaxaca and do not

include them as “pan-Mesoamerican.” To avoid confusion, I con-

tinue to use the term Olmec style, while noting Flannery and

Marcus’ (1994, 2000) preference for the term “pan-Mesoamerican.”

A basic problem is how Flannery and Marcus define and count

these designs, many of which appear to be distinguished by very

minor variations. I explore this problem through the range of free-

standing motifs that characterize Olmec-style pottery in the Valley

of Oaxaca. Pyne (1976:272–274) defines 18 free-standing motifs,

14 of which she considers examples of Olmec iconography. Pyne

(1976:273) and Flannery and Marcus (1994:140–145) classify

seven of these motifs (1–7) as representing the fire-serpent (which

Flannery and Marcus interpret as Zapotec lightning/sky) and

seven (Motifs 8–14) as images of the were-jaguar (or earthquake/earth). Various techniques are deployed to increase the variety

and quantities of such motifs in Oaxaca. When they illustrate a

sample of Pyne’s first 14 motifs, Flannery and Marcus (1994:

Figures 12.5–12.13) include designs that do not appear outside of

Oaxaca and should not be considered Olmec style—doing so

inflates the variations of these motifs and the actual number of

Olmec-style sherds in the Valley of Oaxaca. Flannery and Marcus

(1994) organize Pyne’s Olmec-style motifs to include numerous

variants, many of which consist of thin, often straight, incised

lines. I suggest such designs do not meet a rigorous definition of

Olmec style and should not be included in their quantities of

Olmec symbols in Oaxaca. For example, the often thin and straight

incised lines, sometime combined with hachure, that comprise

Motifs 4, 5, 6, 12, and 14 have no visual relationship to

Olmec-style designs and iconography. Furthermore, motifs that

are primarily incised lines, or variants of double-line breaks, may

fall late in or after the San José phase (see above). Unless hachure

is combined with cleft shapes, it is not Olmec style; I exclude

from the rubric of Olmec style all vessels with simple incised

lines or vertical bands of hachure; several sherds with such

designs were included in the Valley of Oaxaca samples in the sour-

cing study reported below and appear to be local Oaxaca products.

Excluding many motifs considered by Flannery and Marcus as

Olmec-style renders their assertion of the larger repertoire of these

symbols in the Valley of Oaxaca problematic at best. It also

exposes one of several problems in their ceramic totals; when

Flannery and Marcus (1994:Table 16.1, 2000:Table 2) present fre-

quencies of Olmec-style pottery from the Valley of Oaxaca, they

do not specify which motifs or variants are included. Thus, it is

not possible to simply go through their totals and recalculate more

accurate frequencies of Olmec-style materials from their exca-

vations, unless all excised sherds are assumed to be Olmec style

(see Stark 2007 and below). The quantities of sherds that Flannery and Marcus cite as exhibiting such iconography, and

types of designs in Oaxaca, are vastly overstated.

Equally problematic is Flannery and Marcus’ (2000:24) asser-

tion that their Valley of Oaxaca excavations yielded more types of

pottery with Olmec designs than at San Lorenzo. Several distortions

occur with their comparisons between ceramic assemblages from

the Gulf Coast and Valley of Oaxaca. Archaeologists create etic

pottery types based on specific requirements and features of their

assemblage (Spaulding 1953). Flannery and Marcus (2000:25)

express their “surprise” that the San Lorenzo ceramic typology

created by Coe and Diehl (1980) includes only one pottery type

with Olmec symbols, Calzadas Carved (the San Lorenzo typology

is being revised by the SLTAP; see Di Castro and Cyphers 2006).

Compared to only one pottery type at San Lorenzo with Olmecmotifs, Flannery and Marcus (2000:25) emphasize their four

types of pottery from the Valley of Oaxaca with such motifs

(Leandro Gray, San José Black-and-White, Atoyac Yellow-White,

and Delfina Fine Gray); they associate the higher number of types

with Olmec-style designs in Oaxaca with Zapotec potters’ greater

involvement in their creation. Their comparison is fundamentally

flawed, as Flannery and Marcus (2000) overlook the different classi-

fication criteria. Because the pottery excavated by Coe and Diehl

(1980) at San Lorenzo suffered extensive erosion, preservation of

surface colorand slip varied and therefore does not playa significant

role in their classification. Conversely, surface color plays a primary

role in Flannery and Marcus’ (1994) classification of the well-

preserved Valley of Oaxaca pottery as is evident in the names of

the types that exhibit supposed Olmec designs. Since Coe andDiehl were not able to make distinctions in slip color a consistent

factor in their classification, they generally did not assign excised

sherds to different types; Calzadas Carved includes only pottery

decorated by excised lines, sometimes in combination with

incised decorations. Flannery and Marcus’ comparison of ceramic

types reveals nothing significant about production of Olmec

pottery in these two regions but simply highlights differences in

methodologies. Differences in these etic ceramic types cannot be

interpreted to assign greater Oaxacan priority in the creation of

Olmec-style designs, contra Flannery and Marcus (2000).

