CHAPTER ELEVEN
STORAGE, TRIBUTE, AND POLITICAL ADMINISTRATION AMONG THE LOWLAND MAYA
Michael P. Smyth
Introduction
Storage, the setting aside of food and goods for future need and investment, was of critical importance to ancient Maya political economies. Because the growing season was not year-round in the tropical Maya lowlands, limited by rainfall and periodic but unpredictable drought cycles, the Maya state had to rely on the storage of foodstuffs to finance the economics of political administration. The way the Maya state organized storage is closely related to Maya political structure, especially during the Late Classic period (AD 600–900). This chapter distinguishes differences in storage strategies, how and where goods were stored, and how stored goods were administered, as a way to reconstruct political structure among the lowland Maya.
Three major topics concerning Maya storage and the economy are explored: (1) subsistence and surplus, (2) specialization and trade, and (3) the degree of political centralization. I argue that storage relates to production, consumption, distribution, and exchange in various ways at Maya centers. The focus here is on the Maya city of Tikal, but it is assumed that there was considerable variability across the lowland Maya world. An important implication is that storage can be used to monitor economic processes and their variation across time and space. Moreover, differences in storage strategies—how and where goods were stored and how stored goods were administered—are key questions for reconstructing ancient economies. Identifying both storage places and storage organization is essential for understanding the past Maya political economy.
Tikal
Tikal was one of the largest Classic period centers in the southern Maya lowlands, with an urban core of sixteen square kilometers and an estimated population of around sixty thousand (Culbert et al. 1990; Figure 11.1). Most attention has been directed to Tikal’s monumental edifices, hieroglyphic writing, and elite culture; comparatively little work has attempted reconstructing Tikal’s political economy and its material foundations. With the exception of studies of water management (Scarborough and Gallopin 1991; Dunning et al. 2002), and underground cisterns (chultunes; Puleston 1971), there has been little work to understand the role and significance of goods storage at Tikal or other Maya centers.
Subsistence reconstruction at Tikal has demonstrated that the Maya were engaged in a complex array of cultivation strategies, including various forms of wetland agriculture, as early as the Preclassic period (Harrison and Turner 1978; Harrison 1993; Pohl 1985; Turner and Harrison 1983). Challenges to the role of wetland systems during the Classic period (Pohl 1990; Pohl, Bloom, and Pope 1990; Pohl and Dahlin 1989), however, have not altered settlement and ecological studies that have discredited the traditional swidden-based hypothesis. Clearly, the agricultural landscape around Tikal was extraordinarily complex (see Scarborough and Gallopin 1991; Dunning et al. 1999), with permanent wetland cultivation systems combined with upland swidden fields and, surely, annual rainfall agriculture. With this elaborate agricultural technology, the Maya were clearly capable of producing the material surplus necessary for supporting complex political institutions and sustaining large, sedentary populations at Tikal for more than one thousand years. Given the many threats to farming, Tikal could not have been maintained without storage technology.
Tikal was located along a strategic trade route linking tropical lowlands to highland regions. It remains unclear, however, how this trade network functioned, what kinds of goods moved in and out of Tikal, or whether the city was primarily a consumer or a producer of goods for local consumption and export. If there was a large, central marketplace at downtown Tikal (Coe 1988; C. Jones 1991; Thompson 1966), unambiguous evidence is lacking, as is an understanding of the internal economic organization of the city. One must not confuse the presence of a marketplace with a market-based economy. Market capitalism and the commoditization of labor, hallmarks of market-based economies, were an unlikely part of the ancient Maya economy at Tikal (see McAnany 1992; cf. Dahlin et al. 2007). If the fundamental material power base of Maya elites rested on the control of land, labor, and the material by-products thereof, then the storage of surplus goods generated and the political-economic strategies employed to support the state should be closely related. In other words, storage strategies should reflect the political power (control) structures.
