Formal approaches

Formal approaches explore the outcome of rational decision-making with regard to choices faced by prehistoric populations. By conceiving of economic behavior in terms of universal rationality, these approaches are analytically useful because they allow for the isolation of variables and for cross-cultural comparisons. Formal economic analyses are built on studies of modern markets by human geographers and involve reducing labor, land, and capital to the price as the unit of cost. Anthropologists using formal approaches may apply energy or time as value units to studies of food procurement, raw material provisioning, and settlement choice as in studies by behavioral ecologists (Winterhalder and Smith 2000) and archaeologists (Earle and Christenson 1980;Jochim 1976;Kennett and Winterhalder 2006).

Formal approaches to prehistoric exchange have been used by archaeologists to study the evolution in exchange systems both organizationally and from the perspective of individual behavior (Earle 1982: 2). On the larger scale, regression analysis (Hodder 1978;Renfrew 1977;Renfrew, et al. 1968;Sidrys 1977) and gravity models (Hodder 1974) use assumptions of cost minimization to differentiate between possible exchange systems in prehistory. "The sociopolitical institutions establish constraints in terms of the distribution and value of items. Then, individuals, acting within these institutional constraints, procure and distribute materials in a cost-conscious manner" (Earle 1982: 2). Neoclassical assumptions on the scale of individual behavior have also been used to examine the evolution of market based exchange (Alden 1982) and subsistence goods exchange by territorial groups exploiting high-yielding yet unpredictable resources (Bettinger 1982). A synthesis by Winterhalder (1997) investigates the way in which complex exchange behaviors that have been documented ethnographically can result from models of circumstance such as tolerated theft, trade and risk reduction, and models of mechanism such as kin selection and dual inheritance.

Critiques of formal approaches have been various, with strong methodological criticism coming from influential ex-formalists like Ian Hodder. On the subject of exchange, Hodder (1982: 202) observes that the explanatory power of formal approaches to prehistoric exchange are significantly weakened by the problem of equifinality in the empirical evidence, an issue discussed below. Hodder further argues that middle range links between social contexts, political strategies, and the empirical evidence provided by distributions of archaeological data are insufficiently accounted for with formal approaches such as regression analysis.

Substantive approaches

Substantivism arose in anthropology largely in response to what was perceived as the inapplicability of formal approaches and the assumptions of neoclassical economics to ethnographic case studies (Wilk 1996: 1-26). Substantive approaches emphasize that economy and exchange are fundamentally linked to other aspects of human behavior. To substantivists, economic institutions are effectively cultural traits, therefore techniques designed around "modern" or "western" conceptions of rational individualism are inadequate for application in non-western cultural contexts (Bohannan and Dalton 1962;Dalton 1969). The position was first articulated by Karl Polanyi (1957) that the economy is "embedded" in sociopolitical institutions. This view of economy and non-western exchange has its roots in studies by Malinowski (1922) and Mauss (1925), although the focus in that earlier period of economic anthropology was on social relationships, whereas social change dominated the discourse in economic anthropology during the 1960s (Dalton 1969).

Mid-twentieth century substantivism was based on a functionalist view of society as static and aspiring to the maintenance of equilibrium within the social environment (Schneider 1974). Interaction took place through reciprocity, redistribution, and exchange. Sahlins' (1965) further elaborated on reciprocity based exchange by placing generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocities along a continuum that served to describe the dynamics of interaction within specific social contexts. Another distinction lay between the transfer of inalienable gifts between reciprocally dependent individuals "that establishes a qualitative relationship between the transactors" (Gregory 1982: 101) and alienable commodities as transfer between reciprocally independent people "that establishes a quantitative relationship between the objects exchanged" (Gregory 1982: 100).

A number of critiques have emerged of the substantivist approach. One critique of substantivist approaches to exchange, one that is true of functionalism more generally, is an early version of agency theory. In the substantivist view, society is constructed of consistent rules within agents must act and includes a moral obligation of exchange (Dalton 1969: 77). In this organic perspective, however, "[t]here is little room for individual construction of social strategies and manipulation of rules, and there is little intimation of conflicts and contradictions between interests" (Hodder 1982: 200).

A second critique focuses on the distinction drawn by substantivists between complex and small-scale societies. Among complex societies, formal approaches are supposed to be more relevant, but in the context of small-scale societies substantive approaches are appropriate, and this dichotomy creates a dilemma of where exactly to draw the line. Monica L. Smith (1999: 111) argues that the ethnographic cases to which many substantivist models refer (i.e., small-scale societies) are lower in population density and involve fewer layers of interaction than would have been found in premodern states and empires and therefore formal approaches might have more relevance in premodern complex societies than is presented by substantivists.

A third critique holds that the direct correlation between forms of exchange and level of socio-political complexity lacks empirical support (Hodder 1982: 201). Anthropological studies suggest that unpredictability in food supply correlates with more extensive reciprocal exchange systems. Reciprocity is encountered more frequently among hunters, fishers and farmers than among gatherers and pastoralists who exploit relatively predictable resources (Pryor 1977: 4).

In the current day, Polyani's framework centering on the distinction between reciprocity, redistribution and market forces continues to be widely used in anthropology and archaeology, despite the development of alternative models that are particularly relevant to studies of commercialized pre-modern states. In particular, Michael E. Smith (2004) argues that more refined differentiation of transaction mechanisms can be used to distinguish the degree of internal and external commercialization in state-level societies, such as those presented by Carol A. Smith (1976). However, the subtleties of ancient commercial enterprise are less relevant in places like ancient Egypt and the Andes where historical and archaeological evidence attest to strong state control of uncommericalized economies without market-based economics, money, and independent merchants. In other words, Polyani's coarser distinctions of reciprocity, redistribution combined with non-market trade are sufficient in regions such as the ancient Andes where most scholars believe commerce played an minor role in prehistoric development (LaLone 1982;Stanish 2003). In Mesoamerica, however, where evidence for prehispanic markets and traders is widespread, anthropologists have found that Polyani's distinctions are vague and that models with further refinement in modes of commercialization are applicable (Braswell 2002;Smith 1976;Smith 2004).

Complementary applications of formal and substantive approaches

Formal and substantive approaches can be applied in a complementary manner. For example, in Stone Age Economics, Sahlins (1972) attempts to explain the existence of supply and demand curves among aboriginal exchange networks where social parameters determine the development of exchange. Winterhalder (1997) discusses some of the concepts presented by Sahlins (1972) using a behavioral ecology approach to gifts and exchange among non-market foragers. Winterhalder finds that issues such as social distance can be addressed more explicitly in a formal framework, albeit more narrowly, because economizing, neoclassical assumptions are a starting point for this type of analysis. As Hodder (1982: 200) points out, formal and substantive approaches are targeting different behaviors; formal economics relies on outputs and performance, while substantive analyses relate to social contexts of exchange.

While these differences make the two approaches irreconcilable on some levels, some studies attempt to integrate both avenues of research. Drawing on the advantages of both formalism and substantivism may be worthwhile, but a tendency to apply formal analyses to state-level societies, due to greater commercialism and specialization, and to apply substantive analyses to small-scale societies, should be resisted (Granovetter 1985;Gregory 1982;Smith 1999). The assumption that in premarket social contexts economic behavior is heavily embedded in social relations, but then is increasingly atomized and conforming to neoclassic analyses in modern, market-oriented societies is inconsistent. Granovetter (1985: 482) writes

I assert that the level of embeddedness of economic behavior is lower in nonmarket societies than is claimed by substantivists and development theorists, and it has changed less with 'modernization' than they believe; but I argue also that this level has always been and continues to be more substantial than is allowed for by formalists and economists (Granovetter 1985: 482).

Similarly, Danby (2002) observes that there are serious logical flaws in the false dichotomy, widely applied by archaeologists, where neoclassic, cost-minimizing logic is applied to premodern, complex societies but increasingly assuming an embedded "gift" economy among smaller-scale economies.

This dissertation research project follows on the substantivist tradition in the Andes, but formal approaches have been influential in exchange studies worldwide. The weaker elements of the substantivist approach will be avoided by not assuming a direct correspondence between socio-political complexity and volume or type of exchange.

Exchange and social distance

The dominant ethnographic approach in twentieth-century substantivist anthropology contrasts non-western gifting and exchange with capitalist, market-oriented trade in alienable commodities. Malinowski (1922) describes forms of exchange ranging from pure gifts to trade with increasing self-interest and "equivalence" as one moves towards the trade relationship. Mauss (1990 [1925]) attacks the notion of the pure gift and instead focuses on the temporal aspects of gift-giving, with the establishment of what are effectively ancient forms of credit. Further, Mauss focuses on the sociality of gift exchange with the idea that gifting can take hostile forms by inflicting obligations that the recipient may fear. Sahlins (1972: 191) subsumes the sociality of exchange relationships into a single trajectory with the concept of social distance. The "social distance" between exchange partners is a way of conceiving of the degree of familiarity and information transfer between producer and consumer of goods.

