Crafting and Consumption in Prehispanic Mesoamerica: A Diachronic Perspective/La Producción y el Consumo de Artesanías en Mesoamérica durante la Época Prehispánica: Una Perspectiva Diacrónica

Recent research has begun to conceptualize pre-Hispanic handicrafts within a theory of goods. This approach focuses on the social encoding of goods (handicrafts) as gifts or commodities. From a theoretical perspective, the encoding of handicrafts (especially exotic or special items) as gifts has direct implications with respect to social embedding and restricted consumption. Conversely, the encoding of handicrafts as commodities (e.g., regional goods or bulk luxury goods) implies a very different political-economic strategy that privileges much freer production and wider access to products. Thus, understanding the social encoding of goods allows scholars to better apprehend how crafting and consumption figured into or impeded the development of exclusionary political economic strategies that seek to control handicrafts through social embedding and restricted markets; or more collective political-economic strategies in which political architects seek to develop economic institutions that encourage broad social participation in commercial transactions (e.g., open markets). Accordingly, this symposium seeks to investigate the changing roles of goods in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica from the Early-Middle Formative through the Late Postclassic and how these roles affected production and consumption in terms of social embedding, commercialization, and collectivity.