Bitumen Sourcing in the Olmec Region

Conclusions

The findings presented here represent the first attempts at studying bitumen, an important economic resource in Mesoamerica. Results of the study demonstrate that sourcing archaeological bitumen is feasible, worthwhile, and has great potential to advance our understanding of Olmec and other prehistoric Mesoamerican economies. Moreover, Mesoamerican archaeologists now possess a new tool in Mesoamerican archaeology that will allow scholars to document the movement of a utilitarian material, which in turn will lead to insight on the everyday workings of ancient Mesoamerican economies.

This pilot project lays the foundation for more detailed bitumen sourcing studies that can investigate Early Formative period bitumen trade on both the intra-regional and inter-regional levels. Data on bitumen trade can be used to help evaluate various hypotheses including David Grove's (1994) ideas on 'zonal complementarity' in the Olmec Heartland, and contribute valuable data to the debates on the nature of Early Formative interregional exchange and interaction (e.g., Flannery 1968; Flannery and Marcus 1994, 2000; Blomster et al. 2005; Flannery et al. 2005). In order to achieve these objectives, more seep and archaeological bitumen (both inside and outside of the Olmec region) need to be analyzed so that archaeologists can discover exploited source loci, reconstruct patterns of exchange, and identify interaction networks.

Previous Page  |  Table of Contents  |  Next Page

Return to top of page