PATRONS OF SHAMANIC POWER

Abstract

This article takes two new approaches to the “enigmas” of La Venta. First, it examines the form of the site in relation to the region from which the La Ventans procured their stone: primarily, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. La Venta's north–south axis pointed to the nearest high mountain south of the site. The bar-and-four-dots design on the Mosaic Pavements corresponded to the duality of the female earth and its four-directional maize plants crossed by the east–west path of the male sun. The Massive Offerings, previously interpreted as effigies of seas, are noted to be on the north of the ceremonial court and to correspond to the ocean a few kilometers north of the site. Second, this paper augments the current understanding of the ideological or spiritual motivations for the design and construction of La Venta's Massive Offerings and Mosaic Pavements by looking through the lens of contemporary Mixe ritual practice and shamanic cosmology. The Mixe are probably the linguistic descendants of the Gulf Coast Olmecs. Using these two lines of analysis, the paper advances several related proposals. It argues that the La Ventans planned Complexes A and C (the designations for the ceremonial court containing the Massive Offerings and other deposits and for the big mound) to replicate the topography of the region important to La Venta as a source of materials and food and, by extension, of knowledge. It specifically correlates the Massive Offerings, Mosaic Pavements, and almond-eyed supernaturals on stelae at the foot of Mound C to the principal “supernatural reality configurations” of the contemporary Mixe. Furthermore, it contextualizes the problem of shamanism by arguing that these supernaturals were not “gods” but sources of shamanic power and that the many buried offerings at La Venta are best seen as similar to aspects of Mixe ritual, which they call “work of the earth.” Finally, the paper reconsiders the existence of “gods” among the Olmecs, concluding that a more appropriate way to express their notions of the sacred is that they conceived supernaturals as meta-cosmological or meta-meteorological forces.