Globalization in Prehistory Contact, Exchange, and the 'People Without History'

Globalization in Prehistory challenges traditional historical and archaeological discourse about the drivers of social and cultural connectivity in the ancient world. It presents archaeological case studies of emerging globalization from around the word, from the Mesolithic period, through the Bronze and Iron Ages, to more recent historical times. The volume focuses on those societies and communities that history has bypassed - nomads, pastoralists, fishers, foragers, pirates and traders, among others. It aims for a more complex understanding of the webs of connectivity that shaped communities living outside and beyond the urban, agrarian states that are the mainstay of books and courses on ancient civilizations and trade. Written by a team of international experts, the rich and variable case studies demonstrate the important role played by societies that were mobile and dispersed in the making of a more connected world long before the modern era.

Introduction. Archaeology and people without history Nicole Boivin and Michael D. Frachetti; 1. What's the point? Globalization and the emergence of ceramic-using hunter-gatherers in Northern Eurasia Peter Hommel; 2. Globalizing interactions in the Arabian neolithic and the 'Ubaid Robert Carter; 3. Domestic dispersal, human agency and the connectivity in Island Southeast Asia during the Holocene Tim Denham; 4. Bronze Age participation in a 'global' ecumene: mortuary practice and ideology across Inner Asia Michael D. Frachetti and Elissa Bullion; 5. Prehistoric globalizing processes in the Tao River Valley, Gansu, China? Yitzchak Jaffe and Rowan Flad; 6. Global networks and local agents in the Iron Age Eurasian steppe Ursula Brosseder and Bryan K. Miller; 7. Nomads and caravan trade in the Syrian Desert Eivind Heldaas Seland; 8. Invisible agents of Eastern trade: foregrounding Island Southeast Asian agency in pre-modern globalization Tim Hoogervorst and Nicole Boivin; 9. From rural collectables to global commodities: copper from Oman and obsidian from Ethiopia Ioana A. Dimitru and Michael J. Harrower; 10. The Tsodilo Hills and the Indian Ocean: small-scale wealth and emergent power in eighth–eleventh century Central-Southern Africa Edwin N. Wilsen; 11. Christians and spices: hidden foundations and misrecognitions in European colonial expansion to South Asia Kathleen D. Morrison; 12. Subsistence middlemen traders and pre-colonial globalization in Melanesia Ian Lilley.

Nicole Boivin is Director of the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. Her archaeological research incorporates field and laboratory techniques to explore a range of issues, from anthropogenic landscape change to processes of dispersal, migration, and trade in human societies. She is the author of Material Cultures, Material Minds: The Role of Things in Human Thought, Society, and Evolution (Cambridge, 2008) and co-editor of Human Dispersal and Species Movement: From Prehistory to the Present (Cambridge, 2017).
Michael D. Frachetti is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Washington University, St Louis. His work addresses how economic and political strategies served to shape inter-regional networks across Asia as early as 2000 BC (the Mid-Bronze Age), and how those networks laid the foundation for the later Silk Roads. He conducts archaeological field research in Eastern Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. He is the author of Pastoralist Landscapes and Social Interaction in Bronze Age Eurasia (2009) and a forthcoming book entitled Ancient Inner Asia.