Ancient Maya Embedded Economies
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Economies are embedded within the sociopolitical dynamics of society, thus providing a lens through which to study broader organizational frameworks. In this session, we examine the entanglement of economies with political, social, and religious practices to understand integration processes of the ancient Maya. The organization of ancient Maya economies has been a subject of much debate and discussion. Many early studies focused on the dichotomization of elite and non-elite economies and the ways in which economies legitimate hierarchies. Economic activities can function to create such divisions and it is important to understand how they do so. More recently, scholars have turned to question how economic networks crosscut socioeconomic and political boundaries, placing an emphasis on integration processes. Through utilizing both approaches, we can gain more nuanced understandings of interaction networks that in turn affect understandings of the broader organizational principles of the ancient Maya. Papers in this session utilize diverse datasets from multiple regions of the Maya world to provide a comparative perspective.
Other Keywords
Maya: Classic •
Lithic Analysis •
Political economy •
Craft Production •
Archaeometry & Materials Analysis •
Market •
Mortuary Analysis •
Households •
Trade and exchange •
historical ecology
Geographic Keywords
United Mexican States (Country) •
Belize (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
Peten (State / Territory) •
Yucatan (State / Territory) •
Orange Walk (State / Territory) •
Cayo (State / Territory) •
Corozal (State / Territory) •
Belize (State / Territory) •
Stann Creek (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)
- Documents (8)
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Chocolate, Manioc, and Maize: Kante’t’u’ul and Chachaklu’um in Motul de San José’s Realm (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Between 2013 and 2015, the Periphery of Motul de San José Archaeological Project conducted fieldwork at two subsidiary sites, Kante’t’u’ul and Chachaklu’um, located within 5 km of Motul de San José, the primary Late Classic center in this zone along the northern shore of Lake Peten Itza. Paleoethnobotanical and chemical residue analyses have highlighted...
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Economic Integration across Political Boundaries in Highland Chiapas (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the integration of small polity economies in highland Chiapas, and the ways in which polity size and proximity were factors. This region formed part of the western frontier of the Maya linguistic and cultural area, and has been characterized as a relatively autonomous economic and political periphery. Beginning in the Late Classic...
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Economy and Sociopolitical Change at Classic Period Carcol, Belize (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maya economic systems were neither static nor simplistic. Research at Caracol, Belize, has shown that the site’s Late Classic inhabitants received the bulk of their goods and services from markets that were embedded within the city. Whereas some researchers have postulated the existence of a dual economic system for the Maya in which quotidian and...
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Embedded Ancient Maya Economies (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient economies are intertwined with aspects of the daily life of individuals in both market and premarket economies. To more fully understand these relationships, we must explore the ways in which economic actions are embedded and entangled within social, political, and religious practices. We briefly discuss the history of the term and how we utilize...
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Exploring the Economic Sphere of Prestige Items through the Lens of Ancient Maya Greenstone Mosaic Masks (300–750 CE) (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With the aim of exploring the economic system surrounding prestige Maya items during precolumbian times, we present research focused on greenstone mosaic masks (GMM) found in funerary precincts of high elite individuals in the Guatemalan Maya Lowlands. Through microarchaeological analyses of a select number of tesserae (n = 249) that form sections of 13...
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Grinding It Out: Ancient Maya Embedded Economies and Changing Ground Stone Densities in Households at Actuncan, Belize (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Classic Maya economies, artifact distributions alone do not neatly reflect modes of production and exchange. The simultaneous existence of multiple modes of production (domestic, specialized, ritualized, etc.) and exchange (gift giving, tribute extraction, and markets) in households complicate our understanding of the strength of any given aspect. We...
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The Maya Economy: Dual? Integrated? Embedded? Or All of the Above? (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we argue that the complexity of Maya economic structures and the debates that ensue over their interpretation stem from the fact that manifestations of those economic structures vary so greatly across time and space in the precolumbian Maya world. Maya economies were both dichotomized along elite and commoner lines, while also integrated in...
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Stone Goods and the Organization of Late Classic Period Regional Economies of the Middle Usumacinta River Region (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Embedded Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we present the results of the analysis of nearly 42,000 chert and obsidian artifacts from sites in the Middle Usumacinta River region to examine economic production and exchange at the level of the polity. Our study includes a range of household and non-household contexts, revealing entanglements of the lithic economy within the...