Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-tnzcf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T11:36:00.942Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Can Be Learned by Estimating Human Energy Costs?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

Robert D. Drennan
Robert D. Drennan
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Archaeologists have estimated the human energy costs of various undertakings. Confusion has arisen about the notion of energy “profits”–what must be included in their calculation and what we can learn from such calculations. When it comes to assessing the contribution to sociopolitical hierarchy building of energy profits derived from long-distance transport of food staples, it is the energy expended (both in transport and acquisition of the food staples) that matters. The source of the food that produces the human energy so expended is immaterial. What may be learned from such calculations is whether attempts to understand certain behaviors in terms of economic “rationality” succeed or not.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Fall 1994, pp. 209 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Cowgill, George L. 1993 Comments on Andrew Sluyter, Long-Distance Staple Transport in Western Mesoamerica: Insights Through Quantitative Modeling. Ancient Mesoamerica 4:201–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drennan, Robert D., 1984a Long-Distance Movement of Goods in the Mesoamerican Formative and Classic. American Antiquity 49:27–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drennan, Robert, 1984b Long-Distance Transport Costs in Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. American Anthropologist 86:105–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drennan, Robert D., 1985 Porters, Pots, and Profit: The Economics of Long-Distance Exchange in Mesoamerica. American Anthropologist 87:891–893.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drennan, Robert D., Fitzgibbons, Philip T., and Dehn, Heinz 1990 Imports and Exports in Classic Mesoamerican Political Economy: The Tehuacan Valley and the Teotihuacan Obsidian Industry. In Research in Economic Anthropology, vol. 12, edited by Isaac, Barry L., pp. 177–199. JAI Press, Greenwich, CT.Google Scholar
Parsons, Jeffrey R. 1976 The Role of Chinampa Agriculture in the Food Supply of Aztec Tenochtitlan. In Cultural Change and Continuity: Essays in Honor of James Bennett Griffin, edited by Cleland, Charles E., pp. 233–257. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Sluyter, Andrew 1993 Long-Distance Staple Transport in Western Mesoamerica: Insights Through Quantitative Modeling. Ancient Mesoamerica 4:193–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeitlin, Robert N. 1991 The Energetics of Trade and Market in the Early Empires of Mesoamerica. In Research in Economic Anthropology, vol. 13, edited by Isaac, Barry L., pp. 373–386. JAI Press, Greenwich, CT.Google Scholar