Most Maya researchers see craft specialization as being organized at the household scale; it is unclear whether specialization was predominantly kin-based or attached to elite households (Becker 1973; Blanton et al. 1981; Freidel 1981; Rice 1987). Evidence from other Maya centers, such as Sayil and Colha (Shafer and Hester 1991; Hester and Shafer 1994; Smyth and Dore 1994; Smyth et al. 1995), indicates that there was large-scale ceramic making and even entire communities specializing in lithic tool manufacture, implying the possibility of an economic ranking within social classes (also see Chase and Chase 1992). These studies suggest that the Maya had complex, multilevel social stratification and not just a rigid two-class society (elite and commoners), though evidence for a true middle class remains doubtful (McAnany 1995). At Tikal, how and where utilitarian goods were produced, distributed, and exchanged to tens of thousands of consumers are not known (Fry 1974; Moholy-Nagy 1976). A better understanding of storage systems and how they associate with craft production and marketplace exchange can reveal important aspects of the Maya economy.
Much recent attention has focused on Maya elite culture as Tikal, especially epigraphy (see Culbert 1991), but there is significantly less understanding of sociopolitical structures and the material foundations of elite power. Written inscriptions reveal little regarding the role of the lesser nobility, an administrative bureaucracy, and the commoner class. Important information of the lesser nobility, however, has been recently gleaned for the epigraphic record of Copan and elsewhere (see below). The most popular political model for the Maya is still the segmentary state: a decentralized political structure with regal-ritual centers serving as places of ceremony, elite affairs, and consumption but not major economic production and exchange (Ball and Taschek 1991; Demarest 1992; Fox 1977; Sanders and Webster 1988). A contrasting view sees the Maya as regional states and even as militaristic, tribute-based empires akin to the Aztec (Adams and Jones 1981; Adams 1991; Martin and Grube 1994, 1995). Obviously, a much wider range of information is needed to reconcile such diverse views of Maya political organization. The collection of more complete settlement data from different Maya centers, both large and small, is needed (King and Potter 1994; Smyth, Dore, and Dunning 1995). Also, a better understanding of storage organization can shed insights into the structure of the Maya political economy.
Storage Economy
Storage is fundamental for understanding past political-economic organization. Identifying storage systems in the archaeological record and in the Maya area, however, has not attracted adequate research attention among archaeologists (see Gotthilf 1982; Smyth 1990, 1991). Elsewhere I outlined (Smyth 1989: 98–99) a set of archaeological expectations of how storages systems should appear under diverse mechanisms for generating state surplus; surplus refers to material commodities produced not for immediate consumption but for future use and investment. The basic idea is that there are three generic kinds of preindustrial economies: labor service (corvée labor), tribute, and trade, with corresponding degrees of political centralization reflected by investment in central/state, community, and domestic storage systems. Drawing on these expectations, this exercise attempts to posit necessary linkages among degrees of political centralization, methods of surplus generation, and storage systems in the Maya area (Table 11.1). In other words, the kinds of storage systems employed by a society should reflect important organizational aspects of the political economy.
Table 11.1 Hypothetical Relationships among Political Economies, Storage Systems, and Degrees of Political Centralization
| TRADE/EXCHANGE |
| Trade/Exchange |
| Domestic |
| 1. No substantial investment in facilities: short-term storage |
| 2. Low redundancy in form of storage |
| Community |
| 1. Substantial features |
| 2. Bulking: diversity in form of storage |
| 3. Associated with local market |
| Central/State |
| 1. Larger than community |
| 2. High diversity in form of storage |
| 3. Associated with marketplace and/or civic architecture |
| LABOR SERVICE |
| Domestic |
| 1. No substantial investment in facilities: short-term storage |
| 2. Redundancy in form of storage |
| Community |
| 1. Large storage features(s) |
| 2. Bulking: low diversity in form of storage |
| 3. Associated with local/public architecture |
| TAXATION/TRIBUTE |
| Domestic |
| 1. Substantial storage feature(s) |
| 2. Redundancy in form of storage |
| Community |
| 1. Large storage features(s) |
| 2. Bulking: low diversity in form of storage |
| 3. Associated with local/public architecture |
| Central/State |
| 1. Very large and /or many substantial storage features |
| 2. Warehousing: moderate diversity in form of storage |
| 3. Associated with major civic/governmental architecture |
Mesoamerican political-economic systems were dependent on storage but evidence for storage remains elusive (Smyth 1989, 1990). The reason for low visibility may be because storage was organized across different societal scales, such as at the household, community, and state levels. Although all state-level societies practice storage at different scales, it is the degree of domestic storage to the political economy that may distinguish Mesoamerica from other early states where central storage was highly developed (e.g., the Andean highlands, dynastic Egypt, the Indus Valley, and Mesopotamia).