Nor is Flannery and Marcus’ comparison accurate, as there are

other types of contemporaneous pottery at San Lorenzo that

exhibit incised and some excised Olmec-style designs, such as

examples on the following four types: Limón Incised; Conejo

Orange-on-White (Figure 3d; Coe and Diehl 1980:Figure 150); an

Olmec-style face carved on a specimen of Yagua Orange (Coe

and Diehl 1980:Figure 158b); and several possibilities—not defini-

tive due to preservation and size of the sherds—of carved designs on

Tatagapa Red (Coe and Diehl 1980:Figures 159o, p). While Coe and

Diehl’s (1980:Figure 146) sample of Xochiltepec White consists of

restricted vessels without plastic decoration, one San Lorenzo

sample of this type in the MURR database (SLN519) is an

incised hemispherical bowl, and a decorated example excavated in

the Valley of Oaxaca (but sourced as originating at San Lorenzo)

Blomster142



is also in the MURR database (see below). Due, however, to the

erosion of surface color on San Lorenzo pottery, incised

Xochiltepec White vessels (which are extremely rare) may actually

be Conejo Orange-on-White without any remaining traces of slip;

thus, Xochiltepec White clearly is not a significant type for the dis-

semination of Olmec-style designs. While the number of etic

Olmec-style pottery types is an artifact of different methodologies,

Flannery and Marcus, however, fail to consider fully the range of

decorated types at San Lorenzo.The ceramic comparison between the Gulf Coast and Valley of

Oaxaca becomes even more problematic when sherd frequencies

are examined. Flannery and Marcus (2000:22–25) note that only

4% of Level F’s sherds at San Lorenzo are Calzadas Carved; they

compare this frequency with Leandro Gray sherds from San José

Mogote as a type, noting this type comprises 23% of all middle

San José phase sherds. Their comparison is invalid and misleading,

as not all Leandro Gray sherds have Olmec-style designs and cannot

be compared as a type with one that is comprised completely of

Olmec-style sherds. In fact, only 12% of Leandro Gray sherds

from a midden at San José Mogote are decorated at all (Flannery

and Marcus 2000:Table 2); how many of these have Olmec-style

motifs remains unclear. Only 2% of another type with occasional

Olmec symbols, Atoyac Yellow White, is decorated; Flannery andMarcus’ (2000) focus on the high frequency of this type overall at

San José Mogote is irrelevant. Thus, by comparing “Olmec-style”

pottery from the Valley of Oaxaca by types, the vast majority of

which do not exhibit Olmec-style designs, with those from San

Lorenzo, Flannery and Marcus further create the illusion of a

higher frequency of Olmec-style designs in Oaxaca, a tactic also

recently identified by Stark (2007:51), who, using only excised

designs at San José Mogote, recalculates Olmec-style frequencies

as between 1% and 4%.

Flannery and Marcus employ the same strategies in their presen-

tation of Niederberger ’s Zohapilco data, where they use quantities

of all sherds, both decorated and undecorated, from the types

Tortuga Pulido, Volcán Pulido, Atoyac Gris Fino, Valle Borde

Blanco, Pilli Blanco, and Paloma Negativo to generate inflated fre-quencies (between 27% and 29%) of Olmec-style motifs, which

Flannery and Marcus (2000:19) proclaim as the highest frequencies

of Olmec-style designs in Mesoamerica (see also Di Castro and

Cyphers 2006:50–51). Niederberger (1976:159–164) recalculated

the frequencies of Olmec-style motifs as only 0.5% to 2.0%,

while Stark (2007:Table 3.1) estimates 0.4% to 1.7% and Di

Castro and Cyphers (2006:51), only 1.15%, significantly less than

frequencies for Olmec-style sherds at San Lorenzo, calculated by

David Cheetham (2010) as 6.4% for Calzadas Carved, 8.8% for

Limón Incised (based on rim sherds from Coe and Diehl’s

project). Flannery and Marcus (2000:19) also erroneously

promote the appearance of supposed Olmec-style designs on six

types at Zohapilco (compared, once again, to only one decorated

type at San Lorenzo) as significant.

