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DOI: 10.1177/1469605309338424

2009 9: 341Journal of Social ArchaeologyBruce H. DahlinChunchucmil

Ahead of its time? : The remarkable Early Classic Maya economy of

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ISSN 1469-6053 Vol 9(3):341367 DOI: 10.1177/1469605309338424

Journal of Social Archaeology A R T I C L E

341

Ahead of its time?

The remarkable Early Classic Maya economy of Chunchucmil

BRUCE H. DAHLIN

Center for Environmental Studies, Shepherd University, USA

ABSTRACT

Classic Maya sites in the lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula aregenerally known for their monumental art and architecture in centralsacrosanct spaces, and their political economies are believed to havebeen highly centralized. The predominantly Early Classic site ofChunchucmil, however, does not fit this stereotype. Moreover, eventhough its urban population ranks among the largest and most denselypacked in any Maya site, it inhabits one of the most depauperate agri-

cultural landscapes. These idiosyncrasies have stimulated a great dealof archaeological research, all of which lead to the conclusion thatChunchucmil had a surprisingly commercialized economy. In additionto importing basic necessities, some of which were exchanged in alarge central marketplace, its basic economy was built on servicingmerchants along the most active Mesoamerican maritime trade routeand funneling long distance trade items to sites in the interior of thepeninsula. This article summarizes the data leading to the conclusionthat Chunchucmils economic complexity rivaled that of the second-

ary states of the Postclassic Period and therefore was way ahead of itstime. It also questions whether the kind of bottom-up approachapplied here might reveal more complex economies at other Classic

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342 Journal of Social Archaeology 9(3)

Maya sites than the more ardent advocates of the prevailing, mono-lithic political economy paradigm have thus far been able to concede.

In which case, it was perhaps only slightly ahead of its time.

KEYWORDS

Classic lowland Maya archaeology interdisciplinary studies inenvironmental archaeology long distance maritime trade pre-Hispanic economic complexity

INTRODUCTION

There has been a long-standing tendency to conflate political evolutionarystages bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states with Polanyis (1957) modes ofexchange reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange, respectively.According to this scheme, the Classic lowland Maya are relegated to achiefdom or early state level or political organization, with redistribution astheir primary mode of exchange. Control of all or most labor, pro-duction and the dominant mode(s) of exchange were concentrated in ahighly centralized authority figure, a paramount chief, king and/or polyarchy

of elite kin groups, who traded exotic goods among themselves while extract-ing other goods, most importantly agricultural output, from the majoritypopulation through taxes and tribute to maintain themselves and acivic/religious infrastructure that they symbolized. They then redistributedsome of these goods down the social ladder in payment for fealty, loyalservice and the like. As West (2002) and Yoffee before her (1977) note,however, these concepts are stereotypes and, like all stereotypes, they havetheir uses but they may not have any pure expressions on the ground.

The concept of political economy, or polity-centered, decision-making

activities of governing personnel that center around the management ofresources deemed germane to the politys macrosystemic welfare . . .(Smith, 1991: 34; also see Scarborough and Clark, 2007), focuses over-whelmingly on the production and distribution of material symbols ofpower. Support for this top-down model is substantial, starting with theearly and enduring attention being paid to the grandeur of Maya art andarchitecture made by the majority pool of labor to celebrate the elite at thecenter of the Maya universe. It is reinforced by what most archaeologistswould probably concede is an over-representation of the archaeologically

most visible kinds of artifacts durable prestige goods which, again, arefound predominantly in elite contexts, to say nothing of its accentuationin public iconography and epigraphy which overwhelmingly depict theapparel and accoutrements of the elite class. On the other hand, most

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343Dahlin Early Classic Maya economy of Chunchucmil

utilitarian artifacts that might have been made and exchanged in director market economies by the majority population were almost certainlymade of organic materials, and, given the notoriously poor preservation

inherent in the humid subtropics, are almost totally absent in the archae-ological record (Cavanagh et al., 1988). These phantom artifacts mayaccount for as much as 90 percent of the Mayas artifact inventory(Dahlin, 2007).

