Publisher's Synopsis
Contexts for Prehistoric Exchange is a collection of papers that discusses the theoretical and methodological approaches in understanding the parameters of regional exchange from both the Old and New Worlds. The papers deal with the sourcing of exchange material, spatial patterning, the modeling of exchange, production for exchange, consumption, and symbolic contexts. One paper evaluates the different laboratory techniques for analyzing archaeological materials, their efficiency, "cost," range of applicability, and the mathematical usefulness of the data toward the research. Another paper describes the prehistoric obsidian used throughout New Mexico, and applies mathematical representations of the procurement strategies associated with the different obsidian source areas or time periods. The paper then incorporates these analyses with available bodies of theories on raw-material procurement and exchange. Through an analysis of stylistic and technological attributes of southwestern ceramics, one paper notes that inferring exchange on the basis of stylistic similarity does not always lead to a simple correlation between stylistic distributions and patterns of material exchange. Another paper suggests that ethnohistory and archaeology in Andean exchange can be complementary approaches to the discovery of patterns, processes, and change/exchange of other systems. The collection can prove beneficial for archaeologists, anthropologist, sociologists, and researchers interested in the pre-history of the Old World or New World.
