Richard A. Diehl

Smokescreens in the Provenance Investigation of Early Formative Mesoamerican Ceramics

We are glad that Sharer et al. (this issue) have dropped their original claim that the INAA data demonstrate multidirec tional movement of Early Formative pottery. Beyond this, however, they offer nothing that might enhance understanding of Early Formative ceramic circulation or inspire new insights into Early Formative cultural evolution in Mesoamerica. Instead, their response contains fresh distortions, replications of mistakes made in their PNAS articles, and lengthy pas sages that are irrelevant to the issues raised by Neff et al. (this issue). We correct and recorrect their latest distortions and misunderstandings here. Besides showing why their discussion of ceramic sourcing repeatedly misses the mark, we also correct a number of erroneous assertions about the archaeology of Olmec San Lorenzo. New evidence deepens understanding of Early Formative Mesoamerica but requires that some researchers discard cherished beliefs.

Oldest Writing in the New World

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.

Olmec civilization, veracruz, Mexico: dating of the san lorenzo phase.

Archeological excavations at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, Veracruz, show that the Olmec sculptures of this zone are associated with the San Lorenzo phase, which can be placed in the Early Formative period (1500-800 B.C.) on the basis of ceramic comparisons. Five of six radiocarbon dates for the San Lorenzo phase fall within the 1200-900 B.C. span. The San Lorenzo phase therefore marks the beginning of Olmec civilization, and the sites forming the San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan group represent the oldest civilized communities known in Mexico or Central America.

Sacred Consumption: Food and Ritual in Aztec Art and Culture by Elizabeth Morán (review)

The authors definitely succeed in showing that the detailed recording of conservation work is an essential tool for a historian’s research on indigenous featherwork as, “feather selection and use, as well as trimming and attaching, provides meaningful interpretative evidence” (3). Precisely because Pearlstein’s template represents a new standard in conservation work, and thus opens new lines of interpretation for historians who research the topic, one might wish for more detailed cultural biographies of the case studies’ objects. In addition, the limited variety of samples available in the online databases conservators use to identify feathers points a basic difficulty: how, on one hand, to reflect on historical migration patterns of birds, and on the other, on the exchange of feathers among indigenous communities in pre-Colombian and colonial times.

No man has ever been an Island: New looks at ancient trade

Jeremy A. Sabloff and C. C. Lamberg‐Karlovsky, eds. Ancient Civilization and Trade. Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1975. xiv + 485 pp. Figures, tables, references, and index.

Time and water: Two major variables in ancient Mesoamerica

20.00.

Methodological Issues in the Provenance Investigation of Early Formative Mesoamerican Ceramics

Fredrick Johnson, ed. Chronology and Irrigation. Volume Four of The Prehistory of the Tehuacan Valley. Richard S, MacNeish, series editor. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972. xi + 290 pp. Illustrations, maps, figures, bibliography and index.

In the land of the Olmec

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