The political economies of the early states, for example, were organized around strongly autocratic personalities and bureaucratic institutions, with centralized power in the hands of relatively few individuals and/or within strong regulatory yet exclusive institutions. Among the highest levels of government, the distinction between personal wealth and state wealth was either ambiguous or did not exist. The power vested in the Egyptian pharaoh and Inka emperor is a good example of extreme autocratic rulership where the property of the state and the wealth of the sovereign were virtually inseparable (Conrad 1981; Murra 1982; Rowe 1946; Cyril 1986; Kemp 1989). Under these conditions, the political economy was materially sustained, on command, by relying heavily on the control of labor. Stated another way, labor service was the dominant tax for supporting the state. Tribute in goods, although collected, was not primary, and markets and trade were not central to the economy. Under labor service, state storage was practiced on a monumental scale, reflecting a high degree of centralized political control.
In contrast, Mesoamerica seems to have been less centralized politically, with power being shared among many competing factions. In Late Classic Copan, for instance, the community house or “Popal Na” of local lords played an important role in decisions of late Copan rulers (Sanders 1989; Fash, Andrews, and Manahan 2004). Among the Aztec, it is clear the king was not an autocratic ruler. The Aztec ruler shared power with the elected high counsel of esteemed men from the important cities and wards (including the rulers of the Triple Alliance) and was obliged to consult them on all matters affecting the empire (Carrasco 1971; Gibson 1971). Berdan (1977) has shown how important the tribute system was to the Aztec state and how it articulated with other labor and exchange systems; corvée labor was clearly a tax, but it is questionable whether it was the most important form of material provisioning to the state. Although the working of elite estates by tenant farmers was important to the maintenance of the nobility, tribute payments in the form of goods paid locally, regionally, and throughout the empire were fundamental, especially to the king. It is likely that tribute was also economically as important to the Classic Maya state as it was in Terminal and Postclassic Yucatan (Chamberlain 1951; see also Andrews 1983; Ardren et al. 2010).
Trade and Exchange
Long-distance trade and market exchange provided goods for distribution, wealth, and prestige for both elite and nonelites, but trade and exchange may not to have contributed substantially to the state. Tikal and other large Maya states were not based on market economies, but that market exchange was obviously important for the distribution and importation of goods. If elite power was based on trade, then storage facilities should be concentrated at marketplace settings and—this depended on the kinds and amounts of different trade goods imported and exported—should exhibit evidence of the goods being stored and exchanged. This certainly seems to be the case for Late Postclassic Cozumel. Warehousing facilities (identified as raised nonhabitation platforms at the interior of the island at San Gervasio) appear to have been located next to marketplaces and elite residences where stored trade goods could be offloaded from large seagoing canoes (Freidel and Sabloff 1984). Market storage of this variety also would have served to protect trade goods from pirates and hurricane activity, so prominent in this area. Many argued that Tikal had a marketplace, but they could not identify the locations of major warehousing facilities, where trade goods were locally produced and exchanged. Marketplaces without warehouses suggest that local exchange was of far greater economic importance than long-distance trade where trade items circulated among the elite. In either case, the state could not have been sustained by taxing marketplaces, controlling market exchange, or engaging in long-distance trade. Here, storage systems, mechanisms for surplus generation, and power structures appear interrelated.
