Gendered food behaviour among the Maya

Abstract

Ethnohistoric and archaeological evidence indicates that the production and distribution of food was an important source of agency and power for ancient Mayan women. Although it is believed that elite women controlled food used in rituals, isotopic measures of diet from a variety of sites representing different environments and time periods indicate that they ate fewer ideologically valued foods than males. By contrast, non-elite women appear to have consumed the same foods as their male equivalents. This finding may suggest that: women did not participate in ritual consumption of food in the same way or to the same extent that men did, or that food consumption was associated with gender identity. Preferential access to ritual foods by males ceases after the Spanish conquest but males continued to have more carnivorous diets. This phenomenon could be caused by the conversion of public rituals to private – the assimilation of Spanish gender values – or an underlying ideology that is maintained in gendered dietary differences.