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Global commodities: cosmology and value
Shadreck Chirikure & Abigail J. Moffett
To cite this article: Shadreck Chirikure & Abigail J. Moffett (2023) Global commodities:
cosmology and value, World Archaeology, 55:4, 383-391, DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2023.2445972
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2023.2445972
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EDITORIAL
Global commodities: cosmology and value
Introduction
The core idea behind this special issue of World Archaeology builds on archaeological and anthro-
pological approaches to material culture (Gosden and Marshall 1999; Hoskins 1998, 2006). As
a preface to the contributions that follow, we engage with some of the big, cross-cutting questions
in the archaeology and anthropology of global commodities. Why were similar commodities often
produced, consumed and valued dierently – temporally and spatially – in Africa, Eurasia, Americas
and Australasia? We believe cosmologies, or worldviews, hold the answer. In ancient and modern
societies, value is an attribute that ebbs and ows depending on the place/context of a commodity
in its life history (Gosden and Marshall 1999) and within dierent worldviews (Chirikure forth-
coming). Reconstructing and explaining the networks within which objects circulated, and the
biographies they accumulated in their social lives from the moment of production, through to
exchange, and consumption, require the analytical lenses provided by cosmologies (Brück 2024;
Chirikure forthcoming). It is within the frameworks of cosmology, ancient or modern, that we can
explore how rarity or scarcity and the laws of supply and demand might be activated to determine
a commodity’s shifting values.
As contributions to these two special issues demonstrate, commodities such as glass beads
(Casimiro, Duarte, and Iglésias 2024; McLay et al. 2024), obsidian in New Guinea (Golitko and
Torrence 2024), porcelain (Zhang 2024), cacao (Sampeck and Chirikure 2025) and salt in the
Americas (Millhauser 2024) circulate through networks of exchange and consumption, creating
links between producers, traders, and consumers; acquiring or losing value over time, across space,
and between people. Unlike modern economic theory, which calculates such changes of value in
terms of monetary equivalence and renders commodities fungible objects have long been
acknowledged to have a ‘social life’ (Appadurai 1986) and acquire ‘cultural biographies’ (Kopyto
1986). Commodities can be thought of in terms of mutability as they move in and out of commodity
status, and in any specic context, their worth reects the corresponding ‘regimes of value’.
Diering world-views account for why the papers in these two special issues devoted to commod-
ities demonstrate materials assumed dierent values and signicances, dependent on society, even
when societies were part of the same networks of exchange.
Cosmology (and not exchange) as source of value
What makes cosmology or world-view central to the value of global commodities? Worldviews
provide ways of being, seeing, ordering, making and contemplating worlds (Chirikure forth-
coming; Kanu 2013; Mbiti 1969). The values of commodities are determined by cultural logics,
tastes and aesthetics, making them a derivative of worldview. It is cosmology that explains why
the ancient Chinese valued jade more than gold, a metal highly valued in ancient Egypt and the
adjacent areas of the Middle East and Levant (So 2019). In ancient sub-Saharan Africa, copper
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2023, VOL. 55, NO. 4, 383–391
https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2023.2445972
© 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
was more valuable than gold (Herbert 1984), while the diamonds which sustain modern
economies of countries such as Botswana were neither known nor valued. Ironworking technol-
ogies did not exist in the Americas before Columbus, and humans in Africa, south of the Sahara,
worked iron before tin, bronze and gold (Chirikure 2015). In the Middle East and other parts of
Eurasia, metalworking began with copper, then transitioned to bronze and iron. Values are not
limited to economic concerns, but embrace sensory aspects and aesthetics including texture,
touch, colour and appearance. The physical characteristics of natural and articial materials,
including crystals, shells and minerals have appealed to many dierent cosmologies in the past
(Chirikure and Bray forthcoming). Seashells (e.g. cowries), especially shiny, white-coloured types,
were exchanged across Asia, Africa, and later the Americas where they performed the role of
currency, and commodity, with aesthetic and symbolic signicance (Moett and Hall 2020;
Moett et al. 2022; Sampeck and Chirikure 2025). This centrality of cosmology explains why
trajectories of manipulating materials and technologies dier across cultures, places and time.