Returning to the Valley of Oaxaca, Flannery and Marcus have

also attempted to emphasize an important Zapotec role in the cre-

ation of Olmec symbols by linking the two basic forces represented

by Pyne’s Motifs 1–7 (fire-serpent) and 8–14 (were-jaguar) with

distinct Zapotec expression of natural forces, sky/lightning and

earth/earthquake, respectively (see above). In addition to ill-

advisedly conflating 14 such disparate motifs as representing two

opposed “forces” (a ceramic vessel from central Mexico often

used to illustrate these “forces” shows front and profile views of

the same dragon-like entity), identifying these symbols with

Zapotec forces known through Spanish ethnohistoric documents

2,500 years later remains especially problematic. Flannery and

Marcus (2000:13) speculate that this “ancient dichotomy” existed

long before the Gulf Coast Olmec; no supporting material evidence,

however, has ever been offered. Furthermore, no clear connection

has ever been developed between these Olmec-style symbols and

later Zapotec belief and iconography. One potential link has been

cited by Marcus (1989:196), who connects the Early Formative

Zapotec “earth/earthquake” iconography with the earthquakeglyph from later Zapotec writing, which Marcus and Flannery

(1996:130) believe first appeared on a stone slab (Monument 3)

from San José Mogote, the dating of which remains debated (see

Cahn and Winter 1993). Urcid (1992:157) demonstrates that the

supposed earthquake sign (Glyph E in the system established by

Alfonso Caso) on Monument 3 is Glyph L—not related to earth-

quake. Thus, Olmec symbols do not correspond to early Zapotec

iconography. While the visual distinction between fire-serpent and

were-jaguar imagery obviously reflects important conceptual cat-

egories, they may not form a neat dichotomy between two opposing

forces.

There has been an inaccurate impression that the Valley of

Oaxaca had both more types and higher frequencies of Olmec-

style pottery, signaling greater involvement in their creation (asZapotec expressions of natural forces) and dissemination; utilization

of such flawed data by other scholars leads to inherently problematic

conclusions (see Stark 2007). Flannery and Marcus’ category of

“pan-Mesoamerican” designs includes clearly local as well as

Olmec style designs, inflating their frequencies in Oaxaca. In

addition to artificially stacked comparisons, there is an underlying

problem that simply having more varieties of designs (as defined

by archaeologists) correlates with the designs’ origins.

Missing from comparisons of the Gulf Coast and Valley of

Oaxaca ceramic assemblages has been another major Olmec-style

decorated ceramic type—Limón Incised—as it has not been docu-

mented by Flannery’s important excavations at San José Mogote.

Additionally, while Marcus (1989:194) asserts that the Valley of

Oaxaca Zapotecs were more involved in the creation and productionof pottery with “pan-Mesoamerican” symbols than the Mixtecs, the

Etlatongo excavations encountered numerous examples of both

Limón Incised pottery and Conejo Orange-on-White (virtually

absent in the Valley of Oaxaca), as well as all of the basic types

found in the Valley of Oaxaca. The supposed priority of the

Zapotecs in the creation of Olmec-style gray ware and other

pottery can no longer be accepted, even within the boundaries of

modern Oaxaca state. Indeed, the centrality of San José Mogote

in Early Formative sociopolitical complexity and interregional inter-

action may largely be an artifact of its earlier excavation; Etlatongo

is as large as nuclear San José Mogote, and its inhabitants were

probably more intensively involved in utilizing, importing, and pro-

ducing a whole spectrum of Olmec-style objects.

MOVEMENT OF OLMEC-STYLE POTTERY IN EARLY

FORMATIVE MESOAMERICA

Throughout the debate on the significance of Olmec-style pottery

throughout Early Formative Mesoamerica, scholars lacked robust

compositional or petrographic data. While it had long been sus-

pected that Xochiltepec White may have been a Gulf Coast export

(Pires-Ferreira 1975:82), its origin remained undocumented.

Similarly, fine gray ware pots, including those with Olmec-style

designs, have long been asserted to be a Valley of Oaxaca export




but without significant support based on analyses of raw materials

(Flannery and Marcus 1994, 2000).

In order to more objectively determine the origin of Olmec

pottery, researchers have collaborated on a program of chemical

characterization. Over 1,000 archaeological pottery and modern

clay samples from the Gulf Coast, Oaxaca state, Chiapas, and

central Mexico were subjected to Instrumental Neutron Activation

Analysis (INAA) at the University of Missouri Research Reactor

(MURR). Samples were selected to include local pottery as wellas possible imports. Details on methodology and statistical tech-

niques, which focused on Mahalanobis distances and multivariate

analyses for compositional pattern recognition, have been pre-

viously published (Blomster et al. 2005; Neff et al. 2006). An

effort was made to include the eight supposed Oaxaca imports (as

identified visually by Pyne but never illustrated by Flannery and

Marcus) from the San Lorenzo collection, curated at the Peabody

Museum of Natural History, Yale University (Blomster 1998a,

2004). Between this INAA project and one directed by David

Cheetham (2010; Cheetham et al. 2009), those sherds have all

been subjected to INAA. Through INAA, it was possible to deter-

mine the compositional group and region of origin for 726 (updating

previously published results) samples of pottery (see Table 1).

