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Archaeology and the Aztec Economy: The Social Scientific Use of Archaeological Data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Michael E. Smith
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Extract

Recent theoretical and methodological developments within anthropological archaeology have transformed the discipline in such a way that archaeology is now beginning to make contributions to a number of areas of social science. Two of the more significant of these areas are the question of socioeconomic change over long time spans and the study of past economic systems. The former contribution arises out of the stratigraphie character of the archaeological record and the development of increasingly accurate methods of measuring past time. Archaeological studies typically deal with change over periods of time equivalent to or even longer than Braudel’s (1980) “longue durée” (e.g., Sanders, Parsons, and Santley, 1979; Blanton et al., 1981), and many archaeologists see this diachronic social perspective as the primary contribution of archaeology to social science knowledge (Plog, 1973). The second major contribution of archaeology—the study of past economic systems—is made possible by archaeologists’ reliance upon material culture. Beyond the obvious link between material objects and the study of ancient technology, material culture can be quite revealing about many types of economic activities as well as other sociocultural phenomena (e.g., Gould and Schiffer, 1981). This focus on material objects is so crucial to archaeologists that some have suggested that the major social science contribution of the field is its concern with the relationship between behavior and material culture in modern as well as ancient societies (e.g., Rathje and Schiffer, 1982; Rathje, 1979).

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , Fall 1987 , pp. 237 - 259
Copyright
copyright © Social Science History Association 1987 

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Footnotes

A condensed version of this paper was presented at the symposium, “Economic Organization and Optimization in the Distant Past” at the 10th Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association in Chicago, Illinois (November, 1985). I would like to thank Thomas J. Riley, organizer of the session, for the opportunity to participate. My understanding of the Aztec economy has benefitted from discussions with the following people: Frances Berdan, Richard Blanton, Elizabeth Brumfiel, Thomas Charlton, Susan Evans, Kenneth Hirth, Druzo Maldonado, Jeffrey Parsons and William Sanders.

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