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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ANCIENT ECONOMIES
Realizing Value
in Mesoamerica
The Dynamics of Desire
and Demand in Ancient
Economies
Edited by
Scott R. Hutson · Charles Golden
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Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies
Series Editors
Paul Erdkamp, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Kenneth Hirth, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
Claire Holleran, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK
Michael Jursa, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Jaehwan Lee, Department of History, Chung-Ang University, Seoul,
Korea (Republic of)
William Guanglin Liu, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong
J. G. Manning, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Himanshu Prabha Ray, Gurugram, Haryana, India
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This series provides a unique dedicated forum for ancient economic
historians to publish studies that make use of current theories, models,
concepts, and approaches drawn from the social sciences and the discipline of economics, as well as studies that use an explicitly comparative
methodology. Such theoretical and comparative approaches to the ancient
economy promotes the incorporation of the ancient world into studies of
economic history more broadly, ending the tradition of viewing antiquity
as something separate or ‘other’.
The series not only focuses on the ancient Mediterranean world, but
also includes studies of ancient China, India, and the Americas pre-1500.
This encourages scholars working in different regions and cultures to
explore connections and comparisons between economic systems and
processes, opening up dialogue and encouraging new approaches to
ancient economies.
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Scott R. Hutson · Charles Golden
Editors
Realizing Value
in Mesoamerica
The Dynamics of Desire and Demand in Ancient
Economies
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Contents
1
Introduction: Realizing Value in Mesoamerica
Scott R. Hutson and Charles Golden
1
Part I Approaches to Value
23
2
Postclassic Maya Things and Their Entanglements
Marilyn A. Masson
3
Considering Reciprocity and Gratitude in Postclassic
Basin of Mexico Economies
Kristin De Lucia
51
Chronotopic Value: Objects and Meaning Through
Mesoamerican Timespace
Mallory E. Matsumoto
79
4
Part II Lithics and Land
5
Assembling Value in Mesoamerica
John K. Millhauser, Andrea Torvinen,
Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza, Camilo Mireles Salcedo,
and Ben A. Nelson
6
Toward an Understanding of Obsidian Values Among
the Ancient Maya Through a Comparative Approach
Zachary Hruby
109
139
v
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vi
CONTENTS
7
On Value and Values: The Displayed and Hidden
Action of Classic-Period Maya Jades
Brigitte Kovacevich and Michael Callaghan
8
Shifting Landscapes of Value in the Maya World
Charles Golden
163
201
Part III Crafting
9
10
11
Crafting Jewels, Creating Value: Techné
and Tlateccayotl among the Nahuas in the Basin
of Mexico
Emiliano Ricardo Melgar Tísoc
Cotton Thread Production, Communities of Practice,
and Value in Postclassic Oaxaca, Mexico
Marc N. Levine, Arthur A. Joyce, Femke J. Heijting,
Stacie M. King, and Pascale Meehan
Soft Infrastructure: Realizing Value of Craft
Producers in Small Centers and Settlements
in Veracruz, Mesoamerica
Alanna Ossa
221
247
277
Part IV Exchange
12
13
14
Exchange Value in Classic Period Maya Economies:
The View from Western Belize
Bernadette Cap, Rachel A. Horowitz, and Jason Yaeger
309
Magic and Marxism: Valuing Enchantment
in the Maya Political Economy
Eleanor Harrison-Buck and David A. Freidel
335
Classic Maya Tribute as a Social Register
Joanne Baron
361
Part V Inequality
15
Beyond Economic Inequality: Unmeasurable Values,
Collective Demand, and Community Building
in Classic Period Mesoamerica
Tatsuya Murakami
397
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CONTENTS
16
“Inequality of What?” Multiple Paths to the Good Life
Scott R. Hutson
Index
vii
425
447
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List of Contributors
Joanne Baron Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, USA
Michael Callaghan University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA
Bernadette Cap San Antonio College, San Antonio, TX, USA
Kristin De Lucia Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, USA
Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza Centro de Estudios Arqueológicos, El
Colegio de Michoacán, La Piedad, Michoacán, México
David A. Freidel Department of Anthropology, Washington University,
St. Louis, MO, USA
Charles Golden Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University,
Waltham, MA, USA
Eleanor Harrison-Buck Department of Anthropology, University of
New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA
Femke J. Heijting Independent Scholar, Huissen, Netherlands
Rachel A. Horowitz Anthropology Department, Washington State
University, Pullman, WA, USA
Zachary Hruby Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY,
USA
ix
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x
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Scott R. Hutson Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky,
Lexington, KY, USA
Arthur A. Joyce University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
Stacie M. King Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
Brigitte Kovacevich University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA
Marc N. Levine University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA
Marilyn A. Masson Department of Anthropology, University at Albany
SUNY, Albany, NY, USA
Pascale Meehan University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
Emiliano Ricardo Melgar Tísoc Museo del Templo Mayor, Ciudad de
México, Mexico
Mallory E. Matsumoto Department of Religious Studies, University of
Texas, Austin, TX, USA
John K. Millhauser Department of Sociology and Anthropology, North
Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
Tatsuya Murakami Department of Anthropology, Tulane University,
New Orleans, LA, USA
Ben A. Nelson School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona
State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Alanna Ossa State University of New York at Oswego, Oswego, NY,
USA
Camilo Mireles Salcedo Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Andrea Torvinen Florida Museum of Natural History, University of
Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
Jason Yaeger Anthropology Department, University of Texas, San
Antonio, TX, USA
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List of Figures
Fig. 1.1
Fig. 2.1
Fig. 2.2
Fig. 2.3
Fig. 2.4
Map of Mesoamerica showing major locations discussed
in this book
At Mayapan, translucent, higher quality chalcedony
raw materials used for tools and flakes concentrate
at high-status contexts (left), whereas commoner
domestic contexts (right) had greater proportions
of weathered, patinated material, as illustrated by these
narrow, pointed bifacial tools
A worn greenstone chisel (top left) and piece of raw
material (top right) accompanied central concentrations
of broken effigy censers, part of termination rites
at two buildings of a ceremonial group (Itzmal Ch’en)
at Mayapan; photos on the bottom row illustrate more
finely made jade objects at the group’s temple
Altar offerings at the Mayapan Itzmal Ch’en temple
(top) and at an elite residence at Caye Coco, Belize
(bottom) illustrate the symbolic importance of ordinary
or fragmented artifacts in a ritual context
An upper-status child burial at Mayapan House Q-40
was accompanied by a unique urn effigy vessel (top
left) and numerous metal and shell artifacts, including
the tweezers (top right), small metal and shell rings
(bottom left), and monkey effigy bell (bottom right)
5
27
29
31
36
xi
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xii
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 2.5
Fig. 2.6
Fig. 3.1
Fig. 3.2
Fig. 3.3
Fig. 4.1
Fig. 4.2
Fig. 4.3
Fig. 4.4
A perforated miniature mask (top left), three female
figurine head fragments, three animal figurine fragments,
and two bivalve pendants accompanied an upper-status
child burial at House Q-40, Mayapan
A Classic period K’awiil (God K) effigy scepter
was reused as an offering at the Postclassic site
of Laguna de On, Belize
Map of the Basin of Mexico with key sites relevant
to the text
Aztec merchants on the road (top) and selling their
wares (below). Florentine Codex, Book IX: The
Merchants, [Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana], World
Digital Library, https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.wdl/wdl.10620
Example of a household offering from Xaltocan Mexico.