It is doubtful that long-distance trade generated significant state surplus at Tikal. Though it is difficult to assess the volume and movement of such trade goods as salt, honey, feathers, and slaves during the Classic period, there was a brisk trade in these items during the Postclassic (Andrews 1983; Roys 1943, 1957), and we know that obsidian and jadeite were important trade goods. Local exchange, however, could have contributed significantly to state institutions and to the prosperity of economic middle-level groups. While evidence for local exchange at Tikal is limited, data from the Maya centers of Sayil and Chunchucmil in the north suggest the presence of central marketplaces and large-scale craft specialization (Sabloff and Tourtellot 1991; Smyth and Dore 1994; Smyth et al. 1995; Tourtellot, Sabloff, and Carmean 1992; Tourtellot and Sabloff 1994; Dahlin et al. 2007). These data show that the Maya economy was organized in complex ways and that we need to learn more about the means of material provisioning, including storage.
What was the predominate method of surplus generation among the Maya? If labor service was the primary means of material support for the state, why is there no clear evidence for large centralized storage facilities? The bulking of foodstuffs and goods at a centrally controlled location was a prominent feature of the labor-based taxation systems of the Inka, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian states. Large stores of food were needed to feed and supply workers who labored for state-sponsored construction projects, normally during off-agricultural periods (Mendelssohn 1974; Murra 1980). The building of Tikal’s monuments obviously required enormous labor, and surely draft labor was employed. Why, then, is there not ample and clear evidence for central storage? One possible answer is that draft labor was important to monument construction but not necessarily to the material support of the state. Perhaps, local communities were required to supply both the laborers and their rations for periodic state-building projects in addition to their regular tribute payments, something alluded to in the ethnohistoric record of Yucatan (Chamberlain 1951). The lack of large-scale centralized storage suggests that labor service was not a primary factor in the material support of the Maya state and suggests a low degree of political centralization.
Tribute
Tribute refers to a tax on goods produced and are taxes paid to the state by turning over a portion of already produced goods. If tribute was given on a large scale and on a regular basis, I argue that one should see heavy investment in diverse storage systems at different societal scales, especially the domestic and community levels. Information on the pre-Conquest tribute system of the Maya of northern Yucatan indicates that foodstuffs (maize, beans, squash, chili peppers, and so on) were the main items given as tribute since at least the tenth century AD. Under these conditions, goods would be produced, stored, and distributed at dispersed locations throughout the urban center, such as at house compounds and at communal buildings in neighborhoods and city districts. If most storage was dispersed, then central storage should be found at palace and/or temple localities but at a reduced scale, perhaps not unlike the storage magazines alluded to by Spanish eyewitness accounts for the Aztec palace complexes at Tenochtitlan. While these facilities were puny by Inka standards, they were clearly not designed to support major economic redistribution but rather to sustain the ruler’s extended household and his duties as head of state (Díaz de Castillo 1956: 211; Rojas 1987). This observation is apparent from the accounts of the three-year famine of “One Rabbit,” when royal stores were opened to prevent Tenochtitlan from being depopulated; most of the stored food seems to have come from outside the city (Durán 1964: 144–147; Hassig 1981). How applicable the Postclassic Aztec organization is to the Classic Maya is a matter of debate, although some level of comparison cannot be discounted.
Because studies of storage at Tikal have received little attention, a lack of evidence for central storage at Tikal does not necessarily mean it did not exist. Indeed, many studies of palace architecture imply that many small room compartments were for the storage of goods, especially durable goods. Other studies suggest that underground cisterns were major storage places. My observations and experiments suggest that this kind of storage must had been limited to nonperishable goods because the fluctuating temperature and humidity levels in stone rooms and underground chambers in tropical climates will produce an environment detrimental to food storage (see below). I and others have argued that most long-term food storage in the Maya lowlands must have taken place within impermanent structures and facilities, where the storage environment could be more securely regulated (see Gotthilf 1982; Hernández Xolocotzi 1949; Smyth 1989, 1990, 1991).
