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Settlement pattern surveys provide important clues to Olmec sociopolitical organization, although variant sampling strategies, intensities of coverage, recording methods, and field conditions make their comparison challenging. Site-based surveys focus on the identification and description of contiguous areas of artifacts and constructions (sites) reflective of human behavior and settlement, often over tens to hundreds of hectares (Borstein 2001; Budar 2016; Santley and Arnold 1996; Stoner 2011; Symonds et al. 2002; Urcid and Killion 2008). Siteless surveys as they have been carried out on the Gulf Coast focus on recording individual constructions (mounds or platforms) and concentrations of artifacts, particularly in areas where distributions of such features are relatively continuous or field conditions make site definition difficult in the field (Loughlin 2012; Pool and Loughlin 2016, 2018; Stark 1991). Sites may then be defined on the basis of the spatial clustering of such features. In recent years, airborne LIDAR (light detecting and ranging) mapping of features has begun to complement traditional pedestrian survey methods of field walking and surface collection (Loughlin et al. 2016) (Figure 2.5).

Figure 2.5 LiDAR imagery of Tres Zapotes in high (dark gray) and low (light gray) resolution. Gray line indicates extent of Tres Zapotes Archaeological Survey (Spanish acronym RATZ).

High-resolution imagery by NCALM; low-resolution by INEGI.

The much expanded coverage obtained in the last three decades (Figure 2.1) very clearly documents variant cycles in the growth and decline of populations and settlement hierarchies in different parts of the region (Figures 2.3 and 2.6). The middle Coatazacoalcos River basin around San Lorenzo was an early locus of hierarchy. By the end of the Bajío phase, ca. 1450 BCE, San Lorenzo was already a moderate village of some 20 ha at the center of a cluster of 36 hamlets and small villages in the area bounded by the Coatzacoalcos, Tatagapa, and Chiquito rivers as well as 50 islotes on the seasonally inundated flood plain (Symonds et al. 2002: Figure 4.1, Figure 4.4). Over the course of the next 250 years San Lorenzo would grow to some 700 ha as a regional center at the head of a settlement hierarchy that included no less than two secondary centers, three large villages that may have had some administrative functions, and over 200 smaller villages and hamlets, with a population currently estimated at between 8352 and 18 022 (median 11 152) at its maximum in the San Lorenzo B phase (1200–1000 BCE) (Cyphers et al. 2013: 112) (Figure 2.3). Though it lagged behind the middle Coatzacoalcos, the San Juan basin to the south of the Tuxtlas also achieved a peak of population in the Early Formative period, centered on Laguna de los Cerros (Borstein 2001; Urcíd and Killion 2008). Population in both these areas fell substantially at the close of the Early Formative period, as populations and settlement hierarchies grew in the areas of La Venta (González Lauck 1996; Rust 2008) and Tres Zapotes (Pool and Loughlin 2016, 2018) (Figure 2.6). The central Tuxtlas mountains, however, appear to have maintained a relatively mobile settlement pattern involving shifting garden cultivation and exploitation of wild resources through the Early Formative period and saw only modest population growth and settlement differentiation before the Late Formative period (400–1 BCE) (Arnold 2000: 126–128; Arnold and McCormack 2002; Santley and Arnold 1996). The settlement system at La Venta collapsed around 400 BCE as Tres Zapotes grew, becoming the largest Epi-Olmec center in the southern Gulf lowlands – a status it held for another 700 years.

Figure 2.6 Middle Formative settlement patterns in three regions of Olman.

Middle Coatzacoalcos basin and Western Tabasco Plain adapted and redrawn from Symonds et al. (2002: Figure 4.12) and Rust and Leyden (1994: Figure 12.1), respectively. Heavy line indicates area of pedestrian and LIDAR survey in the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin.

Overall, the accumulating data from settlement surveys indicate a dynamic demography with cycles of growth and decline in microregions that also suggest migrations of population as large centers and their supporting hinterland settlements collapsed (Figure 2.6). On the other hand, growing knowledge of settlement histories indicates that the narrative of a simple sequence of San Lorenzo, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes as macroregionally dominant capitals fails to account for the overlap in the growth of these centers (as well as Laguna de los Cerros) and their local settlement hierarchies as well as what appears to be substantial autonomy in their external economic and social relations (Pool and Ortiz 2008; Pool et al. 2010, 2014).