Chapter Ten Praise the Gods and Pass the Obsidian? The Organization of Ancient Economy in San Martin Jilotepeque, Guatemala Geoffrey E. Braswell In 1972, the book Contemporary Archaeology: A Guide to Theory and Contributions, edited by Mark Leone, was published. Although the title of this thirty-year-old gem no longer is apt, one contribution to it, "Praise the Gods and Pass the Metates: A Hypothesis of the De- velopment of Lowland Rainforest Civilizations in Mesoamerica," by William Laurens Rathje, still is widely cited today. Three aspects of this work strike me as particularly noteworthy. First, it drew atten- tion to the noneconomic aspects of trade by positing that informa- tion, particularly ideology, plays an important role in interaction. Second, it focused not only on the lowlands, where most Maya ar- chaeologists work, but also on the highlands, the location of many important resources exploited in ancient times. A third important contribution was the introduction of core-periphery perspectives on ancient economy. Although there are certain aspects of his hypoth- esis that I cannot accept-for example, that the highlanders were ideological consumers rather than producers-Rathje's substantivist and interregional approach was a refreshing challenge to both envi- ronmental determinism and isolationist models that ignored the im- portance of the Guatemalan highlands to broader Maya and Mesoamerican economies. - 285 -