These sequences conrm that technological development is neither linear nor progressive and
that how humans perceive the world determines how they make sense of and engage with it in
their lives (Chirikure and Bray forthcoming).
Commodities might also pass through cultural lters, and sometimes only those that appealed to
local cosmologies were accepted (Chirikure 2014; Moett and Chirikure 2016; Thomas 1991). Igor
Kopyto’s (1986) concept of cultural biography has been invaluable to interpretation for nearly 40
years in his arguments commodities acquire layers of history and value as they pass through
networks, making object biographies situational and contingent. The cultural biography of objects
thus reects dierent cosmologies, and by extension values, explaining why commodities moved or
did not move, and why they were valued dierently in various societies. One of the oft-cited
examples of early global trade involves the exchange of southern African gold for glass beads
from the Indian Ocean (Chirikure 2014). If one adopts the value system of the present – where gold is
highly valuable, and glass beads are nearly worthless – exchanging beads for gold appears to be
a striking example of unequal exchange. By taking a cosmological lens, however, it becomes
apparent that people in southern Africa had no use for gold, but red materials, such as copper,
were highly valued, as the colour was considered appealing to the ancestors (Herbert 1984) and
attributed medicinal value. Cosmology creates links between exchange and value, allowing the
politics of value (sensu Appadurai 1986) and its supply-and-demand extension to come into play.
Commodities have agency (Hoskins 2006); materials have aordances (Ingold 2007) and aective
qualities (Bennett 2010).
Cosmologies, the global and glocalization
Globalization refers to the process of becoming global; it is demonstrated through interconnections
across varied distances (Jennings 2011). Globalization has existed for millennia and taken many
forms (Beaujard 2019). As a result, the nested development and intensication of connections
between various regions or societies and the commodities exchanged must be understood in
pluralistic ways (Dreher, Gaston, and Martens 2008). We often conceptualize the global today to
denote dense interconnections between many points on the planet. Hodos (2017) puts forward the
potent idea that global should not be taken literally, rather it should refer to the known world at any
given time and place of past societies. Extending Hodos (2017) formulation, denitions of global and
globalization are derivatives of cosmology. In one regard, a society’s known world is shaped by its
technologies of mobility and communication. However, technology is, in turn, a means of imprinting
384 EDITORIAL
a worldview or cosmology onto the landscape and universe (Chirikure forthcoming). Technologies
developed for specic tasks, such as mobility, can thus be argued to be functions of worldviews
(Tresch 2007).
Although globalization can homogenize cultures, it simultaneously dierentiates them locally
what Appadurai (1996) refers to as glocalization. This variability is evident clearly in papers in these
two special issues, which present examples of commodities that connect societies in widely
dispersed regions and cultural settings: metal in Africa and Europe (Brück 2024; Chirikure, Killick,
and Stephens 2024; Sampeck and Chirikure 2025); glass in Australia, Africa and Eurasia (Casimiro,
Duarte, and Iglésias 2024; McLay et al. 2024); obsidian in New Guinea (Golitko and Torrence 2024);
Chinese ceramics (Zhang 2024); cacao in the Americas and Europe (Sampeck and Chirikure 2025);
salt in the Americas (Millhauser 2024). Some commodities, such as tobacco, are associated with
diseases which have also been glocalized and left marks on human remains (Casna, Davies-Barrett,
and Schrader 2024).
In the present capitalist world, globalization is generally used as an encompassing term for the
growing integration of markets, rapid homogenization and local dierentiation, accumulation of
capital, spread of technological advancements and the associated transformations of economic,
political, and cultural foundations of society (Appadurai 1996; Dreher, Gaston, and Martens 2008).
