The Classic-period households of the Ceren village in ; the southeastern periphery of the Maya area provisioned ; themselves by one of three different economies. (1) Household ; members produced many items for intrahousehold use, including ; architecture, food, and some artifacts, with no input from ; outside. (2) Each household produced some commodity in ; excess of what they needed for their internal consumption, ; by means of part-time specialization, and they used this ; for exchange with other households within the village or ; nearby. This is termed the horizontal or village economy. ; The commodities included craft items such as groundstone ; tools and painted gourds as well as agricultural specialities ; such as agave for fiber. (3) Each household obtained distant ; exotic items, such as obsidian tools, jade axes, and polychrome ; serving ceramics, by exchanging their household surplus ; commodities in elite centers. In this paper, this is called ; the vertical economy. The choices available to commoner ; households in negotiating economic transactions in various ; elite centers gave them economic power and could have the ; effect of constraining the elite in setting exchange equivalencies. ; This is quite different from the view from the top of the ; pyramid which generally depicts commoners as the exploited ; class at the bottom of a powerful political and economic ; hierarchy.
