La Venta

La Venta is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Olmec civilization located in the present-day Mexican state of Tabasco [1]. La Venta was a civic and ceremonial center [1]. As a ceremonial center, La Venta contains an elaborate series of buried offerings and tombs, as well as monumental sculptures [1]. Complex C, "The Great Pyramid," is the central building in the city layout, is constructed almost entirely out of clay, and is visible from a distance [1]. One of the earliest pyramids known in Mesoamerica, the Great Pyramid is 110 ft (34 m) high and contains an estimated 100,000 cubic meters of earth fill [1]. Seventeen colossal heads have been unearthed in the Olmec area, four of them at La Venta, officially named Monuments 1 through 4 [1]. Frans Blom and Oliver La Farge made the first detailed descriptions of La Venta during their 1925 expedition, sponsored by Tulane University [1]. La Venta was first excavated by Matthew Stirling and Philip Drucker between 1940 and 1943, resulting in several articles by Stirling and in 1952 a two-volume monograph by Drucker [1].