Financing the Domestic Economy: A Study of Craft Production and Technological Change in Central Mexico

Summary

Studies of technological change often leave unasked how people finance their adoption of new technologies, focusing instead on concepts of risk and uncertainty. The means of finance—whether by surplus production, saving, assuming debt, sharing costs, or other mechanisms—depends on the particulars of the economy in question and can have systemic and long-term consequences for adopters. To show why finance matters in explanations of technological change and how archaeologists can study it, this paper presents a case of household saltmaking in the Basin of Mexico during the Aztec and Spanish empires. Saltmakers adopted several innovations in the manufacture of vessels they used to evaporate brine, but differences in how they financed these changes had divergent effects on the social relations of production. One set of innovations that reduced ceramic vessel production costs during the Late Postclassic correlates with a period of independence and stability among saltmaking households. However, Colonial-era saltmakers became dependent on wealthier investors for access to the means of production, most likely because they lacked the financial means to adopt an innovation involving metal cauldrons. This research shows the importance of considering finance in explanations of technological change as well as the study of domestic economies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 18748