56 Thomas D. Hall
Applications to European Prehistory
A number of scholars have utilized WSA explicitly in their analyses of societal interac-
tion in prehistoric Europe. Kristiansen (Chapter 6 in this volume, and 1998; Kristiansen
and Larsson 2005) has discussed developments in Europe from the second to the first
millenniumBCEin the context of an emerging world-system. He posits several key com-
ponents in this system. First, he argues that the Mycenaeans served “as transmitters and
receivers of new influences between the east Mediterranean and Central Europe. We
propose that they rose to power through their ability to provide useful goods to both
parties, and thereby created a new competitive niche” (Kristiansen 1998: 360). Kris-
tiansen also argues that the Mycenaeans forged connections between the Aegean and the
Black Sea, with extensions up the Danube to the Carpathian region, which created “the
culturalkoineof the Aegean/eastern Europe” (361). Trade contacts expanded to the
central and western Mediterranean in the period 1500–1200BCE. In all, the “histori-
cal sequence reflects a development from small-scale luxury trade in the early phase (tin,
amber, and gold) towards large-scale bulk trade in commodities—including copper—in
the late period” (364). He identifies two other key factors in this process: the rise of
metallurgical centers, from ca. 1900BCEon, and the emergence of warrior elites as part
of “indirect centre–periphery dynamics” (378). Subsequent research suggests that trade
in metals was in large quantities over significant distances.
Kristiansen sees the development of a regional exchange system in the Late Bronze
Age in which there was a “closer periphery...integrated into the Mycenaean economy”
demonstrated in the distribution of Mycenaean pottery from western Anatolia to Italy,
and a “secondary periphery, where Mycenaean body armour and skill in metal crafts-
manship were adopted” (1998: 389). He concludes that a world-system emerged from
the interaction between the Near East, the Mediterranean, and central Europe ca. 2000
BCE, which was reflected in social, cultural, and economic “regularities” (394, 418). The
relationships between centers and peripheries changed over time between two forms,
with elite control of sedentary loci of metal production and dispersal at one pole, and
decentralized warrior societies at the other (412–15, Figure 225). Chase-Dunn and Hall
(1997) refer to this process as “pulsation.”
The Aegean
Kardulias (1999) has used WSA to explain general trade in the Bronze Age Aegean
and the production and distribution of flaked stone tools during the same period, and
to analyze the results of a survey in Cyprus (Kardulias 2007, 2010). Initially, he sug-
gested that the Aegean system consisted of multiple levels (internal, intermediate, and
long-distance) that linked local, regional, and international communities. The materials
exchanged varied, with low-to-medium-value bulk goods (e.g., obsidian for tool produc-
tion) concentrated in the internal and intermediate levels, and high-value luxury goods
being the focus of trade between the Aegean and the Near East, including Egypt. The
account emphasized the interaction of different communities on Crete that in one sense
formed their own insular “world,” but that also were connected to other Aegean islands