Figure 2-1. Varieties of reciprocal exchange (after Sahlins 1972: 199).

In Sahlins' classic taxonomy of reciprocity he identifies generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocity as a continuum from gift through exchange to haggling and theft, with explicitly different moral standards applying to transfers occurring in each sector. These modes of reciprocity were mapped directly on to increasing social distance originating in the household, although Sahlins was unspecific about the institutional forms of exchange, allowing for wide cross-cultural variation.

Besides the functionalist underpinnings of Sahlins' approach, one critique of his social distance model rests on his distinction between the role of the state and social relationships based on economic ties.

Because Sahlins is constructing a general theory, he is not obligated to deal with the refractory ethnographic data of one particular group. Hence, Malinowski's multiple heterogeneous categories of gifting never arise. In its place, Sahlins has a single Big Idea developed in the famous chapter on Hobbes and Mauss. The idea is that economics is politics for primitives. The understructure of human society, the default, is the chronic insecurity of Hobbes' "war of all against all." Primitives lack the state that is Hobbes' preferred remedy (Danby 2002: 24).

The result for Sahlins rests on a weak dichotomy between primitive|modern economic contexts that includes (1) primitive contexts where relations are mediated by social and economic relationships, and (2) modern contexts given over to the logic of neoclassic economics because commercialization and the circulation of alienable commodities are qualitatively different. Danby presents instead a "post-colonial critique [that] sees gift|exchange as yet another mapping of primitive|modern, an ultimately tautologous them|us split in which 'they' are various negations of what 'we' think 'we' are" (Danby 2002: 32). Anthropologists have sometimes followed this dichotomy where long-term investment and the establishment of social relationships in transactions is given over to the gift side, while exchange in alienable commodities is expected in complex, state level economies where exchange transactions are analyzed following the neoclassical approach and spot transactions are conducted in open markets.

In contrast, Danby argues that, if anything, one should expect greater temporal complexity and mechanisms for extending forward credit with greater social complexity.

Rather than building theory by pushing off against neoclassical exchange, let us put neoclassical exchange aside... the asocial spot transactions on the right-hand ends of [Sahlins' (Figure 2-1)] gift-exchange continua are also marginal to wealthy capitalist economies. Forward, debt creating transactions, embedded in social relations that often entail power, are central. Moreover, they are likely to be socially embedded in a variety of ways that should lead us to rethink the dichotomies between non-gift and gift (Danby 2002: 28).

Instead of framing the anthropological discussion of exchange in opposition to neoclassical approaches, Danby argues that the discussion should be reframed around institutions that underlie transactions in society and provide the long-term temporal milieu within which transactions occur. Temporality is particularly important when exchange is framed by production calendars based in agricultural cycles and by social calendars centered on gatherings and ceremonial occasions. By this standard, goods lying on the inalienable end of the continuum are fundamental to examining all economies in an anthropological light.

Common goods and luxury goods

The inalienability or uniqueness of an object sometimes parallels the categories of common and luxury items, with common items being mutable and replaceable. Yet, the classification as 'common' or 'luxury' for a given object is not discrete. It has been widely observed that the distinction between common and luxury items is contingent in space and time.

The line between luxury and everyday commodities is not only a historically shifting one, but even at any given point in time what looks like a homogeneous, bulk item of extremely limited semantic range can become very different in the course of distribution and consumption...Demand is thus neither a mechanical response to the structure and level of production nor a bottomless natural appetite. It is a complex social mechanism that mediates between short- and long-term patterns of commodity circulation (Appadurai 1986: 40-41).

Appadurai presents sugar as an example of a product with widely varying significance, and he observes that it is not merely the possession of exotic goods, but also the social significance of the knowledge surrounding the production or consumption of these goods, that carries significance. Goods that are irregularly distributed in space, portable, and that have wide consumption appeal such as sugar, salt and obsidian, were transported great distances in prehistory. For example, in the Mantaro Valley of the central Andes, Bruce Owen (2001: 280) notes that a number of metal items such as copper needles went from being wealth goods found primarily in elite contexts prior to the Inka conquest, to being utilitarian items and found with equal frequency in commoner contexts under Inka rule.

The movement of commodities has the significant effect of reinforcing relationships between social groups in the sense that the Kula ring promotes regular contact (Malinowski 1984 [1922]). However, in circumstances where the elite strive to control consumption of commodities, exchange can threaten the position of the elite. In Appadurai's perspective, both rulers and traders are the critical agents in articulating supply and demand of commodities.

The politics of demand frequently lies at the root of the tension between merchants and political elites; whereas merchants tend to be the social representatives of unfettered equivalence, new commodities, and strange tastes, political elites tend to be the custodians of restricted exchange, fixed commodity systems, and established tastes and sumptuary customs. This antagonism between "foreign" goods and local sumptuary (and therefore political) structures is probably the fundamental reason for the often remarked tendency of primitive societies to restrict trade to a limited set of commodities and to dealings with strangers rather than with kinsmen or friends. The notion that trade violates the spirit of the gift may in complex societies be only a vaguely related by-product of this more fundamental antagonism (Appadurai 1986: 33).

The suggestion that exchange promotes contact that threatens elite control results from either a relatively independent group of traders, or competing elites that utilize external contacts to advance their positions. Appadurai's point, however, is that in the realm of political finance one might expect established elites to strive to exert greater control over the values of production and exchange rather than relegate this important issue to those who traffic in long-distance goods, such as caravan drivers.

Following Polanyi, one might expect to find that in complex, premodern societies without market-based exchange there was dominance of administered trade. However, a number of scholars have observed that Polanyi (1957) appears to have ruled out precapitalist commercialism in ancient states a priori, as he claimed that there were no true markets or prices that reflected supply and demand in the ancient world, but rather equivalences in value that were set by rulers in an administered context. These "dogmatic misconceptions" (Trigger 2003: 59) appear to have caused Polanyi to distort the historical evidence as his views of administered markets in premodern states have been widely refuted (Smith 2004: 75-76;Snell 1997). Historian Philip Curtin (1984: 58) observes that even within contexts of administered control traders may have had more freedom than previously thought.

In some regional contexts, such as the prehispanic Andes, Polanyi's interaction types continue to be viable because there is little evidence of commercialization and open markets. The prevailing interpretation of prehispanic economy, for the Inka period in the central Andes at least, is "supply on command" (LaLone 1982) with elite economic domination primarily through labor mobilization. This issue will be explored in more detail in the Chapter 3, but Andeanists have largely found that Polanyi's non-commercial typology of premodern exchange suffices for analyses of prehispanic Andean economies.

Exchange promotes interaction between communities, yet Appadurai also explains that "such a tendency is always balanced by a countertendency, in all societies, to restrict, control, and channel exchange" (1986: 38). Under the rubric of "politics of value" Appadurai describes a pattern of institutional or elite control of commerce monopolizing or redirecting the flow of commodities. On this issue Graeber characterizes Appadurai's 1986 framework as "neoliberal" and describes it as follows

Appadurai leaves one with an image of commerce (self-interested, acquisitive calculation) as a universal human urge, almost a libidinal, democratic force, always trying to subvert the powers of the state, aristocratic hierarchies, or cultural elites whose role always seems to be to try to inhibit, channel, or control it. It all rather makes one wish one still had Karl Polanyi (1944) around to remind us how much state power has created the very terms of what is now considered normal commercial life (Graeber 2001: 33).

Appadurai cites examples of historic royal monopolies and sumptuary laws restricting trade items in Rhodesia and renaissance Europe support his argument (Appadurai 1986: 38). However, without the state-organized overhead of basic institutions guaranteeing peace, investment, and the protection of property, the movement of goods would involve much more danger of theft by brigands or goods could be simply confiscated by rival authorities.

Appadurai's focus on consumption is a significant contribution in that it releases anthropologists to address activities specifically related to consumption behavior, even though the neglect of production presents an incomplete picture of economy. Consumption loci are often the contexts where the strongest evidence or patterning of interaction is found. Thus, consumption is particularly useful to archaeologists who may only have evidence of changing consumption patterns, or who must infer links between production and consumption indirectly.

Exchange in subsistence, cultural, and prestige technologies

The distinction between the circulation of common and luxury goods observed by anthropologists can be considered in terms of the larger economy and the organization of technology by linking these concepts to those of practical and prestige technologies. As described broadly by Hayden (1998), practical technologies are those that are primarily organized around principles of sufficiency and effectiveness, while the logic of prestige technologies is fundamentally different because it is oriented towards social strategies where greater labor investment in products serves to communicate the wealth, success, and power of the parties involved. A third category, termed cultural goods, will also be used to examine the relationship between material culture and exchange. The concepts of practical, cultural, and prestige goods will be used to link long term changes in the organization of technology and production with consumption patterns and socio-political evolution.

