Craft specialization, the reorganization of production relations and state formation

Abstract

Since the late 1970s, archaeologists have been concerned with the origins and development of craft specialization in early civilizations. More recently, some have examined the organization of production, the identities of artisans, the use and consumption of the goods they produced, and the cultural and social meanings of those objects. Much of this literature is rooted in the conceptual framework of societal evolutionism, which was formulated by eighteenth-century theorists, who were attempting to account for the rise of capitalist agriculture rather than the development of precapitalist forms of craft production. This article examines the premises of the conceptual framework as well as the political-economic and ideological context in which societal evolutionism was formulated. It suggests that a theoretical framework derived from Marx’s writings after 1857 provides insights into the organization of craft production and an alternative explanation of the role specialization played in the rise of civilization.