INTRODUCTION

Trade and exchange - peaceful means by which people obtain goods not available to them in their local environments - are mechanisms complementary to resource procurement and industry. Together they constitute the means by which people acquire things they want. Here I define ‘trade’ as the peaceful transmission of goods for other goods, and ‘exchange’ as the transmission of goods primarily for social or political purposes, as in gift exchange or tribute payment. The two blend together in real life, and archaeologically it is not always possible to distinguish between them.

Archaeological evidence demonstrates the regular transmission of goods between peoples inhabiting different regions of Europe at least from the Early Neolithic period onward (Jankuhn 1969), and by the Celtic Iron Age, systems of trade and circulation operated intensively and extensively throughout Europe.

The results of trade are often very apparent archaeologically, in the presence of goods in a context that is foreign to that cultural or physical environment (Stjernquist 1985). Less apparent are the mechanisms of circulation and the meaning of the trade or exchange for the people involved. All systems of trade and exchange depend upon the social and economic structure of the participating communities. The close connection between social systems and circulation of goods is especially clear in the rich burials of Celtic Europe - exotic trade goods from distant lands often distinguish these graves from the majority of burials.

One reason for trade is to obtain raw materials not available in the local environment. We have good evidence during the Celtic Iron Age for trade In iron, copper and tin, graphite, salt, coral, stone, lignite, jet, sapropelite, amber, gold and silver. Communities that did not Inhabit lands where these materials were naturally available had to acquire them through trade, though other less peaceful means were probably used sometimes. At the salt-mining sites of Hallstatt and the Durrnberg, iron deposits In the middle Rhineland, and graphite-clay sources in south-east Bavaria and Bohemia, communities developed to produce raw materials for trade (see Chapter 12 for discussion and references).

The second main reason for trade in Celtic Europe was to acquire manufactured

Goods. This trade included both circulation between production centres and outlying rural communities, and long-distance trade that supplied exotic goods from other culture-areas. Most such trade in iron age Europe served primarily social purposes - to provide objects to express and enhance status relations - rather than strictly economic purposes. To understand the motives behind most of the circulation of materials in prehistoric Celtic Europe, we have to think of goods in terms of their social and communicative value, as Douglas and Isherwood (1979) have argued.