Las Bocas

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An archetypical baby-face figurine from Las Bocas.
© Aimee W, used with permission.

An Olmec-style bottle, reputedly from Las Bocas, 1100 - 800 BCE.

Las Bocas is a minor archaeological site in the Mexican state of Puebla, whose name has become attached, often erroneously, to a wide-ranging type of Olmec-style figurines and pottery.

The Las Bocas site, part of the Balsas River basin, was heavily plundered in the 1960's by looters looking for "Olmec" pottery and figurines. As the prestige associated with "Las Bocas" artifacts grew, that label was given to many similar artifacts – and occasional forgeries – of unknown origin.^[1] The high numbers of artifacts attributed to the site are "implausible at best",^[2] and as a result, the term "Las Bocas" has now little archaeological significance.

The first systematic archaeological investigation of Las Bocas was begun by David Grove in 1967. In 1997, the archaeologist Maria de la Cruz Paillés Hernández started the first of her three seasons at the site.

[edit] Notes

^ Grove.
^ Pool, p. 210, who states that the plunder of Las Bocas is "one of the most egregrious examples of looting in the annals of Mesoamerican archaeology."

[edit] References

Grove, David C. (2000) "Bocas, Las (Puebla, Mexico)", in Archaeology of Ancient Mexico & Central America: an Encyclopedia; Routledge, London.
Paillés Hernández, Maria de la Cruz; "Las Bocas, Puebla, Archaeological Project", Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., accessed March 2007.
Pool, Christopher (2007) Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica, Cambridge University Press.