A cut long bone and a tortoise shell are not included
in the photo (photograph by author)
Jade pendant from Piedras Negras that was recovered
from the Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza: (a) front view;
(b) side view; (c) reverse with hieroglyphic inscription.
Gift of C. P. Bowditch, 1910. Courtesy of the Peabody
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard
University, 10-70-20/C6100
Bottom fragment of Stela 4 from Piedras Negras,
showing K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II standing above two
captives with a large belt ornament on his waist.
Photograph by Teobert Maler. Courtesy of the Peabody
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard
University, 2004.29.7573
Bottom fragment of Stela 10 from Piedras Negras,
showing Itzam K’an Ahk IV sitting on a throne
affixed with a large belt ornament. Photograph
by Teobert Maler (1895), Piedras Negras II / El Petén,
Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut/Stiftung Preußischer
Kulturbesitz, CC-BY-NC
Stela 40 from Piedras Negras, showing Itzam K’an Ahk
IV wearing a large belt ornament on his back as he
scatters incense into the open tomb of a female ancestor:
(a) photo of carved scene; (b) detail of upper half. Gifts
of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1958. ©
President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody
Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 58-34-20/
68456.1 & 58-34-20/68459
37
40
53
54
70
85
87
89
90
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LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 4.5
Fig. 5.1
Fig. 6.1
Fig. 6.2
Fig. 7.1
Fig. 7.2
Fig. 7.3
Fig. 7.4
Fig. 7.5
Fig. 9.1
Fig. 9.2
Fig. 9.3
Stela 13 from Piedras Negras, showing Ha’ K’in Xook
scattering incense with a large belt ornament on his
waist. Photograph by Teobert Maler. Courtesy
of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology,
Harvard University, 2004.29.7561
Map of northern Mesoamerica with sites, regions,
and obsidian sources mentioned in the text. Digital
elevation model and historic air photos provided
courtesy of the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y
Geografía, Mexico
Map of the Maya area and the sites discussed in the text
A visual comparison of 3s blade width, thickness,
weight, and use-wear quotient between the sites
from the Peten discussed in the text
Map showing the location of Maya sites
and the Motagua Valley in Guatemala (Map by Brigitte
Kovacevich)
Jade Earflare (or headdress flare) from Cancuen (Photo
by Brigitte Kovacevich)
Jade flare polisher or abrader from Cancuen (Photo
by Brigitte Kovacevich)
Winged Plaque with carving of Olmec Maize God
on the obverse side from the Middle Formative period
with a Late Preclassic (100 BC–100 AD) incised scene
of a ruler with hieroglyphs on the reverse (Drawing
by Alexandre Tokovinine)
Reworked Maya Belt Plaque (Drawing by Alexandre
Tokovinine)
The archaeological zone of the Great Temple
of Tenochtitlan (Drawing by Victor Solís Ciriaco
and Emiliano Ricardo Melgar Tísoc)
Experimental archaeology workshop on lapidary objects:
(a) replicating a serpentine scepter on travertine; (b)
anthropomorphic figurine on slate (Photos by Emiliano
Ricardo Melgar Tísoc)
Examples of Tenochca imperial style objects: (a)
obsidian pectoral; (b) travertine scepters; (c) serpentine
sculpture; (d) turquoise mosaic (Photos by Emiliano
Ricardo Melgar Tísoc)
xiii
95
112
152
156
167
168
175
179
180
222
230
233
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xiv
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 9.4
Fig. 9.5
Fig. 10.1
Fig. 10.2
Fig. 10.3
Fig. 10.4
Fig. 11.1
Fig. 11.2
Fig. 11.3
Fig. 11.4
Fig. 11.5
Fig. 12.1
New materials identified in Tenochtitlan: (a) imperial
green jadeite; (b) blue jadeite; (c) fluorite; (d)
serpentine; (e) transparent gray obsidian; (f) jet (Photos
by Emiliano Ricardo Melgar Tísoc)
New relics and styles detected in Tenochtitlan: (a)
Olmec axe; (b) Mayan plaque; (c) Teotihuacan
noseplug; (d) Mezcala pendant (Photos by Emiliano
Ricardo Melgar Tísoc)
Lower Río Verde Region of Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico
Spindle whorls from the Lower Río Verde region
of Oaxaca. (a) Early Postclassic Yugüe phase whorls
from Río Viejo, Operation B, (b) Late Postclassic
Yucudzaa phase whorls from Tututepec, Residences A,
B, and C
Spindle whorls and mold from Tututepec household
excavations: (a–b) Assortment of whorl types; (c)
biconocial type whorls; (d) whorl mold with top, profile,
and bottom views (image at far right has biconical whorl
inserted into mold; mold images not to scale)
Distribution of Late Postclassic biconical whorls
along the Pacific coast of Oaxaca and Chiapas, with inset
images below from (a) Tututepec (Heijting, 2005); (b)
Copalita (Matadamas Díaz & Ramírez Barrera, 2010:
Fig. 29); (c) Acapetahua (Voorhies & Gasco, 2004:
Fig. 51, modified)
Map showing Sauce center and PALM and Speaker
survey blocks in south-central Veracruz, Mexico
Map showing SAP collections and sampling rings
Ordinal size groupings of individual mound volumes
weighted by their Postclassic pottery percentages
Spindle whorl counts and artifact associations by rings
from Sauce
High density summary visual analysis of pottery types
by rings from Sauce
Map of the Mopan River valley showing sites discussed
in the text
236
239
249
254
256
263
279
282
291
293
295
311
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LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 14.1
Fig. 14.2
Fig. 14.3
Fig. 14.4
Fig. 14.5
Fig. 14.6
Fig. 14.7
Fig. 14.8
Fig. 14.9
Fig. 14.10
Fig. 16.1
Fig. 16.2
Fig. 16.3
Ritual examples of ikaatz: (a) K1004 (all K-numbers
indicate photos by Justin Kerr. Creative Commons
License BY-SA 4.0. Justin Kerr Maya archive,
Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University,
Washington, DC); (b) K7750; (c) Itzamna Court Vase,
drawing by the author from Coe and Houston (2015,
plate XVIII); (d) Yaxchilan Lintel 1, drawing by author
after photo by Ian Graham. https://peabody.harvard.
