commodities (Other Keyword)
1-8 (8 Records)
The commoditization of cowrie shells in the 17th and 18th centuries was central to the economics of the consumer revolution of the early modern world. Cowries drove the Africa trade that cemented economic relationships between rulers, investors, merchants, and planters in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. From their origins in the Pacific, to the markets of India, from Europe to West Africa, and from West Africa to the New World, cowries played a central role as both commodities and...
Gift of the Gods: A Mashup of the History of Mesoamerican Avocados (2023)
This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The earliest avocados of the Americas were dispersed by extinct megafauna, and later by human populations, including Olmec, Maya, and Aztecs peoples. Prized for their flavor and rich caloric content, avocados were portrayed on Maya king’s tombs, served as the municipal symbol of ancient Mesoamerican cities, as a month in the Maya...
Little Giants of the Seas: Situated Globalities on the Small Islands of the Venezuelan Caribbean, 1638-1880 (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "In Small Islands Forgotten: Insular Historical Archaeologies of a Globalizing World", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Venezuelan Caribbean, while being an expansive and influential space, has been an understudied region, underrepresented within Caribbean and Atlantic-world historiography. Various small islands in the long chain of archipelagoes and insular territories that dot this maritime region —...
Tokens of Oppression: Coinage at a Nineteenth-Century Galapagos Sugar Plantation (2017)
In the 1870s Manuel J. Cobos founded the El Progreso plantation agricultural operation on the Island of San Cristóbal in the Galapagos. It is known that he used "scrip," or company-issued cash, to force workers to only spend their wages at the company store. Archaeological recovery of hard rubber tokens from several plantation contexts brings up many questions of economics and labour relations surrounding this remote location which was also tied to the global economy through steam power,...
Twenty Years of Historical Archaeology in the Yalahau and Costa Escondida Regions (2017)
Since the mid-1990s, members of the Yalahau and Costa Escondida projects have focused on historical archaeology in northern Quintana Roo. Our research has examined the remnants of the chicle (chewing gum), sugar cane and small-batch rum industries from the late 1800s. Although these sites are relatively recent, the production equipment and other artifacts have been picked through by later occupants, making it challenging to be able to reconstruct the historic record. In an attempt to overcome...
Wagons, Trains, Trucks, and Bottles: Transportation Networks and Commodity Access in Castroville, Texas. (2017)
Transportation networks greatly influence the movement of commodities into a community. This paper uses a model of commodity flow developed by Pred (1964) and elaborated on by Adams and colleagues (2001) to analyze glass bottle assemblages from Castroville, Texas. The model suggests that a combination of commodity value, shipping costs, and distance from the North American manufacturing hub influence the movement of goods around the country ca. 1880-1950, creating regional differences in market...
"Well-Found Ship, Full Equipment, and High Hopes": Material Culture Studies and the Outfitting of Historic Antarctic Expeditions (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Pre-Recorded Video Presentation Things and the Global Antarctica", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Human experiences of Antarctica have often been mediated through scientific expeditions, which can operate only with a full complement of equipment. The importance of some of this equipment, such as scientific instruments, is readily apparent. Yet what can we learn from examining more mundane gear that is no...
(What’s) Left of the Commodity: Archaeology and the Creative Resuscitation of Spent Goods (2018)
Hobo jungles and other transient laborer and homelessness related sites present a sustained material critique of Capitalism. These kinds of sites provide insight into the creative strategies people employ to circumvent commodity markets when capital is not available. Whether residual evidence of an intentional statement against an oppressive system, or of a means to persist in the most desperate of situations, the assemblages left behind by people who reside on the fringes of...