Market as Place and Space of Economic Exchange: Perspectives from Archaeology and Anthropology - Tapa blanda

In the context of commodification, material culture has particular properties hitherto considered irrelevant or neglected. First, the market is a spatial structure, assigning special properties to the things offered: the goods and commodities. Secondly, the market defines a principle of dealing with things, including them in some contexts, excluding them from others. The contributions to Market as Place and Space address a variety of aspects of markets within the framework of archaeological and anthropological case studies and with a special focus on the indicators of practices attached to the commodities and their valuation.

Hans Peter Hahn is Professor of Social Anthropology at Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt from where he received a doctorate in 1994. His research focuses on West-Africa, material culture, ethnographic museums, comsumption, migration and mobility and globalization. Geraldine Schmitz is a Post-Doctoral researcher in the research training group `Value and Equivalence' in the Institut fur Ethnologie of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt, with special research interests in the anthroplogy and economy of markets, particularly in Ghana.