edu/yaxchilan
Other examples of ikaatz: (a) K7727; (b) K0793
Mythological examples of patan: (a) K1398; (b) K8076
Earliest identifiable historical reference to patan, K5453
Other patan examples: (a) K1775; (b) drawing
by author from K3395
Dry goods commonly offered as tribute: (a–b) K5453;
(c) K2914; (d) K4339; (e) K0624
Rarer dry goods: (a) K2697; (b) K2220; (c) K3832; (d)
K7797; (e) K4617; (f) K2026; (g) K7727
Confrontation scene, K1489
A lack of tribute for God D: (a) K2026; (b) drawing
by author from Tunesi (2008, figure 1)
Further examples of God D’s court: (a) K7727; (b)
K4999
Map of Ucí-Cansahcab area with sites mentioned
in the text
Above: East side of megalithic Structure 42S2, Yaxché/
21 de Abril, facing west. Below: West side of megalithic
Structure 51, Kancab, facing east
(a) Map of the Structure 42S2 residential group,
Yaxché/21 de Abril, showing locations of excavations;
(b) Map of the Structure 51 residential group, Kancab
xv
374
375
376
377
378
382
384
385
386
388
435
438
440
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List of Tables
Table 1.1
Table 5.1
Table 5.2
Table 5.3
Table 5.4
Table 5.5
Table 6.1
Table 6.2
Common understandings of value
Counts of artifacts by raw material types in the chipped
stone collections from the Malpaso Valley and Talleres
3 at Los Guachimontones
Sources of obsidian identified in the Malpaso Valley
collection
Comparison of chipped stone artifact types (combining
all raw materials) for sites in the Malpaso Valley
and the Postclassic contexts at Talleres 3, Los
Guachimontones
Comparison of chipped stone from the Malpaso
Valley with sites where core-flake technology
predominated and chipped stone from Talleres 3
at Los Guachimontones with sites that used core-blade
technology
Comparison of obsidian colors in each collection
with the proportion of colors in uncommon artifact
types compared to all artifact types. Color categories
present at both sites do not mean that the same
obsidian sources were used at each site
A comparison of overall counts and weights of obsidian
artifacts from the sites discussed in the text
A comparison of 3s blades from the sites discussed
in the text with a focus on blade metrics and use-wear
quotient
6
117
118
120
125
131
153
155
xvii
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xviii
LIST OF TABLES
Table 10.1
Table 10.2
Table 11.1
Table 12.1
Table 14.1
Tututepec Whorl Types and Proportions (modified
from Levine [2007: Table 6.04])
Spindle Whorl Frequencies from Sites in the Lower Río
Verde Region
Counts of residential mounds by ceramic types per ring,
showing high density and 75th percentile results
Characteristics of obsidian assemblages
from the Buenavista del Cayo and Xunantunich
marketplaces
Tribute register repertoires
257
257
296
320
371
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Realizing Value
in Mesoamerica
Scott R. Hutson
and Charles Golden
Introduction
The construction, imagination, and experience of “value” shapes our daily
choices—how we spend our time, where we choose to invest labor, how
we engage with others within and beyond our communities, and what we
assign to realms of exchange or consider inalienable and priceless. Value is
a total social fact (Mauss, 1966 [1925]), a reality that requires a degree of
consensus among individuals—consensus established in part through the
marketplace. Yet, the establishment, meaning, and social power of value
remain subjects of debate among social scientists even for modern cultures
and economies.
S. R. Hutson (B)
Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
e-mail: scotthutson@uky.edu
C. Golden
Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA
e-mail: cgolden@brandeis.edu
1
S. R. Hutson and C. Golden (eds.), Realizing Value in Mesoamerica,
Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44168-4_1
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2
S. R. HUTSON AND C. GOLDEN
How might archaeologists infer consensus (or lack of consensus) about
value in the past? What manner of relationships produce and reproduce value and how do these relations extend over time? How can
we glean from material culture the relationships between value, wealth,
and social identity in pre-Colonial Mesoamerica? Recent research on
Mesoamerican economies has begun to offer greater inroads to these
puzzles, highlighting complexities in patterns of production, exchange,
and consumption that promise to shed light on pre-Columbian notions
of value and challenge long-held approaches to method and theory on
these topics. Particularly in the Maya area, stretching from eastern Mexico
through northern Central America, growing acceptance among scholars
of the material evidence of marketplaces has helped archaeologists recognize additional incentives that may have guided the economic decisions of
ancient actors. We no longer envision risk-averse subsistence provisioning
of households and extractive tribute requirements from royal courts as the
only concerns shaping economic strategies and investments of time and
labor. The option of producing surplus for market exchange introduces a
profit motive that was sorely missing in overly substantivist models. Yet,
fine-grained data have also illuminated intra- and inter-site variability that
cannot be fully explained by profit-making and household concerns as
more traditionally understood, such as ensuring subsistence and satisfying
the demands of a political economy.