The results demonstrate a clear pattern of San Lorenzo pro-duction and dissemination of Olmec pottery, producing both fine,

white-paste pottery and decorated Olmec-style pottery. The San

Lorenzo Olmecs exported several types of pots to regional centers

across Mesoamerica, with not all regions exhibiting the full array

of pottery types available during this time period. Some pottery

types, such as Xochiltepec White (Figure 11) and Conejo

Orange-on-White (Figure 7), appear to be produced solely by the

Olmecs. Examples of Xochiltepec White vessels, while often in

the shape of vegetal effigies, rarely exhibit plastic decoration (see

above), while examples of Conejo Orange-on-White from both

San Lorenzo and Etlatongo manifest elaborate designs. Also, one

Xochiltepec White example found at San José Mogote, imported

from San Lorenzo (SLN206 in the MURR database), has a

complex incised design, and Flannery and Marcus (1994:258)note other Valley of Oaxaca examples have excised

“pan-Mesoamerican” motifs. In Oaxaca, other relatively undeco-

rated types imported to Etlatongo and San José Mogote resemble

La Mina White (BLM032) and differentially fired Perdida

Black-and-White (BLM031, SLN213) defined at San Lorenzo

(Coe and Diehl 1980) and identical to so-called Coatepec

White-rimmed Black, as defined in the Tehuacán Valley and the

Valley of Oaxaca. In terms of decorated pots, a small portion of

the non-white paste Olmec-style vessels recovered from excavations

at Etlatongo and Valley of Oaxaca sites were imported from San

Lorenzo.

Throughout Early Formative period Mesoamerica, chieflycenters imported pots decorated with Olmec-style iconography,

while potters in each region produced vastly more local emulations,

imitations, and variants with much regional diversity in types of

designs and frequency of both imported Olmec-style pots and

local creations (see Blomster et al. 2005). For pottery with

Olmec-style symbols from sites in Oaxaca, the INAA results are

especially interesting. So-called gray ware pottery with Calzadas

Carved designs, asserted as solely a Valley of Oaxaca product

(Flannery and Marcus 1994, 2000), was actually manufactured at

both San Lorenzo and in several regions of Oaxaca. Examples of

Olmec-style iconography imported from San Lorenzo but found

in the Valleys of Oaxaca and Nochixtlán invariably appear on the

exterior of Delfina Fine Gray cylinders. This type, along with

Leandro Gray, have been referred to as important wares “widelyexported” from the Valley of Oaxaca to the rest of Mesoamerica

(Flannery and Marcus 1994:157, 259); the INAA performed at

MURR directly contradicts the idea of a substantial amount of

Oaxacan gray wares with Olmec-style designs exchanged through-

out Mesoamerica, especially arriving at San Lorenzo. At San José

Mogote, one large fragment of a Delfina Fine Gray cylindrical

vessel has diagonal “fire serpent ” excisions filled with red

pigment (see Figure 4). INAA demonstrates that this specimen

was an import from San Lorenzo (Sample SLN287). While a

small percentage of sherds classified as Delfina Gray may be San

Lorenzo imports, sherds classified as the thicker Leandro Gray

appear to be limited in production and distribution to the Valley

of Oaxaca.

At Etlatongo, fine gray ware pots with Olmec-style iconographywere encountered virtually identical to examples of Delfina Fine

Gray from San José Mogote (see Figure 12). INAA reveals,

however, that such vessels at Etlatongo were not made in the

Table 1. Regional Assignments for San Lorenzo Horizon Pottery

Region as identified by INAA

Archaeological Context:Gulf

Coast MazatanValley of

Oaxaca Nochixtlán

ValleyValley of Mexico

Chiapas CentralDepression

Isthmus of Tehuantepec Total

San Lorenzo (Gulf Coast) 203 0 0 0 0 0 0 203

Mazatan (various sites) 23 177 0 0 0 0 0 200

Valley of Oaxaca (varioussites)

13 0 42 0 0 0 0 55

Etlatongo (Nochixtlán

Valley)

35 0 0 26 0 0 0 61

Tlapacoya (Valley of Mexico) 17 0 0 0 87 0 0 104

San Isidro (Chiapas Central

Depression)

1 0 0 0 0 41 0 42

Laguna Zope (Isthmus of

Tehuantepec)

3 0 0 0 0 0 58 61

726

Note: Updated from Blomster et al. 2005 (Table 1)

Blomster144



adjacent Valley of Oaxaca, Calzadas Carved gray wares at Etlatongo

appear to be either Gulf Coast imports or local Etlatongo products.

