Sumptuary Goods Research Articles

Baubles, Bangles and Beads: Commodity Exchange between the Indian Ocean Region and Interior Southern Africa during 8th–15th Centuries CE

When material objects are recovered in a place different from their presumed place of origin, archaeologists usually fix attention on those objects and places themselves. Material objects do not, in themselves, however, have intrinsic value, and underlying the material variables of objects and their loci of origin and deposition is a more fundamental actuality of their translocation, the regimes of value in which things were assessed and in which they moved. Fundamental to this is that things have exchange value as well as consumption value and may also have spiritual value in specific circumstances. I argue that these are particularly important considerations when material objects are translocated from a distinct socio-geographic region, with its internal regime of values, to another quite different region, with probably diverse local regimes of value, as is the case when Early–Middle Iron-Age (300–1300 CE) sumptuary goods, mainly glass beads, moved from the East African Indian Ocean sphere to interior southern Africa, which had its own distinct regimes of value. In this article, I present data for this movement and premises regarding regimes of value, to address the trajectory of such beads into the southern region. I suggest that marine gastropod shells, cowrie and conus, are equally significant markers of interior–coastal associations, and their presence at 7th–11th-century southern sites with no glass beads suggests that different regimes of value were held by southern African peoples. This offers clues to bead and shell distributions. Several concrete instances demonstrate the point.

MARE NOSTRUM ET MARE ERYTHRAEUM: EL CANAL DEL WADI TUMILAT

This work focuses on the study of the canal that in the past linked the Nile with the Red Sea. Control over the Nile through an artificial canal allowed the Egyptians to use water as means to increase mobility, which permitted a higher transit of goods and people between the river delta and the Gulf of Suez. In addition to being used to irrigate the territory crossing Wadi Tumilat, and as a defense against the enemies from the East, the Egyptian canal that started at the Pelusiac arm was used mainly to import sumptuary goods from the East and to export grain and other products to the East. Also, fluvial transit through the canal reduced travel time and increased the amount of goods being transported.

Cooperation and tensions in multiethnic corporate societies using Teotihuacan, Central Mexico, as a case study

In this paper, I address the case of a corporate society in Central Mexico. After volcanic eruptions triggered population displacements in the southern Basin of Mexico during the first and fourth centuries A.D., Teotihuacan became a multiethnic settlement. Groups from different backgrounds settled primarily on the periphery of the metropolis; nevertheless, around the core, intermediate elites actively fostered the movement of sumptuary goods and the arrival of workers from diverse homelands for a range of specialized tasks. Some of these skilled craftsmen acquired status and perhaps economic power as a result of the dynamic competition among neighborhoods to display the most lavish sumptuary goods, as well as to manufacture specific symbols of identity that distinguished one neighborhood from another, such as elaborate garments and headdresses. Cotton attire worn by the Teotihuacan elite may have been one of the goods that granted economic importance to neighborhood centers such as Teopancazco, a compound that displayed strong ties to the Gulf Coast where cotton cloth was made. The ruling elite controlled raw materials that came from afar whereas the intermediate elite may have been more active in providing other sumptuary goods: pigments, cosmetics, slate, greenstone, travertine, and foreign pottery. The contrast between the corporate organization at the base and top of Teotihuacan society and the exclusionary organization of the neighborhoods headed by the highly competitive intermediate elite introduced tensions that set the stage for Teotihuacan's collapse.

MYTHS, GENDER, BIRDS, BEADS: A READING OF IRON AGE HILL SITES IN INTERIOR SOUTHERN AFRICA

ABSTRACTHomologous origin myths concerning the Tsodilo Hills in north-western Botswana, Polombwe hill at the southern tip of Lake Tanganyika in Zambia and Kaphiri-Ntiwa hill in northern Malawi are examined. Parallels are drawn between the myths, where, in the process of creation, a primal pair in undifferentiated space and time passes through a series of liminal states, thereby bringing structure to the landscape and legitimacy to society in Iron Age Central and Southern Africa. These myths narrate the instituting of social legitimacy in their respective societies based on a resolution of the inherent contradiction between the concepts of authority and power, lineage and land. The structure of rights to possession of land is examined, and the text considers the role of sumptuary goods such as glass beads and metonymic signifiers such as birds within this structure. This study examines the prominence of hilltops as the residence of paranormal power and its association with human authority, and relates this to the archaeological interpretation of the Iron Age site Nqoma (Tsodilo Hills); this is compared with Bosutswe (eastern Botswana), Mapungubwe (Shashe-Limpopo basin), and the Shona Mwari myth recorded by Frobenius as used by Huffman in his analysis of Great Zimbabwe.

A Macroregional Perspective on Chiefly Cycling in the Central Region of Panama During the Late Ceramic Ii Period (A.D. 700–1522)

AbstractThe sixteenth-century indigenous societies who inhabited the Pacific plains of Panama have occupied an important place in discussions of social hierarchy in the Americas. Beginning with the discovery of the richly stocked tombs at Sitio Conte in the 1930s the origins of social hierarchy and wealth accumulation has been a key theme in the Central Region of Panama. Although the most lavish burial hoards at Sitio Conte contained hundreds of sumptuary goods elaborately decorated with cosmological iconography, no other contemporary cemetery shows evidence for this degree of wealth accumulation. The only other site with mortuary patterning suggestive of high ranking individuals is He-4, where high ranking mound burials were interred following the abandonment of the Sitio Conte cemetery. From a macroregional perspective the increase in access to prestige goods in mound burials at He-4 contemporaneous with, or immediately after, the decline of Sitio Conte is best explained as a result of changes in political organization of the kind often associated with the growth and decline of chiefly polities.

