The travels of Maya merchants in the ninth and tenth centuries AD: investigations at Xuenkal and the Greater Cupul Province, Yucatan, Mexico (original) (raw)
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Anchored in archaeological, bioarchaeological, and chemical research conducted at the coastal enclave of Xcambo, this paper examines Classic period Maya coastal saline economic production and exchange, along with the lifestyle, ethnicity, and mobility of the traders. Nestled in the coastal marshlands of the northern Yucatan, Mexico, Xcambo functioned as a salt production center and port during its occupation, maintaining long-reaching ties with other parts of the Maya world and Veracruz. Considered together, the different data sets document a reorientation in Xcambo’s exchange routes and connections, which are echoed by increasingly diverse cultural affiliations and an increasing geographic mobility of Xcambo’s merchants. This new information confirms the known pattern of gradually intensifying, though still relatively independent, trade dynamics along the Maya coast in the centuries leading up to the so-called “Maya collapse” and the rise of a new merchant league under the control of Chichen Itza. It was this new order that probably led to the swift end of Xcambo soon after a.d. 700.
Data from the previous chapter suggest that the agricultural potential of the Chunchucmil Economic Region (CER) fell short of being able to feed the large population of Chunchucmil and its neighbors. Carbon isotope analysis of the bones from a limited sample (n = 5) of burials from residential groups suggests that Chunchucmil residents were relying less on maize than residents at Yaxuná in the central portion of the Yucatán Peninsula, or inhabitants of sites in Belize and the Petén region (Mansell et al. 2006). We believe, however, that alternative foods did not entirely make up the dietary shortfall. Both regular and fine screening of excavated contexts failed to recover bones from fish or game. However, it is common practice among fishermen and hunters in Yucatán to butcher their catch or game at or near the site of the catch or kill, which would severely limit the presence of faunal remains in dietary evidence. This will be discussed further below. Paleoethnobotanical analyses have been limited (see Hutson 2004:122-125), including phytolith analysis of soil samples from two domestic contexts and a pilot macrobotanical study that did not produce useful results. The phytolith analysis revealed evidence of maize and beans, but little clear evidence of other foods. We propose that the people of Chunchucmil acquired additional food by trading with people beyond the CER. We discuss sources of this food in chapter 13 but for now we state merely that food would have been coming from the east, between 30 and 100 km away; not a short distance but shorter than the proposed maximum distances that food could be moved on foot before becoming too costly (Cowgill
Ancient Maya Commerce : Multidisciplinary Research at Chunchucmil
It seems that research at Chunchucmil began only yesterday, but it actually goes back more than forty years. The first anthropologist to visit the ruins of Chunchucmil was Salvador Rodríguez Losa, in the early to mid-1970s. At the time he was the director of the Escuela de Ciencias Antropológicas of the University of Yucatán, and he showed his sketch map of the site to Silvia garza Tarazona de gonzález, Edward Kurjack, and David vlcek (vlcek, garza Tarazona de gonzález, and Kurjack 1978:223). garza Tarazona de gonzález and Kurjack were then directing the project "Atlas Arqueológico del Estado de Yucatán, " and vlcek was conducting surveys for the project. This was a statewide archaeological survey conducted from 1974 until 1980, when garza Tarazona de gonzález and Kurjack published a compilation of the survey data in two volumes of text and maps. Several airphotos and a preliminary airphoto-based map of Chunchucmil were included in volume 1 (garza Tarazona de gonzález and Kurjack 1980:31-35, figures 7-10). As an urban center, Chunchucmil was considered one of the most important "finds" of the Atlas project, and is discussed in several sections of volume 1. After examining air photos of the site, vlcek and Kurjack visited Chunchucmil in 1975, and quickly realized its importance as a dense urban settlement. They asked Norberto gonzález, then director of the Centro Regional del Sureste of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, if he would support a mapping project, which he did. The purpose of the project was to obtain a detailed map of a residential sector of the city, which included the foundations of houses and other Domingo, and Coahuila-and to a landowner from the town of Halacho. The people from these ejidos who gave us the most help are Maestro gualberto Tzuc Mena (Chunchucmil), Rosalino Camal (Chunchucmil), Esteban Uh (Chunchucmil),
This paper explores a particular ceramic type, Vista Alegre Striated, an assumed locally produced utilitarian cooking vessel, recovered at the coastal Maya site of Vista Alegre during the Terminal Classic period (AD 800-1100). This study investigates the variations present within this type and how these differences inform production practices at the site and in the region. I use a three-point comparison of recovery locations: a pit feature at the site representing a single depositional episode, intrasite recovery locations, and a regional sample. Through these analyses I highlight various diversities in rim formations that suggest a diversity of producers over time.
