Changing Patterns of Production and Exchange in "Borderland" Economies: The Case of the Classic Maya Civilization

Summary

Following the trajectory of the work of Rita Wright, recent research has focused on production, producers, and exchange in a "borderland" zone, the "frontier" between Classic Maya lowland city-states and less complex, but more diverse, polities of the resource-rich highlands to the south. These "borderland" studies led to insights concerning exchange, production, and the roles of elite managers and non-elite "labor". Archaeologists and economists examined the material culture of dozens of sites to assess changing borderland partnership networks. This evidence revealed innovations in management and production strategies. Those innovations led rapidly to spectacular wealth, yet growing inequality, in a new economic system, while more conservative central lowland Maya states to the north were declining.

As in Wright’s approach, this material culture history of these "borderlands" provided a foundation for application of social and economic theory including Innovation Network theories and Network Failure theories from economics. This research is directed upward to examine the "big picture" of changing state economic structure and "downward" to identify the agents and forms of agency involved. This work confirms Wright’s conviction that borderlands production and its agents and material products provide keys to understanding ancient economic systems and the people that acted within them.

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): 22055