publications. As we will see in Chapter 5, a regional approach to this kind
of information can give us a better sense of the relationships between
different types of site, which can enhance what we do know in a variety of
ways (Fig. 4.8).
The ecological environment provides the essential parameters within
which our northern societies operated. If we want to get a clearer
understanding of economic patterns beyond this preliminary sketch,
then we need to develop concepts about the social mechanisms of
decision-making and how these informed demand for certain commod-
ities. We need to imagine a social matrix that provides a working model
of the kinds of social constraints and social preoccupations that operated
alongside the ecological givens in the northern Aegean of thefirst
millenniumbc. This involves interrogating material culture as well as
the more usual narrative, numismatic, and epigraphic evidence. How
does material culture speak about past societies and about the relation-
ships between individuals and their social groups? This is where Thor-
stein Veblen and some current trends in anthropology provide useful
points of departure.
THORSTEINVEBLENANDTHE‘INSTINCT
OF WORKMANSHIP’
How objects make subjectsIn his seminal book,The Theory of the LeisureClass (1899), the econo-
mist Thorstein Veblen explored the concept of‘conspicuous consump-
tion’, a term that has since become a familiar item in the vocabulary of
modern living. Yet Veblen’s is not a household name in the same way
that this perceptive phrase and others that he coined have become. In his
own day, he was not fêted for the originality of his thinking and did not
become a social guru. Veblen was a visionary, but some of the things he
wanted to tell his contemporaries were not what people wanted to hear.
He was critical of his own society, of North American business practices,
and of received wisdom among his fellow economists, who responded by
calling him‘not sound’, or worse,‘not an economist’, implying that he
was no more than a social commentator. His technological approach to
the grand sweep of history, and his low estimate of the role of politics,
were deprecated by those of his academic contemporaries who made
historical writing their business. Veblen’s prescience about international
152 Thelongue duréein the north Aegean