This top-down approach, in combination with the elusiveness of organicartifacts, has had the effect of seriously underconceptualizing any othermode of exchange among the Classic Maya. For example, when, in the 1960s(Haviland, 1969), it became apparent that large urban populations such asthat at Tikal were simply too large to have been sustained by long fallowswidden, attention was almost exclusively shifted to increasing regionalcarrying capacities through agricultural intensification (Bronson, 1966;Fedick, 1996; Flannery, 1982; Pohl, 1985; Puleston, 1968; Siemens andPuleston, 1972; Turner, 1974; Turner and Harrison, 1978; Wiseman, 1978).Never seriously considered until very recently was the possibility thatcritical segments of these urban populations were supplied through foodimports and market exchange or a market economy (terms I use inter-changeably, contra Polanyis 1944 extreme substantivist position).Moreover, the rejection (often tacit) of market economies was oncesupported by the well-known difficulties of the prevailing tumpline mode

of transportation (Drennan, 1984a, 1984b) and the assumption of a highdegree of environmental homogeneity (Sanders, 1977); together thesenotions all but precluded the need for intraregional trade in food stuffs andother basic necessities. These latter notions have been soundly refuted,however (e.g. Dunning et al., 1998; Fedick, 1996; Gmez-Pompa et al., 2003;Sluyter, 1993).

Maya archaeologists struggling with the reconstruction of Classic Mayaeconomic systems still prefer the top-down approach of putting ancientMaya economies in the service of political power, rather than seriously

entertaining notions of market economies from a bottom-up perspective.As I am using the term here, market economies are exchange systems inwhich goods and services are routinely bartered and/or bought and sold,and at least two of the factors of production (labor and capital) were freelytransacted. Such systems are relatively disembedded from the politicaleconomy, i.e. some economic autonomy is allowed within a distinct (butperhaps overlapping) tier or sphere of exchange. As I discuss later in thisarticle, market economies were allowed after the succession of secondarystates in the Postclassic Period, but their legitimacy is based largely on eye-

witness accounts recorded in the literature of the Conquest Period. Eventhen, many Mayanists still probably concur with Farriss statement, All buta small minority of the Maya, before or after the conquest, were simplyoutside a market economy with little to sell and little need to buy (1984:



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156). Nevertheless, this is beginning to change, and Chunchucmil is a casein point. As I argue here, either Chunchucmil was way ahead of its time inhaving a market economy, or market economies were more common in the

Classic Period than previously thought.

CHUNCHUCMIL

Chunchucmil is a Classic Maya city in northwest Yucatan, Mexico(Figure 1). A large interdisciplinary project (The Pakbeh RegionalEconomy Program, or PREP) working here and in the surroundingregion has compiled evidence to the effect that it is one of the largestancient Maya sites yet known, and one of the strangest! Magnoni (2008a)has conservatively estimated an urban population of up to 42,500 concen-trated in an urban area of 20 to 25 km2 and somewhat more in the almost64 km2 of what we are calling Greater Chunchucmil. This estimate is basedon 13 years of broad regional survey (remotely sensed and on the ground),a detailed 11.7 km2 map, close to 850 excavation units into residentialcompounds and other features (n = 141), more intensive excavations intoseven residential groups representing all social strata, and geomorphologi-cal, soils and hydrological studies.

The peak of Chunchucmils development is now reliably dated to AD400 to 600, or late Early Classic and early Late Classic Periods (Bond-Freeman and Mansell, 2006), and the city was almost totally abandonedthereafter. Magnoni (2008b) has documented ca. 20 platforms in and nearthe site center, some placed directly on top of Early Classic residential unitsand partially intact remnants of stone fences, streets andsacbeob, or cause-ways, with a combined estimated Late/Terminal Classic population of ca.700 inhabitants. The site has suffered very little disturbance over thecenturies, providing us the unprecedented good fortune of seeing the

organization of a highly nucleated Early Classic cityscape at its peakdevelopment. Structure density during the late Early Classic, however, isgreater than any known ancient Maya city, and unlike settlement at almostall other Maya sites (which is essentially dispersed), transportation requireda honeycomb of streets and narrow lanes. These are outlined by roughlyparallel dry-laid stone walls that wrap around almost every residentialcompound (Magnoni, 2008a). Some of the longest streets start in thecountryside and twist and turn throughout the residential districts toconverge onto Chunchucmils densely crowded downtown area (Figure 2).

Just as intriguing, this gigantic prehistoric city is located in one of thedriest areas of the Maya world with a mean annual rainfall of 640 mm andhigh losses due to evapotranspiration and seepage through the porouslimestone bedrock, resulting in a mean annual water budget deficit of 600



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to 700 mm (INEGI, 1983; Luzzadder-Beach, 2000). Soils are also poor,with bare bedrock estimated to cover 25 to 50 percent of the landscape(e.g. Isphording and Wilson, 1973; Perry et al., 2003) and at least 30 percent

Figure 1 Map of the Chunchucmil Economic Region showing the large and

diverse resource zones to which the people of Chunchucmil had access.

