Maya commoners drank chocolate too...

27th Oct 2022

Mexicolore contributor Dr. Anabel Ford

How come, if ‘money grew on trees’ in the form of cacao pods, Maya farmers that grew chocolate couldn’t afford it themselves? Up till now experts have focused largely on chocolate as a sacred and elite drink. Recent research now shows that it was consumed at every level of society. At the forefront of this research, Dr. Anabel Ford, a leading anthropologist and director of the MesoAmerican Research Center at UC Santa Barbara, California, has kindly shared with us some of the main findings... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

(Successful) attempts to identify the residue of cacao on ceramic vases have tended to focus, till today, on beautifully ornate drinking vases, the assumption being that the drink was reserved for the noble classes. ‘We now know this is not the case. The imbibing of cacao was a luxury accessible to all. The importance is that it was a requirement of the rituals associated with it’ says Ford.
To test this, Ford, alongside leading UCSB Professor of Chemistry Mattanjah de Vries, carried out a pioneering study, involving the chemical analysis of 54 ceramic sherds (broken ceramic pieces) found at El Pilar, an archaeological site on the border of Belize and Guatemala. The sherds came from domestic contexts across a range of social classes.

‘The items used in our sample [some are shown in picture 2] favor the vases, as an example of drinking vessels that were presumed to be used for consuming beverages, and include general purpose storage jars, mixing bowls, and serving plates that are common Late Classic ceramic vessels.’ Concentrating on the search for a key biomarker for cacao, theophylline, all vessel types had evidence of cacao!
’This was a surprise at first’, Ford said, ‘but giving thought to the presence and understanding of their uses, bowls would be good for mixing, jars would be right for warming the drink (a traditional cacao preparation) and plates appropriate for serving food with sauces that can contain cacao (such as mole poblano).’

Clearly, chocolate was consumed at every level of society. Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that the cacao plant was grown widely in the Maya lowlands - every farming family with an orchard would have access to it. Cacao was one of the two most important and sacred crops for the Maya, alongside maize. It was also used widely as a form of currency in Mesoamerican markets. Does this mean that ordinary Maya farmers were ‘wealthy’, and their society ‘egalitarian’?
’Egalitarian? Only as much as we are...!

‘Let’s look at other valuables in our lives - gold: those like the royals we’ve been reading about have a lot, but it is not formally restricted so you can find a person in the East End of London, in fact anywhere around the world may have a gold item of jewelry, but small amounts compared to Queen Elizabeth II. Access is restricted by other matters: in the case of gold, that is money. We could think of other things as well that might even be imitations! Even we find this in Mesoamerica in the metallurgical techniques that made “gold” bells that used a copper alloy with gold and the finishing process made the gold surface. And the fancy vases of the Maya: there are ones with clear writing that can be read by the literati, but there are pseudo-glyphs on others that cannot be read but look like they might - these may be displayed to those who cannot read and may look authentic.’

‘Ritual can be sumptuary (maybe like the recent rituals surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth II to keep up a theme). No ordinary citizen will be kept at state for 10 days in a public viewing area, no ordinary person can have a state funeral. But funerals are celebrated by many people, so it is a shared ritual. We have many such shared rituals - from daily brushing our teeth to annual Thanksgiving. While the President of the USA celebrates this with a special kind of turkey, the marketing makes sure to provide sufficient turkey for all the participants in the ritual. This is how I imagine the cacao rituals. In fact, now that I have been discussing my project with Maya and Mesoamericans, I learn that they have a special olla [pot] for preparing cacao or celebrating and that they reserve for just such occasions, saved specially and not used in any other way!’

‘My career has focused on settlement patterns of the ancient Maya and I know most of the general households. Everyone has to see to provisioning: to store, prepare, cook, and serve food. My household studies consider the belongings that are necessarily shared with all walks of life. Note that vessels for provisioning are shared with large and small residential units, those near and far from El Pilar (the major center that I found in 1983). Everyone in the Late Classic had a similar household set; vases are the smallest proportion and you can see while accessible to the majority, they are greater in number at the larger units compared with the smaller ones.
I find the same with obsidian, imported from more than 300 air km away. Obsidian is clearly costly but all must have it, maybe like a good knife. There were other cutting stones, but this is special, like Cacao. Many other beverages may indeed be used in ritual, but cacao is special.’

‘These results dispel any doubt as to the importance and inclusiveness of cacao consumption among the Late Classic Maya. That cacao is generally available does not diminish its value but contextualizes its formal and ceremonial importance as a cultural phenomenon that experienced wide participation by the populace. Well beyond the elite ritual civic-ceremonial realm, we interpret the identification of cacao in vessels belonging to people of all walks of life as confirmation that cacao’s prestige was consumed by all in Maya society’ (emphasis added).

Picture sources:-
• Pic 1 (L): image courtesy of Arqueología Mexicana, Mexico DF
• Pix 1 (R), 3 & 7: photos by and courtesy of the author
• Pic 2: photo downloaded from https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2121821119
• Pic 4: photos from Wikipedia (L) and Arqueología Mexicana (R)
• Pic 5: image by, courtesy of and © Justin Kerr, mayavase.com, K6418
• Pic 6: photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore.