434 employment and labor: The Americas All doctors were excluded from having to pay taxes Roman laws dealt more harshly with laborers than with other Romans Where a patrician might be fined for stealing, a laborer could expect to be whipped and sentenced to years of hard labor Wage earners tried to compensate for their low status in society by establishing their own institutions, called collegia Collegia were formed by people with related skills, such as fishmongers, butchers, perfumers, auctioneers, interior decorators, and candy makers The collegia gathered dues and spent the money to buy a meeting hall as well as food and drink The collegia served primarily to provide dinners at which the members could gather and enjoy one another’s company The elected leaders of the collegia were held in high esteem by members Women could participate in many forms of employment Male commoners were expected to serve 20 years in Rome’s military, which in time of war left many jobs to be done by women Even women from the wage-earning class tended to be educated, and they worked as secretaries, teachers, and doctors They also worked as hairdressers, seamstresses, and midwives When desperate, as they often were, they worked as prostitutes During the Roman Republic and the early years of imperial rule, wage earners were often paid with coins, but their employers were expected to feed them too Milk, cabbages, and vegetables were given to laborers Sometimes they were paid in kind, meaning that for their services they were paid with other services, perhaps the cleaning of a coat exchanged for repairing masonry During the second century b.c.e Rome developed a cash economy: Almost all buying and selling was done with money Inflation ate away at the value of money, and in 301 c.e the emperor Diocletian tried to stem inflation by fi xing prices and wages by law The best-paid workers were clothes washers and teachers, who were paid by the item of clothing or by the student Carpenters and stonemasons could earn fift y denarii (roughly 50 American dollars) per day Farm laborers earned half that amount Scribes were paid per 100 lines Coins lost their value during the final three centuries of the Roman Empire, becoming smaller and having less and less real silver in them During his reign, Constantine (r 307– 337 c.e.) regularized Rome’s money and brought back the use of large silver coins After his reign, money became increasingly hard to find, and laborers took payment in the form of goods for their services Taxes on them became so high that many throughout the empire had to pay the government with their children, who became government-owned slaves By the time Germanic kings put an end to the Western Roman Empire, wage earners were little more than slaves themselves, and they were mostly glad to be rid of the empire THE AMERICAS BY MICHAEL ALLEN HOLMES AND TOM STREISSGUTH Historians have a limited understanding of the systems of employment and labor that existed in ancient America Re- cords are scant and in many places were kept on perishable material, such as wood or bark The Maya used hieroglyphic or ideographic texts painted on ceramic vases or inscribed on stone, but these writings deal with political or religious rather than practical matters Still, certain conclusions regarding the manner in which people worked for and with each other have been gleaned from archaeological research As the ancient Native Americans settled the deserts, plains, and woodlands of North America, the division of labor followed the demands of available local resources On the Great Plains, for example, hunters worked together to cull massive herds of bison In the hunt for game, the bow and arrow replaced spears and stone points around 400–500 c.e Archaeologists have discovered many buffalo jumps, where hunters ran bison herds over cliffs and then gathered the carcasses at the base One such buffalo jump, in Alberta, Canada, was used for more than 7,000 years The development of agriculture demanded a more settled and sedentary life The tasks of raising village homes and longhouses were taken up in a cooperative manner by large clan groups Among many tribes it was the task of women to plant and harvest maize and other edible plants, while the men’s duty was to hunt In eastern North America fishing and the gathering of edible coastal shellfish became important occupations Wherever competition for territory and available resources gave rise to armed conflict, Native American tribes developed a class of warriors, whose occupations were tracking, raiding, and using weapons, such as clubs, spears, and bows In the Olmec society of Mexico, systems of hired labor developed between roughly 1000 b.c.e and 300 b.c.e Apart from agricultural production, labor was performed largely at the direction of the priestly class, allowing for the construction of temples as well as the carving and transportation of massive stone heads One of the most fruitful Olmec settlements has been La Venta, an island in modern eastern Mexico Giant heads weighing as much as 40 tons were carved from basalt found at least 80 miles away Workers dragged the heads along land to the nearest river and then floated them aboard massive rafts The painstaking work of transporting, carving, and raising the heads demanded the use of skilled artisans and large gangs of common laborers The Maya built their largest, most complex structures fairly early in their overall development as a society, in about 600 b.c.e Mayan city-states never attained widespread centralization and unification Nevertheless, dominant cities arose where platforms and temples stood 100 feet high; the Danta complex of El Mirador, in the central Petén lowlands, was over 200 feet tall Between 300 and 50 b.c.e the Maya built a system of canals and reservoirs around Edzná, on the western Yucatán, which served some 1.75 square miles of farmland Archaeologists have concluded that the Maya developed important work specializations, including architects, stonemasons, plasterers, and sculptors, with priests and even astronomers contributing oversight to building efforts Historians generally assume that laborers were not employed