We argue that paying closer attention to the concept of value within
a cultural context that includes markets as one, but only one, important economic driver can help us build on recent progress in the study
of ancient Mesoamerican economies. Nearly a quarter century ago, the
press for this volume, Palgrave Macmillan, published a watershed book
in economic anthropology: David Graeber’s Toward an Anthropological
Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams (2001). In that work,
Graeber (2001: xii) defines value as “the way in which actions become
meaningful to the actor by being incorporated in some larger, social
totality—even if in many cases the totality in question exists primarily in
the actor’s imagination.” Graeber places action, as opposed to things, at
the core of the definition of value. His definition opens many paths to
exploring the values that have inspired many of the authors in this book
and can provide a lens for reading even the chapters that do not follow
Graeber.
The contributions to this volume by Bernadette Cap and coauthors
(Chapter 12), Alanna Ossa (Chapter 11), Brigitte Kovacevich and Michael
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1
INTRODUCTION: REALIZING VALUE IN MESOAMERICA
3
Callaghan (Chapter 7), and several others emphasize the connections
between action and value. Graeber sees value as relational in the sense
that actors pursue goals that they believe others hold in high regard.
Value is also relational in the sense that, as chapters by Eleanor HarrisonBuck and David Freidel (Chapter 13), Marilyn Masson (Chapter 2), John
Millhauser and coauthors (Chapter 5), Kristin De Lucia (Chapter 3),
and others highlight, value is not inherent in an object but rather arises
from an object’s context in broader assemblages of things and its relations with both human and non-human people. As Graeber’s quote
suggests, however, there is no singular collective understanding of value.
Multiple and conflicting understandings of what is important and what
is meaningful—what is valuable—coexist within any society, as chapters by Tatsuya Murakami (Chapter 15), Hutson (Chapter 16), and
Golden (Chapter 8) underscore, even as moments of exchange create the
impression of shared formulations of value.
As an emergent social quality, value can be said to have a sort of agency
of its own that can only partly be attributed to materiality. Its origin
in and relationship to shared human interactions can be easily obscured,
giving it the seeming reality of something natural, of inherent qualities.
It mobilizes desires in myriad ways and moves people to diverse kinds
of action. People choose every day how to invest those most limited
resources of time and energy: gamble? produce goods for exchange?
acquire fashionable commodities? channel surplus into upgrading one’s
house? safeguard inalienable goods? build social alliances? relax? service
debt relations with other than human beings? publish an edited volume
on value in Mesoamerica? These choices presuppose a conceptualization
of agency that is more nuanced than traditional economic models whose
preferred protagonist (H. economicus ) has little choice for action beyond
rational maximization of profit.
Even as scholars embrace such fluidity, we must also recognize that
in some cases value is durably structured by many factors, creating doxa
that shapes action in ways that actors may not even realize, much less
be able to question (Bourdieu, 1977: 164). For example, systems of
belief and patterns of practice establish apparently shared understandings of high values for certain goods that become “entangled” in webs
of meaning (Hodder, 2011, 2012). A well-known instance of this process
in Mesoamerica is the symbolic interplay between maize and jade, established in the Preclassic period, which created a long-lasting standard of
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4
S. R. HUTSON AND C. GOLDEN
value largely impervious to the manipulations of later actors in the Classic
period (Gillespie, 2012; Taube, 2005).
Inequalities in social structures are another example of constraints
that circumscribe people’s possibilities for action and investment. Indeed,
a close consideration of the multiplicity and dynamism of values may
promote a more careful understanding of inequality. Archaeologists have
typically focused on a limited suite of material markers to indicate
measurements of value, wealth, and inequality. We quantify polychrome
pots and count jade beads, spondylus shells, or other exotic long-distance
trade goods and take these metrics to indicate a household’s access to
limited—and valuable—resources.
In the absence of significant artifact inventories for a robust sample of
households (or an understanding of acquisition costs even if we had such
household data), it has become common of late to measure inequality
with a single variable: house size, filtered through the analytical lens
of Gini indices (e.g., McLellan & Haines, 2023; Smith et al., 2014;
Thompson et al., 2021). Yet such measures of inequality may not help
predict other indicators of well-being (Murakami, Chapter 15; Munson &
Scholnick, 2022). In cases where we might interpret differences between
two households as a reflection of inequality, such differences may instead
indicate that one household prioritizes different meanings and desires (De
Lucia Chapter 3, Hutson Chapter 16). In other words, the lesser household is not necessarily impoverished; rather, its actions reflect a different
weighting of values. While a study of value can help nuance studies of
inequality, we also recognize that many differences do reflect inequalities,
often crushing ones, that should not be downplayed.
The chapters in this volume seek to move beyond staid and static
notions of value that have served scholars so well and for so long without
merely reformulating precolonial indigenous peoples as post-modern
subjects. This book brings together case studies from many parts of
Mesoamerica, including Western Mexico, the Basin of Mexico, Veracruz,
Oaxaca, and various parts of the Maya Lowlands (Fig. 1.1). Chronologically, the chapters range from the Late Preclassic period (300 BCE–250
CE) to the Spanish Conquest in the early sixteenth century. All the
authors shared drafts of their papers as part of a “lightning round” session
at the April 2023 Society for American Archaeology meetings in Portland,
Oregon. Our goal is to contribute to a broader dialog on ancient systems
of value. We recognize the difficulty of this task given that our own daily
lives are inextricably bound to capitalism. Yet as Ossa pointed out in our
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INTRODUCTION: REALIZING VALUE IN MESOAMERICA
5
group discussions in Portland, many of us do not understand our own
economies very well. In fact, without advocating for a strictly formalist
approach to economies (Cancian, 1966; Cook, 1966; Schneider, 1974),
we argue that the distinctions in perception and practice between capitalist
and non-capitalist economies are not as stark as once thought by substantivist economic anthropologists (Polanyi, 1944). As Harrison-Buck and
Freidel point out in their chapter, modern market behaviors retain social
and moral dimensions at their core—a situation that was long seen as the
hallmark of “pre-modern” economies distinct from capitalism (see also
Granovetter, 1985; Ostrom, 1992; Zelizer, 2012).
