Читать книгу Mesoamerican Archaeology - Группа авторов - Страница 43

Another major shift in the social and political landscapes of Olman occurred around 400 BCE, as La Venta and its sustaining settlements collapsed and population continued to decline in the middle Coatzacoalcos and upper San Juan valleys (Borstein 2001; Rust 2008; Symonds et al. 2002 Figure 4.4). In contrast, surveys in the rest of western Olman document modest population increases in the central valleys and southern piedmont of the Tuxtla Mountains (Killion and Urcid 2001; Santley and Arnold 1996) and substantial growth in the Tepango valley of the western Tuxtlas and in the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin, especially at the centers of Tres Zapotes and El Mesón (Loughlin 2012; Pool and Loughlin 2018; Pool and Ohnersorgen 2003; Stoner 2011). Given the timing of these population trends and the sculptural evidence for a prior relationship with La Venta in the easter lower Papaloapan basin, it seems likely that population increases in western Olman were at least partly a result of migration from collapsing polities in the east.

Changes in the social landscape likely brought challenges of integration as well as opportunities for expansion to the Tres Zapotes polity. Additional challenges came with increased volcanic activity, documented by ashfalls in the sediments of Lago Verde (Lozano-García et al. 2010) and shifts in trade routes that had previously provided Olmec rulers with the prestige goods of greenstone and iron ore that helped underwrite their authority (Pool and Loughlin 2016). Tres Zapotes appears to have met these challenges in part through a reorganization of its government from one in which a single ruler monopolized power, following the well-established Olmec pattern to one in which power was shared among leaders of up to four factions within the capital, which now sprawled over 500 ha (Pool et al. 2008, 2010).

This shift in governance at Tres Zapotes is evidenced in its urban form, the themes and placements of stone monuments, and artifact assemblages that indicate a political economy that offered broad access to local and imported goods for elites and nonelites alike (Figure 2.9) (Pool and Ortiz Ceballos 2008; Pool and Loughlin 2016; Pool et al. 2010). Civic–ceremonial architecture was widely dispersed in four Tres Zapotes Plaza Group complexes, located between 945 and 985 m from one another (Figure 2.9). Each was built on the basic plan of a plaza oriented more or less east–west with a long elite residential–administrative mound bounding the north side, a conical or pyramidal temple mound on the west, and a low adoratorio platform on the plaza’s centerline; subsequent modifications in three groups added conical mounds to the west end of the plaza and low platforms to the south. Although the four complexes vary in extent and volume, the two largest (Groups 2 and 3) are of comparable extent and volume, with neither clearly dominant over the other. Together, the replication of a basic spatial template, the lack of a single clearly dominant group, and the temporal overlap of the complexes, confirmed by excavations, argue for the institution of a more collective political organization with less centralization of power than in Middle Formative Tres Zapotes or other Olmec centers.

The Late Formative ruling coalition at Tres Zapotes also expressed the reduced concentration of power in the content of their monuments and the placement of earlier monuments in their urban landscape. Whereas colossal heads and stelae of the Middle Formative period emphasized the person of the ruler and his position as the central axis uniting heaven and earth, Late Formative sculptures from the Epi-Olmec capital do not emphasize personal rulership, and their distribution is less patterned than that of Middle Formative monuments (Pool et al. 2010b). Stelae A and F, representing late Olmec rulers, had their faces battered away in a manner suggesting their erasure from memory, while images of more distant ancestral rulers, the two colossal heads, were placed in the Tres Zapotes Plaza Groups at the eastern and western edges of the site (Group 1 and the Nestepe Group, respectively) facing north toward the long mounds from the south side of the plaza. Group 2 was built with the earlier basalt column enclosure and platform containing the greenstone axis mundi representation in a similar position on the south edge of the plaza. In this manner, Late Formative factional leaders incorporated ancient Olmec monuments symbolizing rulership into the urban landscape of their civic–ceremonial complexes to legitimate their claims to political and ideological authority (Pool et al. 2010b).

Similar principles were employed to construct the political landscape of Tres Zapotes’s hinterland. As the polity expanded in the Late Formative period, the countryside became more integrated with the center as four Tres Zapotes Plaza Group complexes were built in secondary centers at distances of 6–12 km from Tres Zapotes. At Cobata, the colossal head marked the eastern edge of the polity in a manner similar to the colossal heads in Tres Zapotes Plaza Groups at the eastern and western edges of the capital. Whether it was a rustic Middle Formative version of the Olmec urban tradition, as suggested already, or a later emulation of a remembered past (perhaps emphasized by the closed eyes of the monument – a common Mesoamerican way of indicating death), the head would have strongly referenced the colossal heads on view in the capital.