Hunter-gatherers, trade and subsistence: introductory models

The vital role of trade to the origin and florescence of early civilizations is a topic of considerable interest to prehistorians (Algaze 1993). The analysis of Harappan trade networks is often sub-divided into internal systems of distribution and external trade contacts. The significance of Harappan long-distance trade, the items exchanged, and the mechanics of interaction are topics of continuing debate. Harappan trade relations with prehistoric cultures of the Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, and Mesopotamia are exciting, of wide interest, and have been extensively documented. Pre-Harappan settlements at Mehrgarh (Baluchistan) provide evidence for trade networks extending to the Makran coast and Central Asia during early Chalcolithic (c. 4500 BC) and even Neolithic (c. 6500 BC) times (Jarrige 1985; Lechevallier and Quivron 1985). The archaeological focus on long-distance trade systems in prehistory diverts attention from another important form of exchange and population interaction: small-scale, localized interaction between nomadic hunter-gatherers or pastoralists and settled agriculturalists. Although certainly less spectacular than the nature of indicators for long-distance trade, evidence for this type of interchange should be archaeologically detectable and may have constituted a primary means by which urban centers acquired widely dispersed raw materials essential to a variety of manufacturing goals.