Elements of this denition of globalization, however, have been present since the deep past. New
Kingdom (1550–1070 BCE) scarabs in Nubia attest to global networks extending to the eastern
Mediterranean (Lemos 2024). Less familiar is intra-African globalization represented for example by
the circulation of ostrich eggshell beads as early as 30,000 years |BP to c. 2000 years ago (Sampeck
and Chirikure 2025). Indian Ocean globalization is evident in the exchange of glass beads (Casimiro,
Duarte, and Iglésias 2024) and Celadon ceramics (Zhang 2024). In New Guinea, obsidian was a global
commodity whose dynamics of circulation changed with the advent of European colonialism
(Golitko and Torrence 2024).
Global commodities, knowledge transfer and networks
How do networks of global commodities form, and with what consequences in terms of knowledge
transfer? Networks are established when people want to access things, knowledge and persons in
areas other than their own. In one possible model, as nearby resources get depleted, the need to
access resources not available in the locality might become increasingly necessary, stimulating
advances in production technologies, mobility technologies, and socioeconomic organization
(Chirikure forthcoming). Yet networks are not driven by purely functional means; connections are
often embedded within social relationships and driven by belief systems (Brück 2024; Chirikure,
Killick, and Stephens 2024). Some pieces of the earliest evidence for the exploitation of red iron
oxides (Fe
2
O
3
) as ochre and pigments was recovered from the Southern Cape of South Africa
100,000 years ago (C. S. Henshilwood et al. 2011; McGrath, MacDonald, and Stalla 2022), around
the time-scale and in the same region when and where white perforated shells may have been used
as pendants or beads marking the establishment of symbolic thought and materially visible
cosmologies (C. Henshilwood et al. 2004). Around 10,000 years ago in the Middle East, carbonates
of copper such as green-banded malachite (CuCO(OH)were shaped to make beads and pendants
for personal adornment and for symbolic purposes, with the reduction of oxides and carbonates of
copper to produce usable metallic copper following much later (Radivojević et al. 2010). In fact, Cyril
Stanley-Smith (1981) argued that the beginning of metallurgy was prompted more by the smell,
colour and sound of metals, than by functional needs. The deep blue colour of lapis lazuli was highly
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY 385
valued in the Middle East and adjacent regions, precipitating global supply networks extending to
Afghanistan (Shortland 2012). If the natural supply and demand were present, the drive to continue
mining and exchanging this blue stone continued. Issues in supply, however, likely prompted the
invention of an articial material – glass – as a substitute for lapis lazuli in Mesopotamia and ancient
Egypt. Glass ranks as one of the most signicant inventions arising out of the human desire to
produce articial materials mimicking the colour of natural minerals (Shortland 2012). Once dis-
covered, the prestigious technology of glass working was initially closely guarded and restricted to
a few centres. As millennia passed, and as humans traded and exchanged things and ideas, coloured
glass became embedded in the value systems of most societies in Afro-Eurasia. From the 1500s, for
example, Europeans were making glass beads for trade in Africa and elsewhere, reaching Oceania by
the 19th century (McLay et al. 2024).
Along global networks, it was not just commodities that were produced and exchanged; knowl-
edge and skills were also transferred (Chirikure 2015; Chirikure, Killick, and Stephens 2024). To
produce something, you must have knowledge, but to consume something, you also need knowl-
edge, although the knowledge of the user and the producer may dier (Chirikure 2014). Throughout
their life of use, global commodities were associated with innovation, imitation, invention and
intermediary processes combining all the three into one. Invention is the act of creating a new
commodity; innovation involves improving a pre-existing technology or product better, while
imitation is about copying principles observed in earlier or alien technologies, to produce similar
or related objects (Berg 2002). In practice, however, imitation may combine one’s own creativity and
knowledge with prior technologies which can stimulate invention or innovation both in process and
products. Some of the greatest inventions and innovations in history resulted from a specic type of
imitation known as skeuomorphism the reproduction of a form or shape of natural crystals,
materials or even shells using articial materials (Berg 2002; Blitz 2015). Skeuomorphic techniques,
however, develop to meet demand. When Europeans joined the Indian Ocean trade and exchange
system via the Atlantic Ocean, knowledge of the cosmology, tastes and aesthetics of people in Africa
and Asia enabled Europeans to imitate commodities for exchange in these places (Chirikure 2020a).
