This dissertation focuses on Preclassic Olmec society (ca. 1400--400 B.C.) within the Tabasco Coastal Plain of Mesoamerica. I develop a revised regional chronology for the Grijalva river delta, including the important Middle Preclassic city, La Venta, and present new data on settlement and landscape dynamics. My research fills major lacunae in our knowledge of the emergent complex polities that characterized the southern Gulf Coast region of Mexico during the first millennium B.C. I combine archaeological and geomorphological survey with archaeological testing and geological coring to obtain data on the nature of Olmec communities, their chronology, and their relation to on-going processes of delta evolution that are critical to the understanding of settlement and its regional cultural ecological and political economic bases. I explore theoretical issues, including the reconstruction of population, in the archaeology of delta landscapes. The focus of research is a study area encompassing the course of a major Grijalva delta paleodistributary, the Pajonal, characterized by Early and Middle Preclassic Olmec hamlets, villages, and site clusters. The Olmec elite site San Andres (Bari 1), located in the immediate periphery of La Venta on the Bari paleodistributary, provides key chronological and comparative data. I also discuss data from a second, superimposed paleodistributary, the Arenal, active during the Middle Classic period. The small riverine line towns and isolated homesteads stretching along its course provide new information on Late Classic and Postclassic Tabascan communities