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

groups. This simplified ranking of social organizations into a standardized evolutionary
continuum has proven to be an attractive alternative to the diligence required to analyze
multiple perspectives of each social group independently (Carneiro 1981:37; 1998:22, 37;
Scarre and Fagan 2002).
The term “Gulf Coast Olmec” suffers from these same taxonomic problems. An
entire cultural system is too complex and inclusive to be used as a unit of analysis; it is
inadequate to explain the inherent complexity and nuances of the system. The term has
come to represent a relatively fixed paradigm, a set of assumptions, concepts, and
practices thought to form the worldview for the community that shared them. Outside a
small cadre of investigators, the overarching notion regarding this model is that it is static
and monolithic, representing a single generic archaeological culture. Social theorists have
constructed numerous hypotheses concerning the development of Olmec social
complexity, subsistence systems, political economies, and ideological beliefs. The
cultural implications assumed by these theories have been imposed on the territorial
inhabitants of a “Heartland” region that extended along the Southern Gulf Lowlands.
This critique of the Gulf Coast Olmec paradigm is not intended to suggest that we ‘throw
the baby out with the bathwater,’ but rather, that we be aware of the variability as well as
the similarity among occupants of the Formative period Southern Gulf Lowlands and to
observe them from broader and varying perspectives.
It cannot be assumed that everyone living in the region participated in this system,
and it should be recognized that the degree of participation, or non-participation,
probably varied from site to site and across time. Furthermore, it cannot be presumed that
the meaning and interpretation of the symbols and iconography was uniform for all
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