"Durable Inequality in Aztec Society" (2021)

Durable Inequality in Aztec Society M I C H A E L E . S M I T H , School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA. Email: [email protected] Charles Tilly proposed a model of durable social inequality that is potentially applicable to a wide range of societies. I demonstrate this potential by examining his causal mechanisms of inequality—exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation, and adaptation—as they apply to Aztec society immediately prior to the Spanish conquest of 1521. Tilly’s model helps resolve key issues in the analysis of Aztec inequality and class structure. This application exemplifies the utility of Tilly’s model in explaining social inequality in Aztec society and in unraveling causal relationships characteristic of ancient complex societies generally. Key words: Aztecs, Mesoamerica, inequality, exploitation, stratification, Charles Tilly The late Charles Tilly urged scholars to “put contemporary inequalities into historical perspective” (Tilly 2005:15). The increasing levels of social inequality in contemporary societies have a variety of deleterious social effects (Bowles 2012; Piketty 2014; Wilkinson and Pickett 2009), and the need for deep historical background and context is greater than ever. As Tilly (1984) argued, comparative analysis can produce better understanding of social processes in general and of specific case studies in particular. He developed a broadly applicable causal model that is ideal for comparative analyses of durable social inequality (Tilly 1998), but he did not apply his model to any cases before the early modern era. In this paper I show that Tilly’s model of durable inequality can easily be applied to the Aztec case. It helps explain a number of puzzles of Aztec inequality, and it extends and deepens scholarly understanding of the dynamics of Aztec society. This study has a number of implications beyond the clarification of the Aztec case. First, I suggest to anthropologists and historians that Tilly’s model has potential for illuminating social inequality in a variety of early and non-Western societies. Second, by broadening the sample of societies for which social inequalities have been analyzed I provide a direction for improving the general understanding of social inequality as a broad, human phenomenon. Submitted March 9, 2018; accepted June 30, 2020; published online April 13, 2021. Journal of Anthropological Research (Summer 2021). © 2021 by The University of New Mexico. All rights reserved. 0091-7710/2021/7702-0002$10.00 162 DURABLE INEQUALITY IN AZTEC SOCIETY | 163 CHARLES TILLY’S MODEL OF DURABLE INEQUALITY Epistemological Background: Causality and Explanation Charles Tilly developed what he called a relational approach to social phenomena. He positioned his approach in contrast to what he called the three major social science ontologies. These are methodological individualism, “which insists on decision-making human individuals as the basic or unique social reality”; phenomenological individualism, “the doctrine that individual consciousness is the primary or exclusive site of social life”; and holism, the notion “that social structures have their own self-sustaining logics” (Tilly 2008:6–7). Tilly’s preferred approach—relational realism—holds that “transactions, interactions, social ties, and conversations constitute the central stuff of social life” (Tilly 2008:7); for discussion, see Diani (2007) or Demetriou (2018). Tilly’s relational approach to social inequality combines what anthropologists and other social scientists often refer to as structure and agency: Structural and institutional analyses of relations clarify and emphasize the significance of culture in social life. Instead of imagining culture as an autonomous sphere in which ideas change ideas, which then constrain behavior, structural and institutional analyses treat culture as shared understandings constructed by previous interactions, anticipating one another’s responses on the bases of those frames, and modifying their strategies as a consequence of shared experiences. In such a view, culture intertwines unceasingly with social relations; culture and structure are simply convenient abstractions from the same stream of transactions. (Tilly 1998:19–20) At the heart of Charles Tilly’s model are four social mechanisms that generate and sustain the processes and conditions of durable inequality. Although anthropologists and historians rarely phrase their explanations in terms of causal mechanisms, this is in fact the dominant epistemological approach to causality and explanation in the social sciences today (Beach 2016; Bunge 1997; Gerring 2012; Hedström and Ylikoski 2010; Little 2011, 2017). There is a literature—by Tilly and others—about his use of causal mechanisms (Demetriou 2012; Krinsky and Mische 2013; Tilly 2010), particularly in relation to Tilly’s most influential work, Dynamics of Contention (McAdam et al. 2001). For Tilly, “Explanation consists of identifying in particular social phenomena reliable causal mechanisms and processes of general scope. Causal mechanisms are events that alter relations among some set of elements. Processes are frequent (but not universal) combinations and sequences of causal mechanisms” (Tilly 2001:365). Charles Tilly was a towering figure in historical and comparative social science (Calhoun and Koller 2009; Demetriou 2012; Krinsky and Mische 2013; Steinmetz 2010), but anthropologists have been slow to use his work. Although he published an outline of his model of durable inequality in an anthropology journal (Tilly 2001), his thinking has had little impact on the discipline, outside of its use by a few development scholars (Mosse 2010; Phillips 2013). 164 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH SUMMER 2021 Tilly’s model of inequality is built from four causal mechanisms: exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation, and adaptation. Additional causal mechanisms used by Tilly in other works—e.g., coercion, intimidation, category formation, urbanization— are relevant to processes of inequality but have lesser impact on inequality than the four listed above. His concept of categorical boundaries is not a mechanism, but it is crucial to his model, and I begin with this concept. Categorical Boundaries In Charles Tilly’s scheme, A category consists of a set of actors who share a boundary distinguishing all of them from and relating all of them to at least one set of actors visibly excluded by that boundary. A category simultaneously lumps together actors deemed similar, splits sets of actors considered dissimilar, and defines relations between the two sets. . . . Categories are not specific sets of people or unmistakable attributes, but standardized, movable social relations. (Tilly 1998:62, 66) Categorical social boundaries are formed in a variety of ways. They can be created by powerful individual or institutional actors, they can be borrowed by people from one setting and applied in a new setting, and they can be created as by-products of the interactions among individuals and groups. In Tilly’s scheme categories such as ethnicity, race, gender, or community membership “do boundary work, defining ties and locating distinctions between members of different categories more reliably than they create internal solidarity, homogeneity, or connectedness” (Tilly 1998:72). Because social classes rarely comprise categories in contemporary Western society, Tilly omits classes from his discussion of categories. But he does note that inequality sometimes crystallizes