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.
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