Nahua Diaspora and Cacao

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A significant amount of archaeological evidence demonstrates that Late Postclassic Mesoamericans exchanged cacao intensively and over long distances. A reason for high-volume cacao commerce in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the expansion of its use from a ritual offering and the ingredient in socially important foods and beverages to a commodity money, as well. Although most anyone could grow some cacao, only a few places managed to grow and process cacao at a high enough volume to satisfy common exchange across Mesoamerica; those places were strongly connected to Nahua populations embedded within regions inhabited by Maya and other Mesoamericans. This Nahua diasporic association is not just with cacao, but particularly high-volume and widely distributed cacao circulation above and beyond the reach of large political entities such as the Triple Alliance. This contribution will interrogate how roles in commodity production and circulation relate to processes of diaspora and identity formation and maintenance in the Late Postclassic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32126