into society-wide hierarchical categories (Tilly 2001:362–63), and I argue below that Aztec social classes fit this scheme. Durable Inequality as a Series of Problems and Solutions Charles Tilly’s model of durable social inequality has been the subject of a number of analyses and exegeses (e.g., Mosse 2010; Voss 2010; Wright 2000), and it has been tested empirically, with positive results (e.g., Sampson and Morenoff 2006; TomaskovicDevey 2014; Tomaskovic-Devey et al. 2009). Erik Olin Wright’s (2000) account provides a convenient summary. Wright frames Tilly’s model of inequality in terms of three problems faced by would-be exploiters or elites, and the solutions they devise for addressing those problems (Figure 1). Wright notes that: Tilly’s basic explanatory strategy is a variety of functional explanation. That is, throughout the book he argues that certain kinds of social structural relations are solutions to problems generated with social systems. This does not mean that he argues for a smooth, homeostatic kind of functionalism in which all social DURABLE INEQUALITY IN AZTEC SOCIETY | 165 Figure 1. The functional logic of Durable Inequality, as analyzed by Wright (2000). relations organically fit together into fully integrated social systems. The functional explanations in Tilly’s arguments allow for struggles and contradictions. (Wright 2000:461) According to Wright, the first problem is “how to secure and enhance rewards from the resources to which one has access” (Wright 2000:461). Given that resources are scarce, and competition for their control, pervasive, the solutions are the mechanisms of exploitation and opportunity hoarding. These mechanisms establish the rules and practices that enable resources to be channeled from subordinates to the highest-level group or category within a system. Wright points out that, “Like Marxists, Tilly argues that at the most fundamental level of analysis, exploitation is the pivotal mechanism for the generation of durable forms of deep inequality” (2000:462). The second problem, in Wright’s analysis of Tilly’s model, is how to sustain and deepen exploitation and opportunity hoarding for the long term. The solution is the creation of categorical forms of inequality. The third problem has two parts: how to stabilize and reproduce categorical inequalities, and at the same time reduce potential solidarity within subordinate categories. The solution here lies in the second set of mechanisms, emulation and adaptation (Wright 2000:463). In Wright’s words: To the extent that a given form of categorical inequality can be diffused throughout a society (“emulation”) so that it appears ubiquitous and thus inevitable, and to the extent that people living within these relations of categorical inequality elaborate daily routines (“adaptation”) which enable them to adapt to the conditions 166 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH SUMMER 2021 they face, then the categorical inequalities themselves will be stabilized. (Wright 2000:463) The problems and solutions in Wright’s model (Figure 1) can be interpreted both chronologically (e.g., exploitation precedes adaptation in time) and analytically (as an abstract model of how the system works). In the Aztec case, scholars lack detailed records for the early period in which the structures and practices of inequality must have developed. My argument therefore utilizes Tilly’s model—and Wright’s exegesis of that model—in an analytical sense. My goals in this paper are to identify Charles Tilly’s four causal mechanisms of durable inequality in the sources on Aztec society, and to evaluate the extent to which those mechanisms operated in the manner that Tilly describes. The examples I choose are intended to be more illustrative than exhaustive, to demonstrate the utility of Tilly’s design. As a result, I suggest that durable social inequality in Aztec society does indeed seem to have been created and maintained by the four mechanisms. This paper highlights the nature and importance of interactions and relationships among a wide variety of different social categories and groups within Aztec society. The Aztec system of inequality was quite complex, and Tilly’s model helps us understand that complexity. Although Wright singles out categorical inequality as a distinct step in his model (Figure 1), categorical boundaries and their role in generating social inequality are integrated within Tilly’s discussion of mechanisms. I follow Tilly’s (1998) lead by including categorical boundaries in my discussion of the four causal mechanisms of Aztec inequality. AZTEC INEQUALITY When Hernando Cortés and his soldiers entered the Mexica (Aztec) capital Tenochtitlan in 1519, the island city was home to some two hundred thousand residents. The Spaniards were awed by the tall pyramids, the throngs of buyers and sellers in the central marketplace, and the opulence of the royal palace. The emperor Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin ruled five million subjects, scattered over the northern and central portions of Mesoamerica. This was an empire of indirect control (Berdan et al. 1996) in which many administrative functions were carried out by the roughly one thousand altepetl (city-states). These smaller polities had developed prior to the expansion of the empire. Each one was ruled by a king, often aided by a council of nobles. These petty kings lived in royal palaces in small urban centers, surrounded by cultivated fields interspersed with towns and villages. Descriptions of Aztec society can be found in works by James Lockhart (1992), Frances Berdan (2014), and Michael Smith (2008).1 Aztec society was divided into a small elite class and a mass of commoners. Prior research on Aztec social inequality has concentrated heavily on these two social classes. One of the goals of this paper is to emphasize that Aztec inequality encompassed a broader range of groups and phenomena than just nobles and commoners. In comparative terms the Aztec elite class was an estate, “a legally defined segment of the population of a society which has distinctive rights and duties established by law” DURABLE INEQUALITY IN AZTEC SOCIETY | 167 (Lenski 1966:77), and because membership was strictly hereditary, the label nobility applies (Bloch 1961:283). At least three hierarchical categories of noble can be identified: king (tlatoani), high lord (tecuhtli), and other nobles ( pipiltin). The early colonial Spanish chroniclers, such as Bernardino de Sahagún (1950– 1982) and Diego Durán (1971, 1994), wrote detailed descriptions of kings, elites, and several specialized groups (particularly merchants and priests) and how they interacted with one another. They spent less time on less-privileged persons. Based on these and other works, scholars have concentrated on the luxurious lifestyles of the nobility and the nature of their privileges and duties (e.g., Evans 2001; McEwan and López Luján 2009; Olko 2011). This heavy focus on the nobility has been fed by a fascination with elite culture on the part of many archaeologists and anthropologists (Olko 2005; Richards and van Buren 2000). Information about the activities and social conditions of farmers and other commoners is fragmentary and scattered in the works of the chroniclers and other standard written sources on Aztec society. One of the few agreed-upon findings is that there was a range of social categories, from slaves to serf-like landless laborers to relatively autonomous individuals (Berdan and Smith 2020; Johnson 2018). A key commoner corporate group, the calpolli, was prominent in the Basin of Mexico and