E-Groups and the Origins of Ancient Maya Exchange
Author(s): James Doyle
Year: 2016
Summary
Many communities in the Maya Lowlands began when residents banded together to create E-Groups by leveling bedrock, paving over large plazas, and building modest pyramidal architecture. This presentation traces the spread of E-Groups after 700 BC as a product of two trends: the replication of a primordial place characterized by solar movement and a central living mountain, and the social and commercial gathering of peoples to exchange goods and ideas on a regular basis. The people producing and exchanging things in E-Group communities built their practices into the architecture of the E-Group itself. The physical remnants of activities such as freshwater shell consumption, lithic biface reduction, and solid figurine making was purposefully deposited in the fill of buildings to imbue them with the lifeblood of exchange. Potters in the Middle and Late Preclassic periods (e.g., Mamom and Chicanel spheres) clearly shared information over vast distances, perhaps by traveling to and from different E-Group gatherings, judging by similar paste recipes, formal changes and surface decoration techniques. E-Groups, then, can be viewed as the matrix from which Maya Lowland exchange arose and flourished during the time of the Classic divine rulers.
Cite this Record
E-Groups and the Origins of Ancient Maya Exchange. James Doyle. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Orlando, Florida. 2016 ( tDAR id: 403015)
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Keywords
General
Maya
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Mesoamerica
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Preclassic Period
Geographic Keywords
Mesoamerica
Spatial Coverage
min long: -107.271; min lat: 12.383 ; max long: -86.353; max lat: 23.08 ;