Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Across the ages, prehistoric societies have interacted with each other, generating flows of finished artifacts, raw materials, symbolic items, and last but not least, people themselves that can be discerned archaeologically both among hunter-gatherer groups and farmers. Allochthonous materials and long-distance relationships implied by their presence have usually played a major role within archaeological narratives, especially as signifiers of social and cultural complexity. Meanwhile the employ of local materials has usually been linked to domestic day-to-day activities, and less attention has been paid to their acquisition and movement within societies as a result. However, ethnographic and archaeological sources show us the importance of recognizing a dialectic interaction between both categories of materials in maintaining social and cultural entities in addition to representing social interactions in the archaeological record. We have brought together a group of papers that address the interactions between exotic and local materials and their complexity by making use of provenance studies, morpho-stylistic approaches, and spatial analysis. Our aim is to generate new insights into the mechanics of exchange across scales and the roles that it played within ancient societies.