Morelos, the western portion of the Aztec heartland. The calpolli was the subject of a decades-old debate about its nature and operation (Offner 1983; Reyes García 1996). The calpolli was a crucial institution within the Aztec system of inequality, and I draw on studies of Nahuatl-language local administrative documents (analyzed and summarized in Lockhart 1992) on this topic. In particular, a series of Nahuatl census documents from six communities in what is now the Mexican state of Morelos describe the nature of the calpolli and some of the key processes of inequality on the local level, including taxes, rent, and relations between nobles and commoners (Carrasco 1972, 1976; Cline 1993). A calpolli was a spatially localized cluster of commoner households; in rural areas a calpolli could correspond to a village (Smith 1993), and in cities calpolli were neighborhoods (Smith and Novic 2012). In Morelos, kings and other nobles owned farmland, but decisions about its allocation and use were made by a council of calpolli members. These individuals and households enjoyed more freedom and better economic conditions than did the serf-like landless laborers. The significance of the calpolli for Aztec inequality is explored more fully below. Most research on Aztec social inequality has been more descriptive than analytical. The noble-commoner distinction is accepted by most scholars, with variation in the extent to which individual authors posit the existence of intermediate categories (Berdan 2014:185; Smith and Hicks 2017). Discussions of variation within the two major social classes tend to rely on the general discussions of the Spanish chroniclers (such as the king/high lord/other noble scheme mentioned above). Archaeological fieldwork in the state of Morelos has identified differences in house size and elaboration between nobles and commoners (Olson and Smith 2016), providing strong quantitative evidence that—at least in this one area—the distribution of wealth mirrored 168 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH SUMMER 2021 the social class structure. Furthermore, at these sites, the distribution of house sizes has been used to measure wealth inequality using the Gini index (Smith et al. 2014). Few works on Aztec inequality have been analytical in the sense of exploring causal factors or explanations for the nature or extent of inequality. Social research on Aztec society has long been framed in terms of one or both of two theoretical approaches: anthropological cultural evolution and Marxist analysis of the Asiatic mode of production (Boehm de Lameiras 1986; Hicks 1999; Sanders et al. 1979). In both approaches, social classes are seen as a normal component of state-level societies and, as such, they do not require special explanation. Newer theoretical approaches to Aztec and central Mexican society, including world systems theory (Smith and Berdan 2003) and collective action theory (Blanton and Fargher 2008; Carballo 2016), have so far not engaged deeply with the topic of social inequality; for a start, see Fargher et al. (2020). In short, there has been little formal concern with the causal mechanisms, or the “nuts and bolts” (Elster 1989) of the Aztec system of inequality. One of my goals is to examine the complexity of the Aztec system of inequality more deeply, including its manifestation in many diverse domains of society. Nobles and commoners—and their interactions—were certainly fundamental parts of this system, but Aztec inequality was far more pervasive throughout society than past scholarship has suggested. Charles Tilly’s model of durable inequality provides an excellent tool for this task because it helps identify the different locations of inequality in society, while illuminating the variety of interactions among diverse actors and activities engaged in the social processes of inequality. Beyond its use as an organizing framework, Tilly’s approach also helps address a number of specific problems in our understanding of Aztec society and social inequality. For example, how did the nobility maintain its power and privileges for such a long period of time? What explains the variation in the economic fortunes of Aztec commoners? That is, what gave calpolli members a clear advantage over landless laborers? And why did the pochteca—guild-organized wealthy merchants—limit their membership and operate in such secrecy? Indeed, the Aztec nobility continued to enjoy a privileged position even under Spanish rule. Charles Tilly’s model suggests answers to these and many other questions about Aztec society and social inequality. I turn now to that model. The discussion is organized around his four mechanisms of inequality— exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation, and adaptation. For each mechanism I first review Tilly’s model and then discuss how it applies to the Aztec case. FIRST MECHANISM: EXPLOITATION The Model Exploitation is the most powerful and fundamental of Tilly’s four mechanisms of inequality. Exploitation “operates when powerful, connected people command resources from which they draw significantly increased returns by coordinating the efforts of outsiders whom they exclude from the full value added by that effort” (Tilly 1998:10). Note that the participation of exploited individuals and groups in the DURABLE INEQUALITY IN AZTEC SOCIETY | 169 process of their exploitation—whether voluntary, coerced, or some combination—is part of the definition. Exploitation reproduces itself through the generation or acquisition of resources, some of which are used to reward collaborators. In a later paper, Tilly (2005) lists ten types of resources that have been used for social exploitation over the ages. In Table 1, I divide these resources into two groups: those that have been used in both premodern and contemporary societies and those that pertain primarily to the modern era. The diversity of resources included in Table 1 illustrates the flexibility and generality of Tilly’s model. Elites in ancient societies used a variety of resources to create and maintain their exploitation of other actors; in the Aztec case, I argue that control of land and labor were the primary bases of exploitation, with other resources playing supporting roles. Tilly’s concept of exploitation fits within the tradition of Marxian and materialist explanations of inequality in anthropology (Smith 1976; Trigger 2003; Wolf 1982), and it also resonates with contemporary work in human behavioral ecology. For example, Mattison et al. (2016) propose a model for the origins of social inequality based on the importance of economically defensible (monopolizable) natural resources; see also Eric Alden Smith et al. (2010) and Michael E. Smith et al. (2018). The Aztec Case Tilly’s definition of exploitation as the prime causal mechanism of inequality has three components: (1) a group or category of people that control one or more resources (2) enlists others in creating value from the resource(s) and (3) excludes the others from the benefits of that value creation. I examine three categories of exploiters—the nobility, the city-state, and the empire—with respect to two resources, land and labor. Table 1. Value-producing resources that can serve as the bases of inequality (modified after Tilly 2005:23) Resources relevant to both premodern and contemporary societies: •Coercive means, including weapons, jails, organized specialists in violence •Land, including the natural resources located in and upon it •Labor, especially skilled and/or effectively coordinated labor •Animals, especially domesticated species •Commitment-maintaining