Our colleagues and friends in Guatemala again provided the same generous aid which they had shown to the senior author during his previous field season of 1958. Our profound thanks go once more to Sr. Don Carlos Samayoa Chinchilla, director of the Instituto de Antropologia e Historia, and to Sr. Don Antonio Tejeda Fonseca, director of the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia. Dr. Francis Gall, of the Direction de Cartografia, furnished us with maps and excellent advice drawn from his extensive knowledge of Guatemalan geography and history. Our stay in the village of Ocos was made pleasant by the willing cooperation of the mayor, Sr. Don Juan Reyes. We feel deeply grateful to Sr. Don Vicente Cuadros and his family, who are the present occupants of the Salinas La Blanca site; many of the insights which we have had into human ecology in the Ocos area were gained from conversations with our friend Don "Chente." This report would have been an impossibility without the identifications so kindly furnished us by colleagues in the natural sciences.
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A recent study of Early Formative Mesoamerican pottery by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) yielded surprising results that prompted two critiques in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The INAA study indicated that the Olmec center of San Lorenzo was a major exporter of carved-incised and white pottery and that little if any pottery made elsewhere was consumed at San Lorenzo. The critiques purport to "overturn" the INAA study and demonstrate a more balanced exchange of pottery among Early Formative centers. However, the critiques rely on a series of mistaken claims and misunderstandings that are addressed here. New petrographic data on a small sample of Early Formative pottery (Stoltman et al. 2005) are potentially useful, but they do not overturn INAA of nearly 1000 pottery samples and hundreds of raw material samples.
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