ARC 1010 - Trade and Exchange

• Humans have been exchanging things they need for a long time
• Resources are unequally distributed across landscapes
• People have also been exchanging things they DON’T NEED for the same amount of time!
• Exchange and circulation are basic components of human sociality 
• is exchange about the economic need or something else?

• Exchange: the movement or transfer of goods between people.
  • Processes in which people give and receive something in place of another - transaction
  • Some people restrict the definition to goods and services, others include ideas, information, etc. sometime ‘exchange’ synonymous with ‘market exchange’, where objects or labour are sold and their price is adjusted by demand and supply
• Trade: the exchange of commodities, things that can be acquired in exchange for others of equal value, measured in a particular currency.
  • It usually means the involvement of some kind of market principle (supply/demand).
  • Other forms have aspects of supply/demand without currency (e.g. barter transactions) 
• Circulation: A term that encompasses all of the above: The movements of goods and people, as well as concepts, information, financial products, images, gossip, fame and reputation
• Interaction: A broad term that is used to refer to the action or influence of things and people on each other. The exchange of goods can be seen as one of many possible interaction practices. 

• Gift exchanges: usually defined as the exchange of inalienable goods between non-strangers that establishes qualitative personal relationships between the persons involved in the transaction.
• Commodities exchange: usually seen as the exchange of alienable goods between strangers, establishing quantitative relationships between the objects that take part in the transaction (C. Gregory 1982:8-9) expecting repayment usually 
• Anything produced to be exchanged/traded is a commodity
• A continuum, more than polar opposites 

• The reciprocal exchange of things between equals
• Delicate balance of what to exchange, and when to do it
• Subject to manipulation 
• e.g. Marriage exchange falls under these things
• Every society has exchanges to reinforce relationships
• Now have logic of gift-giving, embedded in consumer culture BUT express feeling/expectation
• We feel obligated to accept things we receive as gifts even if we don't like them
• Charity giving as well
• About us as well as person receiving gift

• The direct transaction of goods or services for other goods or services, without the use of money (1 opinion is this is why money was invented)
• Opposite of gift exchange
• Traditionally understood as the beginning of market economy, as a ‘primitive’, underdeveloped economic system, ultimately to be replaced by money-based transactions
• Mutual interest, profit oriented, impersonal
• But more recent anthropological studies have highlighted the moral and social aspects of barter transactions
• Barter is no longer seen as a poorer version of market exchanges, but as a socio-economic practice in itself with important social implications
• Supports different relationships than thse in market transactions 

• The Marketplace: the space where market transactions occur
• The Market principle: goods or services sold at a price, defined by supply and demand. An impersonal transaction, ruled by mutual interest
• Markets can exist without market economy

• What do you want from money?
  • Light
  • Easy to carry
  • Hard-wearing
  • Good for large/small purchases
  • Impossible to forge
  • Cheap to make
  • Good for propaganda
  • Attractive
  • Ability to control supply
  • Internationally accepted
• Things before coinage, e.g. cowrie shells (involved counting lrg #s of shells and systems made to count quicker)
• Primitive money was not currency because there was no bank to support it 
• Aztec cacao beans, Mexico/Ecuador Axe-monies not used for payment but ritual/state acquisition 

• 3300 BCE
• Found away from his home
• Had stuff with him to indicate trade
• Had wounds
• Migratory herder? Trading trip? On the run?

