A constitutional approach to cacao money

Highlights

• The functions and characteristics of money originate in social relationships and have materially observable effects.

• Late Postclassic production, distribution, and use strategies show that in some cases, cacao was a sovereign unit of account and more often functioned as cash in private transactions.

• High yield cacao production of a few centers, especially the Izalcos region of today’s western El Salvador, was fundamental for cacao to function as money.

Abstract

Money in Mesoamerica has a long history and many forms; cacao, a tree seed, was one kind of currency. Abundant archaeological evidence of cacao money in Mesoamerica contributes to broader theoretical debates about money and monetization. Among many competing theories of money, the constitutional model of money particularly emphasizes materiality as well as the importance of money in relationships of governance and finance in ways distinct from both classical and chartalist theoretical approaches. The propositions of this theory bear up when tested with Mesoamerican examples. In particular, the Izalcos polity located in what is today western El Salvador is an important late prehispanic to colonial case study because it relied upon cacao money to an unusual degree and had extraordinary levels of cacao production. Archaeological evidence of Izalcos region settlement patterns, built environment, and material culture patterning indicate the political and economic consequences of cacao money for configuring authority, state finance, agricultural production, and commercial systems. This evidence accords with constitutional model expectations, including governance seeking to measure and mobilize material resources and labor in order to deploy their power in public projects as well as contexts of well-developed markets, some degree of commodity trade, and complex household economies.

Introduction

Scholars have focused considerable attention on the pre-Columbian and early modern cultural history of cacao, the tree seed that people today use to make chocolate (Coe and Coe, 2007, Dreiss and Greenhill, 2008, Grivetti and Shapiro, 2009, McNeil, 2006, Norton, 2007). Part of that history is cacao’s role as money, which has received less scholarly attention than its culinary uses. Cacao money in Mesoamerica offers an important contribution to broader theoretical debates about money and monetization, which often focus on coinage and textual evidence. This study focuses on one slice of time: the Late Postclassic (1200–1521 CE) and a small area: the Río Ceniza valley in what is today El Salvador, the heartland of the Izalcos (los Izalcos) polity, which was populated by Nahua speakers who called themselves Pipil (Fig. 1, Fowler 1989). Archaeological and historic evidence from this relatively small area is placed in a wider context with Central Mexico, particularly the Aztec empire, because of shared economic, social, and political practices as well as the Maya. The territory of the Izalcos polity in the Late Postclassic was likely settled by Maya peoples in earlier periods (Demarest, 1986, Fowler, 1989, Sharer, 1978), and the Izalcos Pipil intensely interacted in different ways with Maya groups during the Late Postclassic (Braswell, 2003, Feldman, 1985). These regions, in addition to other parts of Mesoamerica, contributed the long history of cacao money, to which the Izalcos polity was a relative latecomer. The story of cacao money in the Izalcos polity is less about the initial phases of the creation of cacao money than its use in the Late Postclassic and subsequent denouement in monetized use during the early modern period. In the array of cacao money contexts, the Izalcos polity was unusual in its extensive and comprehensive utilization of cacao money and extraordinary levels of cacao production. The historian Christine Desan (2014) offers a theoretical approach to monetization that is a productive way to understand how these two phenomena were interrelated. At the same time, an archaeological approach to cacao money offers material evidence of a non-metal example well suited for evaluating a model of money that foregrounds materiality and the interrelationships of governance and finance.