Firing Pots in Durango: Craft manufacture of glazed wares and the origins of consumption and production inequality in northern Mexico

Summary

The historiography of nineteenth century industrial development in the northern Mexican state of Durango has tended to focus on the biography of a few successful business men, rather than on the local production and consumption of daily material culture. Specifically, the inhabitants of this northern territory, experienced greater socioeconomic inequality as only the minority that belonged to the entrepreneurial class reaped the benefits of industrialist projects. Thus only a small number of agents participated in the consumption of non-local luxury goods. In this paper, we use the results of the analysis of ceramic wasters and partially finished vessels from a Republican-period pottery workshop on the outskirts of the city of Durango, as an entry-point to the study the organization of craft production by local artisans. Furthermore, we consider changes in the production of these simple vis-a-vis the influence of industrialization, in the making of the region itself.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Capital, Craft, and Consumption in Mesoamerica after the Spanish Invasion

Keywords

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