Summation

Craft specialization intersects with a range of crucial questions in the quest to understand what past societies were like and to explain social change. Although ostensibly economic, it pertains to a number of social domains, including those involving the construction of social difference, the maintenance of social hierarchy, and the consolidation of political power in the hands of the few. At the same time, it provides a way to consider issues of identity and role across society.

Archaeologists have expended much thought and debate on the best ways to study craft specialization. Intensity, scale, location, and social relations have been recognized as important aspects of the process. Like all analytical concepts, full - and part-time specialization, household versus workshop production locations, or attached versus independent specialists are useful heuristics that allow archaeologists to construct explanatory models. As heuristics, they are subject to ongoing refinement and questioning as a result of both new evidence and new thinking about the underlying framework of the models to which they contribute.

See also: Chemical Analysis Techniques; Civilization and Urbanism, Rise of; Economic Archaeology; Exchange Systems; Experimental Archaeology; Identity and Power; Marxist Archaeology; Political Complexity, Rise of; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology; Social Inequality, Development of; Social Theory; Spatial Analysis Within Households and Sites; Textiles.