Early Preclassic

Refers generally to the period from approximately 2000 BCE to 1000 BCE in ancient Olmec and Maya cultures in Mesoamerica. In pottery and ceramics, the period features ground stone vessels, ranging from roughly made manos and metates (rubbing and grinding stones) to delicately styled flat-bottomed bowls, small pyrite and ilmenite mirrors, and small drilled blocks. The lapidary styles include beads, pendants, ear ornaments, clam shell-shaped objects, petaloid celts and celt-shaped tablets. Jewelry primarily featured pure bluish or translucent jadeite with dark emerald tinges. In architecture, the period is associated with simple huts that served domestic, communal, or religious purposes; however, simple pyramidal structures begin to develop.