Olmec opening page

 

Roger Blench

 

The Olmecs are often known as the ‘mother culture’ of Mexico. Many of the characteristics of later archaeological cultures first appear among the Olmecs. Figure 1 shows the principal Olmec sites. Olmec figures first showed up on the art market in the nineteenth century and were only later identified as an archaeological culture. We do not know for certain what language the Olmecs spoke, although it has been argued that it was a Mixe-Zoque language. The Olmecs has a writing system, which has been interpreted. The Olmecs are particularly known for the massive stone heads found all across their territory. These appear to have African features which has been the source of a great deal of wild speculation. Many of the monumental sculptures were moved from the original site at La Venta to an archaeological park in Villahermosa. Good for conservation, bad for context. Olmec artefacts are found widely outside the proposed core area, suggesting they were part of a highly elaborated trade network.

 

Figure 1. Olmec sites

 

Location

Museum

Image

Villahermosa

Parque Arqueológico

D.F.

Museo de Antropología

Zacatecas

Museo Rafael Coronel

 

 

 

 

A few references to follow up

 

Campbell, Lyle, and Terrence Kaufmann 1976. A linguistic look at the Olmecs. American Antiquity 41:80-89.

Coe, Michael D. 1968. America’s First Civilization: Discovering the Olmec. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc.

Diehl, Richard 2004. The Olmecs: America's First Civilization. Ancient peoples and places series. London: Thames & Hudson.

Pool, Christopher A. 2007. Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

VanDerwarker, Amber M. 2006. Farming, Hunting, and Fishing in the Olmec World. The University of Texas Press, Austin.

Wichmann, Søren. 1999. A conservative look at diffusion involving Mixe-Zoquean languages. In: Blench, Roger & Matthew Spriggs (eds.), Archaeology and Language II: Archaeological Data and Linguistic Hypotheses, pp. 297-323. London: Routledge.

Wichmann, Søren, André Müller, Viveka Velupillai, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Pamela Brown, Sebastian Sauppe, Oleg Belyaev, Matthias Urban, Zarina Molochieva, Annkathrin Wett, Dik Bakker, Johann-Mattis List, Dmitry Egorov, Robert Mailhammer, David Beck, and Helen Geyer. 2010. The ASJP Database (version 13). http://email.eva.mpg.de/~wichmann/languages.htm

 

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