Shaded areas offshore represent recently submerged land forms



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of the soils are thin, reddish brown and dense clay soils that restrict nutrientuptake and soil moisture capacity and provoke localized soil flooding(Beach, 1998; INEGI, 1981). As a consequence, agricultural yields areamong the lowest known in the Maya lowlands and there is little potential nor evidence for most traditional means of agricultural intensification

(Dahlin et al., 2005; Sweetwood, 2008). This disparity between the scarcesoil resources and the large urban population was apparent to all ofour PREP staff early on in the project (as well as those who came beforeus, such as Garza and Kurjack, 1980; Vlcek et al., 1978). This encouraged us

Figure 2 Map of epicentral Chunchucmil (ca.1 km2). Some of the longer

streets and ritual avenues (or sacbeob) in Maya (gray) converge onto the site

center, which includes a marketplace (dark).The dark interrupted ring is an

ancient barricade (Dahlin, 2000) that was erected long after most of the sitehad already been abandoned



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to use Chunchucmil as a laboratory to investigate the very controversialnotion that large and dense ancient Maya urban populations sustainedthemselves by importing a good share of their food and other necessities

from beyond their immediate regions rather than relying exclusively, ornearly exclusively, on increasing production of basic goods through in-tensifying land use and labor, by imposing greater taxes and tributes andcentralizing the distribution of those goods through a hierarchical powerstructure. We wanted to know how much control a central authority exertedover the prevailing modes of exchange versus the degree of autonomythat the majority population had over its own production, exchange andconsumption. Thus, what was at issue was the very economic, social andpolitical organization of a remarkably pristine ancient Maya urban place.

NOT YOUR TYPICAL REGAL-RITUAL CENTER

Chunchucmils cityscape provides some of the answers to these questions.For a large Maya site, Chunchucmils public spaces look remarkably secular not places for masses of pilgrims to visit and residents to worship. The sitelacks grandiose architecture, great public plazas and sculptural art. Whilethe tops of a number of pyramids are conspicuous against the skyline from

almost anywhere in the site, they measure only six to 18 m high, which isrelatively small for a major center. It was obviously not for want of a largeenough labor force to build the kind of grandiose ceremonial temples,palaces, and acropolises that grace other large ancient Maya centers.Similarly, ceremonies that were performed in huge public plazas forcongregations of potentially thousands of attendees at other typical Mayaregal-ritual centers were enacted only in the tightly enclosed patios ofprivate elite residence groups for the benefit of a relatively small numberof people. Patio areas are small, averaging 2000 m2; one patio measured

only 550 m2. Moreover, these parochial spaces were, for the most part,deliberately shielded from public view by other still-extant buildings andwalls (Dahlin, 2005). Therefore, these were esoteric ceremonies byinvitation only (also see Lucero, 2007).

There are some empty spaces in the site center that are large enough tohave hosted public ceremonies, but they are inhospitable, unimprovedbroken terrains that often flood after heavy rains. They are hardlyconducive to witnessing liturgical dramas performed by priests or kings onthe steps or terraces of prominent buildings as they were everywhere else

in the Maya world. Nevertheless, there was an obvious interest exhibited inChunchucmils network of streets and avenues for ushering large numbersof people into the site center. If not for civic/religious performances, thenfor what? Given the rather mundane appearance of most of these open



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spaces in downtown Chunchucmil, we suspect that they served as gather-ing places for the members of nearby barrios and neighborhoods. A notableexception, however, is a 1.5 ha artificially leveled plaza covered by a thin

mantle of unusually rich black soil.

A market economy

We suspected that it was a marketplace. Detailed mapping revealed rows ofrock alignments and low rock piles (Figure 3, left). Insofar as they werefound on top of a thin (ca. 20 to 50 cm), prepared plaza surface rather thanthe tops of retaining walls that are often found at other sites holding plazafill, they give every appearance of having been the foundations of very smallephemeral structures. Their small sizes (approx. 3 to 5 m on a side) and theirorderly arrangement suggest that they were not a haphazard palimpsest ofdomestic houses built over time. PREPs excavations (ca. 380 m2) producedfew artifacts (all Late Preclassic or Early Classic except for some LateClassic sherds around a late platform), which, as it turns out, are not easy tofind in ancient marketplaces worldwide, so we sampled the soils to see ifchemical residues differed in significant ways from other soil contexts, e.g.kitchen areas and middens in houselots, streets, other plazas and ruralfarmland. We also tested the soils at one of the few still-functioning outdoormarkets in the Maya area. We were startled to find concentrations of

