Durable Inequality in Aztec Society MICHAEL E. SMITH, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA. Email: mesmith9@asu.edu 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 Az- tec society immediately prior to the Spanish conquest of 1521. Tilly’s model helps resolve key is- sues 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; Wilkin- son 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 understand- ing 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 mod- ern 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 illuminat- ing social inequality in a variety of early and non-Western societies. Second, by broad- ening 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, hu- man 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