Neighboring Anasazi and Mogollon cultures also seem
to have shift ed from hunting and gathering to more seden-
tary modes of living. Th e establishment of pit-house villages
and the production of pottery marked the transition of the
Cochise in southeastern Arizona to the initial phase of the
Mogollon tradition around 250 c.e. Early Mogollon villages
were usually established at the ends of mesa tops, sometimes
as high as 600 feet above the valley fl oor, at least in part for
defensive reasons. One early Mogollon village referred to as
the SU site had 28 houses; maize and squash were being cul-
tivated, and some of the dwellings were of a signifi cant size.
Th e Anasazi of the region where New Mexico, Colorado, Ari-
zona, and Utah meet represent a long-lived cultural tradition
still extant today.
Many diff erent settlement patterns occurred throughout
Mesoamerica. Numerous villages featuring thatched-roof
houses, as founded on improved maize productivity, rose dur-
ing the Preclassic (ca. 1800 b.c.e.–ca. 150 c.e.) in the humid
Pacifi c littoral of Guatemala and western El Salvador. Along
the coast of the Gulf of Mexico the Olmec civilization (ca.
1500–ca. 400 b.c.e.) consisted of a series of towns and affi li-
ated villages scattered across Mesoamerica as far as Hondu-
ras. Debate continues over the demographic identifi cation of
the primary Olmec sites of Tres Zapotes, San Lorenzo, and La
Venta, all of which bear evidence of both ceremonial priori-
ties and more advanced urban characteristics; some scholars
claim these settlements as early cities. Th e Maya territory at
this point in time comprised numerous towns and villages.
Th e region around contemporary Guatemala City was char-
acterized by a distribution of villages in relation to a large
central town called Kaminaljuyú, which was believed to fea-
ture a core of several hundred temple mounds at its apex.
In South America evidence of maize cultivation and
sedentism in Colombia and Ecuador occurs as early as 3200
b.c.e., and in Peru there is evidence of permanent village oc-
cupation at least as far back as 5000 b.c.e. at a site near the
valley of the Chilca River. Analyses there have confi rmed the
existence of a permanent village of oval pit-houses apparently
not founded on agriculture but on the effi cient harvesting of
the wild resources of the coast. By about 3000 b.c.e. Huaca
Prieta, a modest fi shing village on the north coast of Peru,
had taken hold, with evidence there showing extraordinarily
complex development of fi ber arts. By about 2000 b.c.e. at
least 100 villages like Huaca Prieta had been established along
the Peruvian coast. Peruvian settlements with monumental
architecture and more substantial population centers, indi-
cating town-level development, include Caral, Asia, Salinas
de Chao, El Paraíso, La Galgada, and Kotosh.See also agriculture; architecture; borders and
frontiers; building techniques and materials; cit-
ies; climate and geography; crafts; death and burial
practices; economy; family; government organization;
health and disease; hunting, fishing, and gathering;
inventions; metallurgy; migration and populationmovements; mining, quarrying, and salt making; no-
madic and pastoral societies; sacred sites; settlement
patterns; social organization; storage and preserva-
tion; trade and exchange; transportation.FURTHER READING
James C. Anderson, Roman Architecture and Society (Baltimore,
Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
Norman Bancroft -Hunt, Historical Atlas of Ancient America (New
York: Checkmark Books, 2001).
Gwendolyn Leick, Mesopotamia: Th e Invention of the City (London:
Penguin, 2003).
Susan Keech McIntosh and Roderick J. McIntosh, “Jenne-jeno, an
Ancient African City.” Available online. URL: http://www.ruf.
rice.edu/~anth/arch/brochure/. Downloaded on August 7, 2007.
Oswyn Murray and Simon Price, eds., Th e Greek City from Homer
to Alexander (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1990).
Marc Van de Mieroop, Th e Ancient Mesopotamian City (Ox ford:
Clarendon Press, 1997).
J. B. Ward-Perkins, Cities of Ancient Greek and Italy: Planning in
Classical Antiquity (New York: George Braziller, 1974).▶ trade and exchange
introduction
Systems of trade and exchange in the ancient world required
fi rst that civilizations had desirable goods to trade, goods that
were otherwise unavailable to the trading partner. With the
advent of agriculture and the rapid shift from nomadic hunt-
ing and gathering to more settled, permanent communities,
most trade involved agricultural goods. Th us, as towns and
cities emerged, those communities traded with outlying ag-
ricultural areas for food and other agricultural products like
wool. In exchange, they provided desirable goods produced
by craft speople, including tools, leatherwork, pottery, rope,
and numerous other items that would be useful in a rural ag-
ricultural community.
Later, other types of goods were commonly traded, par-
ticularly aft er the discovery of metals. First copper, then
bronze (a copper-tin alloy), and fi nally iron became the basis
of trade and exchange in many parts of the world. Economic
activity was by no means limited to farm products and met-
alwork. In time, a wide range of commodities were traded, in-
cluding glass and glasswork, jewelry, gold and silver objects,
minerals, perfumes, dyes, silks, amber, oils such as olive oil,
salt, herbs and spices, lumber, furniture, decorative objects,
and many other types of goods.
Usually, the basis for trade was little diff erent from its
basis in modern life. One civilization discovered that it had
resources that other civilizations wanted or that its craft s-
men had developed a particular genius for producing cer-
tain types of goods. Th us, for example, Lebanon discovered
that its cedar trees were in great demand because the lum-
ber is easily worked and cedar’s natural oils made the woodtrade and exchange: introduction 10950895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1095 1095 10/10/07 2:31:03 PM