phosphates of up to 20 times greater than the control soil sites in the rest ofChunchucmil (Figure 3, right) (Dahlin, 2003; Dahlin et al., 2007; Jensenet al., 2002). Our geochemical analyses revealed, moreover, that a band ofvery high phosphate values is roughly isomorphic with a long row of rockalignments and rock piles. This pattern was replicated at the modern marketin Antigua, Guatemala, as rows of market stalls selling food here had veryhigh levels of phosphates as well (Dahlin et al., 2007). Since phosphate isfound in all living matter, the only credible explanation for such high phos-phate values is that large amounts of food and other organic substances were

collected, processed, exchanged, and discarded here for a considerableperiod of time. By contrast, concentrations of high phosphate values weremuch lower in other plazas, for example, one in a large elite residential groupand in and around the only ball court at the site. In each case, P values werevery low except for small but distinct concentrations at the corners of build-ings, not in plaza centers (Terry et al., 2007; also see Moriarity, 2004; Wells,2004). This is where one would expect to find high phosphate values if theplaza or patio were a venue for feasting associated with rituals of some kind,as this is where food would have been stored, processed, presented, con-

sumed and the left-overs discarded. We, therefore, have every reason tobelieve that the function(s) of this quite large and open plaza was notprimarily to host ceremonial activities and feasting, but a marketplace withrows of market stalls to vend food and other organic stuff among otherthings.



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We also used inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy(ICP/AES) on the soils and found high concentrations of zinc and iron.These may have resulted from the production or trade in such things as

mineral dyes or pigments (such as zinc oxide for white coloration and ironrepresenting ochre for red and yellow); alternatively, they may haveresulted from large quantities of foods that are high in these minerals, suchas beans, leafy green vegetables and red meat (e.g. venison). Some house-holds even small ones that we tested also had unusual concentrationsof mercury, from which the pigment cinnabar is made, and manganese tomake black pigments. There are no local or even regional sources ofcinnabar and I am not aware of any manganese sources within the immedi-ate vicinity of Chunchucmil, so they were probably imported in bulk. And,

one of the marketplace excavations (Op. 15K) showed a slight concen-tration of heavily used obsidian fragments, presumably resulting from end-processing of some sort of manufactured good. We have now come tosuspect that the small capital investments that were made in constructingand maintaining market stalls represent more or less permanent venues forfull-time professional market vendors (perhaps to store their goodsovernight or at other times when the market was not in service) rather thanfor transient peasant producers who might have periodically brought tomarket small farm surpluses and simple crafts that they made on a part-

time basis. In all likelihood, these latter items were displayed on portablesurfaces, like tarpaulins, blankets or mats, much as they are in Maya marketstoday. And, the paucity of public, civic/religious monuments would suggestthat if people attending the market were also drawn to the site because ofperiodic fairs and feasts, then they were of a very different variety than has

Figure 3 The marketplace,with (left) parallel rows of short rock alignments,

low piles of stones which are the remains of the ancient kiosks and (right) thedistribution of phosphate residues in the soil that have resulted from

processing,vending,consuming and discarding large amounts of organic

materials over a long period of time



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been hypothesized elsewhere (Freidel, 1981). An alternative interpretationof the rows of rock piles and clusters in an otherwise open plaza, as well asthe bands of high phosphate concentrations, is that they are the residues of

some sort of recurrent feasts or festivals; if so, they have never beenobserved before.Based on Chunchucmils context within its regional landscape, we can

make some pretty good guesses about some of the commodities that weretraded here. The city is located on a broad ecotone between seasonally andpermanently inundated wetlands to the west and the impoverished agri-cultural plain to the east, thereby gaining greater access to goods comingfrom both resource zones (Hixson,2001; Hixson et al., 2006) (Figure 1). Theseasonally inundated savanna immediately to the west would have providedimportant items like venison and meat from other large edible animals. Notonly do the local villagers hunt here today, they also bring back a host ofother important goods that do not preserve in the archaeological record,including honey, grasses and palms for cordage and thatching, and evenfertile soils brought back to fertilize and mulch their vegetable and flowergardens. The perennial wetlands closer to the coast are home to indigenousand migratory birds and other tropical animals, some with bright plumesappropriate for capes and body ornamentation (e.g. Barrera Marin, 1982;Batllori, 1990; MacKinnon, 1992), and the marine environment of thenearby Gulf of Mexico is, of course, rich in fish and shellfish. Indeed, stable

isotope analyses of five human skeletons from humble residential groupsshow a diet slightly richer in protein than that of populations living furtherfrom the coast (Mansell et al., 2006). Some of these resources could havebeen gathered directly or traded in face-to-face interactions, but some ofthem may well have made it to the marketplace as there is room forperhaps as many as 600 market stalls, suggesting a market economy ofmajor proportions (Dahlin et al., 2007).

