Reciprocal exchange, value, and forms of transaction: an archaeological approach from the Atacama Desert (northern Chile)

Abstract

Exotic goods belong to a class of valuable materials that have played an important role in ritual activities, political ceremonies, and economic agreements in different human contexts, both past and present. However, we have made little progress in understanding exchanges as relationships between donors and receivers, as forms of reciprocal interaction that forged a network of links between individuals and groups of different cultural traditions. Although the archaeological record presents multiple limitations in the study of these interactions, an exploratory archaeological perspective allows researchers to examine questions related to the social character of exchanges, the value attributed to goods, and the ways in which these circulated. I argue that the presence of exotic goods is an indicator of intercultural social relations whose values are expressed through their consumption. They represent a relational materiality between humans and nonhumans, which allows us to discuss forms of reciprocity and the cultural nature of the network of long-distance exchanges. Here, I present case studies from archaeological localities in the Atacama Desert (northern Chile) during the Formative Period (800 BCE-400 CE) to illustrate these concepts.Exotic goods often belong to a category of valuable materials that, in different past and present human contexts, have enabled the performance of ritual activities, political ceremonies, and economic agreements. In trans-egalitarian societies with no hereditary or institutionalized authorities, the consumption of exotic valuables of foreign origin has been associated with emerging social complexity (see, e.g., Cobb 1993;Hayden 1998;2007; Price & Brown 1985). While the exchange of such goods undoubtedly had economic and political effects, we know very little about the variety of social forms these transactions took in the past. Exchanges of goods, knowledge, or persons are economic relations steeped in the social, especially when they are reciprocal transactions, whether of the immediate (balanced reciprocity) or delayed (general reciprocity) compensation kind (Sahlins 1965: 193-4). These relations promote mutual responsibility and/or commitments among individuals and/or groups that enable the construction of longterm social ties. And they can also include unilateral exchanges (negative reciprocity) such as extortion, looting, pillaging, or murder -all ways of accessing resources that foster undesirable ties among individuals and groups and can promote vengeance, retribution, or both in a history of long-term victimization (Lévi-Strauss 1943;1971