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Between 1400 and 400 BC, in what is now Mexico and Central America, the Olmec people created a magnificent culture, one too often overshadowed by those of the Maya and the Aztec. This catalogue accompanies an exhibition of over 250 Olmec works of art - ceramic, jade and stone - on display at the Art Museum, Princeton University in December 1995, and travelling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Essays by prominent scholars offer interpretations of such topics as the power of objects within the context of the Olmec ritual system. These identify and illustrate the fundamental themes of Olmec small-scale sculpture, the sacred role of the maize in Olmec ideology, and the relationship of Olmec culture to later civilizations. An illustrated glossary of motifs and symbols is provided to clarify the often highly abstract style and encoded iconography of the Olmec. The book also includes precise mineralogical descriptions of the lithic materials they used.

Between 1500 and 500 BC the Olmecs flourished in the tropical lowlands of Mexico's Gulf Coast, creating the most complex of Mesoamerica's early societies and its first monumental art. Emphasising the strategies of political leaders and the environmental and social diversity within the Olmec region, this up-to-date and comprehensive study describes the history of Olmec research, synthesises recent scholarship on the ecology, economy, socio-political organisation and ideology of Olmec society, and evaluates current debates over the influence of the Olmecs on their contemporaries and their contributions to later Mesoamerican civilisations.

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This handsome volume presents the creations of Mesoamerica’s most ancient societies in their archaeological contexts. The Olmec―best known for a unique style of monumental stone head and jade were-jaguar―were based along the Gulf of Mexico but have also been linked to other Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Maya and Aztec. This book discusses recent spectacular finds and provides a framework for understanding the history, art, and archaeology of the Olmec.

Between 1400 and 400 BC, in what is now Mexico and Central America, the Olmec people created a magnificent culture, one too often overshadowed by those of the Maya and the Aztec. This catalogue accompanies an exhibition of over 250 Olmec works of art - ceramic, jade and stone - on display at the Art Museum, Princeton University in December 1995, and travelling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Essays by prominent scholars offer interpretations of such topics as the power of objects within the context of the Olmec ritual system. These identify and illustrate the fundamental themes of Olmec small-scale sculpture, the sacred role of the maize in Olmec ideology, and the relationship of Olmec culture to later civilizations. An illustrated glossary of motifs and symbols is provided to clarify the often highly abstract style and encoded iconography of the Olmec. The book also includes precise mineralogical descriptions of the lithic materials they used.

A major exploration of one of the most important early artistic cultures of the ancient Americas Considered the “mother culture” of Mesoamerica, the Olmec developed an iconic and sophisticated artistic style as early as the second millennium B.C. This pre-Columbian civilization, which flourished in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco between 1400 and 400 B.C., is best known for the creation of colossal stone portrait heads of its rulers.  Some weighing up to 24 tons, the monumental heads are among ancient America’s most striking and beautiful masterpieces.In the fifteen years since the last major study of the Olmec, archaeologists have made significant finds at key sites in Mexico. This sweeping project brings together the most recent scholarship, along with a diverse selection of more than 100 monuments, sculptures, adornments, masks, and vessels, many of which have never traveled beyond Mexico’s borders, that paint a rich portrait of life in the most important Olmec centers, including San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of the culture, distinctive variations in the art of different city sites, and the chronology and reach of the society during its apex.Centering on the concept of discovery, this wide-ranging volume presents a fresh look at Olmec civilization, recapturing the excitement that greeted the unearthing of the first colossal stone head in 1862.

Considered the mother culture of Mesoamerica, the Olmec developed an iconic and sophisticated artistic style as early as the second millennium B.C. This pre-Columbian civilization, which flourished in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco between 1400 and 400 B.C., is best known for the creation of colossal stone portrait heads of its rulers. Some weighing up to 24 tons, the monumental heads are among ancient Americas most striking and beautiful masterpieces. In the fifteen years since the last major study of the Olmec, archaeologists have made significant finds at key sites in Mexico. This sweeping project brings together the most recent scholarship, along with a diverse selection of more than 100 monuments, sculptures, adornments, masks, and vessels, many of which have never traveled beyond Mexicos borders, that paint a rich portrait of life in the most important Olmec centers, including San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of the culture, distinctive variations in the art of different city sites, and the chronology and reach of the society during its apex. Centering on the concept of discovery, this wide-ranging volume presents a fresh look at Olmec civilization, recapturing the excitement that greeted the unearthing of the first colossal stone head in 1862.

