The Political Economy of Bread and Circuses: Weather Shocks and Classic Maya Monument Construction

Melissa Rubio-Ramos (), Christian Isendahl () and Ola Olsson ()
Additional contact information
Melissa Rubio-Ramos: UNIVERSITÄT ZU KÖLN
Christian Isendahl: Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg
Ola Olsson: Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University, Postal: P.O. Box 640, SE 40530 GÖTEBORG, Sweden, https://www.gu.se/en/school-business-economics-law/economics

No 850, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: In early states, government elites provided both productivity-enhancing infrastructure, such as irrigation systems, as well as seemingly non-productive monumental architecture like temples and pyramids. The nature of this ”bread-and-circuses”-tradeoff is not well understood. In this paper, we examine this phenomenon in the Classic Maya civilization (c. 250-950 CE) where city-state elites chose between investing in essential water management infrastructure (reservoirs, canals), and monumental architecture. We analyze information from 870 dated monuments from 110 cities. Correlating this dataset with a proxy record for variations in annual rainfall, we find–perhaps counter-intuitively–that monumental construction activity was more intense during drought years. A text analysis of 2.2 million words from deciphered hieroglyphic inscriptions on monuments, further shows higher frequencies of terms associated with war or violent conflict during periods of drought. We propose that in the Classic Maya setting, with numerous small city-states, monument construction functioned as a costly signaling device about state capacity, designed to attract labor for future control of revenue.

Keywords: Bread and circuses; public goods; monumental architecture; drought; Maya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N50 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2024-11-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/2077/84193 Full text (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0850

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jessica Oscarsson ().