There are also indications that some sort of exchange economy waswoven broadly into Chunchucmils social fabric. This is exemplified by the

distribution ofsascaberas. Sascaberas are artificial caves or quarries duginto the side(s) of a sinkhole or rejollada or open pit mine just under thecap rock, usually to a depth of about 3 m (Figure 4). Until very recently,Chunchucmils sascaberas have been little explored as most of the roofshave collapsed, leaving huge immovable boulders weighing several tons.Most archaeological interest in sascaberas elsewhere has focused onextractingsascab or loose gravel for plasters, stuccoes and mortars used inlarge-scale construction (Folan, 1978; Littman, 1958; Morris et al., 1931;Roys, 1934). But sascaberas have other important resources and uses (see

Winemiller, 1996, 1997). For example, sascab is also used as mulch forgardens and, because of the high humidity inside them, sascaberas are idealfor processing agave (or henequen) and other fibrous materials for clothes,sleeping mats, hats, etc.; until very recently this is where traditional Maya



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women wove them. The rejolladas normally associated with them are alsoused as gardens, orchards and apiaries (Folan et al., 1983; Gmez-Pompaet al., 1990; Kepecs and Boucher, 1996). Sascaberas also provide silicifiedlimestone, and extremely poor quality chert, with which to make expedienttools (Dahlin, 2007; Hruby et al., 2007; Mazeau, 2002, 2003; Mazeau andForde, 2003). The sources of high quality chert are 30 to 60 km away andtransport costs would have made it much more expensive. With so manyimportant resources and uses, one would expect that every householdwould have a sascabera. But they dont. Only about 20 percent of house-

holds have them. How, then, did the other 80 percent of households thatlacked sascaberas get sascab and chert tools but through trade of some sort?

Another possible traded resource and this one is truly shocking if true was potable water, as access to this living-giving substance was severelylimited, particularly in the four to five-month dry season and given theunpredictability of the precipitation regime even in normal years. Onlythree reservoirs have been mapped and they are dry throughout most ofthe year. Despite the fact that ground water is only 3 m below the surfaceand is not very susceptible to contamination (as underground streams that

constitute the Yucatan aquifer flush it rapidly; see Back, 1985; Dahlin andJones, 1998; Doehring and Butler, 1974; Luzzadder-Beach, 2000; Perryet al., 1989, 2003), less than 1 percent of all households have wells and onlyfour wells are known in what might be construed as public spaces to serve

Figure 4 One of the 20 percent of households with a sascabera



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as many as 42,500 people. By contrast, most large and better-preservedsascaberas contained wells at the equally large site of Coba, located in themuch wetter climate of eastern Quintana Roo, and Coba is also blessed with

lakes in its site center (Folan, 1978; Folan et al., 1983). We could have missedsome wells while mapping Chunchucmil, but we couldnt have missed thatmany! Thus, we feel that at least some of the missing wells were placedwithin the now impenetrable sascaberas. Whether it was exchanged indirect, face-to-face reciprocal transactions with neighbors or through somemore formal market transactions, or both, cannot be determined, but bothits rarity and necessity stimulates us to think it likely that potable water wasturned into a commodity and traded in some way.

DISTRIBUTION OF GOODS THROUGH THESOCIAL RANKS

Still another line of evidence about the complexity of any ancient economyis the distribution of imported goods throughout all socio-economic levelsof society. The higher the level of consumption of imported goods acrossthe social spectrum, as well as their diversity, the more likely it is that thoseitems were obtained by means of a market mechanism rather than through

redistribution by the controlling, often stingy, hand of the elite class (Hirth,1998). Huge amounts of obsidian relative to the amounts found at othernorthern Maya sites have come out of our excavations (Hutson et al., 2008b;Mazeau, 2002, 2003; Mazeau and Forde, 2003). And, not only were bladesdistributed more or less evenly among Chunchucmils households, but therecovery of 14 exhausted cores and some production debris from house-hold contexts indicates that the obsidian was probably imported originallyby middlemen in the form of polyhedral cores and the resultant blades wereeither consumed on site or traded out (Hutson et al., 2008b; West, 2002).

