Household and Political Economy in Ancient Hohokam Society

Summary

Examining household-level economic behaviors has long been a means for archaeologists to explore social and political organization in ancient Hohokam society. In this presentation, I reflect on the training and influence of Katherine Spielmann in my thinking about the economic roots of inequality in small- scale societies and begin to outline an explicitly political-economic framework to explore the structure and bases of power among the Hohokam of southern Arizona. The Hohokam household was the locus of crucial relations of production and it was households who controlled both the means of production and productive labor. I argue that Hohokam households exploited production and labor to compete with one another for political power. Inequality was created and experienced through a relative ranking of households based on control, exploitation, and competition. Understanding changes in the relations of production and how production and labor may have been controlled can help us model changes in the nature of power and the experience of inequality throughout Hohokam history.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Prehistoric Economies in Middle-range Societies: Papers in Honor of Katherine Spielmann

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16083