This framework is relevant to this discussion of anthropological approaches to exchange because it places the contrasting behavior that Appadurai terms "common" and "luxury" goods into an empirical and evolutionary framework capable of addressing change over long time periods. Thus while the earlier discussion of "luxury goods" that transcend social and political boundaries referred to particular contexts of circulation, these are specific manifestations of goods Hayden would include in the broad category of prestige technology, as these objects are labor intensive to produce or acquire.

The concepts of practical and prestige technologies parallel in some ways the economic distinction made by Earle (1987;1994) between subsistence and political economies. The household level subsistence economy is based on satisficing logic, while the political economy involves the mobilization of surpluses and competition between political actors, and is subject to the maximizing strategies of elites. The organization of technology is sometimes approached in terms of three groups as Binford (1962) has done with "technomic", "sociotechnic", and "ideotechnic" categories. For Binford, technomic objects correspond to "practical technology", and the sociotechnic and ideotechnic groups would largely, but not exclusively, overlap with "prestige technologies". Hayden (1998: 15) observes that labor inputs are low but sociotechnic significance is high in Australian Aboriginal string headbands that signal adult status, and labor is low but ideotechnic significance is high in a pair of crossed sticks tied together to represent a crucifix. Hayden points out that despite these exceptions, items of ritual and social significance are often made with relatively costly materials (such as gold crucifixes) but he admits that many items fall between his categories such as decorated antler digging-stick handles, and "the analysis of such objects becomes especially complex where the prestige materials such as metals or jade are actually more effective, but far more costly, than more commonly used materials" (Hayden 1998: 44-45). Obsidian presents a similar dilemma where, on the one hand it is rare in many regions, and it is unusual-looking, and yet it is also more effective for many kinds of cutting functions and so the inducement to use the material is not straight-forward. As an object can move between categories it should be said that ultimately the significance of an item is not an inherent property of the object, but rather it is created by contexts of use or consumption and should best be considered in terms of labor, exchangeability or life-history (Appadurai 1986;Graeber 2001).

Category	Distribution	Examples
Subsistence Goods	Practical technology. As a response to stresses item must be effective. Widely available, minimizing costs due to satisficing logic, distributed shorter distances.	Simple tools: axes, saws. Simple baskets and pottery. Bulky, low value foods (i.e., cereals, tubers). Common metals (later Old World prehistory).
Cultural Goods	Widely available goods, but with information content and social and ideological significance. Aesthetic but non-labor intensive and non-exclusive designs.	Some projectile technology. Textiles, shell, herbs and medicines such as coca leaf. Items for commonplace rituals.
Prestige Goods	High labor inputs, investment logic due to political potential of consuming labor, sometimes wide distribution in circumscribed contexts. Competition may mean that these are consumed or destroyed.	Rare metals; serving vessels: ceramics, baskets; jewelry; tailored clothing. Musical instruments, high value foods, rare or costly herbs and medicines.

Table 2-1. Three categories of exchange goods, the boundaries on these categories are contingent on contexts of production, circulation, and consumption. Many items like meat, maize, and obsidian tools can belong in any one of these groups depending on form and availability.

According to Hayden (1998: 44) any material that is transported more than two days should probably be considered a prestige technology due to labor investment, however he mentions that perhaps a useful intermediate category of "cultural goods" could be defined consisting of non-prestige ritual or social artifacts. In his analysis of long distance caravans in the Andes, Nielsen (2000: 66-67) borrows concepts from Hayden's practical and prestige technologies with some modification for a discussion of exchange goods. Nielsen defines "subsistence goods" and "prestige goods", but he also defines a third category as "cultural goods" to include maize used for subsistence but also for ritual, as well as coca and textiles. These goods are often non-exclusive, but their form and consumption carries significance and the circulation of such items does not conform to the satisficing logic of practical technologies and subsistence goods.

Ordinary goods and archaeological theory

The fact that many artifacts cannot easily be classified into one of the above groups in a particular time or cultural context shows the difficulties inherent in developing a generalized framework for addressing production and exchange through prehistory. Obsidian is a prime example of a material that has practical value, but it is visually distinct and it is also a material with cultural significance and prestige associations in some contexts. Thus, while the focus in exchange studies has been on prestige goods linked to status competition, because these activities have evolutionary consequences, subsistence goods may also contain social or cultural information. The association of items luxury or commonplace categories is a function of geography, technology, and socially defined valuation.

Exchange as a prime mover?

Regional exchange is of particular utility to anthropological archaeology because it is a material phenomenon that occurs at the intersection of social relationships, resource procurement, and individual or community differentiation. However, exchange has been attributed with great causal significance in the past and, while it provides evidence of particular utility to anthropologists and archaeologists, it is important to not ascribe excessive significance to exchange in human affairs. For example, to V. Gordon Childe (1936) long distance trade was a prime mover that had direct social evolutionary consequences. Engaging in trade had derived benefits that can affect the balance of power between competing polities and stimulate larger forms of organization.

In the 1970s, Rathje (1971;1972) proposed that it was the lowland Maya need for "essentials" like obsidian, salt, and grinding stones that propelled them to seek external sources for these scarce goods, initiating long-distance relationships. Those who control access to scarce materials accrued benefits from their position in the trade network, he argued, and hierarchies emerged from the differential access to these required, or desired, trade goods. Virtually all of Rathje's postulates have since been disproved, but some variant of the theme first articulated in Rathje's exchange model underlies many contemporary investigations of ancient trade (Clark 2003: 33-34).

In the multilinear evolutionary framework of Johnson and Earle (1987), trade is part of an array of processes that are relevant to socio-political development, but trade does not become a dominant process until the formation of the Nation-State.

Economic Processes in Political Evolution
Local Group	Regional Chiefdom	Early State	Nation-state
WARFARE	warfare	warfare	warfare
risk management	RISK MANAGEMENT	(risk management)	(risk management)
technology	technology	TECHNOLOGY	(technology)
trade	trade	trade	TRADE

Table 2-2. Economic processes in political evolution (Johnson and Earle 1987: 304) where capitalized words indicates a dominance of that process, parenthesis indicate important secondary processes.

The approach taken here is that all human groups engage in exchange in some form and it therefore serves as a consistent index of regional relationships through time. Furthermore some trade items, such as obsidian, appear to have been part of a suite of features that, at particular times and socio-political contexts, serve to differentiate individuals or groups from the rest of their community for purposes relating to political strategy. While exchange is not a prime mover for socio-political change, transfer between peoples and groups in different forms provides a vehicle for social differentiation and a materialization of geographical relationships that are closely linked to socio-political organization. Thus, while one may see exchange occurring over the long term, it is not a prime-mover but it is changes in evidence of production, transfer, and consumption of non-local goods that inform theoretical models of prehistoric change.

Exchange concepts reflect the current theory

Forty years ago, advances in technical analysis in archaeology, in particular geochemical sourcing, initiated several decades of research into exchange by archaeologists. Following the dominant theoretical approaches of the time, adaptationalist or managerial models held that socio-political change was stimulated by factors that impacted the entire cultural system. Such changes could be stimulated by a combination of factors, including external pressures and internal pressures. External pressures include resource stress, drought, and warfare. Internal pressures include greater efficiency in organization despite larger population levels, irrigation, and organizational complexity due to circumscription.

More recent theoretical approaches focus on social and political strategies prioritize the active role of individuals in the process of political change. The role of commodity exchange in the onset and dynamics of socio-political complexity connects the exchange behavior documented by anthropologists with the long term changes that underlie the archaeological evidence of exchange in prehistory. Leveling mechanisms among hunter-gatherers promote intergroup sharing and are especially prominent when resource predictability is low. With greater resource predictability, and especially when resources are intensifiable, these leveling mechanisms often begin to break down and social differentiation is observed.

Exchange is thought to have been one of a number of interacting behaviors by "aggrandizing" individuals that had the indirect result of institutionalizing social inequality (Clark and Blake 1994;Flannery 1972;Hayden 1995;Hayden 1998;Upham 1990). What were the socio-political contexts that permitted individuals to differentiate themselves, and how did individuals pursuing their interests result in the long-term changes observed archaeologically?