One of the themes that crosscut contemporary and ancient understandings of value is the difficulty of defining it and understanding it
without recognizing the relations that constitute it. Relations are at the
core of the definition of value we provided above: “the way in which
actions become meaningful to the actor by being incorporated in some
larger, social totality” (Graeber, 2001: xii). Stated differently, value always
depends on its broader linkages. The authors in this book talk about value
in very different ways but are unified by an appreciation of the way that
value inheres in relations—as opposed to being intrinsic in a “thing.”
Fig. 1.1 Map of Mesoamerica showing major locations discussed in this book
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Table 1.1 Common understandings of value
Value measured in the amount of labor (Adam Smith, Karl Marx)
Value measured in the skill of the labor (Adam Smith, Karl Marx)
Value in terms of scarcity of materials (David Ricardo)
Use value in the satisfaction of basic needs (nutrition, shelter, livelihood, task
completion)
Historical/biographical value (Arjun Appadurai)
Sentimental value (Igor Kopytoff)
Value in the sense of values: the ideals that orient life and inform a sense of what is
proper
Sacred value: desirability based in alignment with cosmological principles
Exotic value: geographically distant contacts equate to cosmological power (Mary
Helms)
Inalienable value: parting with an object means surrendering core identities (Annette
Wiener)
Exchange value in the sense of what one is willing to pay (Georg Simmel, Carl
Menger)
The personified value of gifts that motivate recipients to action (Marcel Mauss)
Value in a linguistic sense of meaningful difference (Ferdinand de Saussure)
Our central goal in this introduction is to trace some of the common
ways in which the authors connect value to actors (human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate) and projects. No introduction can
provide an exhaustive catalog of the kinds of relations that produce
value, or what value can mean (but see Mathews & Guderjan, 2017;
Papadopolous, 2012). Yet as editors, we would be doing a disservice
to the readers if we failed to sketch the range of approaches that recur
in the subsequent chapters. Thus, Table 1.1 provides a list of some of
the processes and relations that make things valuable. In the remaining
sections we expand on how the chapters in this book treat the concept of
value.
Hau, Knowledge, and Value
Several of the chapters in this volume build on the long anthropological and sociological tradition suggesting that the value of an item can
be enhanced due to its associations with specific people. Marcel Mauss
(1966 [1925]) famously explored this and other themes in his essay The
Gift . To simplify grossly, Mauss wrote about several cases in which the
value of an item—its capacity to motivate action—arises, in part, from its
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7
connection to a person. Specifically, in the context of gift exchange, a gift
motivates the recipient to give something in return. Mauss’ most famous
example, drawn from the Maori of New Zealand, is just one version of
this principle. Among the Maori, the gift contains the spirit—the hau—of
the giver and in seeking to return home, the spirit moves the recipient to
offer a counter gift. Mauss’ broader purpose was to critique the notion
that self-interest must be at the core of “economic” actions.
But a legacy of The Gift is the recognition that cross-culturally, well
beyond the Maori case study of Mauss, the renown (or notoriety) of
producers or owners can cling to an item (Helms, 1993). As Annette
Weiner (1992) famously observed, this can create the seeming “paradox
of keeping-while-giving.” Gifts are “alive and personified” (Mauss, 1966:
10). Harrison-Buck and Freidel (Chapter 13; see also Harrison-Buck,
2021) make this point clearly in discussing marriage exchange and underlining the animate nature of non-human gifts. In Chapter 7, Kovacevich
and Callaghan argue that the essence of artisans affixes itself to jade
adornments. In cases where nobles and non-nobles contributed labor in
different stages to the same piece, it may be the case that recipients of
the finished ornament knew only the noble who endowed an ornament
with esoteric knowledge in the final stages of production. Nevertheless,
Kovacevich and Callaghan suggest that the work put in by non-nobles
added to the jade’s esteem, vitality, and permanence. Melgar (Chapter 9)
pursues similar themes with the rich historical and archaeological data
from the Mexica Templo Mayor, exploring how the valued work of
lapidary artists was intimately tied to their expertise and connections to
ritual life. Chapter 10 by Levine and colleagues, however, serves as a critical reminder that communities of practice can participate in the creation
of value from the “bottom up”—where producers are not specialized or
ritually distinguished from other members of society.
Cap and coauthors (Chapter 12) explore the impact of personal associations on value by examining how well consumers know producers of
stone tools. In their case study from the Upper Belize River Valley, lithics
were exchanged at marketplaces but could also have been traded in the
domestic workshops where they were produced. Although stone tools
were not unique enough to create brand loyalty, Cap and coauthors note
other ways in which connections between producers and consumers may
have affected value. They note that because final production steps sometimes took place in the marketplace, consumers at the market would have
been able to observe producers in action and therefore assess their level
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S. R. HUTSON AND C. GOLDEN
of skill. They argue that deeper knowledge of the labor invested in a
commodity can raise or lower the consumer’s estimation of the value of
that commodity. They also note that if buyers regularly get tools from
the same artisan, whether at marketplaces or workshops, social relations
between consumers and producers may develop, therefore affecting sale
prices. Cap and her coauthors’ study reminds us that even an exchange
at a marketplace is not necessarily a “closed” exchange where a fair swap
ends all commitments between buyer and seller (cf. Graeber, 2011: 220).
Deep bonds can form between buyers and sellers, leading to informal
discounts or freebies even in our own economy.
The broader point of the paper by Cap and coauthors is the relationship between observation, knowledge, and value. For Cap and coauthors,
value equates to price: the degree to which consumers can observe a
producer, how well they know the producer, and knowledge about the
quality or even performance characteristics of the finished goods affect
what they pay. In other studies, knowledge equates to value not in terms
of price but of power. Along these lines, Julia Hendon (2000: 45) argued
that lower status households made their stored resources partially visible
to others, whereas higher status households stored goods in ways that
did not reciprocate knowledge about what they owned (cf. Lamoreaux
St. Hilaire, 2022).
