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On Value and Values: The Displayed and Hidden Action of Classic-Period Maya Jades

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Realizing Value in Mesoamerica

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies ((PASTAE))

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Abstract

How we currently define value is certainly different than understandings and meanings of value in the past. Nevertheless, coming to a more common understanding of how we define value in academic writing can make it easier to communicate between researchers and then progressively understand indigenous conceptions. We argue that using a three-part definition of value, or ideological/moral/ethical value(s), esteemed value, and measured value can more effectively allow us to see how objects in the past may have traversed these different realms. We explore how jade among the Classic-period Maya may have been viewed in the past in terms of an ideological value system that gave it an inherent value and animate agency that could be modified and embellished by human agency to add more prestige and esteemed value. Many of these objects were acted upon by human actors, but also acted back to constitute the social identity of human actors. David Graeber argues that what is ultimately being valued are actions and not things. During the Maya Classic period jade objects may have been on the precipice of the transition from esteemed value to measured value because the ideological conceptions of the capacity for action of these objects (and therefore their owners) were shifting. Value is the way actions become meaningful to the actors by being placed in some larger social realm, real or imaginary. In this way, if we can understand how the object is situated in its social realm, it can give us clues as to not only its value, but the larger values of the society and how those realms of value were mutually constituted.

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  1. University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

    Brigitte Kovacevich & Michael Callaghan

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  1. Brigitte Kovacevich
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  2. Michael Callaghan
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Correspondence to Brigitte Kovacevich .

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    Scott R. Hutson

  2. Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA

    Charles Golden

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Kovacevich, B., Callaghan, M. (2023). On Value and Values: The Displayed and Hidden Action of Classic-Period Maya Jades. In: Hutson, S.R., Golden, C. (eds) Realizing Value in Mesoamerica. Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44168-4_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44168-4_7

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