Modeling Olmec participation in Early Horizon interaction networks requires better understanding of the relations of Gulf Olmec communities with one another as well as with contemporaries elsewhere in Mesoamerica. We compare pottery, figurines, and obsidian assemblages from a recently isolated Early Formative component at Tres Zapotes with contemporary assemblages from San Lorenzo and Macayal, both in the Coatzacoalcos basin. Our analysis indicates that village inhabitants at Tres Zapotes interacted with populations in eastern Olman but also forged their own economic and social ties with central Veracruz and the Mexican highlands. This evidence suggests a heterogeneous politico-economic landscape in which multiple polities of varying complexity participated in overlapping networks of interaction, alliance, and competition within and beyond Olman.

The El Manatí archaeological site in Veracruz State, Mexico, is famous for its deposits of ceremonial stone axes and beads from the Olmec culture. Some of these have been considered to be in jadeite‐jade, but this rock type in these artefacts has never before been physico‐chemically verified. A portable Raman spectrometer was employed in situ inside the Centro‐INAH Veracruz reserve for this remote analytical operation of non‐destructive direct hand‐held analysis to identify some of the mineral species present. The key points of interest were as follows: which objects can correctly be called ‘jade’ because they contain the high‐pressure minerals jadeite or omphacite and, if so, with what mol. % Jd (Jd%) in the solid‐solution jadeite–diopside–hedenbergite. The Jd% value was then quantified from the wavenumber shift of the symmetric Si–O–Si Raman vibration band. Although some artefacts did not yield any usable Raman spectra, exploitable spectra were obtained from 41 stone axes or beads. Jadeite was found in 13 artefacts and omphacite in another 11. Jd% varied from 95 to 38% such that many of these jades are actually omphacite‐jade rather than jadeite‐jade. The complicated terminology of jades is thus re‐examined. A partial correlation is shown to exist between the Jd% value and the density of the artefacts. These results provide important, hitherto unknown, mineralogical data for archaeologists studying artefacts at different horizons at different sites of Mesoamerican cultures. These results also allow these artefacts to be now labelled correctly in their Museum reserve or exhibition display. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In 1943, Matthew Stirling (1943:72) once opined, “Izapa appears to be much more closely related to the earth-mound sites of southern Veracruz … than it does with sites in the Maya area.” Since then, scholars have postulated ties of varying strength between Late Formative polities on either side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Ceramic similarities have been noted between southern Chiapas and the Gulf Coast, but discussion of Late Formative transisthmian interaction has focused primarily on sculptural similarities between Izapa and sites of the lower Papaloapan basin, including Tres Zapotes, El Mesón, and Alvarado. Indeed, Michael Coe (1965b:773) suggested that the Izapan art style may have originated on the Gulf Coast rather than on the Pacific slope. In this article, we reexamine Late Formative interaction between Izapa and Epi-Olmec polities with an expanded data set based on recent iconographic studies and archaeological investigations in and around Tres Zapotes.

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A block with a hitherto unknown system of writing has been found in the Olmec heartland of Veracruz, Mexico. Stylistic and other dating of the block places it in the early first millennium before the common era, the oldest writing in the New World, with features that firmly assign this pivotal development to the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica.