Making money in Mesoamerica: Currency production and procurement in the Classic Maya financial system

Abstract

The material nature of money has always been at the core of debates about its early development and its role in socioeconomic relationships. Archaeology can contribute to these debates through its attention to the material world, its long‐term perspective, and its examination of diverse contexts in which money has been used. In this article, I examine the early monetization of cacao beans and cotton textiles among the Classic Maya (250–900 CE). I argue that these products, originally valued for their use in status display, took on monetary functions within a context of expanding marketplaces among rival Maya kingdoms. As a result of this monetization, cacao and textiles could be used to finance more state activities and household needs. In response, political regimes and their subjects devoted more labor and resources to the acquisition of these products and circulated new discourses justifying this acquisition. I conclude that money's value in social relationships is not shaped by its materiality alone but by practices and discourses that frame specific material properties as valuable; through historical processes that move these value‐laden materials into new social contexts; and through the reframing of the relationships and motivations of those who produce, circulate, and consume them.

Assessing Classic Maya multi-scalar household inequality in southern Belize

“…In the Maya region, highly crafted prestige goods and valued raw materials were distributed through exchange networks [ 109 – 111 ] that linked the powerful polities in the western Maya area, including the Central Petén [ 10 ] and along the Usumacinta River [ 103 , 107 , 112 ]. Although glyphic texts provide few direct indications that Maya polities in the east participated in these principal alliance and exchange networks [ 113 ], evidence for long distance political connections nonetheless exists for some eastern Maya polities including those in southern Belize [ 56 , 59 , 106 ].…”

“…Historically, cloth products including mats and huipiles were traded to southern Belize by merchants and cacao was exported [ 69 ]. For the Classic Maya, Baron [ 56 ] points to southern Belize as an intensive cacao producing region, where networked principals hosted foreign merchants and exported cacao. Cacao served both as a ritual beverage of symbolic value and as a currency throughout Mesoamerica [ 118 ].…”

“…Although interconnected with the larger Classic Maya world, these two rural polities in the Rio Blanco watershed of southern Belize nonetheless were spatially removed from larger and more populous polities, such as Tikal, Calakmul, and Caracol, in the heartland of the Maya region [ 10 ]. Although Uxbenká, Ix Kuku’il, and other polities in southern Belize, are located 150 kilometers from the Classic Maya heartland of the central Petén, they were unambiguously connected to the political economies of more central regions and polities, such as Tikal and El Perú in the Central Petén, Cahal Pech in western Belize, and Copan and Quirigua in the southeastern periphery [ 56 – 59 ].…”

Salt and marine products in the Classic Maya economy from use-wear study of stone tools

“…Salt cakes may have been used to facilitate trade transactions by the Classic Maya, who used textiles and cacao beans as currency equivalencies ( 7 , 31 – 33 ). Production of standardized salt cakes for trade at marketplaces in different communities has a long antiquity in the Maya highlands and elsewhere ( 10 , 12 , 13 ).…”

Finance beyond function: Three causal explanations for financialization

“…OPE sees financialization as the product of political struggle between, against, and among state and financial elites. Baron (2018) demonstrates that the expansion of financial logics can very well happen in noncapitalist societies. The monetization of cacao beans and cotton textiles in the Classic Maya empire (250-900 CE), for instance, was directly connected to struggles for political power and imperial expansion.…”