Epi-Olmec culture

The Epi-Olmec culture was a cultural area in the central region of the present-day Mexican state of Veracruz, concentrated in the Papaloapan River basin, a culture that existed during the Late Formative period, from roughly 300 BCE to roughly 250 CE. Epi-Olmec was a successor culture to the Olmec, hence the prefix "epi-" or "post-". Although Epi-Olmec did not attain the far-reaching achievements of that earlier culture, it did realize, with its sophisticated calendrics and writing system, a level of cultural complexity unknown to the Olmecs.

Tres Zapotes and eventually Cerro de las Mesas were the largest Epi-Olmec centers though neither would reach the size and importance of the great Olmec cities before them nor El Tajín after them. Other Epi-Olmec sites of note include El Mesón, Lerdo de Tejada, La Mojarra, Bezuapan, and Chuniapan de Abajo.

The rise of the Epi-Olmec culture on the western edge of the Olmec heartland coincides with the depopulation of the eastern half of the Olmec heartland and the decline of the Olmec culture in general. The Epi-Olmec culture represented a gradual transformation of, rather than a sharp break with, the Olmec culture. Many Olmec motifs, for example, were employed by its successor culture. Tres Zapotes, one of the largest Olmec sites, continued as a regional center under the Epi-Olmec culture. And daily life for the non-elites continued much the same: subsistence farming with opportunistic hunting and fishing, wattle-and-daub houses, thatched roofs, and bell-shaped storage pits.

On the other hand, the Late Formative period saw a widespread decline in trade and other interregional interaction throughout Mesoamerica, along with a marked decline in the use of exotic prestige items, such as greenstone beads. It has been proposed these exotic trade goods were replaced as prestige items by locally created luxury goods, such cotton cloth and towering headdresses. The decline in interregional interaction and trade was not uniform however: in particular, interaction with cultures across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec increased, and an increase in the import of obsidian has also been detected.

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