Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica [Hardcover]

Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica offers the most thorough and up-to-date book-length treatment of Olmec society and culture available.The Olmecs created the most complex social and political hierarchies of their time on the North American continent. Pool offers the most thorough and up-to-date book-length treatment of Olmec society and culture available. It will be of interest to academics, graduate, upper-undergraduate students of archaeology, anthropology and history of art.The Olmecs created the most complex social and political hierarchies of their time on the North American continent. Pool offers the most thorough and up-to-date book-length treatment of Olmec society and culture available. It will be of interest to academics, graduate, upper-undergraduate students of archaeology, anthropology and history of art.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.1. Introduction; 2. 'Great Stone Faces of the Mexican Jungle'; 3. Olman, the land of the Olmecs; 4. Olmec beginnings; 5. Olmec transformations: the Middle Formative period; 6. The Olmecs and Mesoamerica; 7. Collapse, continuity, and evolution: Late Formative Olman; 8. The Olmecs and their legacy.