Introduction: Perspectives on trade and exchange

Abstract

Today, in America, we are surrounded by objects from distant places: toys from China, cars from Japan, shoes from Mexico, wine from Argentina, and myriad goods from around the world. Workers in Naivasha, Kenya, harvest roses in the afternoon, and by the next morning they are for sale in the flower shops of London. High-speed, economical transportation links producers and consumers in an international marketplace; the average home in the western world contains goods transported by trains, container ships, and cargo jets. In the prehistoric and historic past, when transport was slower and costlier, the exchange networks that linked distant peoples were complex and productive. Nonlocal goods were transported, traded, and exchanged through a variety of means, over short and long distances, and it was often the case that the social dynamics that were part of this process were as meaningful as the objects themselves. Archaeological tools for identifying foreign objects, such as provenance studies, stylistic analyses, and economic documentary sources reveal nonlocal materials in prehistoric and historic assemblages. Yet trade and exchange encompass more than mere production and consumption. Exchange was a mechanism for introducing the exotic into daily life. Foreign objects were integrated into everyday practice long before the advent of a global economy. © 2010 Springer-Verlag New York.