For the ancient Maya, food was both sustenance and a tool for building a complex society. This collection, the first to focus exclusively on the social uses of food in Classic Maya culture, deploys a variety of theoretical approaches to examine the meaning of food beyond diet-ritual offerings and restrictions, medicinal preparations, and the role of nostalgia around food, among other topics. For instance, how did Maya feasts build community while also reinforcing social hierarchy? What psychoactive substances were the elite Maya drinking in their caves, and why? Which dogs were good for eating, and which breeds became companions? Why did even some non-elite Maya enjoy cacao, but rarely meat? Why was meat more available for urban Maya than for those closer to hunting grounds on the fringes of cities? How did the molcajete become a vital tool and symbol in Maya gastronomy?

These chapters, written by some of the leading scholars in the field, showcase a variety of approaches and present new evidence from faunal remains, hieroglyphic texts, chemical analyses, and art. Thoughtful and revealing, Her Cup for Sweet Cacao unlocks a more comprehensive understanding of how food was instrumental to the development of ancient Maya culture.

This volume pulls together 13 chapters regarding the culinary culture(s) of the ancient Maya, drawing from a number of disciplines, including archaeology, art history, epigraphy, and culinary history...this book will primarily be useful for graduate students and scholars...Recommended. (CHOICE) Her Cup for Sweet Cacao is clear about how a focus on food and drink can reveal important insights for archaeological information...a satisfying taste of ancient Maya foodways. (ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America) Through a range of approaches, Her Cup for Sweet Cacao makes powerful connections that show the many different ways one can learn about past peoples through food. It is an important work not only for Mesoamerican archaeologists but anyone studying the food-ways of the Americas. (Anthropology & Mission) "[An] excellent edited volume...[Her Cup for Sweet Cacao] should be on the shelf of any archaeologist interested in the social archaeology of food or in the archaeology of the Maya world. The book contains an unusually dense and rich collection of studies, and readers comfortable with archaeological methods and terms will greatly appreciate the thoughtfulness and depth that characterize the works, as well as the data that many authors provide...Her Cup for Sweet Cacao is an unusually good edited volume." (American Anthropologist) This compelling collection of essays reveals the key role that food played in all dimensions of Maya society, including economics, politics, and religion...Ardren and the collection’s contributors painstakingly advance a unique, compelling, and thorough analysis of the social uses of food and foodways in Classic Maya culture, grounded  in rich evidence analyzed from a diverse range of approaches. This volume sets the groundwork for further studies to explore other periods and regions in order to gain a broader understanding of this phenomenon in Maya culture. (Hispanic American Historical Review) The chapters in Her Cup for Sweet Cacao present multiple approaches to investigating the social importance of food in ancient Maya society, all of which push the conversation beyond viewing food as simply subsistence...The debates this volume will surely spark can help archaeologists refine the ways we conceptualize food in the ancient past. (Anthropos)

Traci Ardren is a professor of anthropology at the University of Miami. She is the author of Social Identities in the Classic Maya Lowlands, and her research has appeared in the journals Food and Foodways and Ancient Mesoamerica, among others.