The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership - Hardcover

The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, by Michael Coe, is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum December 1995 - June 1996. Between 1400 and 400 BC, in what is  now Mexico and Central America, the Olmec people created a magnificent  culture, one too often overshadowed by those of the Maya and the Aztec.  The exhibition featured over 250 Olmec works of art - ceramic, jade and  stone - and their images are captured in this book. Essays by prominent  scholars offer interpretations of such topics as the power of objects  within the context of the Olmec ritual system. These identify and  illustrate the fundamental themes of Olmec small-scale sculpture, the  sacred role of the maize in Olmec ideology, and the relationship of  Olmec culture to later civilizations. An illustrated glossary of motifs  and symbols is provided to clarify the often highly abstract style and  encoded iconography of the Olmec. The book also includes precise  mineralogical de