Chipping away at Maya economies

A career studying ancient Maya economics isn't what most young people dream of pursuing. But for Rachel Horowitz, an assistant professor of anthropology at Washington State University, the fascination began early with a toy excavation kit that let her dig into a clay model of a Maya pyramid. She was eight years old, and already she knew she wanted to be an archaeologist.

Fast forward to today, and Horowitz is in the midst of a three-yearNational Science Foundation grant examining the economies of the ancient Maya through the lens of stone tools. Her work could ultimately help reshape how scholars understand everyday life in one of the Americas' oldest civilizations. The research suggests that the Maya weren't simply subsistence farmers under the thumb of rulers, but active participants in economic systems that bore striking similarities to the present day.

"We often imagine the Maya through their pyramids and kings," Horowitz said. "But when you look at the tools, you see evidence of choice, competition, and agency - a picture of society that feels surprisingly familiar."

A puzzle in the hills of Belize

This summer, Horowitz and her team dug into the hills outside a small town in western Belize, near the Guatemalan border. What they found was both practical and evocative: a carved niche in the bedrock where Maya craftspeople stored cobbles of chert, the raw material for knives, scrapers, and other stone tools more than a thousand years ago. Beside it, postholes suggested a thatched roof that might have shaded workers as they sat for hours, making tools from stone.

"You can picture them on their porch, working in the shade, with piles of stone debris all around," Horowitz said. "It brings their lives into focus in a very tangible way."

These discoveries are part of a broader effort to map how Maya toolmakers lived, worked, and traded in the late classic period of the Maya, roughly 670-890 CE (about 1,200-1,400 years ago). Multiple workshops in the same valley appear to have produced similar tools at the same time. For Horowitz, that points to economic competition - customers deciding which producer to patronize, perhaps based on quality, convenience, or personal relationships.

From obsidian to chert

The project builds on Horowitz's earlier work tracing the long-distance trade of obsidian, a volcanic glass imported from hundreds of miles away. That research showed how elite networks funneled prized goods into Maya cities. Chert, by contrast, was local - quarried in the very hills where workshops operated. Studying it reveals how ordinary economies functioned at a more local level.

"Obsidian tells us about high-value, long-distance trade," Horowitz said. "Chert tells us about everyday life. Everyone used it - rulers and farmers alike. That makes it a powerful tool for understanding how economies worked across social classes."

Lithics, as archaeologists call stone tools, also leave unusually clear traces. Because they're made by chipping away at stone, each flake of debris points back to the act of production. By analyzing these trails, Horowitz can reconstruct not only where tools were made, but how they were distributed and used.

Oddities and insights

Among the thousands of flakes and blades excavated earlier this summer, Horowitz's team found something unexpected: a miniature stemmed macroblade, a style usually associated with a much earlier period. Weeks later, she spotted an almost identical piece in a museum, confirming that the unusual find wasn't a fluke.

Finds like these, Horowitz said, make the past feel alive. "It's exciting to see something you've never encountered before, even after years of studying stone tools," she said. "It reminds you there's always more to learn."

The work, Horowitz argues, is not only about the past. Understanding how ancient economies functioned can shed light on the present day.

"Even today, we have multiple kinds of economies happening at once," she said. "Every time you give a gift or trade favors with a neighbor, that's an economic interaction. The Maya show us how those systems create relationships, or sometimes create distance. That's as true now as it was 1,200 years ago."

For now, Horowitz is awaiting the results of geochemical analyses that could allow her to match stone tools to their exact sources, tying artifacts found in marketplaces back to individual workshops. It's painstaking work, but the payoff could be profound: a clearer picture of how ancient Maya people navigated choice, competition, and community.

And for the girl who once knelt over a toy pyramid, that's the dream come full circle.