This is a study of technology as self-help endeavor in the home and the provisioning of the household; as work in the rural workshop that supplies pots or iron tools for the village; and as techniques mastered in the urban workshop feasible not in simple tribal villages but when new production institutions emerge with the development of a political hierarchy. It travels from the agricultural field to the building of the home (with its food-processing and storage facilities), to urban water supply techniques and transport mechanisms, to the use of stone, bronze and iron for tools and weapons....