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

Expanding the Boundaries and a Look to the Future
The recent accidental rediscovery of Formative period El Marquesillo (c. 1500
BC to AD 150) underscores the fact that the investigation of the Olmec Heartland over
the past 60 years has been restricted to traditionally acknowledged sectors surrounding
San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes (Diehl 1989, 2000b; Grove 1997).
Furthermore, this spatially limited examination has influenced the theoretical image of
the Gulf Coast Olmec and other groups along the Southern Gulf Lowlands. Only a small
portion of the “Olmec Heartland” has been subject to differential surface surveys or
cursory observation, and much less has received thorough levels of investigation. The
pronounced majority of what is considered Gulf Coast Olmec territory has not been
assessed, evaluated, or even contemplated. Yet determinations about the Southern Gulf
Lowlands have been derived from a restricted and incomplete corpus of sites: San
Lorenzo, La Venta, Laguna de los Cerros, and Tres Zapotes (see Chapter 2). This
constraint has led to a narrowing of the Olmec phenomenon to a point where many
consider it an undiversified, homogenous culture. When data from El Marquesillo are
considered new issues arise, and established conclusions are called into question. In other
words, when deep-seated assumptions are examined, they prove to be less clear-cut than
they were prior to the introduction of the El Marquesillo data.
Tacon (1999:34) has succinctly concluded that the “landscape is in the eye of the
beholder,” a statement that encourages researchers to look beyond the socially or
environmentally defined settlement region. It is important to realize that, although the
archaeological record is static, the landscape that produced it was, and remains dynamic
(Waters and Kuehn 1996). In the Southern Gulf Lowlands, volcanoes, earthquakes,
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