Implications of Rock Art Aesthetics in Olmec Sculpture

Abstract

The development of freestanding stone sculpture by the Olmec people of Mesoamerica's Gulf lowlands has long been considered one of the defining artistic achievements of the Formative period. However, by the Middle Formative period the production of freestanding sculpture was often eclipsed by the contemporaneous creation of rock art outside the Gulf lowlands. In this article I argue that Gulf Olmec sculptors and audiences occasionally co-opted the aesthetic and ritual treatments of rock art at topographic shrines to construct and reinforce the sacred geographies of primary site cores. In so doing, Olmec elites converted the ideological power of the wild and the animate earth into a form of political capital.