Indeed, both gray wares illustrated in Figure 12, from San José

Mogote and Etlatongo, originated at San Lorenzo. Local versions

of Olmec-style iconography at Etlatongo most frequently adorn

coarse café paste vessels, as they do in the Valley of Oaxaca.

While Oaxacan-made versions of decorated Delfina Fine Gray

and Leandro Gray vessels do not appear to have been exported in

the current INAA sample, it would be interesting to determine if some examples, perhaps without Olmec-style designs but undeco-

rated or with purely local motifs, did move between regions; one

possible example from the Valley of Oaxaca has been identified

at Etlatongo (Blomster 2009; see above). At both Etlatongo and

San José Mogote, potters created local imitations of Olmec-style

pottery in a variety of clay recipes and forms, using both slips

and design configurations unique to each region. From the limited

INAA sample, it appears that a greater frequency of gray ware

pots with Olmec-style symbols were imported at Etlatongo com-

pared with San José Mogote, which supports the greater range of

types or styles of Olmec vessels (see above) found at Etlatongo,

and further contradicts the idea that the Early Formative Mixtecs

were less involved in interregional interaction than their Zapotec con-

temporaries (Marcus 1989:194). While in most Early Formativeperiod contexts at Etlatongo, Olmec-style pots, both imported and

local, represent 5% or less of the assemblage, in three contexts that

contributed sherds to the MURR study, they constitute between

10% and 22% (Blomster and Cheetham 2008). In terms of the fire-

serpent and were-jaguar categories used by many scholars to charac-

terize abstract Olmec-style designs on pottery, Etlatongo is also more

similar to San Lorenzowith its focus on fire-serpent /dragon imagery,

while both designs are more evenly represented at SanJosé Mogote.I

note, however, that many of the so-called were-jaguar or “earth”

motifs in the Valley of Oaxaca appear to be primarily local, and

may have little to do with the Olmec style.

The INAA data have several implications for both macro- and

micro-scale interaction in Early Formative Mesoamerica. None of

the Calzadas Carved examples in the San Lorenzo sample analyzedat MURR were made in Oaxaca; however the presence of one or two

Oaxaca-made vessels at San Lorenzo would not contradict the

pattern generated by the INAA data. A recent attempt through pet-

rographic analysis to suggest that a handful of sherds at San Lorenzo

were made in Oaxaca failed to overturn the results of the MURR

study because of the assumption that only Oaxaca clays would

contain volcanic materials (Stoltman et al. 2005). This assertion is

fundamentally incorrect as shown by petrographic analyses of

clays and pots made in the San Lorenzo vicinity (Guevara 2004;

Neff et al. 2006). In addition, the Stoltman/Flannery study limits

non-plastic inclusions in San Lorenzo pottery to calcareous sand

and quartzite (Stoltman et al. 2005:11213). A recent study using

petrography and x-ray diffraction has contradicted this assertion as

well, revealing the complex mineralogy of San Lorenzo pottery(Cheetham et al. 2009).

Thus, the San Lorenzo Olmecs had priority in the production and

dissemination of both Olmec-style decorated pottery and white

paste pottery. Societies in neighboring regions, such as the

Nochixtlán Valley and the Valley of Oaxaca, made their own imita-

tions of this pottery but generally did not exchange it with each

other or with the Olmecs. Undecorated pottery or pots with local

motifs may have been exchanged between regions such as the

Nochixtlán Valley and the Valley of Oaxaca (Blomster 2009).

While the Olmecs may not have created all of the motifs exhibited

even on Gulf Coast pottery, they played a fundamental role in

synthesizing them into a coherent package, iconography dramati-

cally different from that displayed stylistically in ceramic objects

prior to the San Lorenzo horizon beyond the Gulf Coast.

EPISTEMOLOGY AND MODELS OF EARLY

FORMATIVE INTERACTION

The chiefly centers of San José Mogote and Etlatongo imported

Olmec pottery, both white paste and with Olmec-style iconography,

from San Lorenzo rather than from each other. This pattern attests to

the high value that was placed on Gulf Coast-produced pottery and

suggests that models that have downplayed the nature and origin

of the iconography of Olmec pottery must be reevaluated. The differ-

ences in the assemblages of Olmec-style material between the Valley

of Oaxaca and the Nochixtlán Valley indicate the great variety in the

nature of interregional interaction across Mesoamerica. Models must

consider the agency of all players in this interaction.