institutions, such as religious sects, kinship systems, trade diasporas •Information, especially information that facilitates profitable, safe, or coordinated action Resources most relevant to contemporary societies: •Machines, especially machines that convert raw materials, produce goods or services, and transport persons, goods, services, or information •Financial capital: transferable and fungible means of acquiring property rights •Media that disseminate information •Scientific-technical knowledge, especially knowledge that facilitates intervention—for good or evil—in human welfare 170 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH SUMMER 2021 Exploitation by the nobility. The noble-commoner distinction was one of the strongest categorical boundaries in Aztec society. As in other noble classes throughout history, members of the elite class formed a geographically extensive social network that cut across political and ethnic boundaries (Hassig 2016; Olko 2005; Smith 1986), and this network was a key component of the exploitation of commoners by nobles. Aztec land tenure was complex and is not fully understood by scholars, and most information and interpretations are based on colonial-period documents (Hicks 1986, 2009; Williams and Harvey 1997). A large number of Nahuatl terms are used in the primary documents for types of land tenure (Lockhart 1992: Table 5.3). Although some scholars have viewed these as designating different categories of land, Lockhart (1991:142–57) shows that the native terms fall into two categories: lands belonging to kings and nobles and lands pertaining to the calpolli (Lockhart 1992). Against traditional scholarship arguing that calpolli land was collectively owned, Lockhart argues that all land may have been owned by individuals. Yet while records exist of land sales by nobles, there are no recorded cases of individual commoners selling or alienating land. Pedro Carrasco (1972, 1976), in his analysis of the Nahuatl-language census documents from Morelos, concludes that calpolli lands were strongly controlled, if not owned, by nobles (Carrasco 1976:116). While the surviving documents may not allow scholars to fully resolve these issues, it is important here to point out that the two kinds of land identified by Lockhart gave rise to two types of exploitation of commoners by nobles. On the nobles’ own lands, landless commoners farmed under the direction of the landowner, whether a king or other noble (Hicks 1974, 1999). The situation of these peasants was similar to that of European serfs in their lack of assured access to land and their heavy dependence on a noble. Unlike European serfs, however, Aztec laborers were not legally bound to their lords, who could not hunt down escaped individuals. On calpolli lands, calpolli membership gave farmers more regularized and stable access to land, in return for payments to a noble. The conqueror Hernando Cortés (1865:542) called these payments “rent.” He noted that nobles granted land to commoners to farm in return for rent, and commoners might build their houses on the land. In this passage (and others), Cortés was framing his descriptions in Spanish terms, and the extent to which his concept of “rent” matches contemporary definitions can be debated (Smith 2015). This system is illustrated by a case study from the community of Molotla in Morelos, whose early colonial census was published in Nahuatl and Spanish by Carrasco (1972). Molotecatl was a low-ranked noble in charge of a small calpolli with ten dependent households. He distributed 228 of his 600 brazas of land to these calpolli members. The remaining 372 brazas must have been worked by his landless dependent laborers who did not belong to the calpolli. Molotecatl paid a tax (to his city-state king) of 94 cotton textiles, 1,800 cacao beans, 13 turkeys, and several other food items, in addition to labor service (provided by his dependents). Molotecatl’s calpolli tenants paid him seven textiles, plus food and labor services. This can be considered the rent on their DURABLE INEQUALITY IN AZTEC SOCIETY | 171 lands. The other 87 textiles that Molotecatl paid out to the king were almost certainly produced by his dependent commoner women. The census documents (and other sources) indicate that commoner women went to the house of their noble patrons to provide two types of labor service: kitchen labor and textile production (Smith 1994:337). This example—plus other cases analyzed by Lockhart, Carrasco, Hicks, and others— illustrates the mechanisms of exploitation of Aztec commoners by nobles. Nobles owned much or all of the land (depending on how one interprets calpolli tenure), which was worked by commoners. Calpolli members made payments to nobles, whereas landless commoners presumably turned over part of their crop in a share-cropping arrangement. Households in both categories provided labor service to nobles, of which women’s textile labor was of particularly high value (some cotton textiles served as money). Exploitation by the altepetl, or city-state. The second type of exploiter was the altepetl, or city-state. Here, the primary channel of extraction was payments in goods and labor. Although traditionally called “tribute” in the literature, comparative and textual analysis makes it clear that these payments are better described as taxes (Smith 2014, 2015); tributo was the sixteenth-century Spanish word for “taxes,” and this problem has fooled scholars ever since. The exploitation carried out by kings and city-state governments differed from the exploitation by nobles in two ways. First, both nobles and commoners were exploited, and second, the specific tax payments to the king were distinct from payments commoners made to nobles. In Tilly’s terms, nobles were exploited by the king—they provided revenue that benefitted the king, yet they helped create its value by organizing and collecting it themselves. Many of the early Spanish chronicles state incorrectly that nobles had not paid taxes (tributo) in Aztec times, and this error has made its way into the secondary literature. Lockhart (1991:106) shows conclusively, however, that Aztec nobles did indeed pay taxes. In the case mentioned above, the noble Molotecatl’s rent receipts provided part of the tax he paid out. Most of the revenue provided to kings by commoners consisted of labor taxes. Villages and neighborhoods alternated in providing rotational labor to the palace (Hicks 1984), and public works were constructed with a separate corvée tax (Valle 2006). The military service required of all males was another type of labor tax. The king used part of his revenue to provide services (infrastructure, temples, markets), and such services benefitted the commoners who paid the taxes (Blanton and Fargher 2008). To the extent that subjects received the value of their tax payments back as services, such payments would not fit Tilly’s definition of exploitation. Although quantitative data are lacking, I suggest that a considerable portion of the value of Aztec city-state taxes in goods and labor was consumed by the altepetl nobles and did not accrue back to subjects; thus, this can be considered a form of exploitation. Exploitation by the Triple Alliance Empire. The third major category of exploitation in Aztec society were the payments collected by the Triple Alliance Empire. The survival of imperial tax lists makes this the best documented type of Aztec fiscal payment (Berdan and Anawalt 1992). Unlike tax at the city-state level, however, imperial subjects received almost no benefits from their payments, making this a rather 172 