Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Week 2 - The
Olmecs
- EVIDENCE FOR SOCIAL INEQUALITY
- Egalitarian
- Little differenciates
one person from
another
- Villages similar
across a region
- Achievements, age, and sex
constitute the basis for their
identity, achieved status
- Social Ranking
- Settlement system with
central village
- Appearence of
civic/ceremonial structures
- Differences in access to
goods/quantity
- Ascribed status
- Men's Houses - Aligns with suns passage on equinox
with a bell shaped pit in the middle. Found remnants
of wild tobacco.
- Tecomates - Gourd-shaped vessels
- Tlatilco Mask - life and death joined
- THE
OLMEC
- "Olmec" - Aztec name
for the people who
occupied the Gulf
Coast
- Derived from
their word
for "Rubber"
- The Kunze
Axe
- not sharp or
utilitarian
- The Olmec
Heartland
- San Lorenzo
- La Venta
- Tres Zapotes
- Laguna de los Cerros
- "Superman" Basalt
- 50 earthen mounds
- Inscriptions found = MARK the
BEGINNING OF WRITING in Mexico
- Sustained occupation post-la venta
- Stela-C
- Stela - Carving set vertically into ground
- Numeric System - 1 bar = 5, 1 dot = 1
- Island, 18 mi inland,
middle of river
- 900-400BC
- Offering #4
- Tombs above ground
- Pyramid of Clay
- 1500 BC
- Over 50 stone sculptures
across plateau surface
- Destroyed by invasion or other
turmoil ca. 900 BC
- 10 giant heads
- EARLIEST
- LATEST
- The Olmec Fronteir
- Manati
- Las Bocas
- Tlatico
- "Pretty Ladies"
- Chalcatzingo
- located in the highlands
- Burials in crypts, jade ear spools,
pendants, necklaces, and La
Venta-style figurines
- Farming on artifical terraces
- deer and rabbit hunted, but dog was most common food
- first occupied 1500 BC, height from 700-500 BC
- Oxtotitlan
- Guerrero, Mexico
- MURAL - above the entrence to
cave on the interior -man with bird
features on altar/throne -OLMEC
INFLUENCE- x-motif, fangs, alter,
animal and human mix
- PAINTING 1-D- Suggesting a (possibly sexual)
connection between Jaguars and Humans
- Baby Figurines and Ceramics
made of Kaolin Clay
- Olmec motifs and faces found on figurines
- Wooden Sculptures dating from 12-1500BC
- Rubber ball cache
- Waterlogged site allowed wooden
sculptures to preserve
- DISTINCTIVE ART FEATURES
- Olmec "Style" Facial Features
- thick lips
- snarl
- almond shape eyes
- angry expression
- thick eyebrows
- 3-D Bodies
- Giant Heads
- Altars/Thrones
- WereJaguar Celts
- baby werejaguars
- baby figurines
- Human Anatomy art
- Flaming eyebrows
- Environment and Susistence Strategies
- Unstable, marshy environment
- Cultivation of an early form of
maize, mano and metate
fragments, 1500 BC
- Possible cultivation of manioc
- gardens next to houses
- Swidden system (slash and burn agriculture)
- NON-OLMEC
- Monte Alban
- Starts to be build during Pre-classic period
- Replaced San Jose Mogote as Valley
of Oaxaca's most powerful
settlement
- Constructed about 400m above Valley floor
around 500 BC
- Hilltop at juncture of three valleys
- TEMPLE OF THE DANZANTES
- MOUND L - 330 slabs of sculptures
- MOUND J - stone-faced building in shape of
arrowhead pointing south
- "THE OBSERVATORY"
- Interpreted as records of the
towns conquest
- Inverted heads
represent defeated
rulers