Notes from Source: The roles of the gift and the commodity in Greece c. 800-500 B.C. are analysed from the primary literary sources, and it is suggested that current anthropological models of the interrelationships of forms of production, exchange and social organisation are too simplistic. Historical evidence can be used to supplement the ethnographic record, and to show the great importance gift exchange can have in state and even imperial civilisations. Further, the great importance of the gift in Archaic Greece was not unusual in early Europe. It is argued that the archaeologist can attempt to identify spheres of exchange and a gift economy in the material record of the deliberate consumption of wealth in prehistory.

Further Notes: Place: London Publisher: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland