Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Traditional Household Production And Consumption

Trustees Of Boston University, Boston

Investigators

Abstract

The primary objective of this research is to understand how members of ancient households made obsidian stone tools according to different production strategies and used different tool forms for specific functions. This research is focused on households because recent archaeological findings indicate that households and independent consumer demand were integral to the formation of broader economic structures in ancient societies. In many parts of the world, craft production was primarily a household activity without oversight or control by political states or religious institutions. Household tools are also important to study because they can reveal examples of technological experimentation and invention, patterns of exchange in nearby marketplaces or long distance trade, and ritual behaviors. Archaeology is well suited for studying the broader impacts of technological change and economic structures on individual households and their residents because it can reconstruct and compare production and consumption patterns over space and time. In a similar way, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics measures the expenditures and incomes of consumer units (i.e. families or households) to produce the annual Consumer Expenditure Survey, which provides economic policymakers with crucial data for determining the impacts of policy changes on different economic groups. By amassing economic data from different types of households archaeologists can investigate how broader socioeconomic processes operated within ancient societies and affected ancient peoples over the course of time. In addition, in many developing regions of the world today production takes place within a household and archaeological research can set this process in a broader context. Under the guidance of Dr. David Carballo, David Walton will investigate the nuances of obsidian tool production and consumption in household spaces. This project is unique, compared to previous scholarship, because it applies methods of technological classification and microwear analysis to artifact collections obtained from previous and recent excavations at six different sites in the central Mexican highlands spanning the Middle Formative to Late Postclassic Periods (900 B.C.-A.D. 1550). Using archaeological data through a comparative approach avoids culture-bound theorizing and helps to evaluate models of economic behavior gleaned from studies around the world. This volcanically active region of Mesoamerica contains chemically traceable sources of obsidian that were mined consistently for over 2,300 years. The study sample, which includes a survey collection from the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacan, is selected to offer secure excavation contexts from communities of variable sizes located in the same region that had access to these obsidian sources. This project maximizes the amount of data creation for these collections, some of which have been studied to only a small degree, by conducting multiple analyses to generate complementary information. In particular, this project amasses one of the largest and most diverse samples of Mesoamerican stone tools subjected to microwear analysis, which is a heavily underutilized method in the field compared to other areas such as North American and Paleolithic archaeology. This project acts to strengthen international relationships with officials from the Mexican Instituto Nacional de Antropología (INAH) and three US academic institutions through laboratory collaborations and resulting publications. It will also permit Mr. Walton to conduct research for his doctoral dissertation.