Sorry, no links because I forgot where I read this.

Apparently, there was an advanced, pre-agricultural society based in the Danube River valley. They made wonderful pottery and copper and gold artifacts. We know they had an extensive network of contacts because we've found their artifacts distributed over a wide range, and in a lot of places where these folks weren't.

Apparently they didn't go in for monumental architecture, but they buried some of their dead with lots of snazzy pottery and gold doo-dads.

On the basis of these "noble burials," the anthropologists quoted in the blurb I read concluded that their economy was not not based on commerce, but on heroic gift giving of these high-status goods (think of the feasting scenes from Homer).

Say what?

This culture buried some of their dead with rich grave goods. My grandfather was buried in a pair of Big Smith overalls with a pack of Juicy Fruit in his pocket. Based on his grave, would anthropologists assume we have no commerce, and are rather poor?

What is it about rich grave goods in a few graves that would have precluded a skilled flint-knapper from specializing and trading his excess arrow heads for a venison haunch from a particularly skilled hunter?

Call "heroic gift giving," or whatever you want, but isn't a wide-spread trade network in fine pottery and jewelry--things other cultures were NOT making at this time--prima facie evidence for exchange?

Maybe there's a lot more evidence that these people didn't trade, but the blurb didn't mention it. I doubt it. "The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men...," as Adam Smith told us. Exchange in a pre-literate society won't leave much record for anthropologists to find after 7000 years. I'm happy to accept that there is little to no evidence of specialization and exchange among these people, but to conclude that trading was not a significant part of this culture?

Unwarranted conclusion, sirs; unwarranted.