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH SUMMER 2021 stark example of the mechanism of exploitation. The empire provided little or no infrastructure, and few provinces needed imperial protection from enemies. I have argued elsewhere (Smith 2016) that the empire might be viewed as a big protection racket; so long as provincial cities paid their taxes, the empire refrained from reconquering them (Berdan et al. 1996). Intimidation and coercion were major components of imperial operation, in line with Tilly’s observations in a paper on terrorism: “From Mafiosi to ruthless governments, people who operate protection rackets intermittently deploy terror against enemies and uncertain clients” (Tilly 2008:101). The conquered subjects of the empire received little in return for their payments, and typically they were eager to rebel at the first reasonable opportunity. SECOND MECHANISM: OPPORTUNITY HOARDING The Model Tilly’s mechanism of opportunity hoarding “operates when members of a categorically bounded network acquire access to a resource that is valuable, subject to monopoly, supportive of network activities, and enhanced by the network’s modus operandi” (Tilly 1998:10). At the top of the hierarchy in any society or organization, opportunity hoarding is subsumed by the mechanism of exploitation. Its significance lies among lower groups who gain control of a resource and try to monopolize and perpetuate their control, often across generations. Medieval guilds and modern labor unions provide good examples of opportunity hoarding: they secure key resources and work to exclude others from enjoying the benefits of those resources. Premodern states present many examples of opportunity hoarding, including craft and merchant guilds and religious co-fraternities. Ethnicity was and is a common basis for the creation of the categorically bounded networks that engage in opportunity hoarding. The processes of opportunity hoarding typically promote a sense of group identity, and the resulting social networks serve to define the limits of solidarity, trust, and mutual aid. Tilly argues that opportunity hoarding “is not an instantaneous rational decision but . . . a struggle-ridden, and error-ridden process sometimes extending over a generation” (Tilly 1998:161). Although ethnographers have studied cases that conform to Tilly’s definition of opportunity hoarding, only a few have cited Tilly and singled this out as a social mechanism (Colloredo-Mansfeld 2011; Mosse 2010). The Aztec Case Several types of opportunity hoarding can be identified in Aztec society, notably among professional long-distance merchants (pochteca) and luxury artisans such as featherworkers (amanteca), all of whom were members of the commoner stratum of society. Members of the priesthood were, for the most part, hereditary nobles, but I argue that they also engaged in opportunity hoarding. And by restricting membership and access to farmland, rural calpolli members were also opportunity hoarders. For illustrative purposes, I focus on the first and second of these groups. DURABLE INEQUALITY IN AZTEC SOCIETY | 173 Long-distance professional merchants, or pochteca. There were many different types of traders in the Aztec world, from marketplace vendors of small household surpluses to regional traders of high-bulk goods, such as cotton, to wealthy merchants moving valuable exotic goods over long distances (Hirth 2016). These latter were the pochteca, the premier opportunity hoarders in the Aztec world (Berdan 2014). Pochteca lived in exclusive neighborhoods, or calpolli, in major cities in the Basin of Mexico. These exclusory residential arrangements created social and physical boundaries around the pochteca, allowing them secrecy and control over their internal affairs. They socialized their own children (as future pochteca), managed their economic affairs (with departing travelers carrying not only their own goods but those of other pochteca as well), and enjoyed an internal social hierarchy based on economic success and the dedication of accumulated wealth to important statewide ceremonial events. In many ways, pochteca groups resembled the well-known merchant and craft guilds of medieval Europe.2 Pochteca trafficked in the most valuable materials and finished goods in the Aztec known world, including tropical feathers, gold, precious stones such as jadeite and turquoise, decorated cotton cloth, wild animal skins, and shells. From their Basin of Mexico headquarters they carried goods such as golden necklaces, obsidian tools, and rabbit fur; when they returned to their home bases they brought slaves, fine textiles, exquisite feathers, and valuable stones, selling them in the famous Tlatelolco marketplace (Sahagún 1950–1982, Book 10). The pochteca enjoyed a favorable balance of trade and became wealthy even by elite standards. How did these materials and goods fare in Tilly’s terms? Pochteca merchandise was high in value and low in bulk; it was portable, storable, and readily renewed from distant suppliers. The pochteca controlled commerce in these goods by their ability to collectively develop capital investments for merchandise and large caravans. They also accumulated considerable experience and knowledge in the business of undertaking long, dangerous journeys through difficult and often-hostile territories. In addition, they established a critical outpost (Tochtepec) at the confluence of two major trade routes to tropical lowlands, at the fringes of the empire. Here they could control their own affairs far from the watching eyes of their homeland rulers. In these ways, the pochteca effectively monopolized (or nearly monopolized) trade in the most valuable goods in the Aztec domain. The pochteca, in their somewhat ambiguous yet indispensable position, contributed a measure of complexity and inequality to Aztec society. Considerable exclusive control over their own affairs, enjoyment of political favors, and accumulation of vast portable wealth set the pochteca apart from other commoners; indeed, some pochteca became wealthier than many nobles. Yet they were frequently admonished by their own elders to “play it down,” perhaps sensing potential conflicts with hereditary landed nobles who required the services of the pochteca but perhaps also resented their wealth and special privileges. Priests. A look at Aztec priests as opportunity hoarders is instructive, even though they do not fit as neatly into Tilly’s model as do the pochteca. Most notably, priestly 174 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH SUMMER 2021 groups were largely made up of nobles rather than commoners. Yet their importance and social status were not reliant on control over land and labor, and it can be argued that they exhibited the other basic features of opportunity hoarding outlined by Tilly. Priests lived in an unquestionably exclusive world. Although their training began in childhood, we know next to nothing about how individuals were recruited to the priesthood. Their training was in the hands of established priests, and their daily lives revolved around temples, ceremonies, and priestly routines. Every temple, every deity, enjoyed its resident cadre of priests (and sometimes priestesses) whose lives were immersed in caring for the temple and its ritual paraphernalia, the deity’s idol, and the elaborate ceremonies associated with that temple’s specific traditions (Sahagún 1950– 1982, Book 8, pp. 81–82). They also controlled the schools for noble boys (calmecac), instructing and socializing each new generation of aristocratic leaders, as well as new priests. Their lives were