In The Value of Things: Prehistoric to Contemporary Commodities in the Maya Region, ed. by Jennifer P. Mathews and Thomas H. Guderjan, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2017
During the last third of the twentieth century, traditional ceramic production in Ticul Yucatan, Mexico, changed greatly from pottery made exclusively for Maya household consumers to that made largely for tourists, and tourist hotels in Mérida and Cancun. This paper explores the factors behind the changes in ceramic production from a traditional craft making pottery for Maya households to a craft devoted to making pottery for commercial production and sale.
Commerce and Cooperation among the Classic Maya
In 1971, William Rathje provided one of the first systematic models of longdistance exchange for the lowland Maya. Beginning from a then prominent cultural ecology paradigm that held that complex societies emerged only in areas with environmental heterogeneity, Rathje attempted to explain how the ancient Maya produced an illustrious civilization in an apparently homogeneous and resource-poor environment. Rathje argued that because scarce resources such as salt, obsidian blades, and basalt for grinding stones were located far away, individual households could not acquire them on their own. Instead, households cooperated. They banded together to organize production of surpluses for exchange and to outfit long-distance trade expeditions. Such cooperation provided the necessary and sufficient conditions for the emergence not only of social and political complexity, but also of Maya religion. Though Rathje's model has been superseded, it generated a legacy of research on trade and political economy that runs strong today (see chapters in Masson and Freidel 2002). If there is a place in the Maya lowlands where fragments of Rathje's model may still work, it is the northwest tip of the Yucatán Peninsula. Here, the ancient Maya faced thin soils and scarce rainfall (Leyden et al. 1996), but populated several massive sites, such as Chunchucmil, the largest Early Classic period city in this corner of the peninsula (figure 1). The Pakbeh Regional Economy Program has sought to understand how Chunchucmil thrived at the end of the Early Classic period (A.D. 400-600; Dahlin 2003). This research has led to the proposal that survival depended on long-distance exchange. In this chapter, we focus on the durable evidence for long-distance trade and how trade goods were distributed at Chunchucmil. Though other nearby centers such as Komchen and Dzibilchaltún are also understood to have depended on 10_460_06_Ch04.indd 81 10_460_06_Ch04.indd 81 7/15/10 8:45 AM 7/15/10 8:45 AM Figure 4.1. Map of the Maya area showing possible Classic period overland and Gulf Coast trade routes for El Chayal obsidian
Belize Red Ceramics and Their Implications for Trade and Exchange in the Eastern Maya Lowlands
2012
Various models for Maya exchange have been advanced. Many are predicated on long-distance exchange, but local exchange can also be identified in the archaeological record. Trade routes have been charted based on presumed access routes through landscapes and on the distribution of certain resources. While we agree that water-based river and sea trade routes were widely used throughout Maya prehistory, there also must have been overland portage and land-based trade routes. The successes of both Calakmul, and Tikal have been ascribed to their positions on key portage routes running from east to west. More recently, an east-west land-based route has been suggested for the northern flank of the Guatemalan Highlands. Resource-based models identify concentrations of key raw materials and examine the eventual distributions of products. Thus, salt was obtained from sea coasts and shipped inland. Obsidian was acquired from the Guatemalan Highlands and from central Mexico. Granite, slate, and shale were secured from the Maya Mountains. Shells derived from both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Finished products were also extensively traded both locally and at a distance. In this paper, we look at the interface between long-distance and local trade and exchange with regard to Belize Red ceramics, suggesting that the distribution of this pottery reflects both an eastwest riverine-portage route and a land-based north-south route circumventing the Maya Mountains in an extensive trading system that was largely controlled by Caracol, Belize.