Kovacevich and Callaghan (Chapter 7) take up Hendon’s point about
the power of what is not seen, or, better yet, the un-knowable potential of what is not visible. They draw on Graeber (2001), who wrestles
with the question of why beads are often used as money. The easy answer
is that beads are portable, they do not decay, and their small size and
roughly similar form makes them similar or at least easy to compare—what
Graeber calls “commensurable” (see also Baron, Chapter 14, on tribute
and Baron, 2018). The better answer, though, is that items adopted as
currency around the world are often suitable as adornments (beads, after
all, are items of adornment), and adornments ooze with value—we have
all heard, for example that clothing makes the person. But things get
tricky here because adornments have characteristics that diverge from
currencies. Currencies, like bills and beads, are supposed to be interchangeable and non-specific (this dollar bill is the same as that dollar bill).
Adornments, on the other hand, can be very specific, not just because
a particular headdress might be identified with a particular office, social
role, or identity (“a king who gives away his crown is a king no longer,”
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INTRODUCTION: REALIZING VALUE IN MESOAMERICA
9
wrote Graeber [2001: 93]), but because items of adornment often accumulate and convey unique histories centered around who made them,
who owned them, etc. (we return to this notion of history in the next
section).
Thus, Graeber fingers the paradox that while the value of early currencies resides in their linkage with adornment, the types of value expressed
by currency and adornment are diametrically opposed. Currency is often
hidden and represents a potential for action whereas adornment is on
display and represents actions already undertaken (Graeber, 2001: 99,
114). Kovacevich and Callaghan find this polarity useful for understanding jade. Jade beads have been used as currency among the Maya
and, as Kovacevich and Callaghan point out, they are often stored in ways
that hide them. On the other hand, the very specific (singular enough
to be identified in depictions) and historically freighted jade pendant at
the core of Chapter 4, by Mallory Matsumoto, derives its value from
display. Matsumoto’s chapter engages several ideas surrounding object
biographies and itineraries, to which we now turn.
Biography, Itinerary, and Beyond
If the identity of an artisan enhances the value of an object, as discussed
above, the entanglements of the object after it is finished—who owned
it, how it was used, where it went, etc.—do so as well. Arjun Appadurai
(1986) and Igor Kopytoff (1986) opened this line of thought in their
famous explorations of the relationship between commodities and gifts.
We normally think of commodities as indistinct in the sense of raw
materials that are interchangeable; this tumpline of lumber is essentially
similar to any other tumpline of lumber. Likewise, we assume commodities carry relatively little of the identity or essence of their producers
or previous owners. Appadurai encouraged us to move away from this
approach. Instead of using the inherent characteristics of an object to
classify it as a commodity, he argued that commodities are objects that
are exchanged in a particular kind of way. Thus, “the question becomes
not ‘What is a commodity?’ but rather ‘What sort of an exchange
is commodity exchange?’” (Appadurai, 1986: 9)—to which Kopytoff
(1986) added, in essence, “when is a commodity.” Appadurai (1986: 12–
13) concluded that gift exchange and commodity exchange are in fact not
completely different, enabling him to talk about how a single item could
be exchanged as a gift at certain times and a commodity at others. The
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S. R. HUTSON AND C. GOLDEN
study of movement in and out of the commodity state amounts to what
he called a biographical approach. Items that tend to be more singular (an
heirloom as opposed to a hard-boiled egg) tend to be more biographical.
As part of this approach, Appadurai encouraged attention to an object’s
total trajectory, including production, exchange, and consumption (see
also Schiffer, 1972).
Appadurai’s work invited many fruitful lines of inquiry (explorations
of the social lives of things, of the cultural politics of non-Western art
markets, etc.) but has been critiqued for viewing exchange in a way
that prioritizes self-interested calculation (Graeber, 2001: 32–33). Others
have reinvigorated the notion of object biographies by offering refinements. For example, Jody Joy (2009) points out that while the biography
approach is linear, objects (like persons) have multiple relations extending
in many directions (see also Bauer, 2019; Gillespie, 2015; Joyce, 2015).
Furthermore, at any particular time, some relations are active and others
are inactive. Thus, as time passes, objects move in and out of different sets
of entanglements, creating disconnects that do not fit the linear narrative
of a biography. Also, while a biography normally has a birth and a death,
objects can experience multiple re-births as they move through cycles
of production, use, modification, reuse, discard, rediscovery, museum
display, scholarly publication, and so on.
In Chapter 4, Matsumoto highlights this kind of complex itinerary. At
the center of her work is a jade belt ornament first worn by K’inich Yo’nal
Ahk II of Piedras Negras in the early eighth century CE and then worn by
some of his royal successors but perhaps not all. The belt ornament then
left Piedras Negras through unknown means and entered a very different
life at Chichén Itzá, where it eventually settled among other offerings in
the muck of the Sacred Cenote. The ornament found a new life once
dredged from the cenote in the early twentieth century and brought to
Harvard University where it acquired ever-new entanglements through
the work of Tatiana Proskouriakoff and now Mallory Matsumoto, who
provides an illustration of the object in her Chapter 4. Contemporary
geopolitical controversies surrounding the Sacred Cenote objects (many
believe they should be repatriated to Mexico) may mean that there are
more stops in the itinerary.
Yet Matsumoto’s treatment of the belt ornament exposes a shortcoming of the object itinerary approach. The belt ornament existed
as a physical jade artifact but was also depicted in the garb of three
different rulers and denoted in hieroglyphic inscriptions. Thus, violating
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the concept of an “itinerary,” the ornament appears in many places at
the same time. Building on Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope, Matsumoto
argues that the artifact derived its value not so much from its rare raw
material or the labor to create it but from its circulation across time
and space. This circulation includes not just its association with multiple
generations of kings but also from representation and amplification across
multiple media.
The tribute discussed by Joanne Baron in Chapter 14 accrues value
from a somewhat similar process. Textiles and cacao bundles were not
just collected by rulers. They were shown being collected. While Baron
recognizes that tribute most likely existed well before it was first depicted
in seventh century CE tribute presentation scenes, depictions of tribute
can in one sense create a meta-discourse on tribute, a “register.” Building
on ideas from Asif Agha (2017), Baron defines a tribute register as
the conduct and writing surrounding tribute. Using a large corpus of
tribute presentation scenes, Baron detects intriguing patterns in the types
of goods and beings present. For example, when captives are displayed
alongside tribute, the tribute never consists of food or drink. If such transactions represent ransom payments between foes, Baron suggests that the
presentation of food and drink was reserved for more friendly patron/
client interactions. This contrasts with the notion that exchanges of prisoners, marriage partners, prestige goods, and food were all part of a single
continuum of gift exchange (cf. Harrison-Buck, 2021).