• Economics is not a sphere of practice outside of culture and social relations
• There are specific ways of acting (what to give for what, appropriate timing, etc.) that are culturally sanctioned
• For instance
  • •Some things have limited range of circulation and can be exchanged for a limited range of ‘equals’.
  • •Some things can be exchanged for money, others can’t
• What guides economic decisions/transacting goods? Moral vs rational 
• But not every economy is rational, even the West --> acting is culturally sanctioned

• Malinowski first described a system where giving happened “for the sake of giving”
• In the absence of formal laws, reciprocity acts like an ‘invisible hand’ that regulates individual and collective actions and desires.
• Less interest in the ‘aura’ or the power of the gift
• Western economic tools are useless to study this system 
• Give for the sake of giving, no reason for a complex exchange system

• Malinowski first described a system where giving happened “for the sake of giving”
• In the absence of formal laws, reciprocity acts like an ‘invisible hand’ that regulates individual and collective actions and desires.
• Less interest in the ‘aura’ or the power of the gift
• Western economic tools are useless to study this system 
• Give for the sake of giving, no reason for a complex exchange system

• A highly ritualised exchange between historical exchange partners
• Armshells were exchanged for necklaces or vice-versa, but never armshells for armshells or necklaces for necklaces.
• The valuables are system-communal property and cannot be owned privately or kept in one's possession for very long --> prevents power accumulation 
• Shells accumulate value as they circulate among partners around the ring --> they acquire a “history” and a “personality” --> achieve high prestige from accumulating high value items
• The valuables derive their principal social value and meaning from being the objects of Kula exchange, having few other uses in the social lives of the transactors or in their pursuit of an economic livelihood
• Exchange has to be ‘like for like’: only items of similar value or reputation can be exchanged
• For Malinowski, reciprocal exchanges have the function of guaranteeing social integration in the absence of written laws
• There is no “economic reason” behind these exchanges, but there is a “social function"
• Every big transaction supported by many, lower value transactions
• Differs massively from western economic rationality 

The Gift

• Draws upon Malinowski’s work and argues that the subjective experience of the actors needs to be brought into the discussion if we are to understand the essence of exchange
• He is interested in gift exchanges as the opposite of commodity exchange that he saw at the time dominating in the West
• Gifts for Mauss are systems of “total prestations“: people create bonds through perpetual services and counter-services of all kinds, usually in the form of ‘free’ gifts and services
• The gift is imbued with "spiritual mechanisms", engaging the honor of both giver and receiver. The giver does not merely give an object but also part of himself/herself - divine aspect
• Because gifts are inalienable (a basic component of the identity of the giver) they must be returned; the act of giving creates a gift-debt that has to be repaid.
• Gift exchange leads to a mutual interdependence between giver and receiver. The "free" gift that is not returned is a contradiction because it cannot create social ties
• The poison in the gift: Gift exchange, although reciprocal and fostering social integration and harmony, it is also fraught with tensions

The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1948)

• Alliance theory & women as the ‘supreme gift’ between two men
• All exchanges are varieties of the reciprocal logic
• Levi-Strauss saw reciprocity as a fundamental rule, a principle of human society
• He thought that there was no need to explain exchange due to ‘subjective perceptions’ (a critique to Mauss’ approach)
• For him, reciprocity is a principle that works universally, and that can be observed and studied objectively
• More important how rules manipulated and changed with social practices

• A prominent anthropologist who sought to understand the economy as embedded in social institutions
• Defined different levels of social integration through economic exchange
• Reciprocity: refers to transactions between individuals who are symmetrically placed. They exchange as equals. Characteristic of small-scale societies
• Redistribution: implies the operation of some kind of centralization in the reception of goods. Characteristic of societies with some level of centralised control and political hierarchy
• Market exchange: implies a specific central location for transactions, and also the sort of social relationship where bargaining can take place. Usually associated to states and empires
• Very influential in archaeology, as it provided a framework to analyze long-term cultural evolutionary processes

• Reciprocity and redistribution combinations
• Chief engages in exchange to keep funding for his cause and supporters 

• Trade and exchange were always of interest to archaeologists, but it wasn’t until the 1960’s when new scientific techniques enabled the identification of the provenance of materials
• Renfrew in particular pioneered the chemical analysis of obsidian to identify its origin and in this way empirically demonstrate the existence of long-distance exchange networks
• Archaeologists started to look into
  • 1) how exchange fuelled socio-political change (e.g., the role of valuable gifts among elites) (e.g., Renfrew & Shennan 1982; Renfrew & Cherry 1986)
  • 2) how exchange functioned as an adaptive mechanism to the environment (by providing a social network to fall upon when in need) (e.g., Halstead & O’Shea 1989)
  • 3) how different types of societies could be inferred from the spatial distribution of exchanged materials (see Renfrew & Bahn)