The Pitt Rivers Museum has on displays a sizable collection of these cone imitations collected from
dierent parts of Africa, as well as from the Pacic in the early 20
th
century. By focusing on objects
that tted the cultural logics and worldviews of people in the Americas, Africa and Asia, Europeans
created a market for products from their industries (Berg 2002). Europeans were often told ‘not to
worry much about getting things European to the Chinese, but rather about getting remarkable
Chinese inventions to us; otherwise, little prot will be derived from the China mission’ (Berg 2002, 6,
quoting Leibniz). In the end, by targeting cultural logics and developing an ability to produce
commodities in demand, the Europeans became extremely successful in production and distribu-
tion, thereby raising the spectre of the Needham question (Wang 2024) why did Europe and not
China industrialize rst given the latter’s advanced technologies? Consequently, one of the major
strengths of archaeology as discipline is the ability to esh out and even complicate our under-
standing of global commodities, knowledge transfer and networks in relation to the emergence of
the ‘modern world’ (by this we mean the era conventionally understood to be the period to which
‘global history’ and ‘Globalization’ apply) and take understanding beyond accounts based primarily
on texts. Indian-Ocean-based Globalization was deep rooted, preceding Europe’s direct involve-
ment by two millennia (Chirikure, Killick, and Stephens 2024; Zhang 2024).
The contributions to these two special issues on Commodities show that archaeology is essential
for understanding the value and agency of global commodities in the recent and distant pasts of
Africa, Europe, Asia, the Americas and Australasia. These contributions shed light on the transfer of
386 EDITORIAL
technologies and networks of knowledge, both often guided by context-specic cosmologies. These
issues show that global commodities and their circulation can provide insight into the dierent
economies of past societies. By using a dierent analytical framework one that engages in the
value systems of commodities as they move around the world we can bring technologies and
economic processes taking place in dierent parts of the world into dialogue with each other,
providing an expanded lexicon for understanding connections between cosmology, trade and
commodity circulation.
Working with global commodities
In dierent ways, the contributions to these two special issues, engaging with homogenization and
convergence driven by globalization, and the dierences were simultaneously produced by the
same processes. The passages of commodities from one worldview to another emerge in all
contributions with diering degrees of emphasis. Sampeck and Chirikure (2025) provide
a comparative understanding of the mutability and fungibility of cacao, a global commodity that
served as a currency and food within the Americas, but revolutionized cuisine in Europe after
crossing the Atlantic. This created networks in which cacao, in its raw and processed form, became
important globally, and whose production and exchange involved the transfer of tastes, technology
and aesthetics (Norton 2010). Tobacco, another plant from the New World, previously used in ritual
and ceremonial settings, became a transcontinental commodity, produced in plantations and
shipped to Europe for making cigarettes. Tobacco, like cacao, was central to dening new tastes
in Europe, and introduced new diseases which impacted populations (Casna, Davies-Barrett, and
Schrader 2024). These global commodities had local impacts in regions such as Latin America, and
embedded health consequences in the consuming populations of Europe, and the world today. The
examples of cacao and tobacco, show networks fuelled by capitalist cosmologies and hyper-
consumption demonstrating how local tastes might morph into transcontinental desires marketed
by large global corporations. Capitalism, past and present, thrives on the exploitation of the local,
magnifying the scale for wider distribution and prots.
In these special issues, salt, for example, a widely used commodity but one which leaves
little evidence of consumption, is used to explore how salt-making economies were created
and ourished during the Late Postclassic (ca. 1350–1521 CE) and Early Colonial (ca.
