Abstract
The article examines the examples of rock art surviving in Mexico and Guatemala where the iconography includes features of the ‘Olmec style’. The chronological and geographical extension of these painted images on rock outcrops and inside caves, as well as the canonical set of elements of the “Olmec style” are considered. The open-air site “Diablo Rojo” on Lake Amatitlan (Guatemala) is compared with rock paintings from the caves of Juxtlahuaca, Oxtotitlan and Cacahuaziziqui (Guerrero, Mexico), located almost 800 kilometers. The article represents the results of comparing of the data of comparative iconographic and radiocarbon analysis. The development of the iconographic tradition and the formation of the drawing canon become evident in the analysis of rock paintings that have embodied the search for means of artistic expression and important mythological subjects for those who inhabited these lands more than three thousand years ago. Such iconographic motifs are under consideration as kinds of headdresses, typical for the Olmec culture, the elements of an image of a human face (the section of the eyes, the corners of the mouth, pointing downwards), and the most common type of monumental Olmec sculpture – ‘the man in the niche’. The focus of the study is rock art with elements of ‘Olmec iconography’ that are found outside the range of Olmec culture. The authors of the article question the reasons for the creation of such monuments in the territories so remote from the homeland of the Olmec. We argue that one of the possible ways of transferring iconographic motifs is the development of trade relations between the Olmec and remote regions of contemporary Guerrero and Amatitlan.
Keywords
Rock art, iconography, Olmec art, pre-Columbian archaeology, Mesoamerica
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