dedicated to religious service—they lived in an insular, bounded world which may well have seemed mysterious, redoubtable, and surely powerful to the rest of the population. The priesthood monopolized critical resources, although in this case the resources were intangible as well as tangible. Priestly monopolies resided in the realm of the sacred: they controlled access to the supernatural and to esoteric knowledge of myths, deities, and ceremonies. This knowledge, and their conspicuous roles in the performance of spectacular rituals and ceremonies, accorded them respect, awe, and even fear among other members of the society. They also managed considerable material resources produced by themselves and their acolytes, provided by the state, or contributed by the population at large. These resources ranged from the finest attire and adornments for godly idols to musical instruments, books, incense, tobacco, paints, maguey spines, and large quantities of food contributed on designated ritual occasions (Berdan 2007, 2017). Resources also included human beings slated for sacrifice by the priests. Importantly, the priests administered activities at the most impressive structures of any city or town: centrally located temples and associated ritual structures. And the priestly role in acquiring and offering the thousands of ritual objects deposited in the numerous caches around Tenochtitlan’s ceremonial district cannot be underestimated (López Luján 1994). In Tilly’s terms, the priests’ intangible resources were unquestionably valuable, renewable, and subject to monopoly, primarily through priestly control and transmission of religious and esoteric knowledge. Material resources used for religious purposes were almost entirely available in other contexts and used by others in the society at large, although priests were certainly central in interpreting the sacred meanings attached to many of them. Otherwise, material goods do not appear to contribute anything special to priests’ opportunity hoarding. But their monopoly over the intangibles of the religious world is impressive. Priests were powerful in Aztec society, where polity and religion were intricately intertwined and interdependent. How did the activities of opportunity hoarders promote categorical inequality in Aztec society? Our two examples, professional merchants and priests, highlight the variation possible in the establishment and persistence of different types of monopolistic DURABLE INEQUALITY IN AZTEC SOCIETY | 175 groups. They exhibit different bases for their monopolies: material wealth and esoteric knowledge. They persisted over generations as exclusive groups, especially maintaining their insularity through residential segregation and control over training and socialization. In each case, their activities were multifaceted and complex, and not easily appropriated by others in the society. Additionally, their advantageous contacts with rulers protected their privileged status. In all of this, they sat above other members of their social class, contributing to a complex and nuanced social hierarchy. THIRD MECHANISM: EMULATION The Model Unlike the social processes of exploitation and opportunity hoarding, which are tied closely to categorical inequality, emulation and adaptation are more general and widespread mechanisms that operate at many locations throughout society. For Tilly, emulation is a kind of borrowing that consists of the “transfer of existing organizational forms, representations, and practices from one setting to another” (Tilly 2001:366). He uses the terms “cementing” and “locking in place” in reference to emulation and adaptation, imparting a rather static and immovable conception. I prefer to build on his own recognition that “inequality is always in flux” (Tilly 1998:29), emphasizing that processes of emulation and adaptation enter the scene as dynamic factors in reinforcing Aztec social hierarchies. Tilly argues that it is easier to borrow principles of organization and inequality from a similar organization through emulation than to invent them from scratch. Emulation multiplies categorical inequality by spreading specific traits throughout a society and creating the illusion of ubiquity and inevitability (Tilly 1998:191). Tilly explores many examples in contemporary societies in which major categorical distinctions such as gender or caste are imported into new organizations and contexts, bringing with them readily available practices and meanings. Such emulation processes replicate and reinforce inequality through reference to examples that are well-known to members in the society. Note that Tilly’s concept of emulation shares little with the common meaning of that term in anthropology and archaeology. In these fields, emulation typically refers to the imitation or copying of styles and practices, often from more prestigious individuals or groups. Tilly’s concept of emulation is more structural. Tilly may have drawn his concept of emulation from the field of organizational sociology, where the question of how organizations adopt structures and practices from preexisting organizations has long been of interest (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Zucker 1987). Although this process of borrowing structure between organizations has not seen much research in anthropology, there are parallels between the sociological literature and research on cultural transmission in cultural evolution. For example, several of the hypotheses offered by DiMaggio and Powell (1983:154–55) posit processes similar to success bias and prestige bias (Henrich and McElreath 2003; Jiménez and Mesoudi 2019), but on the level of organizations, not individuals. 176 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH SUMMER 2021 The Aztec Case Emulation can come in many guises. Tilly (1998:95) stresses borrowing or “the transfer of chunks of social structure that happen to include unequal categories,” arguing that it is easier and less costly to copy existing forms than to create new ones. Emulation reproduces familiar forms on the broader political and social stage, thereby promoting uniformity. Emulation can be identified in two general contexts in Aztec society: among groups within the imperial capitals themselves, and between the imperial powers and their conquered subjects and clients. Within the Aztec imperial capitals, emulation appears in the replication of patterns of inequality among significant component groups, most notably the warrior, priestly, and pochteca hierarchies. The military organization drew on general principles of Aztec social distinctions in the design of its internal hierarchy. There was no standing army, but individual warriors gained status and rewards based on their success in capturing enemies in battlefield engagements. For each capture, the valiant warrior received visible rewards of specifically designed cloaks and (from the second capture on) feathered warrior costumes to wear in successive battles. The highest achievers were further honored through their participation in major public rituals (Berdan and Anawalt 1992, vol. 3, folio 64r; Sahagún 1950–1982, Book 2, pp. 47–56; Book 8, pp. 76–77). All of this individual ranking aside, warriors with four or more captures to their credit were granted admittance to elite warrior societies, structured military hierarchies with important military and ritual roles, responsibilities, and expectations. Two of these, the eagle and jaguar warriors, also enjoyed their own exclusive chambers located prestigiously to each side of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan. The