An important 1968 paper by Flannery set the tone for much of

the past forty years of interpretation. In the so-called emulation

Figure 11. Xochiltepec White pottery excavated at Etlatongo but identified

through INAA (MURR sample BLM001) as a Gulf Coast import.

Figure 12. Examples of carved gray ware pottery, both sourced through

INAA as San Lorenzo products. The one on the right was excavated at

Etlatongo (MURR sample BLM028); the one on the left was found at

San José Mogote (MURR sample BLM066).




model, Flannery argues against symbols appearing in Oaxaca with

significant Olmec-based meaning, focusing on local developmental

patterns and use of Olmec symbols by Zapotec leaders. Flannery’s

(1968) emulation model derives from systems theory (see above)

and relies primarily on scattered ethnographic analogies from north-

western North America and Burma, not from Mesoamerica. As a

neoevolutionary model, the focus is on local developments, mini-

mizing any foreign contact or impact from the more complexly

organized Olmecs. While this model displays a welcome emphasison the strategizing of local Zapotec leaders, the agency of the Olmec

and the impact of their symbols remain undeveloped. Nearly thirty

years later, in the face of what Flannery and Marcus (1994) con-

sidered as mounting evidence for similar sociopolitical organization

of the Olmecs and Early Formative Zapotecs, they transformed the

emulation model into a peer polity model, which focuses on change

emerging from the interaction of societies, roughly comparable

politically, that quickly spread any innovations through the

network of participating societies (Renfrew 1986:6). In Flannery

and Marcus’ (1994, 2000) most recent scenario, the Olmecs were

simply one of many contemporaneous Mesoamerican chiefdoms

exchanging pottery without any priority in the creation and dissemi-

nation of Olmec-style symbols. Flannery and Marcus argue that a

pan-Mesoamerican style (what has been referred to here as Olmecstyle), like other features of Early Formative Mesoamerican

period societies, arose out of competitive interaction among chief-

doms as part of an “adaptive autonomy” that speeds up evolution.

Even before the INAA results, the idea that such a consistent

abstract iconography from across Mesoamerica could be the result

of sporadic interaction between largely independent societies had

been challenged (Blomster 1998a; Stark 2000). Clearly the vast dis-

parity between contemporaneous societies on the Gulf Coast and

Oaxaca contradicts the first criterion in applying a peer polity

model, the presence of polities of comparable size (Renfrew 1982).

Understanding San Lorenzo horizon interaction has not been

advanced by evolutionary models that provide coarse socio-political

typologies and reject significant impact between distant groups.

Agency perspectives (see above) focus on negotiations of statusand power and seem more amenable to an interaction that may

have focused heavily on religion and its correlates in societal ideol-

ogy. With interregional interaction, agency must be explored from

multiple perspectives for the different parties involved, focusing on

the constant contestation of power and relationships. Such a perspec-

tive also escapes the narrow formalism of neoevolutionary economic

perspectives and its focus on Western capitalist ideas and decisions,

allowing for different forms of interaction within and between

societies that go beyond reciprocal exchange (Polyani 1957).

Recognizing that not all Early Formative societies were at the

same level of sociopolitical complexity and that relationships

between contemporaneous societies may have taken many forms

allows for different models that may more accurately reflect relation-

ships between societies such as the Olmecs, Zapotecs, and Mixtecs.

In relationships between societies of different levels of complexity,

one society in the relationship may be considered a superordinate

center. Defined in both preindustrial states and noncentralized

societies, Helms (1993) suggests that a superordinate center rep-

resents an earthly approximation of a divine, cosmological model.

Helms’ (1993:96) model emphasizes acquisition of goods, which

she defines as a one-sided activity very separate from concepts

such as exchange and reciprocity, and focuses attention on nego-

tiations among social actors at different levels in the societies

involved. The relationship of a superordinate center (which may

characterize San Lorenzo) and outside regions will depend on dis-

tance and the interest of the participants in this interaction. Thus,

there will be much variety in these interactions based on the charac-

ter and organization of outlying societies as well as the motivations

of all agents. While the impoverished neoevolutionary typology cat-

egorizes non-Gulf Coast Early Formative period ranked societies as

chiefdoms, much variety existed in the internal organization and

integration of factions within such societies,which impacted exter-

nal relationships. Debates on understanding Uruk interaction inthe Near East suggest the range of models, from world systems to

distance parity, that may apply across different regions manifesting

a similar phenomenon (Algaze 1993; Stein 1998). What these dis-

parate models recognize is the mutual impact of interacting

societies. While interaction may be asymmetrical or the societies

involved may be at different levels of sociopolitical complexity, par-

ticipants have agency on different levels that often provoke dynamic

and unexpected short- and long-term results among the interacting

parties.

