| Original Message: Re: How Trade Happens |
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Hi Pip, It would be hard to know if Chinese traders brought stone beads from India to China; or if Indian traders brought them in; or if the beads just migrated—by the process of changing hands between people who lived close together in a chain that went from India to China. Trade can be a local situation, in which movement is slow, and the better beads often don't travel as far as the less-good beads. Or it can be facilitated by a trader who travels great distances, meeting people at favored centers, who have also come from a great distance. Import/export entrepots have been great facilitators of trade between people who are far apart. I have remarked a number of times, the origin of the Silk Route ( or "Road") was based on the exchange of goods between the Persian and Chinese empires. This happened at a time when there was very little formal trade between sellers and receivers, but rather represented the exchange of goods between rulers and the elite. But eventually, caravans formed, great quantities of goods were moved around, and many people—including ordinary or not-high-class people—benefitted. Around 500 BCE, glass beads from the Mediterranean, including the popular and often seen Phoenician (or "Phoenician style") stratified eye beads, were sent as far away as China—and they are now recovered from Chinese excavations. (I am a primary proponent of the idea that this trade, and exposure to these beads, instigated the making of Warring States Period glass beads in China. I think the beads themselves support this idea.) So yes, I do think foreign beads would have occasionally or often found their way to contemporary Chinese graves—to be recovered later. Unfortunately, I also think that many newly moved old beads wind up in China, and are falsely claimed to have been recovered there from archaeologically significant or just ancient sites (when they were not). Jamey All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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