Overview

Emphasizing the important social relationships that form between people who participate in small-scale economic transactions, contributors to this volume explore often-overlooked networks of intimate and shadow economies?terms used to describe trade that takes place outside formal market systems. Case studies from a variety of historical contexts around the world reveal the ways such transactions have created community and identity, subverted power relations, and helped people adopt new social realities. In Maine, woven baskets sold by Native American artisans to Euroamerican consumers have supported Native strategies for cultural survival and agency. Alcohol exchanged by Scandinavian merchants for furs and skins enabled their indigenous trading partners to expand social webs that contested colonialism. Slave households on Caribbean sugar plantations contain evidence for trade networks that extended far beyond the boundaries of individual plantations. From moonshiners in Appalachia to seal hunters in Antarctica, the examples in this volume show how historical archaeologists can use the concept of intimate economies to uncover deeply meaningful connections that exist beyond the traditional framework of global capitalism.

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James A. Nyman is a professional archaeologist based in New England.

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