Ancient Maya Marketplace Found

An ancient marketplace once stood in Chunchucmil, a pre-Columbian Maya city that was located in the Yucatán Peninsula.
A new study says. The research sheds light on the ancient Maya economy and challenges prevailing theories that food was taxed and dispersed by Maya rulers during the culture's Classic era, which lasted from about A.D. 300 to 900, rather than traded in markets, experts said. Food and organic matter do leave behind a chemical footprint, though—faint traces of phosphorus that cling tightly to soil particles even in heavy rains. By comparing phosphorus levels in Chunchucmil soil to dirt from a modern market in Antigua, Guatemala, Terry and colleagues concluded that the Maya city likely contained a vibrant market. "Soil chemical analysis provides additional lines of evidence that have changed how we think of the ancient Maya's trade patterns," said Terry in a telephone interview.

"Traditionally we've thought the tax-tribute system was responsible for distributing goods. But this shows that the Maya not only had a marketplace and a market economy but an important middle class of merchants as well." To perform their analysis, the researchers extracted phosphorus from 0.07-ounce (2-gram) soil samples with acid, mixed the solution with other chemicals, and measured the resulting blue glow. The technique revealed a streak containing low levels of phosphorus, with concentrations 40 times higher on either side. A similar pattern was detected in Antigua's modern market—at the time the only market in the area that had not been paved over—the study says.This indicates a footpath passed through Chunchucmil's marketplace and that food was sold or traded around it, the authors say.

"Just who traded in the [Chunchucmil] marketplace is not known," the study concludes. The research may also help solve "the vexing question of how large ancient Maya urban populations were sustained," the authors write. "Conventional wisdom has it that market systems were not important, despite the fact that urban populations often exceeded local carrying capacity using traditional farming methods," said study leader Bruce H. Dahlin. Maya marketplaces have been tentatively identified in a number of large and important sites, added Dahlin, an archaeologist at the Center for Environmental Studies at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. (See an interactive map of famous Maya sites.)

However, "until the emergence of geochemical prospecting techniques, there was no means of verifying them nor if staple foods were exchanged there," he said. The work provides an important launching point for further studies of markets' roles during the Classic Period, he said.


by www.thesupernaturalworld.co.uk