The History of the Olmec Site of La Venta

The Olmec capital of La Venta is located in the city of Huimanguillo, in the state of Tabasco, Mexico, 9 miles (15 kilometers) inland from the Gulf coast. The site is perched on a narrow natural elevation approximately 2.5 mi (4 km) long which rises above the wetland swamps on the coastal plain. La Venta was first occupied as early as 1750 BCE, becoming an Olmec temple-town complex between 1200 and 400 BCE. Key Takeaways La Venta is a capital of the Middle Formative Olmec civilization, located in Tabasco state, Mexico.  It was first occupied about 1750 BCE and became an important town between 1200–400 BCE.Its economy was based on maize agriculture, hunting and fishing, and trade networks.  Evidence for early Mesoamerican writing has been discovered within 3 miles of the main site. Architecture at La Venta La Venta was the primary center of the Olmec culture and likely the most important regional capital in non-Maya Mesoamerica during the Middle Formative period (approximately 800–400 BCE). In its heyday, La Ventas residential zone included an area of about 500 acres (~200 hectares), with a population numbering in the thousands. Most of the structures at La Venta were built of wattle-and-daub walls placed atop earthen or adobe mudbrick platforms or mounds  and covered with a thatched roof. Little natural stone was available, and, apart from the massive stone sculptures, the only stone used in public architecture was a few basalt, andesite and limestone foundational support or internal buttresses. The 1 mi (1.5 km) long civic-ceremonial core of La Venta includes over 30 earthen mounds and platforms. The core is dominated by a 100 foot (30 m) high clay pyramid (called Mound C-1), which has been heavily eroded  but was likely the largest single building at the time in Mesoamerica. Despite the lack of native stone, La Ventas artisans crafted sculptures including four colossal heads from massive blocks of stone quarried from the Tuxtla Mountains approximately 62 mi (100 km) to the west. Plan of La Venta. Yavidaxiu, MapMaster The most intensive archaeological investigations at La Venta were conducted in Complex A, a small group of low clay platform mounds and plazas within an area of about 3 ac (1.4 ha), located immediately north of the tallest pyramidal mound. Most of Complex A was destroyed shortly after the excavations in 1955, by a combination of looters and civic development. However, detailed maps of the area were made by the excavators and, due primarily to the efforts of U.S. archaeologist Susan Gillespie, a digital map of the buildings and construction events at Complex A has been made. Subsistence Methods Traditionally, scholars have attributed the rise of Olmec society to the development of maize agriculture. According to recent investigations, however, the people at La Venta subsisted on fish, shellfish and terrestrial faunal remains until about 800 BC, when maize, beans, cotton, palm, and other crops were grown in gardens on relict beach ridges, called tierra de primera by maize farmers today, perhaps fueled by long-distance trade networks. U.S. archaeologist Thomas W. Killion conducted a survey of paleobotanical data from several Olmec period sites including La Venta. He suggests that the initial founders at La Venta and other Early Formative sites such as San Lorenzo were not farmers, but rather were hunter-gatherer-fishers. That dependence on mixed hunting and gathering extends well into the Formative period. Killion suggests that the mixed subsistence worked in the well-watered lowland environments, but that a wetland environment was not suited to intensive agriculture. La Venta and the Cosmos La Venta is oriented 8 degrees west of north, like most Olmec sites, the significance of which is obscure to date. This alignment is echoed in Complex As central avenue, which points to the central mountain. The central bars of each of La Ventas mosaic pavements  and the four elements of the quincunxes in the mosaics are positioned at intercardinal points. Complex D at La Venta is an E-Group configuration, a specific layout of buildings identified at over 70 Maya sites and believed to have been designed to track movements of the sun. Writing A cylinder seal and a carved greenstone plaque discovered at the San Andres site 3 mi (5 km) from La Venta provided early evidence that writing in the Mesoamerican region had its start in the Mexican Gulf Coast region by about 650 BCE. These objects bear glyphs that are related to but different from the laster Isthmian, Mayan, and Oaxacan styles of writing. Archaeology La Venta was excavated by members of the Smithsonian Institution, including Matthew Stirling, Philip Drucker, Waldo Wedel, and Robert Heizer, in three major excavations between 1942 and 1955. Most of this work was focused on Complex A: and the finds from that work were published in popular texts and La Venta quickly became the type site for defining the Olmec culture. Shortly after the 1955 excavations, the site was badly damaged by looting and development, although a brief expedition did retrieve some stratigraphic data. Much was lost in Complex A, which was torn up by bulldozers. A map of Complex A made in 1955 formed the basis for digitizing the field records of the site. Gillespie and Volk worked together to create a three-dimensional map of Complex A, based on archived notes and drawings and published in 2014. The most recent archaeological studies have been undertaken by Rebecca Gonzà ¡lez Lauck at the Instituto Nacional de Antropologà ­a e Historia (INAH). Selected Sources Clark, John E., and Arlene Colman. Olmec Things and Identity: A Reassessment of Offerings and Burials at La Venta, Tabasco. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 23.1 (2013): 14–37.  Gillespie, Susan. Archaeological Drawings as Re-Presentations: The Maps of Complex a, La Venta, Mexico. Latin American Antiquity 22.1 (2011): 3–36.  Gillespie, Susan D., and Michael Volk. A 3D Model of Complex a, La Venta, Mexico. Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 1.3–4 (2014): 72–81.  Grove, David. Discovering the Olmecs: An Unconventional History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014.  Killion, Thomas W. Nonagricultural Cultivation and Social Complexity. Current Anthropology 54.5 (2013): 596–606.  Pohl, Mary E. D., Kevin O. Pope, and Christopher von Nagy. Olmec Origins of Mesoamerican Writing. Science 298.5600 (2002): 1984–87. Print.Reilly, F. Kent. Enclosed Ritual Spaces and the Watery Underworld in Formative Period Architecture: New Observations on the Function of La Venta Complex A. Seventh Palenque Round Table. Eds. Robertson, Merle Greene, and Virginia M. Fields. San Francisco: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, 1989.  Rust, William F., and Robert J. Sharer. Olmec Settlement Data from La Venta, Tabasco, Mexico. Science 242.4875 (1988): 102–04.