The Aztec Economic World: Merchants and Markets in Ancient Mesoamerica - Hardcover

Hirth, Kenneth G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107142776 ISBN 13: 9781107142770

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2016

Synopsis

This study explores the organization, scale, complexity, and integration of Aztec commerce across Mesoamerica at Spanish contact. The aims of the book are threefold. The first is to construct an in-depth understanding of the economic organization of precolumbian Aztec society and how it developed in the way that it did. The second is to explore the livelihoods of the individuals who bought, sold, and moved goods across a cultural landscape that lacked both navigable rivers and animal transport. Finally, this study models Aztec economy in a way that facilitates its comparison to other ancient and premodern societies around the world.  What makes the Aztec economy unique is that it developed one of the most sophisticated market economies in the ancient world in a society with one of the worse transportation systems. This is the first book to provide an updated and comprehensive view of the Aztec economy in thirty years.

About this title

About the Author

Kenneth G. Hirth is Professor of Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the origin and development of ranked and state-level societies in the New World. He is especially interested in political economy and how forms of resource control lead to the development of structural inequalities within society.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1107142776
• ISBN 13: 9781107142770
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 402