New Study Suggests Mayas Utilized Market-Based Economics
hubie writes:
New study suggests Mayas utilized market-based economics:
More than 500 years ago in the midwestern Guatemalan highlands, Maya people bought and sold goods with far less oversight from their rulers than many archeologists previously thought.
That's according to a new study in Latin American Antiquity that shows the ruling K'iche' elite took a hands-off approach when it came to managing the procurement and trade of obsidian by people outside their region of central control.
[...] While there are extensive written records from the Maya Postclassic Period (1200-1524 AD) on political organization, much less is known about how societal elites wielded economic power. Horowitz set out to address this knowledge gap for the K'iche' by examining the production and distribution of obsidian artifacts, which are used as a proxy by archeologists to determine the level of economic development in a region.
She performed geochemical and technological analysis on obsidian artifacts excavated from 50 sites around the K'iche' capital of Q'umarkaj and surrounding region to determine where the raw material originally came from and techniques of its manufacture.
[...] "For a long time, there has been this idea that people in the past didn't have market economies, which when you think about it is kind of weird. Why wouldn't these people have had markets in the past?" she said. "The more we look into it, the more we realize there were a lot of different ways in which these peoples' lives were similar to ours."
Journal Reference:
Horowitz, R. (2022). Economic Integration and Obsidian Consumption in the Late Postclassic Period K'iche' Region. Latin American Antiquity, 1-19. doi:10.1017/laq.2022.79
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