Laguna de los Cerros

, Laguna de los Cerros is considered one of the four major Olmec centers. [Pool, or Diehl. Cyphers, however, finds that "recent investigations do not support the notion that [Laguna de los Cerros] was a large Olmec center".]

Laguna de los Cerros ("lake of the hills") was so named because of the nearly 100 mounds dotting the landscape. The basic architectural pattern consists of long parallel mounds flanking large rectangular plazas. Conical mounds mark the plaza ends. Larger mounds, formerly raised residential platforms, are associated with the thinner parallel mounds. [Cyphers, Introduction.] Most of the mounds date from the Classic era, roughly 250 CE through 900 CE. [Diehl, p. 46-47.]

History

Due its location in a pass between the river valleys to the south and the northwest, and its proximity to basalt sources in the volcanic Tuxtla Mountains to the north, Laguna de los Cerros was occupied over an uncharacteristically long period – perhaps close to 2000 years, from Olmec times until the Classic era.

Laguna de los Cerros was likely settled between 1400 - 1200 BCE and by 1200 BCE it had become a regional center, covering as much as 150 hectares. By 1000 BCE, it had nearly doubled in size with 47 smaller sites within a 5 kilometer radius. [Pool, p. 129. Dates are in chronological, and not radiocarbon, years which vary considerably during this period).] One of these satellite sites was Llano del Jícaro, largely a workshop for monumental architecture due to the nearby basalt flows. Monuments carved from Llano del Jícaro basalt can be found not only at Laguna de los Cerros, but also the large Olmec center of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán some 60 km to the southeast. It is thought likely that Llano del Jícaro was controlled by San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, either directly or through control of Laguna de los Cerros. [See Pool, p. 131. Another alternative is that Laguna de los Cerros controlled Llano del Jícaro, and San Lorenzo traded for the finished basalt monuments and stelae.]

Llano del Jícaro was abandoned sometime after 1000 BCE and Laguna de los Cerros itself shows a significant decline at that time. The cause of this decline is not known – perhaps a shift in the course of the San Juan river [Pool, p. 155.] – but it does roughly coincide with the decline and abandonment of San Lorenzo, which is often attributed to environmental difficulties.

The site

Unlike the other three major Olmec sites, no colossal heads have been found at Laguna de los Cerros, although roughly 2 dozen other Formative period monuments have been found.

Laguna de los Cerros was briefly investigated by Alfonso Medellin Zenil in 1960 and by Ann Cyphers in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Notes

References

*aut|Coe, Michael D. (2002); "Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs" London: Thames and Hudson.
*aut|Cyphers, Ann (2003) [http://www.famsi.org/reports/02095/index.html "Laguna de los Cerros: A Terminal Classic Period Capital in the Southern Mexican Gulf Coast"] , [http://www.famsi.org/index.html Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc.] , accessed February 2007.
*aut|Diehl, Richard A. (2004) "The Olmecs: America's First Civilization", Thames & Hudson, London.
*aut|Grove, David C. (2000) "Laguna de los Cerros (Veracruz, Mexico)", in "Archaeology of Ancient Mexico & Central America: an Encyclopedia"; Thames and Hudson, London.
*cite book |author=aut|Pool, Christopher A. |year=2007 |title=Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica|location=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-78882-3