Although its importation may have been controlled by elite middlemen(Hutson et al., 2008a; Rice, 1987), we can safely conclude that obsidian wasnot treated simply as a wealth item inasmuch as most of the obsidian bladesthat entered the site were used and found in middens and other ordinaryhousehold contexts. At many other sites, perhaps, the preponderance ofobsidian was consumed without using it for utilitarian purposes and takenout of circulation by ritually depositing it in caches and burials. Had weexcavated more ritual deposits in elite households, we almost certainlywould have found substantially more obsidian sequestered at the top of

the social hierarchy. However, the broad-scale distribution and almostuniversal-use wear of the pieces that we did find suggest that it was notobtained exclusively by elite redistribution to trickle down through rankedkin groups; rather it circulated within the site through direct exchanges ormarketplace transactions.



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A prime example of obsidian consumption is found at the Aak Group(Figure 5, left), a very modest residential group with only four structuresand about 1 ha of yard space. Hutson et al. (2008a) found over 670 well-

used obsidians here. This amount of obsidian represents a sizable capitalinvestment in what appears from microscopic analysis of the blades to havebelonged to tool kits for working fibrous materials, like agave. Whateverthe crafts that were manufactured here, they paid off handsomely, as aburial in one of the small mounds here produced an abundance of jade,spondylus shell, cinnabar and hematite (Figure 5, right).

A SPECIALIZED TRADE CENTER

The question remains, however, what drove this population to increase tothe point where it exceeded the agricultural carrying capacity such that theyhad to depend on a mixed subsistence and imported foods? All of theevidence suggests that Chunchucmil had become a specialized trade center(Dahlin and Ardren, 2002), strategically situated along ancient Meso-americas most vigorous maritime trade route (Andrews, 1990; Collier,1964; Pina Chan, 1978). Located 27 km from the Gulf of Mexico,Chunchucmil was in a position to funnel precious imports from distant

places as well as to import the low-level local and regional goods upon

Figure 5 The Aak Group (left), a small household of craft specialists who

used relatively large amounts of obsidian, and (right) some of the riches found

in Burial 2 under one of its structures



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which it sustained itself. It had a port facility, Punta Canbalam (Andrews,1990; Dahlin et al., 1998), itself strategically situated so as to command thelast protected harbor for another 100 km to the north, making it an almost

imperative provisioning stop for coastal merchantmen traveling furthernorth and circumnavigating the peninsula into Central America. Moreover,its location was appropriate for a point of trans-shipment and a distributionnode for goods entering the northern interior of the Yucatan peninsula.

Documenting prehistoric economic systems is notoriously difficult(Foias, 2002; Hirth, 1998). It is normally based on the analysis of artifactsmade of durable stuff, a particularly thorny vagary in the tropics andsubtropics, where perhaps as much as 90 to 98 percent of all artifacts weremade of highly perishable materials that do not preserve in the archae-ological record (Dahlin, 2007). That is why obsidian has proved to be soimportant. For example, most (9295%) of the obsidian has been visuallytraced to El Chayal in the volcanic highlands of Guatemala (Mazeau,2002),close to 670 km away, or from the Mexican highlands, which is even furtheraway. Similarly, some ceramic vessels came from, or more likely wereinspired by, the mega-site of Teotihuacan, the largest contemporaneousMesoamerican city. Close ties with this Mexican highland metropolis areevident in a talud-tablero facade on a small platform in the Lool Group, arather small, private, residential group near the site center. This style oftalud-tablero is a signature motif of Teotihuacan (Gendrop, 1984; Giddens,

1995; Heyden and Gendrop, 1980; Marquina, 1964); more eclectic formswere often inspired by monumental structures in other large and import-ant Maya site centers where the elite commissioned such works to osten-tatiously link themselves with foreigners with even greater status andprestige (Stanton, 2005).

Foreign goods were handled in bulk to and from Punta Canbalam as wellas consumed locally, as revealed by a large number of artifacts that all Mayaconsidered highly valuable. These include jade beads, obsidian blades, andfine ware ceramic vessels and figurines. That Chunchucmils obsidian passed

through Punta Canbalam is clear from a comparison of the amounts ofobsidian between sites in the interior of the Yucatan peninsula and sites onor near the Gulf Coast, showing that El Chayal obsidian was transportedby sea rather than by an inland trade route (Hutson et al., 2008a). Nothingis left of Punta Canbalam except a surprising number of artifacts that areconstantly washing ashore along a 10 km stretch of coastline, the result ofhundreds of years of alternately rising and falling sea levels and shiftingcurrents and beach lines (Dahlin et al., 1998). The artifacts along the beachand offshore are in seemingly inexhaustible supply, despite the fact that

fishermen and their families from the modern nearby fishing villages ofCelestun and Punta Arenas casually collect them as mementos when theypicnic on the beach as they often do.



