SECRETARY'S REPORT 39 



supplementary financial assistance fi'om the American Philosopliical 

 Society and the Smithsonian Institution. During the same interval 

 he also completed a theoretical paper on "The Sources of Northwest 

 Coast Culture," for publication in the New Interpretations of Ab- 

 original American Oidture History^ 75th Anniversary Volume of the 

 Anthropological Society of Washington. 



Thanks to the liberal support of the National Greographic Society, 

 it was possible to plan an ample program of archcological research 

 at the important Olmec site of La Venta, Tabasco, Mexico. Plans 

 were drawn up for a cooperative project, in which the National Geo- 

 gi-aphic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and the University of 

 California were to participate. Dr. Drucker, representing the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, and Dr. Robert F. Heizer, of the University of 

 California and honorary research associate of the Smithsonian, were 

 to function as coleaders of the expedition. During the latter part 

 of November and early in December, Dr. Drucker made a preliminary 

 trip to La Venta to obtain clearances from local, civil, and military 

 authorities, recruit labor, select a camp site, and negotiate other de- 

 tails. On January 10 he left Washington to initiate the work, being 

 joined on February 1 by Dr. Heizer and two of the latter's graduate 

 students serving as archcological assistants. An additional member 

 of the party was Ing. Eduardo Contreras S., assistant archeologist 

 and representative of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e 

 Historia de Mexico. In passing, due tribute must be given the offi- 

 cers of this organization, whose whole-hearted cooperation made the 

 fieldwork possible. 



The primary aim of the expedition was to carry out architectonic 

 investigations at La Venta, since in past years National Geographic 

 Society-sponsored parties have recovered a good deal of information 

 on Olmec ceramics and art. Excavations were restricted almost ex- 

 clusively to the ceremonial enclosure, where tests in previous years 

 had shown a variety of structures to exist. Working through a 3^2- 

 month season with a crew of about 50 local laborers, the party ex- 

 cavated a series of structures of the ceremonial enclosure complex. 

 It proved possible to identify a series of constructional phases in each 

 of the individual structures and to work out a correlation of the phases 

 throughout the ceremonial enclosure. From the drift-sand overbur- 

 den that covered the structures, materials were recovered pertaining 

 to one, or possibly two, post-Olmec occupations of the site. Deter- 

 mination of the cultural affiliations of these lat«r inhabitants is of 

 special interest. Carbon samples from post-Olmec deposits and from 

 various structural phases of the Olmec occupation were collected for 

 the purpose of obtaining accurate C-14 dates of the phases and 

 periods. 



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