Her Cup for Sweet Cacao: Food in Ancient Maya Society

Abstract

This compelling collection of essays reveals the key role that food played in all dimensions of Maya society, including economics, politics, and religion. Through analysis of the kitchen, feasts, banquets, rituals, and “memory work,” the collection emphasizes food's importance as a social fact and its role in cultural reproduction and identity construction. From a wide range of disciplines, the contributors skillfully connect historical, archaeological, chemical, biological, anthropological, ethnohistoric, epigraphic, and iconographic evidence.Though the volume focuses on the Classic period, Traci Ardren wisely includes a chapter by M. Kathryn Brown and Carolyn Freiwald that analyzes the potluck festival during Middle and Late Preclassic periods as a key element in the following period's social complexity. The book's core—chapters 3 to 9—submerges the reader in an in-depth exploration of the role of food and foodways in the social construction of identities in Classic Maya society.In chapter 3, Jon Spenard, Adam King, Terry Powis, and Nilesh Gaikwad adopt an ethnographic approach to emphasize the social importance of caves as spaces of communication between gods and men, especially between Maya royalty and divine essence. Their analysis shows both cacao's great value in the caves of Pacbitun and women's importance in these rituals. Furthermore, the chapter suggests that the caves may have also been used by specialists for other purposes, such as healing. The following chapter, by Nicholas Carter and Mallory Matsumoto, explores the epigraphy of food and beverages in the Maya courts. The chapter analyzes all dimensions of maize, cacao, and pulque: the way that they were prepared, their mythical meaning, and the social and religious norms that governed their consumption, including preparation processes and table settings.Shanti Morell-Hart next argues that food plants should also be recognized as “dynamic actors, mediators, and messengers” (p. 149). Morell-Hart explains how ancient Maya's plant-based diet was complemented by the intake of animal protein. Petra Cunningham-Smith, Ashley Sharpe, Arianne Boileau, Erin Kennedy Thornton, and Kitty Emery build on the importance of animals in their chapter, which analyzes the role of dogs in Maya culture, whether as food, funeral offerings, or symbols.Chapters 7 and 8 move on to examine culinary and food service equipment as a form of social distinction and a sign of identity. Lilia Fernández Souza, Mario Zimmermann, and Socorro del Pilar Jiménez Álvarez demonstrate how the distribution of culinary and food service equipment in Sihó evinces the existence of social divisions, including the selective use of certain culinary tools in relation to those in privileged power positions. Similarly, Julia Hendon's spatial analysis of the Copán and lower Ulúa valleys shows how food (especially cacao), ceramics, and other goods increased stratification within cities with a central power, such as Copán, and decentralized areas with greater ethnic diversity, such as the lower Ulúa valley.Maxime Lamoureux-St-Hilaire's contribution, the last to address the Classic period, illustrates the role of festivities as channels of communication and as processes of social differentiation. Lamoureux-St-Hilaire explores how the great sophistication of La Corona's feast meant to perpetuate the power and identity of increasingly unstable elites. Lamoureux-St-Hilaire demonstrates how this festival's great economic cost placed a huge stress on the environment and the population. The festival, the author argues, thus played an important role in the deterioration of social and political relations and in triggering the collapse of Classic Maya society.Following this comprehensive analysis of the Classic Maya, the collection's last three contributions focus on the transformations resulting from the collapse of Maya society and the Maya cultural reformulation, due to the arrival of new human groups in the area during the Postclassic period. Ardren's chapter shows how the arrival of new foods and technology organized regional elites and newcomers as new identities emerged, despite the cultural exchanges between both parties. Moreover, in a study of the food consumed in Mayapán, Marilyn Masson, Timothy Hare, Bradley Russell, Carlos Peraza Lope, and Jessica Campbell reveal the unusual growth in the consumption of meat, probably due to several factors including the existence of markets, tribute demands, and sumptuary laws. This contrasted with the countryside, where the intake of animal protein was scarce. Gabrielle Vail and Maia Dedrick analyze the relationships between men, gods, and animals through balche’ rituals from the Postclassic era to the present day, exposing the drink's great relevance to the study of social transformations. Closing out this coherent yet diverse collection, Jeffrey Pilcher contextualizes the book within Maya historiography, recalling the contributors' key arguments and suggesting future lines of research.Ardren and the collection's contributors painstakingly advance a unique, compelling, and thorough analysis of the social uses of food and foodways in Classic Maya culture, grounded in rich evidence analyzed from a diverse range of approaches. This volume sets the groundwork for further studies to explore other periods and regions in order to gain a broader understanding of this phenomenon in Maya culture.