Debt and Obligation in Ancient Maya Political Economies

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The notion of debt pervades anthropological discussion of political economy and exchange. Often used as a descriptor of unequal relationships it also embodies notions of reciprocity, expectation, and mutuality. Debt carries with it a charged negativity in many contexts, conveying experiences of precarity and violence, pressure and visibility. However, debt can be considered as an important tool in the production of social cohesion, the maintenance of relationships, and the reproduction of economic networks. Here debt will be discussed as a factor in the development of authority, the creation of stratified hierarchical relationships, and as a function in economies of reciprocity which characterize ancient communities.

This discussion aims to posit how we may incorporate anthropological notions of debt and embedded concepts of morality and sociality as a means to understand underlying factors in the social dynamics of hierarchical societies in the ancient past. Of particular import is the role social and economic indebtedness, and expectations of reciprocity, may have played in integrating the countryside surrounding major polities and mediated relationships with the hinterlands between ancient kingdoms.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33185