METALLURGY, MAYAPAN, AND THE POSTCLASSIC MESOAMERICAN WORLD SYSTEM

AbstractResidents of Mayapan produced and consumed metal artifacts through long-distance commercial exchange networks in the Postclassic Mesoamerican world system. In this paper, I perform a stylistic and typological analysis of metal artifacts and debris from lost-wax casting from recent excavations at Mayapan, with reference to previously excavated collections by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC. The distribution of metal artifacts suggests that metal objects were not sumptuary goods restricted to elites, but luxury goods availble to those who could afford them. I then compare Mayapan with other sites in the Postclassic Mesoamerican world system that were involved in the interregional distribution of metal artifacts. Although Mayapan did not have local sources of native metal or a longstanding traditions of metalworking, it was able to use its economic influence in the world system to obtain and create metal objects specific to its needs.

Prehistory of Native Americans on the Central American Land Bridge: Colonization, Dispersal, and Divergence

The Central American land bridge has served as a passageway for animals and humans moving between North and South America. Nevertheless, after the first waves of human immigration at the end of the Pleistocene, contact between the native peoples who remained on this isthmus and other peoples living in continental areas where civilization ultimately developed, is characterized, according to the field record, by the transfer of crops, technologies, and goods, until ca.1400 BP when speakers of Mesoamerican languages occupied the northwestern edge (Gran Nicoya). The ancestors of modern-day speakers of Chibchan and Chocoan languages underwent social and cultural diversification mostly within the confines of the land bridge. Some Precolumbian residents altered vegetation immediately after first arrival at least 11,000 years ago, and began to add domesticated crops to their subsistence inventory between 9000 and 7000 BP. Maize and manioc (or cassava), domesticated outside the land bridge, were introduced in Preceramic times, early in the period between 7000 and 4500 BP, and gradually dominated regional agriculture as they became more productive, and as human populations increased and spread into virgin areas. Diversity in material culture is visible ca. 6000 BP, and becomes more apparent after the introduction of pottery ca. 4500 BP. By 2000 BP culture areas with distinctive artifact inventories are discernible. Between 2500 and 1300 BP hierarchies among regions, sites, social groups, and individuals point to the establishment of chiefdoms whose elite members came to demand large numbers of costume and sumptuary goods. A few special centers with stone sculptures and low-scale architecture served a social universe larger than the chiefdom, such as clusters of recently fissioned social groups with memories of a common heritage. Social interactions on the land bridge, endowed with productive bottomlands, highland valleys, and coastal habitats, appear always to have been strongest among neighboring groups.

The Residues of Feasting and Public Ritual at Early Cahokia

Archaeological remains excavated from the stratified layers of a pre-Columbian borrow pit in the middle of the Cahokia site inform our understanding of how ritual events were related to the social and political foundations of that enormous center. Ordinary and extraordinary refuse, ranging from foods and cooking pots to craft-production debris and sumptuary goods, are associated with a series of large-scale, single-event dumping episodes related to activities that occurred in the principal plaza. Taken as a set, the layers of ceramic, lithic, zooarchaeological, archaeobotanical, osteological, paleoentomological, and sedimentological materials reveal that the construction of Cahokia's Mississippian order was an active, participatory process.

Wealth Finance in the Inka Empire: Evidence from the Calchaqui Valley, Argentina

To finance their empire, the Inka empire mobilized and expropriated both staple and sumptuary goods. This paper examines the manufacture and use of wealth-associated objects in the Calchaquí Valley, located on the empire's southern periphery. Recent excavations at the imperial settlement of Potrero de Payogasta and at the local Santamariana settlement of Valdéz recovered extensive manufacturing debris. Craft industries included copper, silver, and gold metallurgy; marine and land-snail shell-, stone-, and bone-bead manufacture; and mica disk cutting. At Potrero de Payogasta, the concentration of production debris in the households of the Inka elite and associated personnel represents attached specialization. Because evidence for several craft industries occurs together in individual households, related technologies were probably performed jointly. The inhabitants of the indigenous settlement, Valdéz, manufactured decorative items using primarily locally available land-snail shell. At Valdéz, the high frequency of ceramic molds, used in the casting of pure (unalloyed) copper, documents only initial stages of manufacture. The scarcity of finished wealth from both sites is noteworthy; although Calchaqui settlements were heavily involved in manufacture, wealth was expropriated for circulation in the Inka wealth-finance system.

A North Andean Status Trader Complex under Inka Rule

In the northernmost peripheries of the Inka Empire (northern Ecuador and Narifo Province, Colombia), an aboriginal status-trading complex resembling Mexican pochteca survived through and after Inka rule. Politically sponsored traders called mindalaes supplied aboriginal lords with sumptuary goods, and sometimes redistributed wealth so as to build political influence. Inkas' partial tolerance of this complex may reflect need for access to resources from zones radically resistant to

Evidence of Social Stratification in Bronze Age Denmark

Abstract The Late Bronze Age hoards (12th–6th centuries B.C.) from Denmark are examined as evidence of the existence of social ranking in that prehistoric society. The hoards contain bronze weapons and ornaments which seem to function as sumptuary goods and appear to be ranked according to regular rules. The hoards also represent economic wealth and include objects of ritual importance. This intersection, in single finds, of material reflections of the political, religious, and economic systems in the society, along with the inferred existence of social ranking, suggests the presence of a prehistoric chiefdom in Denmark in the Late Bronze Age.