ABSTRACT
Many analytical paradigms argue that as particular regions or cultures become intensely engaged in networks of external exchange or entangled with goods and ideas from outside, inter-regional interaction leads to inter-regional integration. This is often constructed as peripheral societies incorporated into a systematized network of dependencies controlled by a dominant core society (Wallerstein 1974; Schortman and Urban 1992, 1994; Frank 1993; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997; Wilkinson et al. 2011), or sometimes merely as peer societies participating in an increasingly homogeneous and, eventually, amalgamative assemblage of material expressions and practices (Caldwell 1964; Dalton 1975; Renfrew and Cherry 1986; Schortman 1989; Hayden and Schulting 1997). Although such processes and congurations indeed occur, these models do not account for instances in which intense inter-regional interactions and exchanges do not engender systemic inter-regional integration or cultural convergence. Archaeologists have thereby begun turning to theories of globalization to help explain local cultural alterations inundated with foreign elements in the contexts of non-amalgamative, cross-cultural transmissions and exchanges (Morris 2006; Pitts 2008; Hodos 2010).