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It was but a short haul from Punta Canbalam to Chunchucmil as well asfurther inland by means of several canals through the estuary. These canalstook advantage of natural channels, many of which were known to have

been straightened or cut by 19th century hacienda owners (Millet Camara,1981, 1994), but natural channels were available to the Classic Maya asthey discharge the aquifer that underlies the entire Yucatan peninsula(Luzzadder-Beach, 2000; Perry et al., 1989, 2002; Pope et al., 2001). Thesecanals and natural channels would have enabled the movement of largequantities of goods of all kinds in cargo canoes from the gulf coast; Hassig(1985: 133) estimates that cargo canoes can carry up to 40 times what a mancan carry on his back with a tumpline. Our survey of the seasonally in-undated savanna immediately to the west of Chunchucmil (Hixson, 2001)also revealed an eastwest network of stepping stones many kilometerslong that connect various archaeological sites and water sources. Portionsof this network are being used by Maya hunters, beekeepers and farmerstoday. These stepping stones could not help but aid the transport of goodsbetween the interior and the coast during the rainy season. The near-coastalregion was also capable of generating its own universally valuable tradegoods, including decorative feathers, decorative shell from the reef locateda couple of kilometers offshore and stingray spines for ritual bloodletting,as well as honey, cotton and fabric dyes.

Last but not least, Punta Canbalam was in a position to control the

Celestun Salinas (Andrews, 1983, 1997; Dahlin et al., 1998), the secondlargest salt works in prehistoric Mesoamerica, giving it a competitiveadvantage over the even larger salt works on the northern coast ofYucatan. Salt is an intriguing commodity, not least because it is a necessityof life and is used to season food the world over. Just as important for thelife of the Chunchucmil region is the fact that salt has long been used as ahighly fungible currency in barter transactions throughout the ancientworld (Kurlansky, 2002; Weatherford, 1996), inasmuch as infinitely varyingamounts of it can be used to balance or compensate for the exchange of

items of unequal worth. Chunchucmil, then, was in a position to exportthis valuable commodity as well as to control and manipulate it ascurrency.

If all the demographic, artifactual, geochemical and contextual evidencesuggest the operation of a remarkably complex market economy for itstime, then I feel justified in speculating that Chunchucmil and PuntaCanbalam also provided services, in addition to manufactured products.Service providers are mentioned in the ethnohistoric literature on highlandmarkets (Feldman, 1978; Hassig, 1985; Hutson, 2000) and provide a useful

analogy. Thus, services (that are normally required by professionalmerchants, market vendors, and other full or part-time entrepreneurs, to saynothing of those required by the urban inhabitants themselves) might

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have included canoe carriers and overland tumpline porters, warehousingfacilities, credit and banking services, protection against marauding banditsand marketplace improprieties, and provisioning residents, merchants and

porters with food, rest and entertainment like taverns, and sweat baths(also see Houston et al., 2000: 13), gaming competitions, and brothels(Feldman, 1978).

DISCUSSION

As I mentioned in the opening of this article, this kind of thinking runsagainst the grain of a good deal of conventional wisdom about Mayaeconomic systems, which sees Maya sites as not having commercialcomponents until the development of secondary states in the PostclassicPeriod (Kepecs, 2003; Kepecs et al., 1994; McAnany, 1993; Masson, 2002;Wells, 2006). The transition to what is believed to be a much more commer-cialized society and culture was first exemplified by the archaeological workon the Postclassic sites on the island of Cozumel (Freidel, 2008; Sabloff,1990; Sabloff and Rathje, 1975, 1980), which Chunchucmil resembles inmany ways. The demise of divine kingship and the cessation after the ClassicPeriod of truly monumental architecture dominating site centers cannot be

denied, but the primary evidence for a much reduced redistributive modein the Postclassic in favor of mercantilism remains documentary and linguis-tic. Actual artifactual evidence for Postclassic market exchange is far lesssubstantial. Landa, for example, states in his Relacin of ca. 1566 that theoccupation to which [the Maya] had the greatest inclination was trade(Tozzer, 1941: 94; also see Oviedo y Valdes, 1851[1535], and Ximnez,192931), and that they traded in such low-value articles as salt, fish, clothand clothing (mantas), copal, wax, honey, and flint knives, in addition tohigher-value goods such as swords and slaves for cacao, stone beads,

