Throwing their weights around? Anthropological perspectives on commodity and gift exchange at the dawn of the Early Bronze Age in western Anatolia

Abstract

The growing body of literature concerning cultural transformations associated with longdistance trade networks between western Anatolia, the Aegean, and Cilicia in the third millennium BC still lacks synthesis regarding social processes and types of exchange involved between trading groups. This paper addresses the issue of longdistance transactions of metals in western Anatolia during the Early Bronze Age. The argument seeks to demonstrate that contact between a predominantly decentralized non-state and an early state society does not necessarily lead to immediate political centralization of the former but rather to a new spectrum of co-existing transactions and socio-political forms. The following contribution derives from empirical evidence of Near Eastern balance weights from the Early Bronze Age 1 (2950–2750 calBC) settlement of Çukuriçi Höyük, a coastal site in western Anatolia. This article is based on previously published archaeological material and addresses wider social implications that weighing and metrology may trigger in a nonscriptural society. The paper draws extensively on ethnographic records of metal trading societies and economic anthropology, in which assiduous attention is given to exchanges conducted outside of the ‘cultural sphere’.