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Creating Memory and Negotiating Power in the Olmec Heartland

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory volume 24, pages 229–260 (2017)Cite this article

Abstract

The creation of political landscapes requires the production of places made significant through acts of social remembering. The Gulf lowlands of Mexico exhibit some of the best known acts of social remembering in Mesoamerican prehistory. In this article, we engage political and practice-based frameworks for understanding the process of collective remembering in an examination of how the Olmecs and their successors inscribed their landscape with buildings, monuments, and rock art in ways that invoked the past while reframing it within the needs of their present. In particular, we explore the Olmecs’ memorialization of individuals and events in sculptures and offerings and their creation of narratives through the juxtaposition of sculptures and architecture. We then examine the creation and erasure of collective memory at the regional center of Tres Zapotes as expressed in the biographies of six monuments. We end with a comparison of “metropolitan” and hinterland carvings recorded in regional survey around Tres Zapotes. These examples situate social memory as an evolving entity molded and stretched by competing interests in an ongoing process of conflict and negotiation.

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Notes

  1. Cyphers and Di Castro (2009) observe that the area between the heads contained numerous structures, and so could not have been used for pageants. We do not disagree, but note that procession would not have been precluded by structures, just as contemporary processions often file through the streets of urban centers.

  2. As recounted by Rowlands (1993:142), the Roman orator Quintillian invoked a similar principle in his instructions on how to train an artificial memory “by attaching images and places to a speech or an order of things which are to be remembered.”

  3. Guernsey (personal communication 2016) notes a resemblance to the volutes behind the principal figure on Izapa Stela 11 and suggests an alternative interpretation that these elements express the act or motion of emergence. In this case, they would evidently refer to the emergence of the ruler from the earth/underworld, which would not rule out a vegetative metaphor.

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Acknowledgements

The research reported in this article was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant numbers BCS-0242555 and BCS-1261514) and the University of Kentucky. Permission for fieldwork in Mexico was granted by the Institution Nacional de Antropología e Historia. We thank David Mixter and Edward Henry for inviting us to participate in the 2014 AAA symposium that gave rise to this article as well as their encouragement and advice as we revised the paper. Julia Guernsey and three anonymous reviewers offered recommendations for revision that greatly improved the final version of the article. We, of course, bear responsibility for any errors of fact or interpretation. Finally, we thank the crew of the Proyecto Arqueológico de Tres Zapotes (2003–3004) and the Recorrido Regional Arqueológico de Tres Zapotes (2014–2015), the people of Tres Zapotes, and the municipios of Santiago Tuxtla, Angel R. Cabada, Lerdo de Tejada, and Saltabarranca.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 40506, USA

    Christopher A. Pool

  2. Insitute for International Studies, Murray State University, Murray, KY, 42071, USA

    Michael L. Loughlin

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  1. Christopher A. Pool
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Correspondence to Christopher A. Pool.

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This study was funded by the National Science Foundation (grant numbers BCS-0242555 and BCS-1261514).

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Pool, C.A., Loughlin, M.L. Creating Memory and Negotiating Power in the Olmec Heartland. J Archaeol Method Theory 24, 229–260 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-017-9319-1

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Keywords

  • Memory
  • Landscape
  • Monuments
  • Rock art
  • Olmec