According to Arnold Toynbee, a civilization arises in response to a challenge. In Central America - the Mesopotamia of the New World - the challenge was the jungle. The Olmecs were the first people to meet this challenge successfully. The coastal plain of Veracruz and Tabasco, along the southern curve of the Gulf of Mexico, is the birthplace of the first great civilization of the western hemisphere. Between the thirteenth and first centuries B.C., the Olmecs built ceremonial centers such as La Venta, with monumental pyramids, a spacious courtyard, a basalt-columned tomb, a offerings of stones, Celts, and jaguar mosaics. At La Venta also are four of the twelve colossal carved Olmec heads that have thus far been discovered. The Olmecs, then, were not only artists but engineers and scientists as well. It is not fully understood how they moved the great stones to the stoneless plain or how they made their jade carvings, which rival the finest of the Orient. They discovered the value of the zero and achieved the most complete system of calculating time conceived in America. Over the centuries the Olmecs penetrated into the Valley of Mexico, southward into Oaxaca and Chiapas and on into the highlands and Pacific coast of Guatemala. Monte Alban in the Valley of Oaxaca shows strong Olmec influence. Thus, this people not only engendered Mesoamerican civilization but also brought forth what might be called the first Mesoamerican empire. The Olmecs appear to have established the pattern which, through the centuries, was to be followed by later expansionist Mesoamerican cultures. The end of the Olmec world was not so much an end as a beginning. It led directly into the Classic world of Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, Tajin, and the Maya, peoples who received the Olmec inheritance and pushed civilization to far higher levels. In an engrossing reconstruction, Ignacio Bernal examines Olmec art, society, and religious beliefs.

This handsome volume presents the creations of Mesoamerica’s most ancient societies in their archaeological contexts. The Olmec―best known for a unique style of monumental stone head and jade were-jaguar―were based along the Gulf of Mexico but have also been linked to other Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Maya and Aztec. This book discusses recent spectacular finds and provides a framework for understanding the history, art, and archaeology of the Olmec.

Between 1500 and 500 BC the Olmecs flourished in the tropical lowlands of Mexico's Gulf Coast, creating the most complex of Mesoamerica's early societies and its first monumental art. Emphasising the strategies of political leaders and the environmental and social diversity within the Olmec region, this up-to-date and comprehensive study describes the history of Olmec research, synthesises recent scholarship on the ecology, economy, socio-political organisation and ideology of Olmec society, and evaluates current debates over the influence of the Olmecs on their contemporaries and their contributions to later Mesoamerican civilisations.

"The first truly complete and authoritative account of this 3,000-year-old culture."—Michael D. CoeThe Olmecs of southern Mexico are America's oldest civilization and Mesoamerica's "Mother Culture." Famous for their Colossal Heads carved from giant boulders, the Olmecs have fascinated the public and archaeologists since the 1940s when National Geographic magazine reported the initial explorations of their centers. Despite well-publicized discoveries of spectacular basalt sculptures, portable jade objects, and richly decorated pottery vessels, until recently almost nothing was known about Olmec history, foreign contacts, and daily life. Now archaeologists have recovered information that allows them to assemble a remarkably broad picture of Olmec culture, its accomplishments, and its impact on later Mexican civilizations.The Olmecs presents the first modern overview of information from recent archaeological field projects and studies of Olmec art. In addition to detailed coverage of Olmec life, culture, and art, it examines the Olmec presence in the surrounding areas of Mexico and their role in the formation of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilization. Profusely illustrated, it will become the standard work on this enigmatic culture. 152 illustrations, 20 in color.

Between 1400 and 400 BC, in what is now Mexico and Central America, the Olmec people created a magnificent culture, one too often overshadowed by those of the Maya and the Aztec. This catalogue accompanies an exhibition of over 250 Olmec works of art - ceramic, jade and stone - on display at the Art Museum, Princeton University in December 1995, and travelling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Essays by prominent scholars offer interpretations of such topics as the power of objects within the context of the Olmec ritual system. These identify and illustrate the fundamental themes of Olmec small-scale sculpture, the sacred role of the maize in Olmec ideology, and the relationship of Olmec culture to later civilizations. An illustrated glossary of motifs and symbols is provided to clarify the often highly abstract style and encoded iconography of the Olmec. The book also includes precise mineralogical descriptions of the lithic materials they used.

