Ancient trade
03 Oct 1994 12:00
In the time of the classical civilizations; in the Bronze Age; in the neolithic. Inner Asia, especially the Silk Road; the Indian Ocean routes. Comparison with Melanesian kula chains.
It's sometimes argued that science, democracy and commerce went together in Ionia and similarly enlightened parts of Greece --- but what about their trading partners, like the Phoenicians?
Cf. my (fairly long) paper "Sing, Ye Countinghouse Muses" on the tangle of music, poetry, myths, commerce and aristocracy in ancient and archaic Greece (roughly, from Homer to Aristotle).
- See:
- Eric H. Cline, 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed [For the bits about the centuries immediately before the late Bronze Age collapse]
- M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy
- George Hourani, Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times
- Barbara J. Mills, Jeffery J. Clark, Matthew A. Peeples, W. R. Haas, Jr., John M. Roberts, Jr., J. Brett Hill, Deborah L. Huntley, Lewis Borck, Ronald L. Breiger, Aaron Clauset, and M. Steven Shackley, "Transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic US Southwest", PNAS forthcoming (2013)
- Polanyi, The Great Transformation
- David Wengrow, The Origins of Monsters: Image and Cognition in the First Age of Mechanical Reproduction
- To read:
- Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History
- Justin Jennings, Globalizations and the Ancient World
- John Keay, The Spice Route: A History
- Philiip L. Kohl, The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia
- Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Pacific
- Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies
- Polanyi et al., Trade and Markets in Early Empires
- Himanshu Prabha Ray, Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia
- Steven E. Sidebotham, Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route
- Roberta Tomber, Indo-Roman Trade
