Las Bocas

Las Bocas is a minor archaeological site in the Mexican state of Puebla, whose name has become attached, often erroneously, to a wide-ranging type of Olmec-style figurines and pottery.

The Las Bocas site, part of the Balsas River basin, was heavily plundered in the 1960s by looters looking for "Olmec" pottery and figurines.

[1] The high numbers of artifacts attributed to the site are "implausible at best",[2] and as a result, the term "Las Bocas" has now little archaeological significance.

[3] The second field season was intended to yield a general overview of the contexts of the Las Bocas site, and to determine areas to be explored later.

Several ceramic pieces were found during the third field season of Paillés Hernández; these dated from as early as the Ayotla phase (1250-1000 B.C.)

They were only claimed to have been found on the site by those who sold them on the art market contemporaneously with the occurrences of looting at Las Bocas.

An archetypical baby-face figurine from Las Bocas.
An Olmec-style bottle, reputedly from Las Bocas, 1100 - 800 BCE.