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5 results

  • 4 - Modes of Production

  • Edited by Jeremy Koster, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Brooke Scelza, University of California, Los Angeles, Mary K. Shenk, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book:
    Human Behavioral Ecology
    Published online:
    07 March 2024
    Print publication:
    14 March 2024, pp 76-103

  • Summary

    Farmers, herders, and the practitioners of diversified economies are interesting to human behavioral ecologists because they encounter similar trade-offs of energy, time, and risk that characterized ancestral populations of humans. Studies of agriculture, herding, and mixed economies also examine choices about how much labor and other inputs to invest in order to increase yields and diminish variability, whether to consume, share, or sell products in markets, and how to manage resources through social institutions. This chapter reviews research and key studies on the five themes of risk, time, investment and intensification, markets, and institutions. The chapter discusses the tricky issue of commensurability, of comparatively evaluating dissimilar forms of value such as calories and cash, certainty and unpredictability, and immediacy and delay. The conclusion proposes avenues for future research, involving niche construction, embodied capital, cooperation and competition, culture, and applied evolutionary anthropology.

Ancient Oaxaca
  • The Monte Albán State
  • 2nd edition
  • Richard E. Blanton, Gary M. Feinman, Stephen A. Kowalewski, Linda M. Nicholas
  • Published online:
    07 July 2022
    Print publication:
    28 July 2022
  • Over two thousand years ago, Oaxaca, Mexico, was the site of one of the New World's earliest episodes of primary state formation and urbanism, and today it is one of the world's archaeologically best-studied regions. This volume, which thoroughly revises and updates the first edition, provides a highly readable yet comprehensive path to acquaint readers with one of the earliest and best-known examples of Native American state formation and its consequences as seen from the perspectives of urbanism, technology, demography, commerce, households, and religion and ritual. Written by prominent archaeological researchers who have devoted decades to Oaxacan research and to the development of suitable social theory, the book places ancient Oaxaca within the context of the history of ideas that have addressed the causes and consequences of social evolutionary change. It also critically evaluates the potential applicability of more recent thinking about state building grounded in collective action and related theories.

  • Nine - On Markets and Marketplaces

  • Kenneth Hirth, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book:
    The Organization of Ancient Economies
    Published online:
    31 August 2020
    Print publication:
    17 September 2020, pp 275-316

  • Summary

    Marketplaces were the lifeblood of household provisioning and occurred in many state and stateless societies throughout the ancient and premodern past. This chapter examines the nature of market exchange, the different types of marketplaces documented in societies of different scale, and the factors involved in their origin. Case studies are discussed from multiple state and stateless societies around the world.

  • 24 - Trade

  • from PART Va - ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 710-740

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses all forms of market exchange including everything from local trade in which very little transport of goods might be involved to trade over long distances, both inside and outside the Roman empire. It talks about what is now known about patterns of trade in various commodities, about the social and institutional mechanisms by which trade was conducted, and about the role of governments. The main geographical patterns of long-distance trade were determined by the location of these markets and of the centres of production or supply. Many merchants avoided specialization, and for this reason among others it is artificial to discuss Roman trade commodity by commodity. It remains true that reasons of technology and of social structure prevented the Romans from replacing their agrarian economy, in which the mass of the population lived not much above subsistence level, with a more dynamic system.

  • 10 - Trade, industry and the urban economy

  • from PART III - THE EMPIRE: ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 312-337

  • Summary

    This chapter revolves around urban demand for commodities, both staples and luxury goods. This is because it was in the cities that the mass of non-producing consumers and most of the wealthy were concentrated. Goods changed hands in other settings, but the city remained the central place where rural production converged and exchange took place. Demand was continuous and remained high, for two main reasons. First, though traditional civic institutions did decline, the cities on the whole survived as economic units. Second, their economic life was still dominated by a landed elite. The movement of goods over medium or long distances did not dry up in the late empire, as the finds of pottery amply demonstrate. It was above all the participation of the propertied classes in the urban economy which guaranteed a certain level of independent economic activity, a certain volume of market exchange.