Elizabeth Brumfiel

Elizabeth Brumfiel was a leading scholar of Aztec archaeology and professor of anthropology at Northwestern University, who was responsible for bringing the study of social and economic inequality to the forefront of archaeological research. In “Weaving and Cooking: Women’s Production in Aztec Mexico, Brumfiel discusses how ethnohistoric documents provide a view into the activities common in the day to day lives of Aztec women. However, these documents do not dig deep enough into the subject matter. Brumfiel questions their overall usefulness. One of her main arguments is that “having defined women’s work as weaving and cooking, they do not comment upon the ties between these activities and other demographic, economic, and political structures

Hendon and Brumfiel both discuss how we in a modern society, can’t properly separate the difference private and public, the transformation between work and homemaking, and the similarities between production and maintenance. (Brumfiel, 226) Hendon focuses in on the issues raised by feminist anthropologists including Brumfiel about the definition of the terms domestic and household. Hendon discusses how research on archaeology of the household, gender and craft stratification is vitally important to the study of the organization and development of domestic labor and the changes in society it brought. It is commonly thought that households dominated much of everyday life, in that the family itself produced much of what was consumed and exchanged mutually between neighboring families. Some specialization of skills and exchange existed, but they were apparently concentrated on special tools and social valuables including cooking and weaving. Brumfiel like Hendon both look at the development of political and market economies, how these women and their households adjusted to it, and we have little knowledge about the pace, size and reasons for these

Aztec women accomplished level of societal success had its limitations as well. Aztec women faced opposing circumstances. Their social environment was based on the principle of gender reliance and role, which saw female and male roles as unique but equal and codependent portions of a larger productive system. On the other hand, they were increasingly subject to an ideology of gender hierarchy sponsored by the Aztec state. The concept of gender in the Aztec society influences the totality of the culture in many ways. The economic system is related to the social organizations, which also influences the ideas and values of the culture. This idea continues through the culture as a whole and the roles of male and females alike. Brumfiel also highlights power relations in the culture, suggesting that one group could end up being more prevailing than the other. Brumfiel understands and shows the reader that gender is not a perception in isolation. All parts of any culture are unified and inclined by each other. This idea based on the evidence presented was used to create the culture that we know today as the