Mesoamerican Archaeology. Группа авторов
and Landscape
Archaeologists have long been interested in the relationship between human societies and their environment, particularly through the theoretical perspective of cultural ecology (Steward 1955) especially influential in Mesoamerica (e.g., Coe and Flannery 1967; Flannery 1968; MacNeish 1964; Sanders and Price 1968), so they launched a series of major settlement pattern studies (e.g., Blanton et al. 1982; Flannery and Marcus 1983; Kowalewski et al. 1989; MacNeish et al. 1972; Sanders et al. 1979; Willey et al. 1965). These important studies nevertheless tended to conceptualize the environment either as a passive backdrop against which humans acted or as a set of determinants to which humans adapted (Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 2).
Since the 1990s, archaeologists have increasingly turned to the concept of landscape, which incorporates but extends beyond the long-standing interest in the environment, as a useful way to address questions about how individuals and collectives mobilized ideological, social, and economic sources of power toward political ends (e.g., Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Crumley 1994; Daniels and Cosgrove 1988; Ingold 1993; Smith 2003; Tilley 1994; see also Earle 1997). For example, the more recent research program of historical ecology emphasizes the mutual interactions of the natural environment and humans as integral components of the world’s ecosystems (Baleé 2006). In this conception landscapes are “the material manifestation of the relationship between humans and the environment” (Crumley 1994: 6) over the long term. Drawing on insights from geography, cultural anthropology, and philosophy (e.g., de Certeau 1984; Heidegger 1972; Hirsch 1995; Lefebvre 1991; Merleu-Ponty 1968; Tsing 2001; Tuan 1974), the intersecting field of landscape archaeology further emphasizes the role of human perception in creating meaningful places within landscapes as well as that of landscapes in shaping human experience in a mutually constitutive relationship (e.g., Knapp and Ashmore 1999; Ingold 1993; Thomas 2012: 75; Tilley 1994). The influence of this line of thought can be seen in Olmec studies, where the settings and juxtapositions in the natural and built landscape has taken an increasingly prominent place in the interpretation of their social and ideological meanings and uses over the last three decades (e.g., Cyphers 1999, 2004; Grove 1999, 2000; Pool and Loughlin 2017; Tate 1999). Critical to the creation of meaning in landscapes is the forging of shared social memory through telling stories, enacting performances, and emplacing material signs that evoke those memories (Mixter and Henry 2017; Rowlands 1993; Van Dyke and Alcock 2008). The establishment of social memory tied to place is strongly involved in forming ethnic and political identities the latter particularly as associated with territory. In a related vein, Adam T. Smith (2003) has argued convincingly that the creation of a political landscape played a key role in creating and maintaining authority in early complex polities.
Thus, in expressing the relationships between humans and the environment materially, as Crumley succinctly states, landscapes combine perceptual and conceptual aspects with the material. Furthermore, the material forms and distributions of human and nonhuman components of landscapes express multiple and intersecting sets of relationships, or dimensions. Different authors partition these dimensions differently as, for example, constructed, conceptualized, and ideational (Knapp and Ashmore 1999: 10–13) or experienced, perceived, and imagined (Smith 2003). Some, focusing on particular kinds of relationships between human institutions and the physical environment, describe social, economic, political, and ritual (or sacred) landscapes (e.g., Stoner and Pool 2015), while others focus on the different scales of interaction with reference to a particular aspect of human practice or organization, as in Smith’s (2003) geopolitical landscapes among polities, territorial landscapes within polities, settlement-centered landscapes reflecting regimes, and the architectural landscapes of institutions.
These are all valuable lenses through which to view landscapes. The important things to keep in mind are that (1) all these dimensions and kinds of relationships exist simultaneously and dynamically, mutually influencing the changing form of landscapes through time, and (2) particular spheres of human endeavor do not always coincide over the landscape but may be disjointed over space and time. In organizing discussion in this essay, I distinguish physical (encompassing geological, biological, and climatic aspects), economic, social, and symbolic components of landscapes that relate most closely to particular data sets and institutions, while recognizing that these are intertwined in complex and varied ways with one another.
Environment and Landscape in Olman
The region from the Papaloapan River in southern Veracruz to the Chontalpa lowlands in western Tabasco is generally considered the heartland or climax area of Olmec culture (but see Arnold 2012 for a more expansive definition) (Figure 2.1). These labels and Bernal’s (1969) metropolitan area all connote an original and more developed hearth in keeping with the Mother Culture narrative for the origins of Mesoamerican civilization. A more neutral term that has achieved recent currency by scholars on both sides of that argument is Olman, derived from the same Aztec root as Olmec and referring to a “land of rubber,” evoking both the natural environment of the region and one of its principal products (Diehl 1996: 29; Pool 2007: 4–5).
Figure 2.1 Maps of Olman. Top: locations of sites mentioned in the text and coverage of archaeological surveys. Dashed line indicates the approximate extent of Olman. Bottom: geological map with physiographic provinces labeled. Base maps downloaded from the Mapa Digital de México V 6.3.0, INEGI.
The Physical Landscape
In recent years archaeologists have come to a greater appreciation of the diversity and dynamism of Olman’s natural environment (Cyphers et al. 2013; Pool 2007: 66–91), in contrast to former characterizations of the tropical lowland region as homogeneous and relatively risk-free (e.g., Blanton et al. 1996: 8; Rathje 1972: 365; Sanders and Webster 1978: 288–289). Physiographically, Olman is divided between two large geological structures (Figure 2.1). Most of the eastern two-thirds of the region lie within the Isthmian Saline Basin, which forms a broad coastal plain crossed by the meandering courses of the Coatzacoalcos, Tonalá, and Grijalva-Mezcalapa river systems (Figure 2.1 and Figure 2.2a–b). Salt domes and ancient terrace remnants form islands that rise from river backswamps and coastal marshes, while interfluves offer broader areas suitable for permanent settlement but lack the fertility and aquatic resources provided by annual floods in the lower areas. The large, shield-like volcanoes and smaller cinder cones of the Tuxtla Mountains dominate the western third of the region, dividing the Isthmian Saline basin from the broad alluvium of the Papaloapan River basin (Figure 2.1, Figure 2.2c–d). With peaks rising to over 1600 m, the Tuxtla Mountains create a significant orographic rainfall effect, dropping more than 4000 mm of rain per year on their upwind northern slopes and peaks and less than 1500 mm per year downwind to the south; most of the eastern part of Olman receives between 2000 and 2500 mm of precipitation per year. These variations in geology (Figure 2.1), hydrography, and climate create a diversity of soils across Olman that vary in texture, slope, fertility, natural vegetation, and agricultural capability (see Pool 2007: 69–72). Importantly, this diversity is patterned both at a regional scale and within local environments, offering divergent opportunities and challenges for populations in different parts of Olman.
Figure 2.2 Physical landscapes of Olman. (a) Western Tabasco swamps viewed from La Venta. (b) Alluvial plain northeast of the San Lorenzo plateau (slight rise in the background). (c) View across Tuxtlas piedmont to the extinct Tuxtlas Mountains volcano of Cerro el Vigía. (d) Cinder cones in the central Tuxtlas Mountains, looking northward across Lake Catemaco. (e) Cerro Manatí viewed from Macayal. (f) Ancient sand dunes near the coast to the west of the Tuxtla Mountains.
Photo of Cerro Manatí courtesy of Pablo Ortiz Brito (photographer) and Alberto Ortiz Brito. All other photos by author.
Security and risk varied over time due to floods, droughts, storms, plagues and, in the Tuxtla