Trade in locally produced commodities falls into two categories: goods which are consumed within the network and those which are part of long-distance trade to Sulawesi, Java, or elsewhere. A trading system is composed of one or more networks and is characterized by a set of linkages which theoretically permit its reproduction over time through both a geographical and social division of labor. In the Moluccas local trading networks tend to be confined to single islands, small island groups, and stretches of coast and hinterland. In the Moluccas the density of network connections has for a long time been infinitely greater along coasts and between small nearby islands than between the coast and the interior, and this has been closely linked to a high interdependency of local populations. It is becoming ever more difficult to argue that even the most isolated human population and its immediate environment can be treated as an unproblematic self-reproducing closed system.