Prehistoric exchange has long been central in anthropological and economic models of socio-political change. Exchange has been discussed by social theorists, anthropologists and archaeologists the debating the ultimate causes of socio-political inequality that emerged independently during the Holocene in different regions of the world. In the course of the last 12,000 years, archaeological evidence documents a change from a worldwide of hunting and gathering groups with relatively egalitarian, village-level social organization to, in a few places world-wide, in-situ development of state-level society with large settlements, greater concentration of wealth, and hierarchical economic and political organizations. While anthropological models accounting for political and economic change have been refined over the past century, evidence of exchange has consistently served as a material indicator of regional interaction and differential access to exotic goods within a community.