1521–1650 CE) periods in New Spain (Millhauser 2024). Capitalist cosmologies became
deeply entrenched in this area of technology, and producers responded by reinventing
themselves, changing with moving times and cultural biographies. At the heart of this
resilience was a possession of knowledge, and skills that were transferable to any changed
circumstance in a network of communities dependent on the product and network. Shifting
to Papua New Guinea, Golitko and Torrence (2024) address objects with obsidian tips and
blades that were made by locals but became desired by European collectors. As demand
increased, new innovations were made alterations in production strategies and promoting
access to new sources of obsidian. These contributions demonstrate the value of scientic
techniques in identifying networks of circulation and associated values, as colonialism and
museum collecting ramped up demand beyond existing needs. In a colonial context, McLay
et al. (2024) engage with late 19
th
-century European glass beads recovered from the
‘Dillybag site’ near Laura, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. These demonstrate preferences
for the customary colours of red, white, and black beads, indicating enduring indigenous
cosmologies in the aftermath of invasion by colonialists. Brück (2024) discusses long-distance
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY 387
trade in bronze and other materials during the European Bronze Age and highlights linkages
between cosmology and other elements of life. She emphasizes the inappropriateness of
using capitalist or proto-capitalist logics to describe these communities, demonstrating the
importance of context in discussing global commodities across space and time. Chirikure,
Killick, and Stephens (2024) focus on the potential of scientic techniques in reconstructing
circulation systems and networks of global commodities: long-distance exchanges of iron
hoes, copper ingots and ostrich eggshell beads fullled, as mediated by dierent cosmolo-
gies, quotidian and luxury desires in ancient southern and central Africa between 500 and
1500 CE. They show that within Africa glocalization must be considered alongside that based
on the Indian Ocean to develop a nuanced understanding of the past. All these aspects of
commodities, as products of cosmology, can productively be incorporated into archaeologi-
cal enquiry. However, a degree of self-awareness/reexivity is needed. The way we approach
global commodities in the past and present is determined by our own world view, which
often shapes our intellectual position, epistemologies, and the vocabularies and grammars
that we use. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but we must be alert to it, as it is
fundamental to our analysis and interpretations. Even more importantly, archaeology is
central to taking discussions of global commodities into the deep past well beyond the
scope of global history.
Concluding thoughts
What questions can we ask of global commodities, collectively and as individual objects such
as a bead, a manilla, or cone of a shell? How about the remains of plants and plant-based
products, such as cacao, chocolate, coee, and tobacco? A lens that unites cosmologies with
the cultural biographical approach includes a long-excluded and yet fundamental variable in
understanding why the same object has dierent values for dierent regions, and why some
commodities are valued in one society but not the other. That variable is the local to supra-
regional world view or cosmology that provides a critical context for evaluation. The contribu-
tions to this volume focus on dierent places and time periods from the Bronze Age in
Europe to the historical era in the Americas and deep time in Africa. While the analytical
approaches may dier, the contribution of science to explorations of cultural biographies of
objects cannot be doubted. It is now possible, within limitations, to identify sources and
origins of materials, to track the movement of objects, and to model trajectories of change in
value and meaning in dierent parts of these networks. Global commodities and their value
cannot be separated from these prevailing cosmologies which generate social, political, or
cultural norms and technologies. As these special issues demonstrate, commodities are
a pathway for understanding diering social, technological, and institutional situations world-
wide, in the past and present. Cosmology determines value, but we must avoid imposing
recent capitalist worldviews as a basis for interpretation for communities in the deep and even
recent past.
Acknowledgments
As editors, we deeply appreciate the inputs of all contributors and anonymous reviewers – which collec-
tively gave life to an exciting but long overdue compilation. Francesca Bray generously and warmly
provided vital anthropological critiques and made extensive edits to this paper. SC sincerely acknowledges
388 EDITORIAL
Francesca’s unwavering support, and friendship. The feedback and ideas received from Chris Gosden,
Lambros Malafouris, Sarah Semple and Ann B. Stahl are acknowledged with sincere gratitude. We are
grateful as well to the Assistant Editors, Chris Davis and Ahmad Mohammed, for additional work on this
contribution.
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390 EDITORIAL
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Shadreck Chirikure
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, School of Archaeology, University of
Oxford, Oxford, UK
Human Evolution Research Institute and Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town,
Cape Town, South Africa
Shadreck.chirikure@arch.ox.ac.uk http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2183-4253
Abigail J. Moett
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Department of Archaeology, University of
Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3236-8267
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY 391
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