NO. 8 LA VENTA CERAMIC COMPLEX — DRUCKER 7 



characteristic art style, ceramic complexes, and patterns of mound 

 construction. On the basis of these last-named criteria, Olmec cul- 

 ture at its greatest continuous expanse never crossed the lower 

 Papaloapan on the west nor ranged much beyond the Tonala- 

 Blasillo drainage to the east. Our excavations at Cerro de las Mesas 

 demonstrated that, although a few unmistakably Olmec pieces oc- 

 curred, particularly among the jade specimens, and certain features 

 suggested a certain kinship with an ancient widespread ceramic pat- 

 tern which likewise appears to underlie the Olmec pottery complexes, 

 the bulk of Cerro de las Mesas culture — pottery figurines, jade-carv- 

 ing, and stelae — represent transplantations of Highland patterns. A 

 glance at a topographic map of the region shows readily why there 

 are more fundamental points of difit'erence between the cultural in- 

 ventories of Cerro de las Mesas and Tres Zapotes than between the 

 latter site and La Venta which is more than twice as far away. The 

 lower reaches of the Rio San Juan, the Papaloapan, the string of 

 lakes connected by the Rio Limon and the Rio Cacique, and the in- 

 numerable small streams and sloughs emptying into the lower Bay 

 of Alvarado, form a hopelessly uninhabitable morass of swamps 

 which prohibited a westward extension of Olmec culture. While 

 some commerce may have been carried on through the tortuous net- 

 work of channels that crisscross this no-man's land, intimate con- 

 tact of the sort that leads to diffusion of entire complexes seems to 

 have been made impossible by this geographic barrier. 



Similarly, the swamps of Tabasco restricted any eastward spread. 

 La Venta, on one of the islands near the borders of the swamps, is 

 the easternmost of the major ceremonial centers of the Olmec. The 

 site of San Miguel, a short distance up the Blasillo, was presumably 

 an occupation center tributary to the ritual focus. The southern mar- 

 gin of Olmec territory is more difficult to define precisely but it 

 seems to correspond with the edge of the coastal plain, never extend- 

 ing into the foothills flanking the rugged highlands. La Ceiba, on 

 the Rio de las Playas, has been determined by Stirling's investiga- 

 tions to represent an overflow of the Chiapas highland, or "Upper 

 Grijalva" complex, down into the lowland. The only point at which 

 an approximate boundary cannot be set as yet is along the pass across 

 the Isthmus. Perhaps there were Olmec outposts, or even secondary 

 centers, clear across to the Pacific side. The occurrence of reliefs 

 carved in purest Olmec style as far south as San Isidro Piedra Parada 

 in Guatemala suggests strongly that such may have been the case.^ 



2 Thompson, J. Eric S., Stone sculptures from southeastern Quetzaltenango. 

 Carnegie Inst., Notes on Middle American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. i, 

 pp. I00-II2, fig. a, pp. 104, III, 1943. 



