DISCUSSION

Many theorists have tried to understand the origins of the market; these theories have often arisen in economic thought and are quite varying, due to the fact that no one facet of what is considered a market—or a market system—is agreed upon, as with the confusion over the concept of “emergence” (Beaulier and Prychitko 2006). In the economic development narrative, however, there is no mention of feasting paradigms. Rather, these paradigms argue normatively, after Adam Smith, that agriculture led to surplus and the creation of wealth, which led to trade, private property, and the market system. Also, economic treatises of feasting mechanisms have recently argued that feasting is insurance against theft. These two narratives, as I will address below, fail the anthropological and archaeological evidence for the emergence/maintenance of regular long-distance trade.

Economic textbooks often mythicize a period of bartering as the mode of pre-currency exchange (Graeber 2014), as popularized by Adam Smith (1982). Smith’s emphasis on the natural division of labor surmises an individualized surplus (i.e., a baker has extra bread, the shoemaker has extra shoes), which is then bartered to meet the needs of the individuals. With the expansion of markets, he argues, metal currency comes to replace bartering as a more effective mechanism for trade. Graeber (2014) traced this idea to the 1500s through the lectures of an Italian banker, Bernardo Davanzati (Waswo 1996). In the modern era, emphasis has been placed on agriculture as this mythical origin to surplus, which catapults the division of labor (see Arnold et al. 2015 for discussion).

Anthropological work, however, has long denied the reality of such an institutional system of pre-currency bartering (Mauss 1969) as well as the necessity for agriculture to create surplus (Arnold et al. 2015). As Humphrey (1985, 48) emphasizes, “No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing.” Rather, bartering arises out of complex situations in which other forms of exchange predominate (Chapman 1980), such as when currency systems are considered unreliable (Humphrey 1985). Chagnon (1968, 100) states that, for the Yanomano, “a prerequisite to stable alliance is repetitive visiting and feasting, and the trading mechanism serves to bring about these visits,” though the trading aspects are downplayed in the social and political theatre of the feast. Feasting is the explicitly understood reason for inter-group peaceful celebration; like the Kula Ring phenomenon (Malinowski 1922), the bartering and trades are (necessary) by-products of feasting societies.

The archaeological record also negates this narrative of surplus leading to bartering leading to extensive trade and currency. Little evidence for the division of labor exists for the majority of prehistory, and when specialized labor

(such as pottery production or spiritual practice) does arise, it’s within the framework of feasting exchange systems, which predate agricultural regimes. If the individualized or communal accumulation of surplus was required for the development of long-distance trade and markets, archaeologists should find storage features that predate or co-currently arise with evidence of trade. This is not so. Toyah feasts, for example, show that incredible amounts of food were cooked at feasting events, but the ceramics are seldom larger than individual bowls. The storage pits that contain Toyah remains are no larger than the non-feasting peoples’ of the Archaic before them. Bartering likely also occurred within these prehistoric societies, as Chapman (1980) argues, precisely because another form of exchange (feasting) predominated and facilitated the peaceful interaction of different groups. This regularized opportunity for bartering helped solidify relationships as formalized trading institutions. In other terms, the institution of feasting lowers the transaction cost (Heady 2005, 264-65) for economic and social exchange by providing a rationale for the peaceful gathering of disparate groups.

Beyond narratives of economic development that neglect feasting activities, some economic treatises of feasting have characterized the tradition as a rational expression of adherence to property rights (Johnsen 1986; Leeson

2014). In this narrative, the costly action of feasting destroys high-valued goods as a signal of wealth, as well as redistributes wealth as social insurance. These narratives, however, are limited to situations with permanent, settled peoples with preexisting property conceptions and geographically constrained subsistence patterns (i.e., agriculture or anadromous fish). Potlatching in the Pacific Northwest of North America, perhaps the most intensely studied form of feasting, was variable across time and space. To this point, I have avoided the term because I believe, and as Hayden (2014b) makes the distinction, that potlatching is a different mechanism than the competitive feasting discussed here. While potlatching is a form of competitive feast, with the conspicuous consumption and drive for increasing elaboration, the destructive aspect is not seen in the archaeological record. In fact, the destructive aspect of at least Kwakiutl potlatching seems to have been driven to elaboration with European settlement (Johnsen 1986, 47)—a disruption in the social structure of native peoples. Therefore, these narratives are fairly constrained to particular circumstances in which property rights have already been established, and there is some form of social or economic pressure against the system. The longue duree perspective here focuses on the first forms of feasts, where property rights are only territorial rather than institutionalized and formal. Potlatching, Kula Ring, and human sacrifice forms of feasting are fascinating, unique forms of feasts, but due to their situation within complex, sedentary groups, they may well represent those attachments to existing property rights rather than fit within the narrative for the origin of markets.

To take the heart of the argument of the association of conspicuous destruction and feasting, conspicuous destruction is undeniably a signal of wealth, but whether it actually suppresses plunder and theft is unclear in these archaeological contexts. As stated above, these early feasting societies did not have large storage of resources, no long-term storage of surplus (cf. Ingold 1983; Testart et al. 1982). Plundering other groups is relatively rare in hunter-gatherer and non-state societies (Kelly 1995; Leeson 2006)—only under extreme environmental distress or sudden influx of population is systematic violence recorded. And in those times of environmental distress or population pressure, feasting is not practiced (Hayden 2014b).

As indicated above, other paradigms that try to understand the emergence of market properties do not satisfactorily fit the historical and archaeological evidence. The narrative presented here, however, does not mean to imply that feasting was the only mechanism that peoples across time and space have adopted to cope with increasing population density. All of the examples presented here that implemented feasting mechanisms arose from huntinggathering-fishing subsistence patterns during periods of relative climate stability and ecological abundance. To contrast feasting, there is archaeological evidence that conflict arises in periods of stable or increasing population density with unstable climates, particularly among agriculturalists (Benson et al. 2007; Foster 2012). The erupting violence in the Casas Grandes region of the American Southwest (Benson et al. 2007) as well as growing militarization in the Levant in the Bronze Age (Drews 1995) speak to how agriculturally dependent societies descend into warfare following ecological uncertainties and amid population growth.