The Value of Context
In addition to the way objects get entangled with people and representations in various media, value and meaning also derive from the
broader assemblages of which objects are a part. In Chapter 2, Marilyn
Masson shows how mundane objects such as sherds, chert flakes, and prismatic blade fragments take on symbolic value when combined with other
objects. Specifically, at Caye Coco, Belize, a sherd can gain value as part
of a collection of other items that complete the set of Maya directional
colors. In Chapter 5, Millhauser and coauthors make a similar point in
regard to an offering in a tomb at La Quemada, Zacatecas, Mexico. The
offering consisted of a variety of items including several unremarkable
obsidian flakes that may not have been valued in isolation. Millhauser
and coauthors write that “the caching of obsidian with other objects
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S. R. HUTSON AND C. GOLDEN
made from different raw materials raises the possibility that some obsidian’s value was only realized in assemblage with other potent materials.
Mesoamerican offerings often assembled materials that only had value
in their completion—no single item could be part of a sacred exchange
without the others present.” Value, in other words, “is less clearly about
power or labor and perhaps about the proper combination and association
of materials in a meaningful Mesoamerican world.”
At Mayapan, Masson shows that Postclassic people placed ordinary
artifacts in extraordinary contexts where they “outperform expectations
based on their raw material quality, workmanship, and condition.” For
example, at the Itzmal Ch’en group, an important ceremonial compound
within Mayapan’s perimeter walls but beyond the monumental core, a
worn-out chisel and a battered, partially smoothed pebble, both made
of greenstone but not jade, were placed in caches containing censer
sherds. Normally caches in such prominent ceremonial contexts contain
jade. Since the Itzmal Ch’en group does not lack jade, they probably
could have used jade if they chose to. Given their placement in the cache
context, the shabby greenstones substitute for jade, acquiring the paradigmatic value of jade in a Saussurean sense but also some of the sacred values
of jade as discussed by several Mayanists (Freidel et al., 2002; Kovacevich
and Callaghan Chapter 8, this volume; Taube, 2005).
The Value of Artisans and Artistry
Artisans create value through a variety of means: hard labor, skill, ability to
integrate ancestral agents into the production process (see below), their
status as, in some cases, renowned individuals whose identity imprints
itself onto the finished product (see above), and more. Several chapters
in this book highlight a slightly different angle: the way in which artisans themselves are a form of value. At Mayapan, Masson (Chapter 2)
interprets an offering of masonry plastering tools as an expression of
reverence toward the experts of this trade. In Chapter 14, Eleanor
Harrison-Buck and David Freidel note, as others have before, two aspects
of members of royalty and high-ranking noble families: (1) they are
sometimes deployed strategically in marriage alliances, (2) they sometimes fill esteemed positions as crafters: painters, sculptors, etc. In the
Rabinal Achí, a precolonial K’iche’ Maya drama still performed today
(Tedlock, 2003), Harrison-Buck and Freidel highlight the connection
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13
between these two roles: men who marry a royal princess produce craft
goods for the royal family.
Harrison-Buck and Freidel envision these artisans and their products as
a stream of social currency that rulers seek to acquire. As defined by David
Graeber, social currencies are not the kind of money used in a commercial economy to acquire goods or accumulate wealth. Social currencies
predate these kinds of commercial transactions and are not used to buy
or sell at all. Rather, “they are used to create, maintain, and otherwise reorganize relations between people: to arrange marriages, establish
the paternity of children, head off feuds, console mourners at funerals,
seek forgiveness in the case of crimes, negotiate treaties, acquire followers” (Graeber, 2001: 130). Social currencies take many forms (wampum,
cattle, metal rods) around the world, with bridewealth being an example.
Echoing that the exchange of human life is difficult to repay, HarrisonBuck and Freidel suggest that craft products as social currency are a
continuing moral obligation due to the father-in-law. For the Classic
period Maya, individual artists had such social currency that, uniquely in
the precolonial Americas, some signed their names to their works. Indeed,
artists may have had the flexibility to move between royal courts that were
in conflict with one another (or were perhaps so valued that they were
captured and put to work for their new masters) (Houston et al., 2021).
As Ossa discusses in Chapter 11, archaeologists have long recognized
that craft producers as attached specialists are an asset to political leaders.
Yet, as Ossa describes, in some historical cases leaders bring producers
to their cities not merely to hoard their output, but to make them
available as resources for other urbanites. Whereas value in many other
chapters hinges on the personification of objects, Ossa considers artisans
as infrastructure, inviting the possibility that value can grow from the
objectification of persons. Ossa sees specialists as soft infrastructure that
leaders attempt to provide as an urban service (compared with Smith
et al., 2016). In her case study from the Lower Papaloapan Basin of
southeastern Veracruz, Ossa finds an increase in crafting from Classic to
Postclassic yet many of these craft households were not strongly attached
to Sauce, the main Postclassic political center. These specialists were well
off and represented an important part of the vitality of small Postclassic
states.
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S. R. HUTSON AND C. GOLDEN
Broadening Value
Several chapters in this book broaden our perspectives on value. Labor
is intrinsically relational but labor as traditionally understood—a human
transforming the world through time and energy—provides a rather
narrow perspective on the process of production in Mesoamerica. And,
as emphasized in several of the chapters mentioned above (Matsumoto,
Kovacevich and Callaghan, Masson, Millhauser et al., Levine et al.,
Melgar), many other processes beyond production add value. But even
within production, it has recently become clear that we need to broaden
the set of actors involved. For example, Harrison-Buck and Freidel
emphasize in Chapter 13 that crafting is not just a human pursuit but one
to which metahuman power (magic) contributes, specifically the presence
of the creator gods. In other words, “economic transactions and spiritual
enchantment (magic) go hand-in-hand.”