• Plotting the frequencies of materials found at different distances from their source
• Generate models of expected frequencies of those materials according to the type of exchange involved
• Statistical curves can describe the type of exchange and this can be linked to the type of socio-economic organisation 

• village settlement served by a down -the - line exchange
• exponential “fall -off” in abundance
• village receive supplies of raw materials down a linear exchange network from its neighbour up the line
• retains a given portion of the material for its use (1/3)
• exchanges the remaining with its neighbour down the line
• if each village does the same an exponential fall -off curve will result 

when other methods of exchange involved:

• central place settlement with directional exchange between centres (redistribution and central market)
• multimodal fall off curve

The Aztecs

• Pochtecas, specialist merchants
• Attached to lords, but not slaves
• high status
• Many kinds of markets, from large scale annual fairs to everyday local markets • But not a ‘market economy

The Uluburun shipwreck (mediterranean)

• 3,300-year-old shipwreck discovered off the coast of Uluburun, SW Turkey
• A Royal cargo within a market economy
• Luxury raw materials and finished products: Hundreds of copper, tin and glass ingots Gold artefacts, 6,000 swords, Baltic amber, Ivory, ebony logs, incense, pistachios, olives, almonds, spices, grains, resin to make perfumes, fine pottery Balance weights… 
• Combined elements of various markets (maybe mycenian)
• Under control of royal envoy but engage in other trade at ports along the way 

• Circulated long-distances since earliest prehistory (for millenia), with evidence of raw amber found in Upper Paleolithic sites
• In the Bronze Age, archaeological evidence attests to widespread use of amber in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East by men, women, and children, primarily among the elite -> not utilitarian good
• Also employed to embellish arms, musical instruments, boxes, furniture, and to make spindles, buttons, and pins
• Baltic amber exchange may have flourished in connection to Mediterranean metalwork (amber exchanged for weapons) (Shennan, 1982). 
• Pliny the Elder: list of uses for amber, including as a medicine for throat problems and as a charm for protecting babies.
• Role in mourning rituals, or as raw material for carving the statues of revered Roman emperors Augustus at Olympia.
• Main amber sources at the edges of the known world, and those distant lands generated further rich lore.
• Myths and realities of amber’s nature and power influenced the desire to acquire it.
• Beliefs about amber’s mysterious origins and unique physical and optical properties affected the ways it was used in antiquity and the forms and subjects into which it was carved

• The tomb was sealed in 1340 BC, with the destruction of the city by the Hitites
• But in use during 200-300 years
• Large assemblage of valuable grave goods (over 2000 artefacts)
• Chemical compositional analysis determined Baltic origin of amber  

• A volcanic glass with unique knapping properties
• Limited geographical distribution
• Sources particularly in volcanoes 
• High quality raw material for making tools and objects such as mirrors
• Medicinal and magic properties (Mexico)

• Occupied continuously since the Upper Palaeolithic
• Obsidian from Melos used since the Upper Palaeolithic/Mesolithic transition
• Evidence from new sites indicates Melos was used even earlier (14,000BC)

• Aegean obsidian circulation and exchange: to re-examine the hypothesis of obsidian as highly valued raw material whether it was treated differently further from the source
• Used Renfrew’s model (discussed above) as basis
• Neolithic: production of utilitarian artefacts at various locations to the same size and standards 
• Found little concern for maximising profits (the fall-off curve does not work)
• No evidence of specialised manufacture
• She inferred that obsidian was obtained in “low cost trips”: seasonal trips to the quarry, involving fishing and other activities
• Early Bronze Age: similar pattern, no major changes within the ‘supply zone’
• Change towards the later Bronze Age, with more evidence of specialized production and with special voyages to the quarry
• A sign of increased demand: population increase and technological change towards unretouched prismatic blades (more easily dulled tools)
• Overall, obsidian was utilitarian, had no special ‘value’ throughout the whole sequence 

