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Contemporary understandings of landscapes emphasize that they are constituted by the relationships between the material world and humans’ perceptions and experience of it (e.g., Hirsch 1995; Tuan 1974). Through these interactions humans both derive meaning from landscapes and impose meanings upon places within them. Those meanings are communicated and preserved in oral and written form, but frequently they also are materialized within the landscape with constructions, monuments, carvings, or offerings, frequently evoking sacred beliefs and historical events (often themselves entwined in myth) (e.g., Thomas 2012; Tilley 1994; Townsend 1992). Engaging with these material symbols helps to forge shared social memories, which in turn reinforce social norms and often support claims to political authority and power (Smith 2003; Van Dyke and Alcock 2008; Wertsch 2002).

All cultures create meaningful landscapes, but the Olmecs are notable for the variety, sophistication, and costliness of techniques they employed to materialize those meanings in natural and built settings. Places that had particularly meaningful associations for the Olmecs included hills, caves, springs, and other bodies of water. The marking of these places with offerings and monuments anticipates cosmological themes in later Mesoamerican belief, including that of a multilayered cosmos consisting of a watery underworld, a quadripartite terrestrial realm often represented as the back of a crocodile, and a celestial realm inhabited by birds, butterflies, celestial bodies, and the deities and forces associated with them (Miller and Taube 1993: 28–29; Tate 1999). Connecting these realms at the center was the axis mundi represented by a world tree or mountain of creation and sometimes personified as a shaman or ruler – humans thought to be able to move between the realms (Reilly 1995). Places that provided access between the cosmic layers, such as caves, springs, or mountaintops where clouds accumulated, were especially powerful places in the sacred landscapes of Mesoamerica and themselves were seen as living entities (see, e.g., Schele 1995; Townsend 1992). Similarly, animals – both real and imagined composites – who moved between air, earth, and water were venerated and held a prominent place in Olmec iconography (Taube 1995). Finally, water in both its surface and atmospheric manifestations, was associated with agricultural fertility and natural abundance as well as with risk from storm and flood (Cyphers et al. 2013: 90–94).

An early example of the meaningful construction of a sacred place in Olman is the site of El Manatí – a waterlogged spring in the swamp at the base of a salt dome hill in the Coatzacoalcos basin, east of San Lorenzo (Ortiz Ceballos and Rodríguez 2000). Between 1700 and 1500 BCE, predecessors of the Olmecs cut V-shaped grooves and rounded depressions in sandstone boulders at the base of the spring and deposited polished axes (celts) and beads of imported greenstone, stone mortars, ceramic vessels, and nine rubber balls, each about 15 cm (6 in) in diameter, as well as offerings of hog plum, false bamboo, and copal resin. Later offerings in the same place between 1500 and 1400 BCE became more formalized, with intentional arrangements of celts, larger rubber balls, and in the third and final event, between 1400 and 1200 BCE, the addition of wooden human busts and the remains of human infants (Figure 2.7). In the Manati offerings and in the offerings of over 600 greenstone celts at the nearby site of Macayal (Rodríguez and Ortiz 2000), we see both continued veneration of a sacred place over centuries and the gradual emergence of a distinctively Olmec ritual practice that would be elaborated to new heights of ostentation, especially in Middle Formative La Venta (Drucker et al. 1959). Other “natural” settings that the Olmecs apparently imbued with meaning by the emplacement of offerings and sculptures included the stream of Arroyo Pesquero (Medellín Zenil 1971; Wendt and Lunagómez Reyes 2011; Wendt et al. 2014), the cleft summit of the San Martin Pajapan volcano (Blom and LaFarge 1926: 44–48; Medellín Zenil 1968; Ortiz Brito 2017: 165–217), and the saddle connecting the extinct volcano of Cerro el Vigía to the western Tuxtla Mountains at Cobata (Beverido Pereau 1989; Pool and Loughlin 2017) (Figure 2.2c).

Figure 2.7 Macayal phase offering at El Manatí.

Photo courtesy of Ponciano Ortiz Ceballos and Carmen Rodríguez.

Though monumental sculpture alone does not define Olmec culture (Arnold 2012), it was a noteworthy innovation in the creation of symbolic and political landscapes (Grove 1997; Pool and Loughlin 2017) (Figure 2.8). Prominent themes revolved around the cosmic order, with natural forces represented as composite supernatural beings and human beings as the ruler and nexus mediating among them all (de la Fuente 1996; Kent 1995; Tate 1995; Taube 1995, 2004). The quintessential image of the ruler was the colossal head, of which 17 have been found: 16 from major centers (San Lorenzo, 10; La Venta, 4; Tres Zapotes, 2) and 1 aberrant head from the rural Cobata locality. Wearing helmet-like headdresses adorned with a variety of symbols and earspools of different designs, each head is unique and larger than life. They seem at once to emphasize the secular power and person of the ruler, though their positions relative to one another and to surrounding architecture may have added layers of meaning, including the veneration of lineal ancestors.

Figure 2.8 Some examples of Olmec monumental sculpture. (a) Colossal head (Tres Zapotes Monument A). (b) Tabletop altar–throne (La Venta Monument 4). (c) Full-round sculpture (El Azuzul) “twins.” (d) Stela (La Venta Stela 2).

All photos by author.

The arrangement of colossal heads at San Lorenzo suggested to Cyphers (1999) a macrodisplay of ruler images, with those of previous rulers perceived as powerful lineal ancestors (Figure 2.9a). Intervening buildings and the burial of at least one in the eastern platform of a quadrangular plaza complex would have obscured the views of the overall scene (Cyphers and Di Castro 2009), but many could have been viewed by processing from one to another, a practice that like the Roman Catholic stations of the cross could have recapitulated the linear structure of a historical narrative (Pool and Loughlin 2017). More intimate juxtapositions of monuments with one another and with artificial constructions, such as the tableau consisting of two nearly identical kneeling twins (Figure 2.8c) and two rustically carved felines at El Azuzul, expanded meanings beyond those that could be conveyed in a single sculpture.

