Abstract
Contributors to Prehistoric Exchange Systems in North America summarize valiantly changing patterns of exchange. What can help us understand temporal variation across the continent? Why do systems of exchange rapidly expand only to collapse and reformulate? J. Johnson (Chapter 5) describes prehistoric exchange as “episodic” and tells us that to explain the exchange, we must focus on the “difference in social organization.” In this chapter, taking an explicit materialist perspective, I will try to position exchange within a general scheme of social evolution and to explain the processes that intertwine economic and social organizations.
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Earle, T. (1994). Positioning Exchange in the Evolution of Human Society. In: Baugh, T.G., Ericson, J.E. (eds) Prehistoric Exchange Systems in North America. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6231-0_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6231-0_14
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