Trade and Culture Process in European Prehistory

Abstract

This paper sets out to re-evaluate one of the chief processes leading towards culture change in prehistory. Widespread diffusion has for too long been the guiding principle in European prehistory; its validity is questioned here. The study of trade (defined in the first instance as the exchange or traffic of materials), and specifically the scientific analysis of raw materials, suggests that the importance of migration and of diffusion in European prehistory have been exaggerated. Change has often been due rather to the operation of local factors. The quantitative study of economic systems, and especially trading systems, for an understanding of the culture process at work is advocated. It is exemplified by the obsidian trade in the Near East in the 7th and 6th millennia B. C. Finally, an attempt is made to explain the formation of urban communities (i.e., of small townships) in the Aegean in the 3rd millennium B. C. as the result of local cultural processes, without significant outside influence. The chief of these processes was trade, necessitated by the rise of metal technology. Urban settlement arose in the Aegean without irrigation, without a significant rise in population, and without a high degree of centralisation. Neither a diffusionist explanation nor an appeal to multilineal evolution provide an adequate framework for its explication.

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