Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Traditional Household Production And Consumption

本研究的主要目的是了解古代家庭成员如何根据不同的生产策略制作黑曜石石器，并使用不同的工具形式来实现特定的功能。这项研究的重点是家庭，因为最近的考古发现表明，家庭和独立的消费需求是古代社会更广泛经济结构形成的组成部分。在世界许多地方，手工艺生产主要是家庭活动，不受政治国家或宗教机构的监督或控制。家用工具的研究也很重要，因为它们可以揭示技术实验和发明的例子、附近市场或长途贸易的交换模式以及仪式行为。考古学非常适合研究技术变革和经济结构对个体家庭及其居民的更广泛影响，因为它可以重建和比较不同空间和时间的生产和消费模式。同样，美国劳工统计局通过衡量消费者单位（即家庭或住户）的支出和收入来编制年度消费者支出调查，为经济政策制定者提供关键数据，以确定政策变化对不同经济群体的影响。通过收集不同类型家庭的经济数据，考古学家可以研究更广泛的社会经济进程如何在古代社会中运作并随着时间的推移影响古代人民。此外，在当今世界的许多发展中地区，生产都是在家庭内进行的，考古研究可以在更广泛的背景下设定这一过程。在大卫·卡巴罗博士的指导下，大卫·沃尔顿将调查家庭空间中黑曜石工具生产和消费的细微差别。与之前的学术研究相比，该项目是独一无二的，因为它将技术分类和微磨损分析的方法应用于从墨西哥中部高地的六个不同地点以前和最近的挖掘中获得的文物收藏，跨越中期形成期到晚期后古典时期（公元前 900 年至公元 1550 年）。通过比较方法使用考古数据可以避免受文化束缚的理论，并有助于评估从世界各地的研究中收集到的经济行为模型。中美洲的这个火山活跃地区含有化学可追溯的黑曜石来源，这些黑曜石的开采已有 2,300 多年的历史。该研究样本包括来自特奥蒂瓦坎古都的调查收集，其选择是为了提供位于同一地区不同规模的社区的安全挖掘背景，这些社区可以获取这些黑曜石来源。该项目通过进行多重分析以生成补充信息，最大限度地增加了这些馆藏的数据创建量，其中一些馆藏仅进行了很小程度的研究。特别是，该项目收集了最大、最多样化的中美洲石器样本之一，进行微磨损分析，与北美和旧石器时代考古等其他领域相比，这是该领域严重未得到充分利用的方法。该项目旨在通过实验室合作和由此产生的出版物，加强与墨西哥国家人类研究所 (INAH) 和三个美国学术机构官员的国际关系。它还将允许沃尔顿先生为他的博士论文进行研究。

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.