"Commodification", Exchange, and Changes in Maya Political Economy on the Eve of the Classic Maya Collapse

Summary

Initial hypotheses on the port gateway city of Cancuen envisioned it functioning within a “normal” Classic Maya economy, albeit with a particular emphasis on import/export of sacred goods, (e.g. jade, pyrite, probably quetzal feathers). After 15 years of excavation and intensive lithic and ceramic studies, however, it appears that after 760 A.D. Cancuen shifted to a different form of economy almost entirely based on commodities production and long-distance exchange. Evidence demonstrates massive obsidian importation, processing, and exportation, yet with little consumption at Cancuen outside of its peninsular epicenter. After 786/790, jade preforms were produced there but treated as a standard commodity, not a sacred nor inalienable good, and jade preforms were for export with remarkably little local consumption in any area of the city. These seemingly counter-intuitive patterns are actually the norm in economics with change in the value and even ideological significance of many commodities along the chain of extraction, production, and exchange systems. The “commodification” of even jade and the distributional evidence on architecture, ceramics, and lithics in the 760-800 period also fit common patterns of control of commodities by elite merchants and suggest changes in political economy that may have profound implications for the “Classic Maya Collapse”.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Nuts and Bolts of the Real "Business" of Ancient Maya Exchange (Part 1)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage