An Unexplored Realm in the Heartland of the Southern Gulf ... - Famsi

esearch being conducted along the Southern Gulf Coast (e.g. Arnold 2003, 2005;
Borstein 2001; Cyphers 2003; Killion and Urcid 2001; Pool 2005, 2006; Pope et al. 2001;
VanDerwarker 2006), demonstrate that the perception and models of the “Olmec,” as
used by social theorists and as they are portrayed to the general public, need to be
revisited and possibly revised.
Upman (1990a:98) maintains that social and political complexity is a mosaic
process in which variables (i.e., environmental, social, political, economic, ideological,
and demographic) may act independently or in differential collaboration to affect change.
In this dissertation, I use diverse lines of evidence from El Marquesillo (e.g., spatial
analysis, remote sensing, anthropogenic soil survey, ethnohistoric and ethnological
accounts, geomorphology, landscape archaeology, and artifact analysis) to examine those
variables. I argue that these data do not fit many of the prototypical models that have
been put forth to explain the Olmec sociopolitical phenomenon that occurred in the
Formative period Southern Gulf Lowlands.
The investigation of El Marquesillo was designed to examine the site from
various perspectives and multiple scales of analysis. It was through this type of approach
that the analyses of the natural and built environments, along with the material record,
suggested that a different social trajectory was followed by the people of El Marquesillo
from what has been postulated for other contemporary regional settlements. There are
distinctive physical expressions that relate to ancestor veneration, occupational and
cultural continuity, interaction of the ancient people with their landscape, and the
manifestation of their worldview. Equivalent displays of continuity and social practice
were either not present or remain unidentified at other Southern Gulf Lowlands sites.
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