Trade and Civilisation Economic Networks and Cultural Ties, from Prehistory to the Early Modern Era

This book provides the first global analysis of the relationship between trade and civilisation from the beginning of civilisation 3000 BC until the modern era 1600 AD. Encompassing the various networks including the Silk Road, the Indian Ocean trade, Near Eastern family traders of the Bronze Age, and the Medieval Hanseatic League, it examines the role of the individual merchant, the products of trade, the role of the state, and the technical conditions for land and sea transport that created diverging systems of trade and in the development of global trade networks. Trade networks, however, were not durable. The book focuses on the establishment and decline of great trading network systems, and how they related to the expansion of civilisation, and to different forms of social and economic exploitation. Case studies focus on local conditions as well as global networks until the sixteenth century when the whole globe was connected by trade.

1. Theorizing trade and civilization Kristian Kristiansen; 2. Cloth and currency: on the ritual-economics of Eurasian textile circulation and the 'origins' of trade, fifth to second millennia BC Toby C. Wilkinson; 3. Prices and Values Origins and early history in the Near East David A. Warburton; 4. The rise of Bronze Age peripheries and the expansion of international trade 1950–1100 BC Kristian Kristiansen; 5. Interlocking commercial networks and the infrastructure of trade in western Asia during the Bronze Age Gojko Barjamovic; 6. Mycenaean Glocalism: Greek political economies and international trade Michael L. Galaty; 7. Deconstructing civilisation: a 'neolithic' alternative Michael Rowlands; 8. Marginalizing civilization: the Phoenician redefinition of power ca. 1300–800 BCE Christopher M. Monroe; 9. The birth of a single Afro-Eurasian world-system (second century BC–sixth century CE) Philippe Beaujard; 10. On the Silk Road. Trade in the Tarim? Susan Whitfield; 11. Trade, traders, and trading systems: macro-modeling of trade, commerce, and civilization in the Indian Ocean Rahul Oka; 12. Trade and civilization in Medieval East Africa: socioeconomic networks Chapurukha M. Kusimba; 13. Conflictive trade, values, and power relations in maritime trading polities of the tenth to the sixteenth centuries in the Philippines Laura Junker; 14. The Hanseatic League as an economic and social phenomenon: archaeo-ceramic case studies in cultural transfer and resistance in Western and Northern Europe, c. 1250–1550 David Gaimster; 15. Elliot Smith reborn? A view of prehistoric globalizaton from the island southeast Asian and Pacific margins Matthew Spriggs; 16. Trade-light: the political economy of Polynesian and Andean civilizations Timothy Earle; 17. Long-distance exchange and ritual technologies of power in the pre-Hispanic Andes Alf Hornborg; 18. Empire, civilization, and trade – the Roman experience in world history Peter Bang; 19. World trade in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries Thomas Lindkvist and Janken Myrdal; 20. Postscript: getting the goods for civilization Jonathan Friedman.

Kristian Kristiansen is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Gothenburg. He is the author of Europe Before History (Cambridge, 1998), Social Transformations in Archaeology (with Michael Rowlands,1998) and The Rise of Bronze Age Society (with Thomas B. Larsson, Cambridge, 2005), which was awarded best scholarly book in 2007 by the Society of American Archaeology. He received the Prehistoric Society's Europa Prize in 2013, and the British Academy's Graham Clark Medal in 2016.
Thomas Lindkvist is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Gothenburg. He has written on a number of aspects of medieval society, including agrarian, political, and economic history, in Scandinavia.
Janken Myrdal has been Professor of Agrarian History at the Swedish University of Agricultural sciences, and is now affiliated with the department of Economic History at the University of Stockholm. He has written on medieval cultural history and agrarian history in general.