Late Classic (A.D. 600–900) Maya Market Exchange: Analysis of Figurines from the Motul de San José Region, Guatemala

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

“…For example, duplicates have been recovered in the production debris associated with ceramic pit firing features at the site of Ejutla, Oaxaca, (Feinman, 1999, p. 92) and in the production debris associated with an updraft kiln from the site of Tula (Hernández et al, 1999, p. 77). The close association of figurine production with that of polychrome vessels is further supported in their overlapping paste recipes detected in INAA and petrography analyses (Halperin et al, 2009).…”

“…Thus, while political-elites likely controlled the distribution of some ''palace-school" products, they are thought to have had little influence in the production and exchange of the bulk of the ceramics used within most households (Freter, 1996;Fry, 1979Fry, , 1980Fry and Cox, 1974;Rands and Bishop, 1980). Elites, however, may have held some role in organizing regional markets or central places where goods exchange took place (Dahlin et al, 2010(Dahlin et al, , 2007Freidel, 1981;Halperin et al, 2009;Rice, 2009b;West, 2002).…”

Ancient Maya Commerce : Multidisciplinary Research at Chunchucmil

“…Using the distributional approach at Motul de San José, guatemala, Halperin et al (2009) believe that figurines were exchanged at centralized marketplaces that took place as part of fairs that drew people from a radius of up to 32 km. Moderate accumulations of chemical residues associated with markets in Motul's main plazas and the lack of a space with dedicated market features (e.g., stalls) support the pilgrimage-fair model (Freidel 1981).…”

“…We do, however, believe that our findings at Chunchucmil join the results of other studies in forcing a revision not just of our understanding of ancient Maya economies, but of ancient Maya life as a whole. As work at sites such as Tikal ( Jones 1996( Jones , 2015, Motul de San José (Halperin et al 2009), Caracol Chase 2004:118-119, 2014), El Perú/Waka' (Eppich and Freidel 2015), Trinidad de Nosotros , Calakmul (Carrasco vargas, vásquez López, andMartin 2009), Buenavista (Cap 2015), Mayapán (Masson and Freidel 2012;Masson and Peraza Lope 2014;Terry et al 2015), Cobá , Maax Na , Chichén Itzá (Braswell and glascock 2002;Cobos and Winemiller 2001:289), Palenque (Barnhart 2007:115), Xunantunich (Keller 2010), Lubaantun (Hammond 1972b, but see West 2002, Ceibal (Bair 2010), Quiriguá ( Jones and Sharer 1986), and elsewhere reveals the importance of market-based exchange, our models of political economy and social organization must change in order to accommodate these revelations. To the extent that Maya economies were embedded in the rest of Maya life-and recent work shows that economies were embedded to a great extent (McAnany 2010;Wells 2006)-new findings in the economic domain demand new thinking about other domains, including politics, ritual, and identity.…”

Circulation as Placemaking: Late Classic Maya Polities and Portable Objects

“…Most households in the Motul de San José region and other sites from Petén, Guatemala, did not produce their own figurines. They likely acquired them through some type of market or centralized distribution system (Halperin et al ). Although figurines likely had multiple life histories of movement, I argue that two important nodes of these movements were centrally located plazas or markets, where figurines may have been acquired and occasionally played as instruments, and household contexts, where figurines were most commonly animated, used, and ultimately discarded.…”