Early leaders

While early social hierarchy emerged from the so-called egalitarian contexts of small-scale societies, Wiessner (2002: 233) observes that "hierarchy characterizes the societies of our closest non-human primate ancestors and seems to be deeply rooted in human behavior" and social hierarchy can therefore be considered a "reemergence" of hierarchy. Egalitarianism is not the "tabula rasa for human affairs on which aggrandizers impress their designs" (Wiessner 2002: 234); rather, it is the result of coalitions and complex institutions of weaker individuals in society that curbs the ambitions of the strong and results in egalitarian structures that were as complex and varied as hierarchical power structures. Wiessner argues that cooperative behavior, such as elaborate exchange relationships, in egalitarian institutions fostered ideologies of coalition building and cooperation in kinship-based networks that extended far beyond local groups. While the egalitarian ethos constrained the competitive activities of aggrandizers, these institutions also provided powerful tools to the cooperative structure that could be used to the advantage of aggrandizers. Exchange has particular significance in agency models that strive to explain how the activities of aggrandizers can result in institutionalized inequalities because exchange can contribute to an understanding of the relationship between structure and agency at this juncture.

Aggrandizers had to work within powerful institutional boundaries that already existed in egalitarian societies in order to forward their interests. The changing nature of exchange, embedded within shifting institutional contexts, complements the emphasis on alienable commodities (Appadurai 1986, see Section 2.2.2). Aggrandizing individuals operate within institutional contexts, indeed their vehicle to promotion is social recognition, yet the ability to organize resources to obtain lower costs for particular items benefits aggrandizers and their supporters. Exchange is a universal feature of human societies, and studies that document the diversity of forms that exchange takes in contexts of early social ranking can shed light on the specific strategies used by aggrandizers that resulted in institutionalized inequality (Clark and Blake 1994).

Prehistoric institutions

Beginning with settlement pattern studies explored by Julian Steward, processual archaeologists often assume regional perspectives that emphasized social and organizational processes (Willey and Sabloff 1974). Building on Polanyi's observation that fundamental aspects of human institutions are economic, archaeologists understood that documenting the regional distributions of artifacts resulting from prehistoric mobility or exchange could contribute to reconstructing past societies. Archaeologists can use direct evidence from the production and consumption of archaeological materials and inference about the likelihood and form of prehistoric exchange to point to the institutional contexts of the ancient economy.

In Polanyi's (1957) seminal article outlining the substantive approach, "The economy as an instituted process," the economy is characterized in terms of two linked properties. First, there is the material process by which items are produced, circulated, and consumed; second, there is the economic form organized around socio-political relationships that arranges interactions diachronically and spatially. In this context, institutions serve as rules and obligations connecting human organizations around the process of producing and circulating goods. The implication is that an archaeological study of variation in prehistoric economies requires that archaeologists can document differences in the institutions that structured past economies.

Many contemporary theoretical approaches downplay the importance of structural analyses in favor of agent-based models, however anthropologists using New Institutional Economics (North 1990) are emphasizing the interdependence of institutions and economics and the implications for activities of individuals (Acheson 2002;Ensminger 2002). Douglass North (1990: 3) defines institutions as "the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction". This view considers how institutions developed from the decisions of individuals over long periods of time, affecting transaction costs through the benefits of coordinated activity. "Based on the advantages of lower transaction costs in commodity flows, [these anthropologists] argue that political and social institutions developed to regulate commodity flows, maintain regional peace, and guarantee contracts" (Earle 2002: 82). In this perspective, institutional complexity developed as rules to govern the economizing nature of individuals, and the emergence of such institutions should be correlated with increasing quantities of commodity exchange in prehistory. The perspective that argues that volume of exchange should correlate with increased social complexity has roots in theories of progressive evolution (Childe 1936), adaptionalist views (Steward 1955), and the managerial role of chiefs (Service 1962).

However, a positive correlation between evolving institutional complexity and a uniform increase in volume or variety of exchange in prehistory is not supported empirically (Brumfiel 1980;Hughes 1994;Kirch 1991). That is, contrary to the evolutionary expectations of some theorists, the volume or variety of goods transferred does not necessarily reflect the political or institutional complexity in a given society. Perhaps some of this inconsistency is the result of elite control of the circulation of commodities as proposed by Appadurai (1986: 38). Earle (1994: 420-421) observes that on the whole, the archaeological evidence is characterized by a great deal of variability in the types of goods exchanged, the volume of exchange, and the social contexts of exchange. In order to address this variability in an evolutionary framework, Earle suggests that exchange should be considered in terms of two categories, the subsistence economy and the political economy[1](Johnson and Earle 2000), with exchange taking different forms in each category of the economy. The exchange in these two forms of economy correspond largely to the distinction discussed earlier between ordinary goods and prestige goods where, according to Earle, political strategy is advanced by elites by, among other things, the manipulation of exchange relationships.

In a non-evolutionist application of New Institutional Economics in anthropology, Wiessner (2002: 235) differs from North in arguing that transaction costs for exchange are actually high in small-scale societies due to the close relationship between social and economic transactions; there is less neutral space for "unembedded" economic behavior with their associated overhead costs. In such contexts egalitarian institutions developed to foster trust and make interactions more predictable.

In non-market economies in which kin-based exchange systems play an important role in reducing risk (Wiessner 1982;Wiessner 1996) the goal of exchange is to be covered in times of need. In this context, the social and the economic are closely intertwined (Mauss 1925) and it is undesirable for returns to be stipulated as to time, quantity, or quality (Sahlins 1972). The most valuable information in such exchanges is the details of the partner - what he or she has to offer and will offer over the long run (Wiessner 2002: 235).

Elaborate institutions regulating behavior are not new, argues Wiessner, but if there is a weakening in the egalitarian prohibition against the accumulation of wealth or power the "alchemy of ambition" (Wiessner 2002: 234) drives a few individuals to seek preferential access to resources. In contexts of regional packing and circumscription it is argued that hierarchies emerge (Brown 1985;Johnson 1982) that are perhaps founded on the control of labor and surpluses, and instituted through ritual (Aldenderfer 1993;Hayden 1995)

Materialist perspectives hold that economic gains are used to bring about changes in the social order, and that these changes are then legitimized and perpetuated through ideology. These economic gains are generally achieved through intensification of production and through finance organized by ambitious individuals (Boone 1992;Earle 1997;Hayden 1995). Clark and Blake (1994: 17), building on practice theory (Bourdieu 1977;Giddens 1979), describe a model whereby institutionalized inequality is the unintended outcome of political actors competing for prestige by using strategies that match the self-interests of their supporters. Ultimately, these strategies may develop into redistributive institutions that appear to build on the social-leveling mechanisms described by Wiessner (1996), but operate on a larger scale and result in political advantage for redistributing leaders and their allies. In other words, it is institutions themselves that form the basis for leveling mechanisms, and it is institutions that are transformed into vehicles that serve to, in part, legitimize social inequalities.

An important temporal component to exchange is connected to institutions as well because transactions involve anticipation and scheduling. As Colin Danby (2002) argues, most transactions in neoclassical economic analyses in anthropology are considered as synchronic "spot transactions" of commodities, while long term interpersonal relationships enter the domain of gifts in a gifts: commodities dichotomy. The temporality of reciprocation is a means by which economic transactions are embedded inside of social calendars, but various socially-mediated methods of extending credit are well-established and probably an ancient manner of precipitating exchange in market-based transfers as well.

Pastoralism, caravans, and social inequalities

The domestication of cargo-bearing animals contributed several important elements that transformed the nature of regional exchange relationships. First, there are some cross-cultural commonalities in the structure of contemporary societies practicing pastoralism, and it is probable that these factors had some role in prehistoric pastoral societies as well. Second, cargo-bearing animals transform the costs of transport and, consequently, the nature of long-distance interaction. Finally, the structure of wealth in animal herds conveys particular scalar advantages to powerful kin-groups that possess large herds. These factors condition long-term transformations such as sedentism, the nature of food production, and the institutionalization of social inequalities. These issues will be explored in three sections: household level articulation with agriculturalists, wealth accumulation among herders that is limited by risk and pasture, and caravans and the organization of pastoral labor.

Polanyi and the economics of exchange

The principal forms of economic organization outlined by Karl Polanyi (1957) - reciprocity, redistribution, and market forces - have been widely used in anthropological discussions of exchange. Paul Bohannan describes the relevance of these economic modes to exchange:

Reciprocity involves exchange of goods between people who are bound in non-market, non-hierarchical relationships to one another. The exchange does not create the relationship, but rather is part of the behavior that gives it context.

Redistribution is defined by Polanyi as a systematic movement of goods towards an administrative center and their reallotment by the authorities at the center.

Market Exchange is the exchange of goods at prices determined by the law of supply and demand. Its essence is free and casual contract (Bohannan 1965: 232).

