As a whole, the economy of the Aztec Empire was based on farming, but it was augmented by industrial development (salt extraction, stone quarrying, and metallurgy), technological innovations (irrigation and dike systems), scientific inquiry (astronomy and botany), and a market and trading system for the distribution of goods and services. Thus, people in many different kinds of occupations helped make the empire stable, but the greatest burden, the production of corn and other food products, rested mainly on the shoulders of Aztec peasant farmers. In his book Everyday Life of the Aztecs , archaeologist Warwick Bray writes of the importance of this group:

There is a natural tendency, shared by the Spanish chroniclers and modern archaeologists alike, to concentrate attention on the spectacular aspects of Mexican civilization and to forget that the cultured life of the towns would have been impossible without the taxes and tribute labour of the...