I integrate the concept of a superordinate center with that of a

regional cult with the superordinate center as the religious and cos-

mological focus or even origin of the cult. Religious cults are known

for later Mesoamerica, such as the Quetzalcoatl cult of the

Epiclassic and Postclassic periods (Ringle et al. 1998). Regionalcults spread across ethnic, political, and linguistic boundaries as

they promote transcultural rituals and play important roles in both

generating new interaction patterns as well as providing an ideologi-

cal basis for transformations in participating cultures (Werbner

1977). While cults are expansive religions, they are not necessarily

spread through force, and they exhibit diverse manifestations due to

considerable agency on the part of participating societies. For

example, the Chavín horizon in Peru, which manifested its under-

lying principles in various media that appear over a dispersed geo-

graphic area, has been characterized as a regional cult, with varying

impacts on societies in contact with it (Burger 1992).

Olmec interregional interactions may have intertwined the

spread of a regional cult with acquisition and/or exchange of

exotic goods desired at San Lorenzo, such as magnetite mirrorsfrom the Valley of Oaxaca (Pires-Ferreira 1975) and ilmenite

cubes acquired from central Chiapas, probably from an outpost

established at their manufacturing point at Plumajillo (Agrinier

1989). Superordinate centers, such as San Lorenzo, have an obli-

gation to extend the spread of cosmic order across regions, generally

by elites from such centers presenting skillfully crafted items to

leaders of distant groups, while acquiring exotic foreign items

from such groups and reinforcing their status (Helms 1993:

179–180). It is worth noting that the San Lorenzo Olmecs interacted

only with already ranked societies; transfers of exotics between

regional leaders also sealed alliances. Rather than Olmec-style

pots, other foreign objects of value arrived at San Lorenzo and

may have served as distant symbols supporting and legitimizing

their religion and cosmology.

From a Oaxacan perspective, emerging leaders obtained Olmec

ceramics, both pottery vessels and figurines, and made local emula-

tions of them. The relationship between the original and the imita-

tions was dynamic, and differentiating between local and imported

Olmec-style pottery from excavations will more fully reveal their

distributions at sites such as Etlatongo. While utilization and con-

scious emulation of the largely alien Olmec imagery enhanced the

prestige of local Oaxacan elites, the model I propose goes beyond

simple emulation, recognizing that significant nonlocal meanings

were embedded in these abstract Olmec-style symbols, so similar

Blomster146



across regions. From Oaxacan perspectives, elements of Olmec ico-

nography and cosmology were accepted and incorporated into local

beliefs and represented their connection to a larger cosmic order as

seen by the consistent adherence to Olmec iconographic features in

the pottery. Helms’ (1993:205) focus on acquisition also applies, as

obtaining Olmec vessels and symbols may have transpired outside

of traditional exchange relationships, and involved active nego-

tiations among social agents and political factions; such interactions

do not imply exploitation or long-term cultural assimilation. Thismodel acknowledges that local potters actively contributed some

symbols to Oaxacan versions of Olmec iconography on vessels

made in villages such as Etlatongo and San José Mogote, but the

available data do not suggest that these contributions informed rep-

resentations outside of their respective regions. Local imitations of

Olmec-style pottery by the ranked societies they encountered do

not appear to have been desired or acquired by the San Lorenzo

Olmecs and were generally not imported to the Gulf Coast.

This model also acknowledges multiple interactions and differ-

ent exchanges occurring and allows for many objects that moved

across Mesoamerica unrelated to Olmec interaction. Within a

region, leaders at chiefly centers such as Etlatongo and San José

Mogote may have distributed some San Lorenzo-made Olmec

pots to supporters in the smaller villages within their realm.Indeed, of the 13 Valley of Oaxaca sherds that visually appeared

to be Xochiltepec White, INAA demonstrated that the only four

actually imported from the Gulf Coast were all found at the

chiefly center of San José Mogote. None was found at the small vil-

lages or hamlets of Tierras Largas, Huitzo, and Abasolo. A similar

pattern extends to the few Olmec-style decorated pots demonstrated

through INAA to have been San Lorenzo imports. If Olmec-style

designs were largely confined to Delfina Fine Gray pots, then this

pattern corresponds with Flannery and Marcus’ (1994:263) obser-

vation that this fine gray ware comes primarily from San José

Mogote, while it is extremely scarce at small hamlets such as

Tierras Largas and Abasolo (although two small Delfina Fine

Gray rim sherds, not exhibiting decoration, in the MURR sample

imported from San Lorenzo were found at Tierras Largas). The

imports, infused with the inalienable qualities of their distant

origin, largely remained at the chiefly center that acquired them.