feathers, bells and other objects of metal. Tozzer also cites Pedro Martyr(1516) that the canoes seen by Columbus held such household items asutensils, pottery, and wooden objects, while other chroniclers spoke ofhemp, clay idols, pelts, fruits, and vegetables, and even maize. More thanhalf of these items are highly perishable. Maya vocabulary, moreover,includes the term kiwik (or kiuik), which can be translated as market,fair, where one buys or sells or simply plaza, and ah kiwik yah for thosewho traded in the marketplace (Barrera Vasquez, 1995: 405; King andShaw, 2007: 6; Wurtzburg, 1991: 947). In addition to terms for professional,

probably elite, merchants, such as pplom for professional merchants, ahpolom for merchant who bought and sold, and ah pplom yoc for travel-ing merchants, the vocabulary includes ah kaay for peddler, ah chokom



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konol for small-time trader mainly in trinkets and little items such asneedles and pins, ah lilits konol for a merchant in spicy condiments andvegetables, and ah lotay konolfor a bulk merchant or wholesaler (see Roys,

1939: 31; Tozzer, 1941: 94, fn. 415). King and Shaw point out that:. . . the types of products generally associated with konolphrases suggestthat they designated mainly petty merchants and/or shopkeepers, peoplewho catered to local and regional demands and did not travel far. Theymay not even have been full-time traders, but part-time or occasionalmerchants. (2007: 6)

The early dictionaries have other trade-related terms, including hel, aform of payment in cacao beans, tem or hotem to refer to a pocket orbag in which those who were trading carried the cacao beans they spent,and kan takin which referred to yellow things and precious stones (Kingand Shaw, 2007: 67) which were used later to refer to gold and silver.

Just how generalizable our findings at Chunchucmil are to the rest ofClassic Maya sites remains to be seen. Chunchucmil may be a rare case ofClassic Period market exchange simply because it was a specialized tradecenter, 600 to 800 years or so before the Postclassic Period; it should alsobe noted that similar geochemical results have recently been obtainedfrom another specialized trade center, La Trinidad (Moriarty, 2004). But,if Chunchucmil and La Trinidad had vibrant market economies in the

Classic Period, then it is worth seriously questioning whether marketeconomies could be found at more orthodox sites. Table 1 is a list of 22Preclassic, Classic and Postclassic sites at which marketplaces have beenhypothesized over the years but never geochemically tested. And, thereare, of course, other lines of evidence suggestive of market exchange,such as signs of craft specialization in utilitarian goods and commodities(e.g. the famous studies of Fry, 1980; Rands and Bishop, 1980; Hester andShafer, 1984; Feter, 1996; also see Brumfiel, 1980; Costin, 2001), differentialconsumption of diverse artifacts (e.g. Hirth, 1998) or the juxtaposition of

resource specialized communities (see Scarborough et al., 2003), etc.The top-down approach, concentrating as it often does on prestige goods,

is simply not a good vantage point to view modes of exchange other thanthe redistributive mode. The lilliputian analyses of organic and mineralresidues in soils have emboldened us to think outside the proverbial box,and it would seem to be an obvious first step in the investigation of thecomplexities of ancient Maya economies from a bottom-up perspective. Iwould suggest that greater use of a bottom-up approach is the only way wewill ever know whether Chunchucmil was way ahead of its time or our

findings are more broadly applicable.



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BRUCE H. DAHLIN is an environmental archaeologist with a deep

commitment to multidisciplinary research. He is currently the director of

the Ancient Maya Environmental Studies Center, and co-PI on twocurrently funded NSF projects: Developing Geochemical Signatures of

Ancient Maya Marketplaces, and Speleothem Proxies for Interactions of

Climate,Land Use,and Culture in the Ancient Maya Lowlands.He was the

head PI on the Pakbeh Regional Economy Program which investigated

Chunchucmil from 1993 to 2006. He has also directed the Project to

Reconstruct Holocene Environments on a Karstic Plain, Yucatan, Mexico

19861993, and The El Mirador Archaeological Project 19761982.He has

taught most recently in the Center for Environmental Studies at

Shepherd University and the Sociology and Anthropology Department

at Howard University. Address: Center for Environmental Studies,

Shepherd University, 443 Turner Road, Shepherdstown,WV 25443, USA.

[email: [email protected]]

dahlin ahead of its time

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