In principle, the price-fixing aspect of market based exchange has an integrative effect and entails communication between segments of the exchange sphere. For the trader, market exchange involves risk and potential profit. For the producer, the consumption patterns and fluctuations in demand should be sensed all the way back in the contexts of production. Market articulation in land-locked regions of Asia and North Africa provided the initial contexts for large-scale caravans in the Old World. With caravans perennially under threat of robbery or obligation to pay duties for crossing sovereign land, the "nomadic empires of the Turk, Mongol, Arabic, and Berber peoples were spread out like nets alongside transcontinental caravan routes" (Polanyi 1975: 146-149). In contrast to market mechanisms, Polanyi also described exchange modes of institutional or administered trade, where material needs were satisfied through the movement of goods but the practice was not motivated by "profit" for merchants in the market sense of the term but rather to meet institutional goals (Salomon 1985: 516;Stanish 1992: 14;Valensi 1981: 5-6). In this type of trade, value and equivalencies are established by political authority or by precedent.

Characteristics of a market economy

Markets are of particular interest in this discussion because while market principles, to a certain extent, underlie all formal economic approaches in anthropology, market-based economies are far from universal in the premodern world, even among state-level societies. A basic definition of a market is "the situation or context in which a supply crowd (sellers) and a demand crowd (buyers) meet to exchange goods and services" and where the market principle is operating (Dalton 1961: 1-2). Three characteristics used by Earle to evaluate the evidence for market-based exchange in the Inka state include: (1) The importance of specialized institutions of production and exchange divorced in their operations from other institutional relationships; (2) The development of a medium of exchange to facilitate the systematization of exchange values; (3) The percentage of goods utilized by a household that are obtained by exchange (Earle 1985: 372-373).

The presence of exchange institutions, either as bustling marketplaces or distributed as "site-free" exchange houses, have a characteristic described by Earle (1985: 373) as a context where "non-exchange relationships, such as kinship and political ties, will not unduly constrain choice". The alienability of products, the strong influence of price motive and the detachment from production and other social linkages, underlie many of the features of these proposed institutions. The consensus among Andeanists is that during Inka domination, and probably during the preceding periods, market-based economies were not found in the central and southern Andes with a few exceptions (Earle 2001;LaLone 1982; but see href="/biblio/ref_2005">Salomon 1986;Stanish 2003).

The location of transfer becomes important with respect to price-fixing markets. In aggregations the public nature of the contact and the circulation of information is quite different from isolated exchanges. These issues are linked to the spatial and temporal configuration of exchange in market economies because just as periodic gatherings, central places, and rank-size geographic relationships serve to distribute goods in some settlement systems, these aggregations serve to distribution information about availability of products and changing prices to buyers and sellers (Smith 1976;Smith 1976). When exchange takes place in a private courtyard rather than a public marketplace then there is reduced risk of the neighbor overhearing the barter exchange value offered to another (Blanton 1998;Humphrey and Hugh-Jones 1992). Greater public visibility and monitoring in market contexts might be expected, and greater privacy, interpersonal negotiation, and temporal depth to exchange relationships in private barter exchange configurations.

Variations on Modes of Exchange

Some scholars have built on Polanyi's four original modes of exchange, others have developed entirely new schema (Smith 1976). Earle (1977: 213-216) argues that Polanyi's (1957: 250) definition of redistribution as "appropriational movements towards a center and out of it again..." is vague and Earle observes that this definition is so broad that it could to apply to economic systems ranging from central storage of goods in Babylonia to meat distribution in band-level hunters. Earle advocates separating leveling mechanisms from institutional mechanisms, where institutionalized redistribution involves wealth accumulation and political transmission between elites across broad regions in the mode of peer-polity interaction (Earle 1997).

Exchange network structures

Based on geographer Peter Haggett's (1966) work, network configurations can be used to describe the characteristics of interaction that resulted in the distribution and circulation of goods. In describing Andean caravan transport, Nielsen (2000: 73-74, 91) uses the following terms: (1) distance that goods are transported; (2) segmentary vs. continuous - in segmentary networks a given node is connected to a small number of other nodes, while continuous networks each node is connected to all other nodes; (3) convergent (focalized) vs. divergent (non-focalized) - in convergent networks the individuals participating in exchange, and the goods they transport, tend to concentrate in a small number of central places or exchange locales.

Reciprocal exchange relationships that take the form of down-the-line trade may be described as continuous networks when these mechanisms serve to move goods between ethnic groups and across regions. Centralized political control by elites and true market mechanisms might result in network convergence at central places (Smith 1976). To Nielsen's third set of terms, convergent (focalized), divergent (non-focalized), one may add diffusive to describe the pattern of a single type of item radiating from the center to the surrounding region as occurs with obsidian.

Figure 2-3. Network configurations.

These network configurations serve to draw attention to the limitations of using raw material distributions as a proxy for all exchange behaviors. Obsidian exchange is sometimes used by archaeologists as gauge of the volume, frequency, and structure of prehistoric exchange relationships. As noted by Clark (2003), raw materials from geological sources diffuse continuously from a single point to the region, presumably following trade routes, until the materials are found deposited at archaeological consumption sites. In contrast, much exchange between complementary groups, such as between agriculturalists and pastoralists, is non-focalized and often segmentary, as it links producers and consumers through a variety of localized articulation methods. The structural differences between diffusive exchange networks and regular, household-level interaction are well demonstrated in mountain regions with distinct ecological zonation, such as the Andes.

Archaeological inferences that do not differentiate the expectations of one network configuration from another are problematic. Often, diffusive configurations will have evidence of the transport of goods in the opposite direction, as one might expect in system where obsidian is acquired through reciprocity-based relationships. However, the pattern where goods are reciprocated to the source area is a configuration model to be tested rather than one that can be assumed.

Exchange across boundaries

Anthropological accounts relate that acquiring resources through trade with neighbors is sometimes a dangerous undertaking that is maybe not far removed from raiding and warfare. "There is a link, a continuity, between hostile relations and the provision of reciprocal prestations. Exchanges are peacefully resolved wars, and wars are the result of unsuccessful transactions" (Lévi-Strauss 1969: 67). Further, Sahlins (1972) observes that reciprocity in trade between unrelated exchange partners in contexts without overarching political control can be a very delicate affair because sometimes it is only the perception of fairness in the exchange that maintains peace.

When people meet who owe each other nothing yet presume to gain from each other something, peace of trade is the great uncertainty. In the absence of external guarantees, as of a Sovereign Power, peace must be otherwise secured: by extension of sociable relations to foreigners - thus, the trade-friendship or trade-kinship - and, most significantly, by the terms of the exchange itself (Sahlins 1972: 302, emphasis in the original).

Yet exchange and markets across boundary areas are common features in world history. Such exchange could consist of "border mechanisms" with trade-partnerships or fictive-kin ties that permit "interactions across tribal boundaries under conditions of peace and personal security" (Harding 1967: 165). Zones between social groups are particularly likely to have active trade and markets if there is some cultural or ecological variation between the groups, such that the products circulating in each zone complement one another (Hodder and Orton 1976: 76). The No-man's-land described as the "Intertribal sector" by Sahlins (1965;1972: 196-204) is a good locale for such exchange because complementary products are available for exchange, and because the morality of exchange in neutral geographical territories permits balanced or negative reciprocity between traders. In perception of value, as well as geography, these border zones can be conceived as overlapping social "spheres of interaction" as described by Barth, where "entrepreneurs will direct their activity preeminently towards those points in an economic system where the discrepancies of evaluation are greatest, and will attempt to construct bridging transactions which can exploit those discrepancies" (Barth 1967: 171). These discussions of the details and great the variability in entrepreneurial strategy anticipate the challenges of an agent-based approach to ancient trade (Adams 1974: 243;Hodder 1982).

Exchange and social distance

The question of the isolation of producers and traders from consumers also connects theories about exchange with the issue of the physical form of the exchange goods. Archaeologists investigating the role of stone artifacts in prehistoric economies observe that lithic manufacture is a subtractive technology as stone artifacts always get smaller with use and maintenance. The degree of reduction of stone material at a lithic source determines the kinds of forms that subsequent artifacts will take.

Jonathon Ericson (1984) applies Sahlins' concept of a continuum of social distance in exchange relationships, discussed above, to the directional, reductive nature of lithic production systems. He explores the idea that the degree of lithic reduction that may occur could be reduced when social distance increases because the producer would have less information about the consumer and the end forms that material will take (Ericson 1984: 6). For example, if the procurer does not know if the nodule will be formed into bifacial lancoleate knife or a triangular projectile point by the consumer, it would be better to leave the nodule in a larger form.

Exchange partners can be slow to respond to changes in the needs of consumers in a given exchange system (Ericson 1984: 6;Harding 1967;Rappaport 1967;Spence 1982), and the effects of social distance can impact production, exchange, or consumption patterns. The implications of social distance for lithic reduction are that, as a subtractive process, reduction circumscribes the potential artifact forms that a nodule of raw material may take in the future. Countering this tendency, people can reduce risk in tool production by producing blanks closer to the source of a raw material where the value of a material is lessened and the costliness of knapping error or breakage, and inconsistent or poor-quality material, is reduced. Stylistically, producers may wish to impart a local motif to the material; alternately, in order to maximize distributive potential, a good may be left in a minimally reduced form.

