Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Agreeing on Things
- 3 Moving People, Objects, and Ideas
- 4 Making Stone Vessels
- 5 The Third Millennium
- 6 The Earlier Second Millennium
- 7 The Later Second Millennium
- 8 The Rough and the Smooth: Stone Vessels from a Comparative Perspective
- 9 Forging Value and Casting Stones
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Moving People, Objects, and Ideas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Agreeing on Things
- 3 Moving People, Objects, and Ideas
- 4 Making Stone Vessels
- 5 The Third Millennium
- 6 The Earlier Second Millennium
- 7 The Later Second Millennium
- 8 The Rough and the Smooth: Stone Vessels from a Comparative Perspective
- 9 Forging Value and Casting Stones
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter shifts away from theories of value to concentrate on understanding the movement of material culture around the Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. It places the study of stone vessels in a wider exchange and consumption context and in so doing declares a particular theoretical and empirical perspective on how we should go about reconstructing the importance of interregional contact in a pre– and protohistoric context. The discussion begins by exploring the Mediterranean environment and how Bronze Age people and objects might travel around it, before then considering the conceptual models with which modern commentators have approached Bronze Age trade, through which the most frequent and important fault line is the extent to which premodern economies can and should be distinguished from modern, capitalist ones. In this respect, we find it hard to assign priority to a range of types and scales of explanation for the movement of objects, just as we sometimes struggle to know how the picture presented by the archaeological record must be calibrated up or down to capture the real quantity, variety, and significance of material moving about. The final three sections address the third, earlier and later second millennia BC more directly and explore how specific flows of material integrated or distinguished different areas at different times.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Stone Vessels and Values in the Bronze Age Mediterranean , pp. 19 - 39Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007