“Trade” is an archaeological category, not an ethnographic one. It is a convenient rubric we use to discuss things moving between people, places, and groups in the past. The social mechanisms through which things circulated, however, probably rarely corresponded to our modern concept of “trade” as a disembedded, free exchange of goods. Every society, including our own, has many social mechanisms for circulating goods, ranging from avowedly utilitarian exchange to gifts and obligatory social presentations to marriage payments, compensation payments, inheritance, ritual transfers, and even disposal, scavenging, and recycling. In our capitalistic society, a commodity’s transition from the “public” to the “private” sphere is accompanied by a change in modes of transaction from sale to gift; each form of transaction has its own rules, expectations, and etiquette. The famous kula cycle through which men obtained shell ornaments was only one of a number of exchange systems in Trobriand society; goods were also circulated through women’s trade in clothing and foodstuffs, through a more open inter-island trade in pottery and foodstuffs, through missionaries and colonial administrators, and through interfamily redistribution and payments from commoners to chiefs in yams and other foodstuffs (Malinowski 1922; Weiner 1988). In many if not most forms of exchange, the item itself is often less important than the social relationship it creates or signifies (Mauss 1990). Moreover, specific trade systems have historical trajectories on a scale of centuries, against which particular exchanges must be understood (Wiessner and Tumu 1998).

Mediterranean prehistorians have rarely dealt with trade anthropologically, that is, with a focus on social relations established through the transfer of items rather than on the objects themselves. By far most of the relevant work has been conducted by means of characterization studies for establishing the exotic origin of