Stone Tools for Steel‐Age Mexicans? Aspects of Production in a Zapotec Stoneworking Industry 1

Abstract

This paper has three aims: (1) to describe in some detail selected aspects of the technology, work organization and production activity of the metateros (metate makers) of the Oaxaca Valley, Mexico, as well as to speculate about aspects of their past technology and work organization; (2) to encourage cultural anthropologists and archaeologists to be more explicit and systematic in considering material artifacts from a production perspective which views technology, ecology, and economics as integrated through the human labor process; and (3) to stimulate more cultural anthropologists and archaeologists to study production and exchange activity among extant populations as a key to understanding the organization of production and exchange among extinct populations.