Elite Maya Pottery and Artisans as Social Indicators

The Archaeology of Food and Social Diversity

“…Food and artifact status values are established using various criteria: texts, ethnohistory, iconography, rarity, exotic origin, contextual associations, diversity, labor-intensity of production and/or preparation, subjection to sumptuary restriction, periodicity, and/or simply inherent nutritional value (Bray 2003a;Crader 1990;Curet and Pestle 2010;DeFrance 2009, table 1;Goldstein and Hageman 2010;Grant 2002;Jackson and Scott 2003;Reents-Budet 1998;Sykes 2004, Thomas 2007van der Veen 2003). In historical contexts, price is often used to assess a food's ranking (Mylona 2008, pp.…”

Pottery politics: Late Classic Maya palace production at Motul de San José, Petén, Guatemala

“…As argued by Inomata (2001Inomata ( , 2007 and Reents-Budet (1998), the production of elaborate polychrome vessels were part and parcel of the production of prestigious political ideologies and identities of the Maya high elite. It was one of the ways in which elite artisans embodied esoteric knowledge of writing, aesthetic traditions, history, mythology, and technical-ritual procedures (Inomata, 2001(Inomata, , 2007Reents-Budet, 1998).…”

“…It was one of the ways in which elite artisans embodied esoteric knowledge of writing, aesthetic traditions, history, mythology, and technical-ritual procedures (Inomata, 2001(Inomata, , 2007Reents-Budet, 1998). As such, the productive process linked the prestigious identities of the producers to their work, materializing one layer of social memory and value that partly lent the objects their ability to work as political ''currency" in feasting activities, gift exchanges, and other processes of sociopolitical interaction (Reents-Budet, 1994, p. 132).…”

On Classic Maya political economies

“…147-148). Rulers are typically depicted in carvings and palace scenes painted on pottery (Reents-Budet, 1998 lavishly swathed in jade, shell, and feathers, revealing that they were consumers of inordinate quantities of exotic goods. Doubtless the right to wear certain kinds of objects was a badge of status; among nobles and priests, jade and other ornaments may have been analogous to the ''beads of knowledge" worn by ruwatu shamans in Venezuela.…”