This point grows from several ethnohistoric and ethnographic studies
that show that successful hunting (Brown & Emery, 2008), stone tool
making (Hruby, 2007), farming (Redfield & Villa Rojas, 1962: 127), and
other activities require the collaboration of other than human beings. In
Chapter 14, Baron suggests that the presence of God D in Maya tribute
scenes grounds such exchanges in mythological stories, providing supernatural justifications and explanations for tribute payments. Dues that
appear to be paid between the human leaders of kingdoms might perhaps
involve additional parties, such as a kingdom’s patron deities. More
broadly, such payments may have been modeled on founding covenants
(Monaghan, 2000) and primordial debts (Graeber, 2011: 55–65) with
gods and goddesses of creation.
In Chapter 3, De Lucia broadens the realm of agents that work
together in production. She makes this point from the perspective of
Amerindian ontologies, in which the cut that differentiates humans from
animals and other entities does not exist (see also Viveiros de Castro,
1998: 471). De Lucia quotes Robin Kimmerer, an ecologist and citizen
of the Potawatomi Nation, who notes that in many North American
indigenous perspectives, crops, prey, and other “natural” materials are
“nonhuman persons vested with awareness, intelligence, spirit, and who
have families waiting for them at home. Killing a who demands something
different than killing an it.” De Lucia pursues the point that the people of
the Basin of Mexico saw relations with nonhumans as forms of gratitude
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INTRODUCTION: REALIZING VALUE IN MESOAMERICA
15
and reciprocity. Landscapes, tools, and less concrete beings played important roles in production, meriting reverence and thanks. Building on
previous interpretations, De Lucia views offerings at the Templo Mayor
as discourses of gratitude. Similarly, the production of landscape and the
creation of value from it that Golden explores in Chapter 8 requires
the engagement of humans and other than human agents in mutually
transformative action.
Hutson’s chapter broadens value by insisting that there are multiple
standards of value within any particular society and therefore multiple
pathways toward a good life. Though trite, this line of thinking serves as
a corrective to uni-dimensional understandings of wealth and inequality
and pervades noble prize winner Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach. In
the Maya area, households at Tikal can be understood without reference
to multiple standards of value: data tidily fit a hierarchical model in which
households that rank highly on one variable (investment in architecture)
also rank highly on other variables (such as diversity of possessions).
Yet different households at Chunchucmil and along the Ucí/
Cansahcab causeway dedicated themselves to different pursuits, resulting
in a heterarchical pattern. For example, households with more obsidian
do not have more of everything else. In other words, obsidian was not
a proxy for general levels of well-being. “Better-off” households did
not automatically have more obsidian. Instead, some households simply
valued it differently than others. In Chapter 6, Hruby echoes this point.
He shows that settlements aligned with Copan, such as Rio Amarillo,
had access to Ixtepeque obsidian blades. Other hinterland sites that lack
affiliation with Copan missed out on obsidian, using chert flake core technology instead. Yet stone tool makers at site 29, located close to Rio
Amarillo, had ample access to obsidian but, like sites not part of the
Ixtepeque obsidian distribution network, used flake technology instead of
blade technology, resulting in much larger obsidian artifacts than at Rio
Amarillo. Hruby concludes that the people of site 29 and Rio Amarillo
had different ways of valuing obsidian. In Chapter 15, Murakami treads
some of the same theoretical ground, noting that studies of inequality
that rely too heavily (or uncritically) on Gini coefficients tend to reduce
or even disregard household variation.
Authors in this book also expand our notions of value by reporting
cases in which ancient behavior does not align with common expectations. For example, in Chapter 6, Hruby presents a reasonable expectation
with regard to obsidian blades: peripheral sites with less access to obsidian
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S. R. HUTSON AND C. GOLDEN
must make their blades last longer, thus squeezing more use out of
them before discarding. We would therefore expect higher use-wear on
obsidian blades from peripheral sites. Yet his data from Peten sites do not
meet this expectation. In Chapter 7, Millhauser and coauthors’ data on
obsidian also buck common expectations. The distribution of obsidian in
the Malpaso Valley of Zacatecas follows a traditional political economy
script to some degree: like many scarce but valuable resources that come
from afar (over 100 km away in the case of the Malpaso Valley), control
of distribution could have been used as a source of power. Indeed, Millhauser and coauthors show that obsidian was more commonly found at
the regional capital, La Quemada, than at peripheral sites. Yet within La
Quemada, there was little evidence that obsidian was valuable enough
to be controlled. Most obsidian took the form of small, expediently
produced flakes. In fact, there appears to be little indication of social or
economic distinction either among households within La Quemada or
between households at La Quemada and those at peripheral sites.
Concluding Thoughts
A volume called “Realizing Value in Mesoamerica” may seem like it calls
for a singular outcome—a eureka realization and resolution to one of
the great anthropological questions. The editors and authors of this book
can’t claim such a thing, of course. “Value” continues to defy attempts to
formulate a grand unified theory in Mesoamerican archaeology, or in the
broader social sciences. Nonetheless, the authors of these chapters have
convincingly pursued the threads of the concept and practice of value
in innovative ways. Working with data that includes rich material culture
and, in some cases, historical and ethnographic work, the participants have
come to striking new realizations about value. Some of these might have
been envisioned by David Graeber and some most certainly couldn’t have
been. We hope that this volume will serve as an introduction to value in
Mesoamerica (see also Mathews & Guderjan, 2017) not just for those of
us who live and work there, but also for students and scholars working
in other regions of the world. And more importantly, that it will perhaps
offer starting points for future research that will lead us further along
the path to understanding value in all its rich, sometimes contradictory,
guises.
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INTRODUCTION: REALIZING VALUE IN MESOAMERICA
17
Acknowledgements The genesis of this book dates to 2017, when Marilyn
Masson enlisted the help of the editors, Hutson and Golden, in organizing a
2018 SAA session on Graeber’s other masterpiece in economic anthropology,
Debt: the First 5,000 Years (2011). Since that 2018 session, the focus shifted from
debt to value. We nevertheless acknowledge an intellectual debt to those who
participated in the 2018 session—Rob Rosenswig, Jennifer Burrell, Alexander
Tokovinine, and John Chuchiak. We also thank Ken Hirth, one of the series
editors, for his encouragement and guidance in the production of this book.
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PART I
Approaches to Value
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