Excerpt from Excavations at La Venta Tabasco, 1955 Through the generosity of the National Geographic Society, funds were made available to undertake the project. Melvin M. Payne, senior assistant secretary of the National Geographic Society, has been, from the beginning of the work through the completion of this report, most helpful, and a large measure Of credit must go to him. The University of California and the Smithsonian Institution con tributed to the project, chiefly in the form of scientific personnel and equipment. We were able to work at La Venta from mid-january to the latter part of May 1955. The actual excavations were carried on from the beginning Of February to mid-may; the initial 2 or 3 weeks were devoted to building camp and clearing the jungle from the part of the site we intended to work in; the last couple of weeks were devoted to filling in our excavations and to breaking camp. Technical personnel included, in addition to Drucker and Heizer, who were in charge of operations, Ing. Eduardo Contreras, assistant archeologist of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, and Robert J. Squier, research assistant in archeology, Uni versity of California. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.