the origins of Mesoamerican civilization began. Blom and La Farge did not use the term Olmec; it was Hermann Beyer who named this newly discovered culture in a review of their report.

Beyer investigated Mesoamerican iconography and writing systems during the 1920s and 1930s and was the liaison between Mexican and German anthropologists. In 1919, he founded the important Journal El Mexico Antiguo, and between 1919 and 1924, he taught archaeology at Mexico’s National Museum.

Beyer’s outstanding student, the young lawyer Alfonso Caso, soon became a central influence on Mexican archaeologists in terms of both his investigations and his work as director of government institutes and programs (Bernal 1979). From his first fieldwork at Tizatlan, Tlaxcala, in 1927, Caso had an intense interest in many fields of archaeology and anthropology. He produced a major study of Zapotec stelae in 1928, and in 1930, he started his project at Monte Albán and other sites in Oaxaca, work that lasted eighteen field seasons with the collaboration of jorge acosta, ignacio bernal garcia, Eulalia Guzman, Anna Shepard, and others. The work at Monte Albán became one of the most important government projects of this period, and Caso was soon famous for his discovery of a Mixtec treasure in Tomb 7 at Monte Albán. The project included the exploration and restoration of many of the principal buildings on Monte Albán’s main plaza along with surveys and excavations of other centers in the valley of Oaxaca. By the late 1930s, this research had produced one of the first detailed regional chronologies and ceramic sequences in Mesoamerica, although the final publication of these results came only years later (Caso and Bernal 1952; Caso, Bernal, and Acosta 1967).

During the 1920s and 1930s, Caso began his significant studies of ancient writing and codices in Oaxaca and related investigations of religion and calendar systems. Like Gamio, the numerous contributions of Caso to anthropology go beyond archaeological investigation. He was the founder and first director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (1939), director of the National Institute of Indigenous Groups, president of the National University, and a federal government cabinet minister (España Caballero 1987). Despite these bureaucratic duties, his academic production was vast, and several books on Mixtec codices have been published based on manuscripts Caso completed before his death in 1970.

The use of stratigraphic excavations to establish ceramic sequences and basic chronologies for Mexico’s major regions was the major concern of archaeologists during the 1930s. For central Mexico, the most important cultural sequences were proposed by Vaillant and Noguera. Vaillant’s work is still very influential although his premature death prevented him from publishing reports of all his excavations. Many of the ceramic type and cultural phase names he presented in syntheses (Vaillant 1938, 1941) are still in use, and his publications concerning central Mexican formative sites are of very high quality. He was perhaps the first archaeologist to identify Olmec traits in some highland formative cultures.

Noguera worked in numerous areas, especially Puebla, the basin of Mexico, and western Mexico, and produced publications about ceramics and chronology. He eventually wrote the only general summary of ceramic sequences for Mesoamerica (Noguera 1967). Another important synthesis of cultural chronologies for the central highlands was published in 1975 by Krickeberg using both ethnohistorical and archaeological data.

Sigvald Linne of the Ethnographical Museum of Stockholm directed an important program during the 1930s to define the principal area of influence of the Teotihuacán state by excavating at Teotihuacán, Calpulalpan, and other highland centers. His work marked a considerable advance over the previous studies of this problem by Seler and others. Linne did some detailed excavations of very large Teotihuacán residences in two sectors of the ancient city called Xolalpan and Tlamimilolpa.

The Mexican government sponsored excavation and restoration projects at the Aztec period centers of Malinalco and Calixtlahuaca in the state of México (García Payón 1936, 1939) and at Tzintzuntzan, Michoacán, the capital of the Tarascan people (Rubin de la Borbolla 1941). It