Soconusco Formative Project

Conclusion

FAMSI-sponsored excavations at Cuauhtémoc are providing a unique view of Early and Middle Formative cultural developments in the Soconusco as the site was continuously occupied from the first settled villages through the rise (and fall) of the distant Olmec capitals in the Gulf Coast. Cuauhtémoc is an ideal location to explore Early and Middle Formative period occupation as there is no occupation at the site after the Middle Formative and thus no overlying deposits. The settlement shift after the Middle Formative, culminating in the abandonment of Cuauhtémoc and its supporting settlements, is not well understood and is an important objective of ongoing settlement survey. Such work will place excavations results within a regional political context. The figurine heads in Figure 15, above, are examples of typical late Early Formative (i.e., San Lorenzo) and early Middle Formative (La Venta) periods. These changing figurine styles, along with many other objects presented in this report, demonstrate that the inhabitants of Cuauhtémoc were actively participating in a changing Formative world. The Soconusco has the best evidence of direct interaction with the Gulf Coast Olmec of any region in Mesoamerica (Clark and Blake 1989; Clark 1990, 1997; Clark and Pye 2000; Navarrete 1974, 1978). Therefore, the excavation and ongoing analysis of materials recovered during the 2002 season at Cuauhtémoc provide a temporally fine-grained view of the evolution of settled life, long distance interaction and the evolution of sociopolitical complexity from the perspective of a single community over nearly a millennium.

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