Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T12:03:16.235Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Olmec and Chavin: Rejoinder to Lanning*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Michael D. Coe
Michael D. Coe*
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The maize design on a bottle from Kotosh is unusual for its time and place in its choice of subject matter and mode of depiction, and a previous statement that the motif might be of Olmec origin is defended. Lanning's attack on past arguments for early diffusion from Mesoamerica to Peru is countered by questioning (a) the role of the Intermediate area and lowland South America as alternative sources for the observed similarities, (b) the nature of unpublished data, (c) the age of the architectural complex at Las Haldas, (d) the likelihood of establishing final “proofs” or full chronological contexts, and (e) the reasoning of the “wait-until-all-the-facts-are-in” school. It is proposed that hypotheses are not assumptions but concepts subject to change which are ever attempting to explain large bodies of data. Such a hypothesis is that which originates New World civilization on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, and a revision of this hypothesis is made which accounts for the Chavin civilization as the result of a fusion of intrusive Olmec art and religion with an older, native-Peruvian tradition based on fabric construction and the worship of the condor and serpent.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , July 1963 , pp. 101 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1963

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Edward P. Lanning for his kindness in forwarding his reply to me in ample time to prepare a rejoinder. I am also indebted to Irving Rouse for reading a preliminary draft of this rejoinder and suggesting revisions, although I take full responsibility for it in its final form.

References

Bird, Junius B. 1962 Art and Life in Old Peru: An Exhibition. Curator, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 145–210. New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coe, Michael D. 1960 Archeological Linkages with North and South America at La Victoria, Guatemala. American Anthropologist, Vol. 62, No. 3, pp. 363–93. Menasha.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coe, Michael D. 1962 Costa Rican Archaeology and Mesoamerica. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 170–83. Albuquerque.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engel, Fredéric 1957 Sites et Etablissements sans Ceramique de la Cote Peruvienne. Journal de la Societe des Americanistes, n.s., Vol. 46, pp. 67–155. Paris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ishida, Elichiro and others 1960 Andes. Report of the University of Tokyo Scientific Expedition to the Andes in 1958. Andean Institute, University of Tokyo, Tokyo.Google Scholar
Kluckhohn, Clyde 1940 The Conceptual Structure in Middle American Studies. In “The Maya and Their Neighbors,” edited by Hay, Clarence L. and others, pp. 41–51. Appleton Century, New York.Google Scholar
Lothrop, Samuel K. 1940 South America as Seen from Middle America. In “The Maya and Their Neighbors,” edited by Hay, Clarence L. and others, pp. 417–29. Appleton Century, New York.Google Scholar
Means, Philip A. 1931 Ancient Civilizations of the Andes. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.Google Scholar
Porter, Muriel N. 1953 Tlatilco and the Pre-Classic Cultures of the New World. Viking Fund Publications on Anthropology, 19. New York.Google Scholar
Spinden, Herbert J. 1917 The Origin and Distribution of Agriculture in America. In Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Americanists, 1915, pp. 269–76. Washington.Google Scholar