The San Lorenzo Olmecs and their interactions with other Early

Formative societies must be understood in the context of these con-

temporaneous societies. Rather than focusing on which neoevolu-

tionary typology best characterizes the San Lorenzo Olmecs, they

must be understood in comparison to their contemporaries acrossMesoamerica. Comparing the “Red Palace” at San Lorenzo with

millennium-later Zapotec palaces at Monte Albán (Flannery and

Marcus 2000:6) reveals little about the sociopolitical organization

of the Olmecs. Multiple lines of evidence demonstrate that the San

Lorenzo Olmecs were more sociopolitically complex than their con-

temporaries (see Clark 2007). Olmec interaction neither created

Zapotec or Mixtec civilization nor transformed ancient Oaxacans as

has been convincingly argued for Olmec contact with the Mokaya

people of Soconusco’s Mazatan region (Clark and Pye 2000) with

an Olmec enclave at Cantón Corralito and a fundamental transform-

ation in many features of the ceramic assemblage resulting from this

contact (Cheetham 2006, 2010). While the impact of Olmec symbols

and cosmology varied throughout Mesoamerica and was negotiated

on a local level, Karl Taube (2004) has tracked features of Olmec reli-gion and cosmology that resonated in later societies through icono-

graphic elements in depictions of supernatural entities.

Understanding Olmec interaction in Oaxaca does not supersede an

interest in local sequences (contra Grove 2007) but rather is vital to

understanding the nature of early ranked societies in the Valleys of

Nochixtlán and Oaxaca as well as comparative Early Formative

sociopolitical organization. The relationships between the Olmecs,

Zapotecs, and Mixtecs represent a complex episode of “interaction

and entanglement ” (Dietler 1998:298) that added a distinct patina

to early iconography and imagery in the Valleys of Oaxaca and

Nochixtlán and provided additional elements to locally emerging

religion, cosmology, and ideology.

RESUMEN

La interacción entre la costa del Golfo olmeca y varias regiones de

Mesoamérica durante el formativo temprano continua a debate y es pobre-

mente entendida. En Oaxaca, los modelos han sido dominados por la

epistemología neoevolutiva. La interacción entre el valle de Oaxaca y San

Lorenzo ha estado caracterizada por la emulación o por modelos de

primus inter pares, con comparaciones obstaculizadas por comparaciones

inadecuadas entre las tipologías de arqueólogos. Las comparaciones entre

los sitios del valle de Oaxaca, el valle de Nochixtlán y la costa del Golfo

demuestran que San Lorenzo estuvo en un diferente nivel de complejidad

sociopolítica que sus contemporáneos. Observando la evidencia material

de la interacción, resúmenes publicados de la cerámica estilo olmeca del

valle de Oaxaca son reanalizados para establecer afirmaciones de quesitios tales como San José Mogote tuvieron ejemplos mas frecuentes

de diseños olmecas, datos recientes de San Lorenzo refutan esta

interpretación. Con el objeto de determinar el movimiento de la cerámica

del Formativo Temprano, el análisis de activación neutrónica demuestra la

cerámica olmeca de la Costa del Golfo exportada a los mixtecos y zapotecos

en Oaxaca, mientras que recibieron unas cuantas—Si es que acaso algunas—

vasijas en reciprocidad, sugiriendo que nuevos modelos y perspectivas

teóricas deberían de ser aplicadas para entender las relaciones entre las jefa-

turas de Oaxaca y el naciente estado olmeca en San Lorenzo. Una perspec-

tiva de agencia explora lo que los grupos mixtecos, zapotecos, olmecas

pudieron haber tomado de estas interacciones y relaciones, y reconoce

tanto el entendimiento local como de la Costa del Golfo de lo “olmeca.”

Tales relaciones podrían ser caracterizadas más por la adquisición entreregiones, con San Lorenzo como centro rector.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Etlatongo research was made possible by permits and support from theConsejo de Arqueología and both national and state-level branches of INAH,while funding came primarily from a Fulbright (IIE) Fellowship; I thank allpast and current directors and members of the various agencies that havebeen so helpful, as well as the many field assistants from Etlatongo. I alsowish to thank several scholars who have graciously provided feedback onthis paper and/or have provided me with additional data, both published

and unpublished: David Cheetham, Alexander Dent, Richard Diehl,Arthur Joyce, Christopher Pool, Marcus Winter, and an anonymousreviewer. Olaf Jaime-Riverón kindly assisted with the Spanish summary. Iwould also like to thank the other contributors to our Society for American Archaeology symposium in San Juan, and especially our discus-sants John Clark, David Grove, and Barbara Stark for their stimulating com-ments. Any errors remain my own.




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