Economics is indeed an important dimension.

It is however, of interest that few items receive when, curation fails 
the status burial  received by the "major prize" so carefully buried by 
the father in Jean Shepard's Christmas Story.

Interesting how appart from recycling and curation economic status of 
objects stops at the soil.

I suppose there may be an exception as there generally is.

Conrad Bladey
Cartist, Peasant

George Miller wrote:

>     Lyle Browning’s question about prices for staples and farm machinery
>raises an important question that historical archaeologists, for the most
>part, have ignored.  Clearly, we are not in a position to build our own
>price series.  Paul Mullins responded with some important sources on this
>topic.  Understanding the history of prices is important for the study of
>the past.  There is an excellent good book on the subject by David Hackett
>Fischer titled *The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of
>History*published by Oxford University Press in 1996.
>His book reads very well and is a wonderful introduction to the
>subject.  Fischer’s
>book has 15 appendices that are also very readable.  Appendix “O” has an
>interesting comment on the “*International Committee on Prices*” that
>gathered price histories for many cities in several countries.  This work
>began as part of an attempt to build a body of data for understanding the
>impact of depressions and other economic phenomena.
>
>
>
>According to Fischer the type of research and data gathering done by the
>International Committee on Prices in the 1930s and 1940s went out of fashion
>following an article by Jalling Koopmans’ titled “Measurement without
>Theory” in 1947.  This seems to have been the beginning of a movement that
>led to changes in sociology, anthropology, economics and other fields that
>devalued the simple gathering of data such building a price series.  The
>“New Archaeology” of the 1960s with its hypothesis testing was part of that
>wave of justifying research by having a question to be answered and against
>the gathering of data without a question in mind.  Fischer’s book is a good
>defense of the building of price series, as he made excellent hay with price
>series to build his overview of changes through time.  I highly recommend *The
>Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History* for a broader
>insight into history.
>
>
>
>            Arthur Harrison Cole compiled information from the
>“International Committee on Prices” in Wholesale Commodity Prices in the
>United States 1700-1861.  Harvard University Press published his study in
>1938, which was reprinted by Johnson Reprint Corporation in 1969.  Prices
>from some of the cities included those from New York, Philadelphia, New
>Orleans, and Cincinnati.  Cole’s study generated “market baskets” of
>consumable goods and indexed them to periods of economic stability so one
>could see the impact of wars and economic panics on prices.
>
>
>
>Philadelphia prices have been studied extensively by Anne Bezanson and her
>colleagues as can be seen by the following:
>
>
>
>Anne Bezanson, Robert D. Gray, and Miriam Hussey.
>
>1935            *Prices in Colonial Pennsylvania*, University of
>Pennsylvania Press.
>
>1936    *Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia 1784-1861*, University of
>Pennsylvania Press.
>
>
>
>Anne Bezanson
>
>1954            *Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia 1852-1896*, *Colonial
>Pennsylvania*, University of Pennsylvania Press.
>
>Thomas Senior Berry published *Western Prices before 1861*, published in
>1943 by Harvard University Press.  Other studies can be found in the
>bibliographies of Fischer and Cole.
>
>
>
>T. M. Adams produced a study titled “Prices paid by Vermont Farmers for
>goods and services and received by them for farm products, 1790-1940; Wages
>of Vermont Farm Labor, 1780-1940,” published by the Vermont Agricultural
>Experiment Station in February of 1944, Bulletin 107.  This study collected
>price data from account books, invoices and other data and is a good insight
>into the problems of building a price series.
>
>
>
>Here are a couple of other articles that might be of interest.
>
>Ethel D. Hoover
>
>1960    “Retail Prices after 1850” pages 141-190 in *Trends in American
>Economy in the Nineteenth Century: Studies in Income and Wealth*.  Volume 24
>by the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth.  A report of the
>National Bureau of Economic Research, New York, published by Princeton
>University Press
>
>
>
>Gisli Gunnarsson
>
>1976    “A Study in the Historiography of Prices”  pages 124-141 *Economy
>and History* Vol. XIX no. 2, 1976.
>
>
>
>You can gain some insights into the role of country stores in the
>distribution system by reading Thomas D. Clark’s *Pills, Petticoats, &
>Plows: The Southern Country Store*, reprinted by the University of Oklahoma
>Press 1974.  Clark had a large collection of country store account books.  It
>is a fun read, but not much in the way of prices.  For the period of the
>mail order houses I would recommend Boris Emmet and John F. Jeuck’s *Catalogues
>and Counters: A History of Sears, Roebuck and Company*, published by the
>University of Chicago Press in 1950.  It has great information on how Sears
>and Roebuck would place large orders for things like cream separators,
>bicycles, and other manufacture products to gain large price discounts and
>then have large sales of these items at much lower prices.  These discounted
>sales created what might be considered “horizon” events for the widespread
>adoption of things like cream separators and bicycles.  *Catalogues and
>Counters* is also a good read.
>
>
>
>Historical archaeologists need to move beyond being able to identify and
>date objects to seeing the larger picture, and economics can provide an
>important too in that process.
>
>
>
>Peace,
>
>George L. Miller
>
>  
>