Description

This edited volume focuses on long-term economic structures reflected in material culture, analyzing the emergent processes that affected production mechanisms and embedded economic behavior. It focuses on approaches and methods for ascertaining levels of societal complexity through the detection of the character and aspects of basic economic processes (involving food production, redistribution, exchange, and specialization) common for most past European societies. The volume shows different ways in which we can approach these processes. From the more traditional methods like artefacts studies, comparative analysis of analogies and ethnographic parallels we are able to infer and develop theoretical models applied and tested through modern methods of computer modelling and social simulation. The wide range of presented papers allows a synthetic review of socio-economic developments throughout the long period from Late Prehistory to the Middle Ages against the background of spatial or social structures at a supra-regional level. The contributions included in this volume are believed to constitute a useful starting point for similar studies that try to combine long-term analysis with short-term developments transcending spatial and chronological barriers from a comparative perspective and bring together different research experiences.