Money Grows on Trees: Arboricultural Proxies and Engendering Ancient Maya Finance

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Entangled Legacies: Human, Forest, and Tree Dynamics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Among the Classic and Postclassic period Maya, cacao beans were one of the most common forms of currency. Ancient Maya art depicts this money, which grows on trees, as tribute in courtly scenes most often populated by men. Yet contact period ethnohistoric documents consistently attribute ownership of trees to women. While contemporary cacao groves are limited to the wetter southern Maya Lowlands and Pacific coast, geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical data sets have recently confirmed the cultivation of cacao in depressions in the drier Northern Lowlands. This paper uses Northern Lowland lidar data to explore the Classic period spatial relationship between domestic settlement and relic cacao groves and the Postclassic period relationship between rainfall and the size and configuration of plots of land that may have been used for arboriculture. The results invite consideration of how gender intertwined with state finance and market exchange.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Entangled Legacies: Human, Forest, and Tree Dynamics   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38274.0