best known of these, archaeologically and ethnohistorically, is the House of the Eagles (Durán 1971:186– 93; López Luján 2006). The general hierarchical exclusions between nobles and commoners were mirrored within at least this warrior cadre, and most certainly within its parallel military association, the jaguar warriors. All men, no matter their social standing, knew these rules, and a commoner knew that in his military achievements, as in other aspects of his life, he could rise only so far. Priests and pochteca were presented above as opportunity hoarders, but they also exemplify the principle of emulation. Like the warriors, they mirrored overall societal inequalities in their own specialized arenas. Acolyte priests could be either noble or commoner boys, depending on the temple served: at the temple of Tezcatlipoca, for instance, “different social classes were represented. Some were the sons of noblemen; others came from the lowest rank” (Durán 1971:112). This sounds rather egalitarian, but Durán (1971:112) continues to say that “Though all lived within the same enclosure, the sons of monarchs and great men were always more highly respected and carefully attended.” Novices faced a hierarchical system characterized by differential opportunities for advancement. Each of the several levels in the priestly hierarchy entailed greater knowledge and experience, heavier responsibilities, and increased prestige, culminating in service to the most powerful deities and performances at the major ceremonies and ultimately appointments to exalted political posts in their elderly DURABLE INEQUALITY IN AZTEC SOCIETY | 177 “retirement” (Durán 1971:137). Climbing the priestly hierarchy was not unlike climbing the political or military hierarchies, wherein the nobility captured the most treasured social prizes. Young pochteca likewise began their careers at the bottom of a specialized hierarchy which could ultimately lead to the acquisition of considerable wealth, political commissions, and influential economic positions (such as assignments as market judges). As with the priests, the lives of ambitious and achieving pochteca intersected with the citystate powers at opportune moments in their social ascendancy. For instance, a critical juncture of a merchant’s upward progression in his guild hierarchy was his offering of a “bathed slave” in a major public ceremony, an extraordinarily expensive undertaking (Berdan 2014; Sahagún 1950–1982, Book 9). And while this was a distinctly pochteca event, the sponsoring merchant’s amplified status in the pochteca hierarchy was dependent on his participation in the broader events of his city-state. Like the warriors and priests, the merchants lived in a microcosm of the overall hierarchical Aztec world. As individuals climbed the warrior, priestly, and pochteca hierarchies, they earned rewards parallel to those of the nobility on the larger social stage: symbols of their increased status, powerful connections and weighty responsibilities, elevated lifestyles, and substantial control over their internal group structure. All of these hierarchical examples, and the motivations involved in encouraging participation in them, served to reinforce the overall system of inequalities, to make them familiar, habitual, and appealing to the individual participant. What about emulation between the imperial city-state powers and their conquered subjects and clients? It was convenient that conquests by the Triple Alliance were conducted against other city-states, polities similar in formation and organization to those of the conquerors. Although many different ethnicities and languages were exhibited in the city-states conquered by the Triple Alliance, there were common understandings of the rules and symbols of military engagement, and of dominant-subordinate relationships (including the consequences of conquest). In some cases, negotiations replaced outright military conquest in outlying areas, resulting in imperial-client relations not dissimilar to those established in the Roman Empire (Luttwak 1976). These were, nonetheless, still politically asymmetrical relations and clearly understood as such by all involved. Emulation was not just political and material. With respect to the esoteric, Lori Diel (2008:15) suggests that “local rulers readily adopted the annals format [for written texts], just as they did the calendar, to show their allegiance to the imperial capital. . . . [T]he subject community mimicked the capital city in hopes of appropriating some of that power for itself.” This form of emulation carried advantages for both emperors and subject elites. It minimized transaction costs (in Tilly’s words) for the imperial rulers who, in their military and political expansions, encountered city-state elites much like themselves; they shared “restricted cultural codes such as writing and the calendar, and common participation in periodic rituals of solidarity and consumption” (Berdan and Smith 1996:211). At the same time the practice of emulation offered subjugated lords a form of external legitimization: “power, prestige, and survival by association” (Berdan 178 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH SUMMER 2021 2014:174). As a side benefit, local rulers and nobles adopting imperial styles and symbols, and embedding them into their local systems, also gained an enhanced measure of exclusivity on their own political stage. FOURTH MECHANISM: ADAPTATION The Model Adaptation is the “invention of procedures that ease day to day interaction and elaboration of valued social relations around existing divisions” (Tilly 2001:366). Citizens or subjects adjust their routines around state requirements and workers reproduce the hierarchical distinctions presented by firms and organizations. “Adaptation locks categorical inequality into place. Once exterior categorical distinctions, inadvertent or otherwise, find their way into an organization, they tend to stay in place for the same reasons that other organizational patterns persist: because they become taken for granted as bases of routine activities within the organization” (Tilly 1998:57). In the words of Vallas and Cummins, adaptation describes “survival strategies and coping practices of subordinate groups, which may inadvertently contribute to the persistence of social and economic inequalities” (2014:231). Tilly’s concept adaptation is often labeled “accommodation” in anthropological studies of domination, resistance, and agency, often in colonial settings (Ortner 1995; Sahlins 1981; Silliman 2005; Vinthagen and Johansson 2013). This concept is quite widespread in the social sciences, including urban sociology (Sampson 2012:364–77), development economics (Sen 1999:63), and Marxist works on ideology (Eagleton 1991:34). The Aztec Case In Tilly’s mechanism of adaptation, nonelite groups become complicit in maintaining their own subordinate positions. Among the Aztecs, adaptation can be found in some specific behavioral practices and ritual performances. In the realm of practices, the pochteca again provide us with an excellent example. Despite their extraordinary wealth and haughty bearing outside their home cities, they were still commoners at home, and their public behavior fell within commoner expectations. The pressures to act modestly did not just derive from the aristocracy; they were admonished by their own elders to go about humbly in dress and demeanor. They also disguised their wealth upon returning from lucrative trading expeditions. These appear to have been deliberate and effective strategies from the merchants’ perspective: it