• Was the value only utilitarian?
• Robb (2007) argues that in the Neolithic, the value of obsidian stems from its capacity to connect people across large areas
• People use it in conventional ways (e.g., making the same types of artefacts) and pass what they don’t use to others, but do not hoard it.
• A material can be socially valued, even if it is not considered highly symbolic

• Isabel McBryde’s (1984): Demonstrated that the circulation of greenstone axes was not utilitarian
• Regulated through reciprocal transactions, with quite specific equivalences
• Quarry was owned by a particular tribal group
• Other, equally good or even better stones were available but still people traded the ones from this quarry in specific, non-random directions
• Cosmological beliefs concerning the meaning of powerful places and their creation of ancestral forces.
• Quarry managers had control and ability to disseminate this knowledge
• The network was influenced by the magical power of a nearby region, seen as the source of ancestral key knowledge. The expansion of the stone axes coincides with the expansion of a myth spreading from that area (Brumm 2010)
• Basically, not about the quality of the stones (better quality elsewhere) but about the exchange opportunity at the quarry 

• Andean ethnography: a source of ideas & concepts
• All existing things -- people, llamas, mountains, potato fields, houses, whatever -- are imbued with life.
• The life-force (sami, also camay) can be transmitted from one living thing to another.
• Relationships of complementarity and opposition: from conceptions of the self, to community cooperation and labour organisation
• Reciprocal obligations, commitment and duty of care are pertinent to humans, animals and things
• Variability of resources: dry side and wet side

• Wide-reaching mobile patterns and exchange networks since the earliest hunter-gatherer occupations (ca 10,000 BP)
• Llama caravans were used for transport, although in earlier periods they may have been small packs rather than full caravans
• While the environment has structured longdistance exchanges, the Andean landscape has also been shaped by mobility, circulation and exchange in various forms
• No evidence of coinage, except for areas in the northern Andes. However, some studies indicate some forms of currency and weights used in central Peru (Espinoza Soriano, 1987)

• To finance their empire, the Incas mobilized and expropriated both staple and sumptuary goods
• No market economy but wealth economy formed by exchange
• Labour was mobilized to fit variations of these strategies
• Staples: state farms & storage, expansive agricultural systems
• Wealth: prestige/luxury raw materials and crafts
• How did they manage to do this, in the context of Andean entrenched views of reciprocity, communal labour and communal property?
• Both systems are intertwined in Inca economy (Earle 1994)

• The Mit’a (labour tax)
• Upon conquest, Ayllu lands were divided: parcels allocated to the sun, to the Inca, to the state, to the community
• Inclusion of new arable land through irrigation
• But the state gave gifts to ethnic lords to secure loyalty, and had a role of redistributor of food and resources to the wider population

• Possibly specialist traders --> evidence in coastal societies
• They controlled the circulation of most goods to certain extent
• Mullu had high symbolic value, used in state rituals

Capacocha (Qhapaq hucha)

• A large party of people coming from Cusco, the Inca capital, by foot
• Noble children and priests, to be dedicated to the mountain
• Incan mediators acted in reciprocity between state and gods

• Artefacts and raw materials move between people and places since the earliest prehistory.
• These movements create relationships, generate roads, create regional spaces for interaction, cooperation and conflict
• Various models and approaches emphasize different aspects, but it is important to bear in mind that societies do not compartmentalize spheres of practice
• Economics, politics, social relationships and cultural value are intertwined
• Archaeology and anthropology often each other perspective:
  • Socio-cultural anthropology offers concepts and field observations that help us integrate all of these aspects
  • Archaeology’s focus on materials and their distribution over large spaces and long periods can help us understand long traditions and how they inform contemporary approaches to exchange (e.g., colonial trade in Africa)