The Archaeology of Trade and Exchange

Graduate / Professional

This seminar focuses on archaeological approaches to exchange and trade. As background, we review some of the principal theories of exchange from anthropology and sociology, such as those of Mauss, Malinowski, and Polanyi. The role of trade and exchange in different kinds of societies is examined by contextualizing these transactions within specific cultural configurations and considering the nature of production and consumption as they relate to movement of goods. We consider methods and models that have been used to analyze regions of interaction at different spatial scales and the theoretical arguments about the social impact of inter-regional and intra-regional interactions involving the transfer of goods, including approaches such as world systems, unequal development, and globalization. In addition, we examine the ways that have been utilized in archaeology to identify different kinds of exchange systems, often through analogies to well-documented ethnographic and historic cases. Finally, we consider the range of techniques that have been employed in order to track the movement of goods across space. These sourcing techniques are evaluated in terms of their advantages and disadvantages from an archaeological perspective, and in terms of how the best technical analyses may vary according to the nature of natural or cultural materials under consideration (ceramics, volcanic stone, metals, etc.). The theme for this year’s seminar is obsidian; students select some aspect of obsidian research for their final paper and presentation. W 11:35am-12:50pm