Figure 2.9 Plans of civic–ceremonial precincts of Formative urban centers. Clockwise from upper left: San Lorenzo, La Venta, Tres Zapotes.San Lorenzo redrawn after Coe and Diehl (1980a: Map 2); La Venta redrawn after González Lauck (1996: Figure 1).

Massive tabletop altar–thrones, weighing up to 40 tons in the case of La Venta Monument 4 (Figure 2.2b), depicted a human figure – presumably the ruler or one of his ancestors – emerging from a cave-like niche with humans or dwarf-like supernaturals on the sides. The details of each differ, but the overall theme seems to be one of rulership sanctioned by human lineage and mythical origins. The two more complete of these known from San Lorenzo have been mutilated as part of decommissioning or recycling efforts (Cyphers 2008, 2012; Grove 1981). Tellingly, two of the colossal heads from San Lorenzo bear vestiges of the niche indicating that they were recarved from thrones (Porter 1990), which Cyphers (2012) argues were likely those used by the rulers depicted. Smaller thrones treat other themes, depicting dwarves, supernatural beings, and so-called Atlantean figures supporting the sky. Thrones were carved in a combination of low and high relief, but the Olmecs also exceled from an early time in carving sculptures fully in the round that depicted humans, animals, and human–animal composites as their most common subjects. Though full-round sculpture continued to be produced in the Middle Formative, by the second half of the period stelae came to replace colossal heads as the preferred means of representing rulers, often in scenes with human or supernatural attendants or with human peers or emissaries.

The image of the water hill (altepetl in the Nahuatl language) rising from a primordial sea was a powerful one that would come to symbolize the city to later Mesoamerican societies, including the Aztecs. In Olman the urban characteristics of such a place were first manifested at San Lorenzo, which sprawled down the slopes of the San Lorenzo plateau toward the seasonally inundated floodplain (Arieta Baizabal and Cyphers 2017; Cyphers 2012; Cyphers et al. 2013). At the summit of the plateau, Olmec rulers emphasized their control over water with long drain lines that carried water to flow over the edge of the plateau and associated sculptures of felines and composite supernatural were-jaguars (Cyphers 1999). Rulers further emphasized their own power at the center of their polity with colossal head portraits and massive tabletop thrones, while political leaders in lesser settlements such as Loma del Zapote and Estero Rabón exhibited smaller thrones and sculptures in the round (Cyphers 1999, 2012).

The principles established early on in places like El Manatí and San Lorenzo persisted and were elaborated upon in later settings. Although the inhabitants of San Lorenzo moved massive amounts of earth to raise the plateau and construct residential terraces and the elites built impressive residences on the plateau, the mound construction often attributed to them was relatively modest and much of it was later (Arrieta Baizabal and Cyphers 2017; Cyphers 1999, 2012). By comparison the rulers of La Venta invested more labor in mound construction per se and executed a more formally organized layout of platforms and plazas in the core of the center (González Lauck 1996) (Figure 2.9b). The Great Mound C-1 at the heart of the site was constructed as a 30 m tall stepped earthen pyramid (González 1997). With five massive offerings of greenstone blocks (one of which had a combined weight of 1000 tons), interred to the north of the pyramid in the restricted Complex A, Carolyn Tate (1999) reasonably interprets Mound C-1 as the representation of a mountain emerging from the primordial sea while referencing the location of La Venta at the center of its specific landscape between the ocean to the north and highlands to the south.

The emplacements of the massive offerings constituted impressive, memorable acts that would have been witnessed at a minimum by laborers and participants and the locations of which were marked with low platforms. Additional buried offerings contained carefully arranged sets of greenstone celts, recalling the much earlier offerings of El Manatí and La Merced, while others contained beautifully carved and polished greenstone figurines. Offering IV, a group of 16 figurines standing before six celts set vertically like stelae, was not only buried but subsequently reopened as if to confirm they were still there and reburied without disturbing their positions in a remarkable act of remembering (Drucker et al. 1959: 154–155).

Monuments, including colossal heads, tabletop altar–thrones, stelae, and sculptures in the round, were intentionally placed to reinforce the different functions and meanings of the site’s four complexes arranged from north to south (Grove 1999). Three colossal heads guarded the northern entrance to the civic-ceremonial core, and three massive crouching human figures with enlarged heads and massive helmets occupied the surface of a platform at the southern end of the cite. Celtiform stelae shaped like greenstone axes with images of earth monsters arrayed on the southern edge of Mound C-1 emphasized the chthonic associations of this artificial water-hill (González 1998; Tate 1999). Other stelae in Complex A and the Great Plaza of Complex B to the south as well as a fourth colossal head in Complex B emphasized the status and roles of rulers, and paired thrones at the southern base of Mound C-1 and Complex D at the southern end of the site bore the images of rulers or ancestors sitting in a niche, one of each pair cradling an infant in its lap and the other flanked by human figures who may represent ancestors or captives (González 2010: 138–145; Grove 1999). Many of these monuments remained visible in their settings for centuries after they were emplaced, as early twentieth-century visitors recounted (e.g., Blom and La Farge. 1926). Later, the Epi-Olmec governors of Tres Zapotes selectively employed that site’s colossal heads and a basalt-enclosed platform as ancient symbols of Olmec rulership in the formal complexes they constructed to reinforce their own claims to authority within a more collective alliance (Pool et al. 2010b).