The exotic and value creation

Non-local exchange goods are prominent in anthropological models of socio-political change because exchange goods can accrue value directly as a function of scarcity, labor input, or through social and symbolic reference. As discussed above under the subject of practical goods and prestige goods, a given object may move between practical and prestige categories in different places, times, and social contexts. The availability of an item in a given milieu communicates not only the relative scarcity but, for alienable goods, the exchange value of that item; such items may also contain allusions to distant regions, social groups, and esoteric knowledge.

Theoretical models assert that in order for sacredness or exotic power to be conferred through possession of non-local goods, those goods cannot be widely available or mutable in economic circles accessible to just anyone (Clark and Blake 1994;Goldstein 2000). The possession and circulation of these goods have also been considered as part of a network strategy, distinct from a corporate strategy, towards acquiring influence and leadership (Blanton, et al. 1996). These goods may have served as indicators of long-distance association for trade and alliance, and also have served as a means of differentiation during this time of incipient political competition. In another approach, one that focuses on differential reproductive success, Craig and Aldenderfer (in press) use costly-signaling theory in a formal, biological adaptationist framework to model the development of social inequalities through the differential use of obsidian in southern Peru at the Archaic and Formative transition. Exotic materials have been used to demarcate commonplace from supernatural referents, or are at least part of a constellation of behavior and objects that signal status difference.

A pattern noted frequently by archaeologists is that close to the source of a raw material there is no distinction associated with the commodity as the item is abundant, whereas farther from the source, where access is intermittent, the possession of such commodities may acquire greater symbolic importance (Knapp 1990: 161;Renfrew 1986). It follows that if one moves from a place where a product is scarce and found in ritual contexts, towards the source of that product such that it becomes less scarce, one may observe a reduction in ritual or exclusive association for that group of goods. This theme will be considered with obsidian use in the Lake Titicaca region.

Furthermore, what of those who transport exotic goods? Mary Helms argues that "we should consider long-distance travelers or contact agents as political-religious specialists, and include them in the company of shamans, priests, and priestly chiefs and kings as political-ideological experts or 'heroes' who contact cosmically distant realms and obtain politically and ideologically useful materials therefrom" (1992: 159). These agents are in a position to benefit, in an entrepreneurial way from the value difference, between the source and the consumption zone, but in many cultural contexts their participation and social roles appear to be circumscribed. The association of non-local goods with status or prestige, long-distance alliance or esoteric knowledge is contingent on a variety of factors upon which it is difficult to generalize, but one can examine these archaeologically through artifact form and context.

California multiethnic access

One possible arrangement is multiethnic procurement at a geological source. Ericson (1982: 136) describes a situation in California's Napa Valley where the Saint Helena obsidian source fell within the territory of the Wappo ethnic group and the Wappo were, in turn, surrounded by the Lake Miwok, Coast Miwok, Wintun and Pomo groups (Kroeber 1925). It is reported that in exchange for obsidian, the Wappo received items such as bows, beads, shells, mats, fish, headbands, and clams (Davis 1961), but it is not known if extraction was conducted by the local Wappo or through direct access by the surrounding groups themselves. Ericson (1984: 7) reviews evidence of multiethnic access to lithic sources. In California there are a number of distinctive obsidian sources that have been studied. At some areas the quarry management was "tribal but related and nearby groups had the right to quarry either freely or on the payment of small gifts. Wars resulted from attempts by some distant tribes to use a quarry without payment. On the other hand, the Clear Lake obsidian quarries were neutral ground" (Bryan 1950: 34).

The Wintun of California practiced round-trip fasting when traveling to obsidian sources (Dubois 1935). A functional interpretation of this behavior from Ericson (1984: 7) is that fasting would avert exhaustion of resources around much-visited obsidian sources. A regionally important quarry could conceivably get so much use, with many groups exploiting the source, that the ecology of the source area catchment would get depleted.

Geochemical studies of obsidian artifacts in California have revealed a concordance between obsidian distributions, as shown by chemical studies, and the geographical boundaries of ethnographically documented cultural groups (Bettinger 1982;Hughes and Bettinger 1984;Luhnow 1997). Dillian (2002: 294-297) found that despite ethnographic accounts of Karok direct procurement at the Glass Mountain source in Modoc territory, the knapping evidence at the source suggests that local Modoc were conducting virtually all of the reduction on site and then exchanging with neighboring tribes where it was widely circulated.

Other Source Areas

The well-known red pipestone quarry in Minnesota "was held and owned in common, and as a neutral group" (Holmes 1919: 262). In the Western Desert of Australia, Gould et al. (1971) report that chert and chalcedony sources themselves are not held through a concept of quarry ownership. All material of usably good knapping quality is equally valued, and knapping is not a skill that is assigned great importance. However, an important totemic affiliation exists between a person and stone from the region in which they were born. Cherts from a person's ancestral region are sometimes visually distinct and therefore materials of a particular region will be sought and transported over long distances as a physical link to those regions.

These preferences appear to be a reflection of the close totemic ties each man has to the particular region in which he was born and from which he claims totemic descent. Thus, a man may have a sense of kinship with some of these localities, and he will value the stone material from them as a part of his own being. Stone materials thus acquired are not sacred in any strict sense but are nevertheless valued highly enough to be transported over long distances by owners (Gould, et al. 1971: 161-162).

Ideological and emotive links to raw material are a consideration in human activities around source areas. Social and symbolic restrictions on quarries have also been documented ethnographically in New Guinea (Burton 1984;McBryde 1984). In terms of exchange behaviors, quarry areas present special problems and opportunities for archaeologists. One of the principal difficulties with examining ethnicity and access to quarries is correlating archaeological evidence with social and symbolic behavior associated with quarries. Some theoretical models are contingent on measuring evidence of maximization and control of production at quarry areas, and these models are often contingent on the detection of boundaries and restricted access based on material evidence (Torrence 1986). Unfortunately, as demonstrated by some of the studies above, many social and symbolic limitations on quarry access leave no direct material correlates and can be extremely difficult to detect archaeologically.

Exchange value

Exchange from the perspective of commodity 'exchangeability' and demand by consumers is a cross-culturally comparable (and often archaeologically detectable) means of assessing value, but this approach depends on the goods actually circulating. Others have observed that some inalienable objects (heirlooms) are valued precisely because they do not circulate, and the ability of an object to "accumulate history" is another means of establishing value albeit a measure that is difficult to establish archaeologically.

Social distance

The continuum of social distance is useful in that it captures the role of different behavior and institutions in exchange as one moves away from the household, and it may parallel formal models of kin selection. Further, the concepts of production and social distance for a commodity like obsidian can be empirically linked to expectations about the degree of lithic reduction as one moves from production to consumption contexts. The use of the social distance concept to position a diachronic, "primitive" household (substantive) exchange against a synchronic, "modern" and commercialized (formal) realm is a problematic and false dichotomy. Virtually all exchange contexts contain elements of both social contracts and economical behavior. Social distance, territoriality, and access to products can be manifested in a variety of ways that range from the organization of technology, socially circumscribed access, and symbolic restrictions; a situation that poses difficulties for archaeologists attempting to establish the relative accessibility of a particular product prehistorically.

Social and political consequences of exchange

Exchange is a mechanism that brings goods and people together between ecological zones and across social boundaries, and exchange creates strategic opportunities for individuals and institutions. Exchange is sometimes used to reinforce status differences because the possession of exotic goods, and the necessary surplus to acquire non-local products, differentially favors those with established regional ties. However exchange across boundaries, along with warfare and ritual, can be dangerous and may be the domain of strategic and opportunistic individuals as traffic in the exotic, and contact with foreign elements, is liable to challenge the social order. Conversely, one of the often-noted social consequences of regular exchange is more mundane: exchange serves to reinforce long distance social ties over time, to buffer risk, and to express cohesiveness through common access to distinct resources.

In recent decades, exchange studies in archaeology have acquired new technical rigor with advances in chemical proveniencing. While the cultural, institutional, and theoretical ramifications of exchange remain complex and nuanced, the demonstrable fact of chemical characterization offers refreshing certainty to the otherwise conditional and qualified study of ancient exchange.

