The study of ancient economies has long been a central theme in archaeological research. Lying at the intersection of human behavior and material goods, economy can often provide a theoretical basis for connecting features and artifacts with larger scale traits in prehistoric societies. Economic approaches to prehistory have the promise of bridging the premodern individuals and institutions of anthropological study with their material remains in a quantifiable way in order to examine processes such as change in subsistence, intensification, and exchange.

A fundamental question in economic anthropology concerns the cross-cultural applicability of economic models developed primarily for explaining behavior in Western, market-oriented societies. In the past 50 years economic anthropology has witnessed protracted debates between advocates of formal and substantive approaches to economy (Plattner 1989: 10-15). The perspective put forward by formalists is that ancient and non-western societies differ from those of modern capitalist societies in degree but not in kind (Wilk 1996). In contrast, substantivists recognize fundamental differences between ancient or non-capitalist societies and modern economies. These debates have been reconciled to a certain extent with the recognition that the two approaches largely complement each other. The distinct assumptions associated with formal and substantive economics, however, are critical to framing research questions about ancient economy, commodities, and exchange.