The Political Impact of Trade in Chiefdoms

Abstract

Trade theories of state formation have failed to specify trade as market behavior, and to appreciate the political role of imported luxury goods in chiefdoms. When luxury goods and other valuable commodities become available through the market rather than through interpersonal, chiefly exchanges, the elite's power depends increasingly on economic exploitation and the control of arms. Archeological data from several locales illustrate the disruptive and formative effects of trade diasporas in chiefdoms.

Recent Trends in Theorizing Prehispanic Mesoamerican Economies

“…The underlying premise is that the movement of prestige goods often takes place through a maze of interconnected and multilayered networks encompassed by a variety of social and political relationships. In societies exhibiting social ranking, one way elites advertise and maintain their social status and finance their political operations is by controlling access to and manipulation of basic and critical resources such as food surpluses, exotic goods, and esoteric knowledge (e.g., Clark, 1986;Frankenstein and Rowlands, 1978;Helms, 1988;Kipp and Schortman, 1989;Renfrew, 1982). Fundamental to this process, elites "usurp," "co-opt," "preempt," or "exploit" the labor of dependent producers (McGuire, 1986, pp.…”

Heterogeneity, power, and political economy: Some current research issues in the archaeology of Old World complex societies

“…Previously, most studies of prestige goods concentrated on those wealth items whose main value derived from the scarcity and/or exotic origin of their constituent raw materials (although, of course, local artisans added to the already existing value of the goods through further processing). This focus naturally led to an interest in the exchange networks necessary to obtain these exotic goods, and to a concern with the transformative impact of these external exchange networks on local political economy (e.g., Champion, 1989;Kipp and Schortman, 1989;Rowlands et al, 1987;Schortman and Urban, 1992). However, the most current ethnoarchaeological (Allchin, 1994;Sinopoli, 1991), archaeological (Vidale, 1990), and replicative (Kenoyer, 1997) research on Harappan craft specialization examines prestige goods made from locally available, low-value raw materials.…”

“…Long-distance exchange in luxury goods used to legitimate elite authority is seen as having a strong transformative or destabilizing effect on the political economy of chiefdoms (Kipp and Schortman, 1989;Peregrine, 1991). Control over either the local production of prestige goods or their procurement through long-distance exchange is seen as one of the most important parts of chiefdom econo-mies.…”

“…interregional interaction in the Persian/Arabian Gulf highlights additional problematic aspects of prestigegoods exchange (Edens, 1992). Researchers working within this framework have argued that when local elites are drawn into a prestige-goods exchange system, they become dependent on the suppliers of these exotic items; this is said to create a fundamental asymmetry in terms of trade between cores and peripheries (Kipp and Schortman, 1989;Rowlands et al, 1987). These approaches treat specific prestige goods as being so essential to the process of social reproduction that any interruption in their supply would cause the breakdown of the elite hierarchy whose legitimacy they uphold.…”

New world complex societies: Recent economic, social, and political studies

“…A number of recent case studies of ancient Latin American chiefdoms are listed in the Bibliography of Recent Literature. Some of the specific issues that have received treatment include trade (Kipp and Schortman, 1989), wealth (Lange, 1992), monument building (Dillehay, 1990;Roosevelt, 1991), and classification (Creamer and Haas, 1985;Earle, 1991b).…”