Measures of abundance

Investigators have compared changes in the abundance of non-local material with domestic goods that are assumed to represent population. The ratio of the weight of obsidian to volume of excavated dirt (as shown in Figure 2-5) or as a ratio of weight of ceramics (as a proxy measure for population) has been used in a number of studies in Mesoamerica (Sidrys 1976;Zeitlin and Heimbuch 1978: 189). In studies of Near Eastern obsidian exchange Renfrew (1969;1977) develops indices for the presence of obsidian based on counts and weights per phase and per excavated cubic meter, and he also uses the count of obsidian artifacts as a percent of the total lithic assemblage count. Renfrew qualifies his conclusions due to a lack of consistency in the data, but he estimates that the total quantity of to arrive at the site was relatively small and he observes a decrease in obsidian at Deh Luran sites. Working at the Olmec site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, Cobean et al. (1971) develop an index that compared the number of obsidian flakes, blades, and total debitage with grinding stones and slabs for each phase at the site, with the abundance of grinding equipment serving as an estimate of number of households. The authors interpret the increasing index of obsidian to grinding slabs as evidence of a gradual rise in "prosperity" for individuals at the site, though they only briefly explore the implications for changing exchange relationships (Cobean, et al. 1991).

In Torrence's examination of the aforementioned studies she concludes that "the major difficulty with studies of consumption based on measures of resource abundance is that they lack the necessary linking arguments between patterns of consumption and type of exchange" (1986: 28-30). She states that what is needed for site-level studies of abundance and exchange is "a series of arguments describing how resource use will respond to specific types of exchange" akin to the explicit connections that Renfrew developed on the regional scale between distance decay and forms of exchange.

Site level composition from multiple sources

When raw material is available to consumers from several competing sources, investigators have used the relative quantity of materials from the different sources at individual sites to gain insights into ancient exchange. Broad exchange relationships are frequently inferred from the presence of obsidian from a distant source. When material from several rival obsidian sources are represented, either strongly or weakly, in different phases at a site, the cause of the changes in representation is often attributed to shifts in the geography of regional political or economic relationships. Geographical explanations are invoked when there is a clear deviation from the LMD, and yet evidence of significant in-situ political change is not found in investigations among studies in Mesoamerica (Zeitlin 1978: 202;Zeitlin 1982) and the Near East (Renfrew 1977: 308-309).

Changes in the mechanisms of exchange, rather than simply geography, are attributed to changes in the source composition from different sources when socio-political changes are perceived by investigators. Studies have inferred redistribution occurring when sites that act as central places (Christaller 1966 [1933]) at the top of the settlement hierarchy have disproportionate quantities of non-local materials irrespective of their distance from the source. This phenomenon has been discussed for Tikal (Moholy-Nagy 1976: 101-103;Sidrys 1977).

When sourcing studies are conducted at the scale of the household unit, though it is often labor intensive and costly to conduct proveniencing studies to an extent that are statistically meaningful, it is possible to discern convergence patterns that can be connected to exchange mechanisms (Pires-Ferreira and Flannery 1976;Santley 1984;Torrence 1986: 35). The most common application of evidence of variability between households in source composition is to infer redistribution from the presence of low inter-household variability in source composition.

In a reciprocal economy where individual households negotiate for their own obsidian, we would expect a good deal of variation between households, both in the sources used and the proportions of obsidian from various sources. Conversely, in an economy where the flow of obsidian is controlled by an elite or by important community leaders, who pool incoming obsidian for later distribution to their relatives, affines, or fellow villagers, we would expect less variation and more uniformity from one household to another (Winter and Pires-Ferreira 1976: 306).

The concept is been depicted in a graphic from.

Table 2-4. Household composition of raw materials should vary with different types of exchange. On the left, individual households acquire source materials more directly, on the right pooling and redistribution results in greater inter-household consistency in raw material composition (Winter and Pires-Ferreira 1976: 311).

This approach was influential in Mesoamerica (Clark and Lee 1984;Santley 1984;Spence 1981;Spence 1982;Spence 1984 ) where the technology of transport did not change significantly except for perceived changes in the form of boat technology. Transport changes could significantly impact the inter-household diversity of source composition in places, such as the Near East, where caravan exchange networks followed from the domestication of pack animals (Wright 1969). The impacts of caravan exchange on artifact variability has long been discussed in the Andes (Dillehay and Nuñez 1988;Nuñez and Dillehay 1995 [1979]), although household-level sourcing data has not been available to date.

Variation in site-level contexts and artifact form

Intrasite variability in lithic distributions, and the morphology of those artifacts, can shed light on exchange patterns. Several projects in Mesoamerica have inferred redistribution as the mechanism of exchange when concentrations of non-local lithic materials at major sites point to debris associated with specialist workshops and other kinds of intrasite use of space. Blade manufacturing debris has been used in this manner at Tikal (Moholy-Nagy 1975;Moholy-Nagy 1976;Moholy-Nagy 1991;Moholy-Nagy 1999), the Basin of Mexico (Sanders, et al. 1979), and Teotihuacan (Spence 1967;Spence 1984).

The proportion of artifact forms of a non-local material in a single site has been used to characterize mechanisms of exchange. This approach has proved useful with obsidian exchange in places where distinctive reduction strategies are associated with finished artifact form, such as blade technology, and these strategies can be recognized in lithic material found in consumption sites. Winter and Pires-Ferreira (1976: 309-310), working at two sites in Oaxaca, argued that blades of high quality, non-local obsidian were introduced to the sites in finished form and that this constituted evidence of elite pooling for prismatic blade reduction followed by redistribution to local sites. The higher quality material was transformed into more valuable artifact forms in workshops located outside of their study area, and then in the Oaxaca sites the presence of these artifacts that were apparently the result of contact with elite spheres of exchange, was interpreted as evidence of redistribution of the finished artifacts. The sourcing and exchange work of Pires-Ferreira has come under some criticism because in her initial proveniencing study she only used two diagnostic chemical elements, and more recent analyses suggest that many of her sourcing attributions are incorrect (Clark 2003: 32). Further, Sheets (1978: 62) argues that the edges of prismatic blades are too fragile to have been transported in completed form (Clark and Lee 1984: 272).

Systematic studies of the intrasite contexts and artifact form of non-local material have the potential to provide insights into exchange and social structure. Intrasite spatial patterns can be investigated in combination with both quantitative data stemming from geographical distances and artifact abundance, and with qualitative data inferred from artifact form and technological aspects of production (Torrence 1986: 36). These kinds of intrasite patterns are susceptible to distortion by dumping patterns and intrasite studies must be sensitive to the problems of conflating material from workshop refuse, household middens and construction fill (Moholy-Nagy 1997).

In a useful review of Mesoamerican obsidian studies Clark (2003: 32-39) summarizes major advances in provenience and trade models, and highlights important avenues for improvement. One important observation made by Clark is that in archaeologists' efforts to design systematic approaches to exchange, early studies failed to distinguish "power as energy and power as legitimacy" (Clark 2003: 38). It could be argued that these forms of power are largely comparable, as the ability to procure, display, and redistribute non-local goods demonstrates power in both energy and in prestige. However, as was emphasized by substantivists in their discussion on the inalienability of certain products, the value of particular status items rests precisely in their incommensurate nature.

Sanders and Santley's (1983) proposal that special goods were returned to Teotihuacan in exchange for obsidian products, and that these were cashed in for corn from the fringes of Teotihuacan's domain in hard times, fails to appreciate that once symbolic goods circulate like economic goods among the hoi polloi such goods lose any legitimizing powers (Clark 2003: 38).

A framework for investigating prehistoric exchange must negotiate between these features of the archaeological record. Material evidence of long-distance exchange is abundant and easily measured, but interpreting the significance and perceived value of these non-local products in the social and political context of their consumption is the measurement of greatest relevance to comprehending the role of exchange over time.

Background and methodological approach

Bradley and Edmonds (1993: 5-17) begin with a useful critique of the formal approaches to exchange first articulated in the work of Renfrew and his colleagues. In reviewing prior approaches, Bradley and Edmonds perceive weaknesses and untenable assumptions in the links asserted by prior researchers connecting (1) efficiency in reduction strategies, organization of production, and degree of hierarchy in social organization (Torrence, Ericson, others), and (2) geographical distributions of types of artifacts with the nature of social organization (Renfrew et al.).

Bradley and Edmonds emerge with a strategy that permits them to connect temporal change in quarrying and the organization of reduction in the immediate vicinity of the source with perceived changes in knapping strategies. They also explicitly attempt to incorporate evidence from social and symbolic constraints on quarries, where historical specifics about specialization, quarry access, and socio-political boundaries appear to trump the larger patterns of circulation documented during the 1970s by Renfrew, Hodder, and others (Bradley and Edmonds 1993: 9, 63). Further, the authors observe that while these social and symbolic control variables are extremely difficult to appraise from archaeological evidence, these unknowns were ultimately some of the most important variables informing Torrence's (1986) formal approach to efficiency and socio-economic control of production. On these grounds, Bradley and Edmonds devote more effort to methodological and theoretical goals that they feel are attainable: documenting variability in production, inferring connections with regional consumption evidence through temporal context, and exploring social and symbolic generalities through ethnographic analogy from quarries and with evidence of regional ground axe distributions in Britain.

