CERAMIC CRAFTING: Early Olmec-Style Pottery

Ceramic vessels exhibit symbols and technologies, often materializing interaction between local and regional groups across Early Horizon Mesoamerica. This chapter explores a constellation of icons, often subsumed under the term “Olmec style,” disentangling twelve motifs from larger compositions in San Lorenzo pottery, where they have been interpreted as abstracting cosmological concepts. The chapter also compares the presence or absence of these twelve motifs at three Early Horizon sites: Tres Zapotes, Etlatongo, and Canton Corralito. Employing communities of practice as a rubric to conceptualize how these pots were crafted as both local products as well as occasional imports, the authors examine what techniques were used to craft these motifs, the vessel forms on which they appear, and their manifestations in asymmetric or symmetric compositions. The comparisons of these twelve motifs and their various iterations provide insights into the complex material patterns that reflect different concepts, agencies, crafting, and interactions in Early Horizon Mesoamerica.