In the context of commodification, material culture has particular properties hitherto considered irrelevant or neglected. First, the market is a spatial structure, assigning special properties to the things offered: the goods and commodities. Secondly, the market defines a principle of dealing with things, including them in some contexts, excluding them from others. The contributions to Market as Place and Space address a variety of aspects of markets within the framework of archaeological and anthropological case studies and with a special focus on the indicators of practices attached to the commodities and their valuation.
Peter F. Bang, The market in context, trade in history: empire, bazaars and archaic consumption
Jessica A. Chelekis, Informal debt in Amazonia: Market relationships and the art of collecting payment
Hugo DeBlock, Back to my Roots: the ritual ground as a space for commodification in Vanuatu
Josué Diaz, The many meanings of the term ‘market’: an approach from the perspective of institutional economics
Hans Peter Hahn, Introduction: Markets as places and Catalysts for Exchange
Thomas Hahn, Crates and crates of Sigillata? The supply of Roman military camps with Italic Terra Sigillata
Keir Martin, ‘It was harder before: we lived by the market’: hopes and fears of a market-free future in East New Britain
Laura Picht, Beyond the market: considerations about the archaeological remains of exchange processes
Mahir Saul, Markets and Marketplaces in the West Africa: Non-Capitalist Exchange in the 19th Century
Geraldine Schmitz, An economy between the markets: the case of Tamale market, Northern Ghana
Ute Scholz, Built environment and consuming place: archaeological research on a medieval market in Tulln, Lower Austria
Ann B. Stahl, Market thinking: perspectives from Saharan and Atlantic West Africa
Katherine Szabo, Lapita shell ornaments as commodities? The impact of the Kula Ring on archaeological interpretations
Lukas Wiggering, Dealing with the ‘foreign’: the movement of artefacts in Bronze Age Europe
Hans P. Hahn is Professor for Anthropology with regional focus on Africa at Goethe University Frankfurt. He spent many years in West Africa (Togo, Ghana, Burkina Faso) doing ethnographic fieldwork on a wide range of themes of rural economies. His research interests are oriented towards material culture, consumption, migration and mobility in non-western societies. He participated in the organization of several exhibitions on human action and materiality. Other ongoing research initiatives are linked with polysemic approaches to material culture studies.
Geraldine Schmitz is a Post-Doctoral researcher in the research training group ‘Value and Equivalence’ in the Institut für Ethnologie of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, with special research interests in the anthroplogy and economy of markets, particularly in Ghana.