Without large central storage, labor service was unlikely to have been the basis of the Maya economy for the reasons given above. Of course, contributed labor was a factor in the support of many elites at the time of the conquest (Roys 1957). Of greater importance for the sixteenth-century Maya of Northern Yucatan, though, was the system of goods tribute collected from dependent centers, communities, and domestic units (Chamberlain 1951) for maintaining Maya state institutions. Indeed, tribute as a mode of surplus collection depended mainly on household and community production and storage. Once again, comparisons of Late Postclassic and Classic Maya are uncertain, although the lack of large-scale, centralized storage in both cases suggests a system of dispersed storage and less centralized political power structures. In addition, the breakthroughs in Maya epigraphy have clearly shown that militarism was indeed a salient feature of Classic Maya polities, especially Tikal and other large centers (Culbert 1991). These data suggest that the acquisition of tribute was a major state objective of conquest and territorial expansion among the Classic Maya (Hassig 1992: 75–80; Martin and Grube 1994, 1995).
Palace Storerooms
Classic Maya palace structures were foci of political and economic activities concerning the ruling elite class. At Tikal, for instance, the Central Acropolis just south of the Great Plaza, built over a period of five centuries, consists of a series of internal courtyards surrounded by range-type buildings with various room and entryway configurations (Figure 11.2). Although the functions of palace rooms have been the subject of much speculation, whether any rooms were actually storerooms has not been seriously explored. Of course, storage identification depends, in part, on whether rooms could house tribute-related perishable foodstuffs over longterm periods greater than one year or beyond one agricultural harvest. The likelihood is low, however.
In the lowland tropics, the storage environment of stone-walled, stone-roofed rooms is not favorable to food storage even if staples, such as maize and beans, were thoroughly dried. The fluctuating high temperature and high humidity levels in palace rooms, especially during the tropical rainy season, produces a poor storage environment. Successful maize storage is constrained by several variables, including moisture content, temperature, humidity, storage time, and the level of fungus present (Christensen and Kaufmann 1969; Johnson 1957; Nansen et al. 2004; Udoh, Cardwell, and Ikotun 2000). These factors are all interrelated to a process called “heating,” which raises the levels of humidity within stored maize, creating an atmosphere conducive to fungus growth and rapid deterioration in the form of rotting and spoilage.
The most effective means of combating fungus growth in grain in the absence of modern refrigeration is by drying (Estler 1979). The reduction of the moisture content of grain lowers relative humidity, inhibiting fungus growth (Milton and Jarrett 1969). The control of ambient temperature and humidity also reduces moisture content of grain.
The way maize is stored—whether on or off the ear—depends on storage time, storage space, and the kinds of facilities available. Some researchers contend that insect damage is less on maize left on the ear (Weatherwax 1954); others suggest that shelled maize dries better (Leonard 1976). Ear maize requires twice the storage space of shelled corn and is best stored in cribs that can provide good ventilation; shelled maize stores better in bins (Leonard 1976; Shove 1970). Either facility option would have been possible within Maya palace storerooms.
In warm climates, insulation, ventilation, and solar radiation are important in the design and placement of storage facilities (Ransom 1960). Insulation from high outside (or inside) temperature succeeds by constructing facilities (and rooms) out of solid, durable materials. To reduce solar radiation, exterior surfaces must be shaded from the sun while windows, doors, wall openings, and accessibility must be limited to minimize heat and entry of warm, moist air. Elevating facilities off the ground promotes adequate ventilation and protection from soil or floor moisture. Finally, ground-level storage facilities, such as those in rooms, should have watertight openings and floors to protect against flooding and moisture.
In November 1986, I conducted a storage experiment within one interior room of the first story at the Great Palace at Sayil in the Puuc region of northern Yucatan. The purpose was to determine if stone rooms with stone-vaulted roofs provide usable environments for long-term storage of maize. Room 35 on the east wing of the palace was chosen because it is structurally intact, has a large interior space (17.5 square meters), and contains a stone bench to elevate a storage facility off the floor. A contiguous exterior room (34) with cord holders and wall sockets suggests that both rooms could be closed and sealed, probably with cloth curtains or heavy tapestries (Pollock 1980; figure 173; Sabloff and Tourtellot 1991).
Research among traditional Maya farmers shows that unhusked dry maize packed on the ear in tight vertical rows in open-sided wooden cribs (trojes) can preserve maize without significant spoilage for more than three years (Smyth 1991; Figure 11.3). Shelled maize stored in bins, in contrast, will not preserve beyond one year. It was also found that the use of powdered lime (calcium carbonate) when generously applied to stored maize helps to further dry ear maize and serves as a vermin repellent. At the Sayil Palace, a miniature version of a maize troje (fifty by fifty centimeters) commonly used by local farmers was constructed of wooden poles, packed with two rows of dried ear corn, saturated with lime, and then elevated above the stone bench of room 35. Subsequently, the storage facility was monitored periodically over the course of eight weeks to determine any changes in state of storage. What became apparent immediately was that the humidity of the room was consistently high (about 80 percent) though the temperature was reasonably low (about 25°C). High humidity is associated with the stonework of Maya buildings, which tend to “sweat” as a result of fluctuating hot daytime and cool nighttime temperatures. Also, poor air circulation is a factor in mold and fungus growth often seen on stone and stucco interior walls in standing Maya buildings, a condition detrimental to long-term food storage.
Within six weeks, the maize began to show evidence of fungus growth, and later there were clear signs of rotting. Obviously, this stone room was not conducive to long-term maize storage. These results were consistent with information provided by local Maya farmers who had attempted, unsuccessfully, to store maize within the intact vaulted-stone rooms near the milpa fields at the Maya palace at Chunhuhub near Xculoc, Campeche. Today, buildings with perishable walls and roofs are used for as rooms for long-term maize storage because they provide a stable, regulatable environment. The ancient Maya must have stored maize and other foodstuffs over the long term in similar perishable structures.
The bulking of valuable durable goods in palace rooms (cotton cloth, exotic stone, fine-ware pottery, honey and wax, and so on) is another matter and must have been part of elite economic tribute and exchange activity. The storage requirements for such durable goods concern accessibility and security. Another factor impacting storage location is whether palace goods were personal possessions or property of the state, and the degree to which these were mutually exclusive. Such valuables should be near or within the elite residence, perhaps not unlike the treasure room uncovered by Spanish conquistadores as they occupied Axayacatl’s Palace in the Aztec capital of Technotitlan in 1519 (Díaz de Castillo 1956).
Of the various palace structures at Tikal’s Central Acropolis, the most secure storerooms for durable goods are interior locations with the few access points (see Figure 11.2). Rooms fitting these criteria are found in the center of Jaguar Paw’s (Chak Tok Ich’aak, AD 360–378) Palace complex (Str. 5D-46), located on the east side of the Central Acropolis, especially the small lateral rooms on the north and south sides perpendicular to the west staircase. This Early Classic Maya ruler may have engaged in long-distance trade and even intermarriage with the powerful city of Teotihuacán (Martin and Grube 2000: 28). A decorated Palace complex (Str. 5D-57) believed to be the personal house and royal court of the Late Classic Maya ruler Jasaw Chan K’awil I (AD 682–734; Harrison 1999) is part of the main building north of Court 3. Here, there are a number of interior rooms on the east and west sides with single doorways and restricted access consistent with a secure storeroom for valuable goods. The so-called Mahler’s Palace (Str. 5d-65) is believed to have been built by the twenty-ninth lord of Tikal, Yax Nuun Ahiin II (AD 768–794), who reigned at the beginning of the city’s decline. His palace is a two-story range structure south of Court 2 on the west side of the Central Acropolis and shows two rear rooms with single doorways that restrict access, one with a lateral chamber, adjacent to the deep Palace Reservoir.