Color frontis. + 288 pp. with 12 figs. & 278 plates (151 in color), folio.

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Twenty-one papers on the Olmec were written for this volume in tribute to Matthew W. Stirling, “pioneer archaeologist, ethnologist, and the discoverer of the Olmec civilization.”

Considered the mother culture of Mesoamerica, the Olmec developed an iconic and sophisticated artistic style as early as the second millennium B.C. This pre-Columbian civilization, which flourished in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco between 1400 and 400 B.C., is best known for the creation of colossal stone portrait heads of its rulers. Some weighing up to 24 tons, the monumental heads are among ancient Americas most striking and beautiful masterpieces. In the fifteen years since the last major study of the Olmec, archaeologists have made significant finds at key sites in Mexico. This sweeping project brings together the most recent scholarship, along with a diverse selection of more than 100 monuments, sculptures, adornments, masks, and vessels, many of which have never traveled beyond Mexicos borders, that paint a rich portrait of life in the most important Olmec centers, including San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of the culture, distinctive variations in the art of different city sites, and the chronology and reach of the society during its apex. Centering on the concept of discovery, this wide-ranging volume presents a fresh look at Olmec civilization, recapturing the excitement that greeted the unearthing of the first colossal stone head in 1862.

A major exploration of one of the most important early artistic cultures of the ancient Americas Considered the “mother culture” of Mesoamerica, the Olmec developed an iconic and sophisticated artistic style as early as the second millennium B.C. This pre-Columbian civilization, which flourished in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco between 1400 and 400 B.C., is best known for the creation of colossal stone portrait heads of its rulers.  Some weighing up to 24 tons, the monumental heads are among ancient America’s most striking and beautiful masterpieces.In the fifteen years since the last major study of the Olmec, archaeologists have made significant finds at key sites in Mexico. This sweeping project brings together the most recent scholarship, along with a diverse selection of more than 100 monuments, sculptures, adornments, masks, and vessels, many of which have never traveled beyond Mexico’s borders, that paint a rich portrait of life in the most important Olmec centers, including San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of the culture, distinctive variations in the art of different city sites, and the chronology and reach of the society during its apex.Centering on the concept of discovery, this wide-ranging volume presents a fresh look at Olmec civilization, recapturing the excitement that greeted the unearthing of the first colossal stone head in 1862.

Twenty-one papers on the Olmec were written for this volume in tribute to Matthew W. Stirling, “pioneer archaeologist, ethnologist, and the discoverer of the Olmec civilization.”

Three thousand years ago, in what is now southern Mexico, Olmec art and culture flourished. No written documents survive, but the exceptional beauty and technical brilliance of the sculpture and its seminal importance to other Mesoamerican cultures are evident in the outstanding objects examined in Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico.Specially commissioned photographs illustrate 120 magnificent pieces, which include 17 monumental sculptures from archaeological sites or Mexican museums, among them a 13-ton colossal head from San Lorenzo and the dynamic "Wrestler" from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Also featured is an extraordinary array of beautiful small-scale objects, including a unique cache of stone figurines excavated at the site of La Venta, votive axes and other implements related to human sacrifice, a ferocious-looking jade jaguar mask, and serpentine shaman transformation figures.Contributions by fourteen Olmec specialists reflect the latest Mesoamerican scholarship and represent a wide range of interpretive approaches of this fascinating subject. They discuss not only the works of art but also the many recent finds that provide remarkable insights into Mexico's most ancient culture, as well as its cultural history, cosmology, and daily life.

Between 1400 and 400 BC, in what is now Mexico and Central America, the Olmec people created a magnificent culture, one too often overshadowed by those of the Maya and the Aztec. This catalogue accompanies an exhibition of over 250 Olmec works of art - ceramic, jade and stone - on display at the Art Museum, Princeton University in December 1995, and travelling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Essays by prominent scholars offer interpretations of such topics as the power of objects within the context of the Olmec ritual system. These identify and illustrate the fundamental themes of Olmec small-scale sculpture, the sacred role of the maize in Olmec ideology, and the relationship of Olmec culture to later civilizations. An illustrated glossary of motifs and symbols is provided to clarify the often highly abstract style and encoded iconography of the Olmec. The book also includes precise mineralogical descriptions of the lithic materials they used.