Technical analysis

Bradley and Edmonds' (1993: 83-104) lithic analysis begins with experimental knapping studies that allow them to identify the character and frequency of different classes of flaked stone generated during production. Establishing reduction stages from flakes of Great Langdale tuff material is particularly difficult because the material does not contain a visible cortex. Bradley and Edmonds pursue strategies that produce a wide range of flake and core morphologies in an effort to capture the range of possible variation in reduction at production sites. Their expressed aims are to move beyond simple measures of efficiency in production, and they also seek to use their experimentally-derived assemblages to inform their analysis such that that they do not merely derive a single, generalized reduction sequence but, instead, shed light on how knappers controlled form, and anticipated and avoided mistakes.

It was just as important to discover which methods couldhave been used to make an artifact as it was to establish which were actually selected. It is clearly important to understand howthe production process was structured in a given context, but we also need to discover whyit took the form it did (Bradley and Edmonds 1993: 88, emphasis in original).

In earlier work Edmonds (1990) cites from, and applied, the chaîne opératoireapproach to his investigation of quarry production. Curiously, in the Bradley and Edmonds (1993) volume the French term does not appear (although they cite the chaîne opératoireliterature), and in their quarry production studies they instead choose terms like "pathways" to describe sequential reduction.

Part of Bradley and Edmonds' aim is to reintegrate symbolic and social perspectives into the study of quarry production and exchange, empirical archaeologists may ask: how do Bradley and Edmonds conduct symbolic and social analysis with lithic attribute data from a quarry workshop? In their data-oriented investigation of reduction strategies, Bradley and Edmonds gather standard lithic attribute data that is largely in common with those that follow the processualist tradition; it is in the interpretations and assumptions about economy that the differences emerge. For example, many of the assemblages are described by Bradley and Edmonds along a production gradient that range from "wasteful and inefficient" to "careful preparation" or ad-hoc versus structured production using evidence from flake dimensions, platform morphology and preparation, flake termination type, and other attributes.

For Bradley and Edmonds, efficiency is investigated primarily in a heuristic manner in association with spatial context in that they suggest expediency, investment, and reduction strategies over the larger quarry area. Their technical analysis is able to conclude, among other things, that axes appeared to be exported from the quarry area in two forms: (1) crude asymmetrical rough-outs with hinges and deep scars, and (2) more processed and nearly finished artifacts that lacked only polishing.

They also note that some processing appeared to occur at some distance from the quarry, and in other cases nearly all of the production sequence occurs at the quarry. The authors used evidence of excessive labor expenditure, such as in axe grinding and polishing, as a contrast to the "rational", cost-minimizing expectations of efficient production expectations. For example, they explain that polishing of axe heads is laborious, but it results in greater longevity in the axe because during use the irregularities can act as platforms for unintentional flake removal. Furthermore, polished axes remain in their hafts more consistently. Polish over the entire surface, however, is not necessary and is labor intensive. Were axes polished over their entire surface to increase their exchange and gift value through greater labor investment? In evolutionary approaches, labor investment in goods is cited as a form of prestige technology (Hayden 1998, see Section 2.2.2). Bradley and Edmonds present an insightful review of existing approaches and bring quarry analysis one step further with their in-depth technical analysis that informs a novel yet cautious interpretation with an incorporation of elements of the symbolic and social theory current in the early 1990s.

Chaînes opératoires at quarry workshops

The chaîne opératoireanalysis of quarry materials described by Edmonds (1990) deserves further mention. The chaîne opératoireapproach conceives of lithic reduction as a comprehensive system or "syntax of action" from the origin of lithic material at the quarry to reduction, reuse, and abandonment within a larger context of human action. Sellet (1993: 106) writes that the chaîne opératoireis a "chronological segmentation of the actions and mental processes required in the manufacture of an artifact and its maintenance in the technical system of a prehistoric group. The initial stage of the chain is raw material procurement, and the final stage is the discard of the artifact."

In the realm of lithic production, Shott (2003) and others question whether the chaîne opératoireapproach is notably different from Holmes' century-old concept of "reduction sequence" (Holmes 1894) and Schiffer's Behavioral chain analysis (Schiffer 1975). Two major differences distinguish chaîne opératoirefrom the lithic reduction sequence analysis in the North American tradition. First, while the American reduction sequence focuses solely on lithic production, chaîne opératoireapplies to apprenticeship and expertise relating to allmaterial culture behavior beginning with lithic production but also including ceramics, textiles, architecture, wine-making, and others (Tostevin 2006: 3). Second, even when confined to lithic production, the chaîne opératoireapproachexplicitly attempts to infer the choices and intentionality of the knapper, as well as to capture greater context and breadth by seeking to address the larger context of activity and action.

French archaeology has a long tradition of attributing archaeological variability to choice, stretching back from Boeda (1991) to Bordes to Breuil. This tendency is balanced by an equally strong American-based resistance to attribute variation to cultural choice until all other factors, particularly reactions to environmental stimuli, have been excluded, forming one of the central tensions in the current debate (Tryon and Potts 2006).

Others argue that while attempts to consider the intentionality of the knapper are commendable, in their weaker form sequential models like chaîne opératoirerun the danger of being overly typological and rigidly unable toincorporate behavior that diverges from a one particular linear progression (Bleed 2001;Hiscock 2004: 72).

From the perspective of quarry procurement and workshop activities, production would have proceeded with a goal in the mind of the knapper based on the quality of the raw material as well as organizational issues like technological requirements and mode of transport. For Edmonds (1990: 68) implementing a chaîne opératoireapproach at a quarry workshop appears to have been complicated by an overwhelming presence of flaked stone belonging to early stages production, and a paucity of evidence concerning consumption. It seems that observing a complete "syntax of action" is hampered by the incomplete view of reduction, as the evidence is overwhelmingly from workshops and not from consumption sites. Thus, while quarry workshops have relatively few classes of artifacts the techniques, such as refitting, are seldom practicable when there is an abundance of early stage material and an under-representation of advanced reduction flakes and complete, or near complete, tool forms.

Variability in initial reduction of cores observed at the Great Langdale quarry workshops reflect the available raw material and the quarrying methods used to procure the material, and these frame the starting context for following a chaîne opératoireanalytical model. However, the chaînesequence is often truncated and largely capable of merely determining early reduction characteristics that are basic to all reduction sequence analyses in the tradition of Holmes (1894). For example, at Great Langdale the researchers determine, mostly from platform characteristics, that there was expedient, ad hoc production in one period and more precise and controlled flaking in another. Sequence models seem to be of limited utility in contexts where only initial workshop production is available, a condition that perhaps explains the avoidance of an explicitly chaîne opératoireapproach in the later Bradley and Edmonds (1993) volume. In sum, chaîne opératoireis roughly synonymous with American 'reduction sequence' and Schiffer's Behavioral Archaeology in terms of low and mid-level theory, but in high level theory it is not generally presented except for the theory of chaîne opératoireitself (Tostevin 2006). Given the difficulties of meaningfully applying chaîne opératoireto data based almost entirely on quarry workshop contexts, the concepts will not be attempted in this research.

Interpreting the axe trade

While earlier approaches focused on efficiency and evolutionary schema in a commodified vision of production, Bradley and Edmonds (1993) attempt to take a middle road where they use measures of efficiency and investment observed in workshop contexts in a heuristic manner, but they principally base their interpretations of production on the changing socio-political context of the larger consumption zone. They consider artifacts in terms of dichotomies that probably existed in some form, dividing the circulation of inalienable gifts from alienable commodity production. They seek to consider the implications of gifts in the theoretical terms that relate gift-giving and status acquisition with the political strategizing of elites in Neolithic Britain. Further, they consider the "regimes of value" where gifts and commodities circulate and are assigned value that is a construction of political contexts and not merely a reflection of measurable costs using the concepts of social distance borrowed from Sahlins. Finally, Bradley and Edmonds consider the circulation of axes as wealth goods and the ways in which elites may influence the specialized production of axes (Brumfiel and Earle 1987) and the circulation and consumption in a peer polity situation (Renfrew and Cherry 1986) or through control of deposition (Kristiansen 1984). Ironically, while neoevolutionist approaches are explicitly rejected, one is left with the question: what is theoretically significant about changes observed in the circulation of axes if not the link to evolutionary changes in socio-political organization? In both Edmonds (1990: 66-67) and Bradley and Edmonds (1993), evolutionary explanations are avoided in the analysis of production, but in regional exchange the changes observed attributed to increasing levels of social ranking as indicated by competition over exchange networks and specialized knowledge during the Later Neolithic.