Preclassic thrones at La Venta : procession and communication within a cosmological landscape

Currently there are eight thrones at La Venta, marking the site as the largest repository of Olmec thrones. These large block style monuments differ stylistically from other Mesoamerican bench style thrones, but share fundamental function as objects of rulership validation. To date, Altars 4 and 5 have received much of the scholarly focus, creating the impression that they have greater importance within the corpus. This thesis analyses each throne equally within a cosmological landscape of La Venta's ceremonial core to demonstrate that the thrones, both individually and within their surrounding monument programs, functioned as a cohesive projection of rulership validation from within the multiple levels of restricted site access points.