CACAO WAS NOT A FOOD EXCLUSIVE TO THE MAYA ELITE (Heritagedaily 09/29/2022)
The prevailing belief: Cacao was more available to, even controlled by, the society’s very upper echelons, royalty. Past efforts to identify cacao in ceramics focused on highly decorative vessels associated with elite ceremonial contexts — think ornate drinking vases — leading to assumptions about how cacao was distributed and who could access it. What about…