Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

366 13. specialized production and exchange
way materially better off (and maybe also happier) under one dispensation
than under another. This was not necessarily the case, because, while
archaeology gives us a good indication of the availability and diffusion of
some consumer durables (bricks, pottery, etc.) and some cash-crops, it does
not give us an accurate picture of individual diet, individual health or the
amount of individual effort needed to sustain these. It is perfectly possible
that peasants in sixth-century Britain, living in wooden huts and using only
hand-shaped pottery, or nomads in seventh-century North Africa, living a
pastoral life in tents, ate better, lived longer, worked less and perhaps felt
better than did their Roman predecessors tied into a market-economy,
despite their fine pottery, their solid houses and the coins jangling in their
purses.
There is, at present, no satisfactory way of measuring these experiences
against each other; and our view of them inevitably reflects the mixed feelings
that we, from a position of great privilege, hold towards the extreme
complexity and materialism of the modern world. If we did want to know
more about individual physical well-being and longevity, we would have to
put more effort into establishing the study of human bones on a sure footing
and on recovering datable and well-preserved groups of skeletons. Perhaps
we might then know who lived healthier and longer lives – though even then
we would not know who had to work the hardest and who was ‘happiest’.
It is therefore important to realize that in these pages ‘poor’ and ‘rich’
necessarily refer to ‘poor’ and ‘rich’ in those material objects which are
readily identifiable archaeologically. Because these words are problematic, I
have often tried to use more specific and less loaded terms to describe economic
conditions: in particular, ‘economic complexity’ or ‘sophistication’
and its opposite, ‘economic simplicity’. These terms do not imply that
everyone was in every way ‘better off’ within a sophisticated economy, but
merely that they were tied into a more complex network of economic activity,
which allowed for more specialization of production and more
exchange, both locally and over long distances.
There is, of course, a relationship between complexity and wealth, but it
is a relationship that does not necessarily favour the individual, particularly
the individual at the bottom of society. A complex economy, because it
allows different areas and groups of people to specialize in producing crops
or goods that they are perhaps particularly suited to grow or make, can
undoubtedly support a larger population, give wider access to specialized
products and produce more overall, than an economy in which each
peasant community produces its own beer, its own tools, its own pots, etc.
It will therefore make for a ‘richer’, more variegated and more specialized
region. However, as we well know from nineteenth-century experience in
Europe and twentieth-century experience elsewhere, this does not necessarily
mean that all individuals within a complex system are ‘better off’.
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