If palace storerooms were closed and sealed in ways to identify the owner and the possessions contained within them, no such unambiguous evidence for seals, doors, or closures has ever been found. How access to storerooms was regulated by the Maya elite is also unknown, but some sort of record keeping associated with tribute collection, redistribution, and exchange activity was clearly necessary. Because the Classic Maya had one of the most sophisticated writing and counting systems of the ancient Americas, it seems inconceivable that the Maya did not keep written records for economic transactions as they did for religious and ritual activity so well documented in the few surviving bark paper codices. If Classic Maya elites employed codices for record keeping, none have survived to the present, unfortunately.
Conclusions
This exploratory exercise is limited by the available storage data for the Maya area. What is certain, however, is that the political economies of the Classic Maya were dependent on stored surplus of material goods. The absence of monumental central storage would seem to indicate that most storage was practiced at smaller scales and dispersed throughout the society. Storage strategies at the household, community, and state levels would have been integrally related to an economy dependent on tribute as the principal mode of material support to the state. Storerooms in Maya palaces would have been used to house tribute collection and the products of exchange activity. If so, the political system must have been organized to marshal surplus and social obligations via a complex hierarchical structure incorporating community and domestic levels of organization, which would have reduced the need for a large central bureaucracy. Such a corporate political structure would favor a high degree of autonomy in community and domestic-level affairs as long as tribute and labor were supplied to the state on demand.
A tax organization focused on communities may resemble the Maya ch’ibalo’ob (Farriss 1984; G. Jones 1989; Roys 1943, 1957) and Aztec calpulli (Carrasco 1971; Caso 1963; Kirchhoff 1959) at the time of the Conquest. In addition, the long-distance movement of tribute goods, including bulky perishables, need not be constrained by inefficient modes of transportation (foot power), as is so often argued for Mesoamerica (see Sanders and Santley 1983; Santley 1984, 1994), because the costs of transshipment would have been absorbed by the payers and not by the state that received tribute (Berdan 1977; Chamberlain 1951; Hassig 1986). This kind of political control does not require a large bureaucratic apparatus and may serve to increase production by encouraging (or forcing) farmers, albeit indirectly, to overproduce.
A working hypothesis inferred from storage organization indicates that a tribute mode of surplus extraction structured the Maya political economy. Without clear evidence for large-scale centralized storage and substantial warehouse facilities for trade, labor service, trade, and exchange were probably secondary in importance for the political economy, providing additional avenues for elite wealth, prestige goods, and a mechanism for redistribution. Under decentralized storage systems, most surplus is produced and stored locally, and a portion is appropriated by the state. When the time comes for stores to be physically “skimmed off” and transferred to political elites, surplus is then redirected, redistributed, or perhaps restored. Therefore, the relationships between storage (movements) of goods may be a key feature of the tribute economy and Classic Maya political centralization. In this way, surplus is spread throughout the society and moves up the storage hierarchy (household-community-state) only when mandated by the state. If the lowland Maya economy was organized around tribute and decentralized storage, political organization would be only quantitatively different from other Classic Mesoamerican societies but qualitatively distinct from other early world state societies.
The challenge of recognizing storage variation and its organization remains a significant methodological challenge for archaeologists. To understand the Maya political economy and its material foundations, it is necessary to conceptualize storage as an economic process involved with not only production and exchange but also distribution and consumption. As argued, storage is a factor in all these processes and is itself a significant economic process that provides material means to support complex economies. Unfortunately, there is little attention given to storage in studies of the Maya economy. In Masson and Freidel’s (2002) edited volume on the subject, surprisingly, the topic of storage is mentioned briefly only once. As storage is treated more analytically and becomes better understood, it will ultimately provide new insight into the complex interworkings of ancient political economies. Conceptualizing the economy as embedded in sociopolitical institutions and linked to economic as well as noneconomic factors, an instituted process as Polanyi (1957) argued, challenges researchers to employ a holistic view of storage and the political economy.
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