Archaeological excavations carried out during the past five years along the Pacific coast of Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador have recovered 79 new 14C dates for the Late Archaic and Early to Middle Formative periods. We analyze these new dates along with 25 previously published dates to refine a sequence of 10 archaeological phases spanning almost three and a half millennia, from ca. 4000 to 650 B.C. The phases are summarized with a brief description of their most salient characteristics. We include illustrations of the Early Formative period ceramics and figurines from the Mazatan region. The sequence of phases reveals a trajectory of cultural evolution beginning in the Archaic period with the mobile hunting, fishing, and gathering Chantuto people. By 1550 B.C., the first ceramic-using sedentary communities appeared on the coast of Chiapas. They were hunter-fisher-gatherers who supplemented their food supply with cultivated plants, including maize and beans. We suggest that by the Locona phase (1400–1250 B.C.) in Chiapas, they began the transition from egalitarian sociopolitical organization to simple chiefdoms, leaving behind evidence of large-scale architectural constructions, long-distance imports such as obsidian and jade, and elaborately crafted prestige goods. Also in Chiapas, during the Cherla phase (1100–1000 B.C.), ceramic and figurine styles, nearly identical to those found at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan on the Gulf Coast, made their first appearance. Many of the local artifact styles were gradually replaced by styles that became increasingly widespread in Mesoamerica. The chronology presented here shows that these changes were roughly contemporaneous with similar ones in neighboring regions of Mesoamerica.

The challenge in summing up the active life and productive career of any famous person is to put the important facts on record while steering a respectful path between hagiography and recitation of his curriculum vitae. We attempt to do this for our esteemed colleague and mentor, one of Mesoamerica's last originals, Gareth W. Lowe (Figure 1). With his death on March 8, 2004, in Tucson, Arizona, at age 82, Gareth left behind a legacy that reaches far beyond his well-deserved international reputation. Gareth spent 50 years of his life working in Mesoamerica, principally on the Formative period in Chiapas, Mexico. He first went to southern Mexico in 1953 as a crew member of the newly organized New World Archaeological Foundation (NWAF). Two years later, the NWAF was rescued by the sponsorship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and much later (in 1976) it became part of Brigham Young University. Gareth served two stints as NWAF field director (1956–1959, 1961–1975), basically as de facto director, and finally served officially as director from 1975 to 1987. In a real sense, Gareth was the NWAF, and its successes and agenda were largely his. The story of one cannot be understood without the other.

En este trabajo presentamos los resultados más sobresalientes de las investigaciones arqueológicas practicadas desde 1985 en el Soconusco, Chiapas, México...

This brief article on Preclassic-period art considers some recurrent themes and discusses some new approaches and recent finds. Specifically, it discusses chronology and the transition from the Archaic to Preclassic Period, and Olmec art. The Preclassic period is perhaps the true “florescent” era, at least for Mesoamerican civilization as a whole, given the appearance, development, and coalescence of arguably all of its major components and features long before Classic Maya civilization. Olmec art has captured scholarly and popular attention since the first report of a colossal Olmec head by Melgar (in 1871) and has since become a hallmark of Preclassic art. Olmec-style monuments, ceramics, portable greenstone art, and figurines have been widely reported throughout Mexico, and scholars have been writing about them since the early twentieth century.

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