Human Plunder: The Role of Maya Slavery in Postclassic and Early Conquest Era Yucatán, 1450-1550

Summary

Upon initial contact with the lowland Yucatec Maya, the Europeans discovered that a significant number of Maya slaves existed within the Maya communities that they encountered. War captives, orphans, and forced and enslaved sexual servants from the lower classes, Maya slaves and their possession became by the late Postclassic and early colonial period the major source of wealth and power of the traditional Maya Nobility. Divorced from control over specified traditional patrimonial landholdings (which many recent scholars have shown did not exist for the precontact Yucatec Maya), and alientated from most other sources of wealth, Maya slaves and forced servitude became transformed into the most important system of patrimonial wealth and power for the Maya nobility. This paper will examine the political economy of Postclassic Maya slavery, its scale, nature and cultural practices in an attempt to understand the political and economic impact of indigenous slavery, and the continued role that Maya slaves and slavery played in the early development of the conquest credit system that led to the financing of the expeditions of conquest organized by the conqueror Francisco de Montejo and his family in Yucatan (1527-1545).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22733