allowed them to accumulate and dispose of their wealth in ways that did not threaten the established nobility, while garnering the respect and esteem of the imperial ruler (Sahagún 1950–1982, Book 9, pp. 31–32). At the same time, Charles Tilly would readily recognize these behaviors as contributing to the continuance of the merchants’ own commoner status within the overall hierarchy. Particularly illustrative of the mechanism of adaptation are the major city-state ceremonies (most of them tied to calendrical cycles) that included both household and public components. Many of the domestic ritual contributions to these ceremonies required participation by everyone, including the humblest commoners. Commoners followed DURABLE INEQUALITY IN AZTEC SOCIETY | 179 prescribed ceremonial roles and scripts in these complex religious scenarios—their activities were coordinated with and mirrored the broader ceremonial experience (Berdan 2014:244). Still, their activities were consistently subsidiary to the more spectacular ritual events which were enacted by priests on the central ceremonial temples, platforms, and plazas. Commoners collected maize stalks, strung flowers, cooked tamales, fasted, feasted, sang, and danced. The more intense, theatrical side of these calendrical ceremonies was performed at a more exalted religious level with which the commoner only occasionally and tangentially intersected. As ceremonies were replayed year after year, likewise the unequal involvement of elite and nonelite was overtly and repeatedly reinforced. DISCUSSION Charles Tilly’s four causal mechanisms of durable inequality—exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation, and adaptation—were clearly present in Aztec society, and the available evidence suggests that they operated largely as described by Tilly’s model of durable inequality. These results have implications on three levels: the specific facts of the Aztec case, the explanation of those facts, and the general explanatory principles available to scholars of ancient and non-Western societies. On the most basic, empirical level, my account suggests that Aztec social inequality was far more pervasive, multifaceted, complex, and dynamic than generally depicted. The use of Tilly’s four mechanisms as a structure of investigation allowed us to describe the Aztec system of social inequality in a way that relates to other societies, both ancient and modern. On the more analytical second level, Tilly’s model provides a causal explanation for the nature and extent of inequality in Aztec society. As explicated by Wright (2000) and summarized in Figure 1, Tilly’s model has been supported and confirmed for a variety of contemporary settings (Sampson and Morenoff 2006; Tomaskovic-Devey 2014; Tomaskovic-Devey et al. 2009). It is a flexible and dynamic explanatory account of durable social inequality in state-level societies of the past and present. Not only were Tilly’s four causal mechanisms present in Aztec society, but many of the specifics of their operation match closely the predictions of his model. The lack of diachronic data on these mechanisms prevents us from achieving a full causal explanation of Aztec patterns of inequality. Nevertheless, I have created an explanatory sketch that appears to capture the nature of the basic processes of durable inequality in Aztec society. And finally, on a broad conceptual level, this case study shows that Charles Tilly’s specific model—as well as his general epistemological approach to social analysis— holds great promise for the analysis of ancient and non-Western societies. I have illuminated the interactions and relationships among a range of diverse social statuses and groups in Aztec society, and I suggest that similar accounts can improve scholarly understanding of durable inequality in other premodern states. The comparative study of systems of stratification and inequality in these societies is seriously underdeveloped in relation to research on contemporary societies. Apart from a few highly generalized schemes (Brown 1988; Johnson and Earle 2000; Lenski 1966; Trigger 2003), historians and other scholars until very recently have been content to describe 180 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH SUMMER 2021 ancient and non-Western systems of inequality as discrete individual cases, with little comparison or model-building (although see Price and Feinman 2010). This situation is changing, with recent synthetic and quantitative accounts of social inequality before the modern era (Kohler and Smith 2018; Kohler et al. 2017; Scheidel 2017). One interesting development is that research in human behavioral ecology, a field largely separate from Charles Tilly and mainstream social science, has settled on an explanation of early inequality that matches Tilly’s model of exploitation quite closely. The key development in the origins of human social inequality, in this view, is the creation of defensible resources: resources that can be defended and exploited by one group but not others (Kelly 2013:156–64; Mattison et al. 2016; Smith et al. 2010). Such “defensible resources” are necessary for the operation of Tilly’s mechanism of exploitation; for discussion of this parallel, see Smith et al. (2018). One limitation of my analysis is its historically static framework. While I cite a few historical facts about early Aztec society, this is a largely synchronic study of inequality in the final decades of the prehispanic epoch. The historical sources are just not sufficiently informative about earlier periods to permit a rigorous analysis of processes of change in the mechanisms of social inequality. Archaeology provides diachronic data on a relatively narrow range of topics relating to social inequality. Although speculation about conditions in early Aztec society is common in the literature, I prefer to limit discussion to the single well-documented period of pre-Spanish Aztec history. A major attraction of Charles Tilly’s epistemological approach and specific models, for scholars of premodern societies, is that they help scholars avoid two common pitfalls: overly particularistic accounts that allow no generalization or commonalities, and invariant uniform explanatory accounts that are insensitive to local conditions. A further benefit of Tilly’s approach is that it “opens social science to history much more readily than do competing approaches to explanation of social processes” (Tilly 2010:55). Charles Tilly’s research and publications cover a breathtaking range of topics and time periods. I have found his model of durable inequality productive in explaining many aspects of Aztec society, and I suggest that anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists would benefit from exploring the applicability of this model, as well as other examples of Tilly’s analytical work. NOTES Frances Berdan has contributed greatly to my understanding of Aztec patterns of inequality, and her input was valuable for several sections of this paper. Christopher Morehart provided helpful comments on an earlier draft. I thank three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, which have helped me improve the argument of this paper. 1. I use the term “Aztec” to refer to the peoples and society of highland central Mexico in the several centuries prior to the Spanish conquest of ad 1521. This society included a number of named ethnic groups, including the dominant Mexicas, who were the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan. DURABLE INEQUALITY IN AZTEC SOCIETY | 181 2. 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