Philonicus Demetriusque: Craft Specialization in the Funerary Relief of Two Freedmen

This chapter deals with prehistoric Western Asia, ca. 9500–4000 BC, when this region was the focus of a series of far-reaching socioeconomic developments that were to change the world. Early in this period a gradual shift occurred from a mobile hunter-gatherer way of life to sustained settlement in villages that were increasingly dependent upon farming. Later on, social ranking, economic intensification, and craft specialization emerged at sites throughout the Middle East (Anatolia, Iran, Mesopotamia, and the Levant), laying the foundations for the earliest urban societies in the region. The chapter argues that these changes, far from being unilateral or monolithic, reflect significant multicultural developments and long-lasting trajectories of regional differentiation, requiring the agency of innumerable individuals and generations over millennia.

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Viator to Ascriptitius: Rural Economy, Lordship, and the Origins of Serfdom in Medieval Poland

Slavic Review ◽

10.1017/s0037677900068819 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 14-35 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Piotr Gorecki

Keyword(s):

Division Of Labor ◽

Thirteenth Century ◽

Rural Economy ◽

Intensive Agriculture ◽

Craft Specialization ◽

Rural Services ◽

The Social ◽

Essential Change ◽

Social Arrangements ◽

Different Parts

In loving memory of Angle Arvidson (1961-1982)Over a decade ago, Georges Duby wrote his account of the development of the European economy between the seventh and twelfth centuries. The essential change he described was the transition from a society ruled by an elite of warriors, accumulating wealth through conquest, booty, and hoarding, to a society ruled by an elite of landholders, accumulating wealth through economic investment in land and places of production and exchange — workshops, markets, and fairs. The social groupings became increasingly complex. The simple societal divisions — between warriors and peasants, and between the free and the slaves — were replaced by complex and fluid structures of lordship and service. The resulting social arrangements and their language varied in different parts of Europe. Poland completed the transition from an economy based on force and warfare to one based on intensive agriculture and craft specialization in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This essay describes the structure of rural services and tributes resulting from this transition in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The first part describes village settlements and division of labor; the second part examines the concept of lordship and in particular the origins of involuntary services rendered by the peasants to the lords — “serfdom” — in Poland during the first decades of the thirteenth century.

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Chapter 9. The Evolution of Craft Specialization

Raiding, Trading, and Feasting ◽

10.1515/9780824864064-011 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 261-291

Keyword(s):

Craft Specialization

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Protohistoric Marine Shell Working: New Evidence from Northern Illinois

American Antiquity ◽

10.1017/aaq.2019.44 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 84 (3) ◽

pp. 549-558 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Madeleine McLeester ◽

Mark R. Schurr ◽

Katherine M. Sterner ◽

Robert E. Ahlrichs

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Small Scale ◽

Craft Specialization ◽

Trade Networks ◽

The Us ◽

Us Midwest ◽

New Evidence ◽

Marine Shell

In the US Midwest, the working of marine shell procured through vast trade networks has typically been associated with elite prestige economies and craft specialization at major Mississippian centers. Outside of these contexts, marine shell goods are often assumed to have been brought into communities as completed goods. A recent finding suggests that local, small-scale marine shell working occurred at an early seventeenth-century village in northern Illinois, Middle Grant Creek (11Wi2739). This finding represents the first probable evidence of marine shell working in the Midwest outside of large, Mississippian contexts. Consequently, this practice may be much more geographically and temporally expansive than previously thought. This evidence encourages a rethinking of marine shell finds whenever they are assumed to be imported as finished goods.

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Disembedded Capitals Reconsidered

American Antiquity ◽

10.2307/279667 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 45 (1) ◽

pp. 132-145 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Robert S. Santley

Keyword(s):

Agricultural Land ◽

Evolutionary Model ◽

Central Place ◽

Craft Specialization ◽

Local Market ◽

Political Strategy ◽

Site Location ◽

Labor Input ◽

Monte Alban ◽

Valley Of Oaxaca

The concept of a disembedded capital is viewed as a specious construct. The logical foundations of disembeddedness of political authority from local commerical hierarchies are viewed as largely untenable, at least in prehispanic Mesoamerica, and the close parallels between Monte Albán and Teotihuacán in terms of general site location, access to prime agricultural land, level of craft specialization required to meet local needs, and local market patterns suggest that both sites had similar roles with respect to local central-place support hierarchies. An alternative evolutionary model is then offered, one which relates developments manifest in the Basin of Mexico and in the Valley of Oaxaca to an economic and political strategy which seeks to minimize labor input and amount of systemic risk.

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