How did trade work back in the Bronze and Iron Ages?

>>3318091
Village to village. Tribe to tribe. Short distances.

>>3318095
Not OP but I wonder why luxury resources such as silk, precious stones and metals, figurines and statues were so commonly traded if this is the case

>>3318091
In the Med, merchants would make round trips buying and selling, hoping to avoid the Greek pirates en route.

>>3318095
Not always, there is evidence for sailors and merchants going thousands of miles from their homes

>>3318103
they grew bored with it and sold it on

>>3318095

t. Sardinia was never colonized

>>3318112
ONLY BY SIGHT

>>3318109
okay, but why would a tiny village/tribe have any want for luxury items compared to richer city states or border towns within larger conglomerate states (empires)

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>>3318091
Though in actuality we can only speculate if certain individuals or caravans before the bronze-age collapse traveled the distances that we know merchants in antiquity and eventually middle ages did, the idea of buying low and selling high as well as supply and demand certainly existed at those times.

I would go so far as to say that merchant kings would have had maps (astrological, oral, or physical) very well laid out and would have most certainly had a "state-sponsored" caravan. iirc, most of the cuneiform tablets anthropological-archaeologists are related to such trade and business transactions.

actually, does anyone have any good reading related to ancient West-Asian trade routes?

>>3318146
archaeologists have found are related*

>>3318091
How did trade work in palace economies? Did foreign merchants have to approach the king for permission to conduct business?

>>3318103
They were traded slowly, one village after another.

>>3318112
being colonized doesnt mean they had close relationship with the other end of the road.

>>3318112
You could get to Sardinia via Tunisia and the Galite islands quite easily without going more than a few days out of sight of land.

>>3318166
There is evidence for Sardinians in Cyprus during The bronze age, because of the presence of both imported and locally Made Sardinian pottery which held no value since it was much less refined than Mycenean or Cypriot one, same thing with Sicilian and South Italian pottery in The Aegean and Levant

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>>3318160
I have a feeling because of how convoluted the entrance and approach towards the Palace thrown-room is that the King would have definitely wielded enough power to push a sort of mystique nature tied to his (and/or her?) rule.

I can see it now...
>Be ancient leventine tradesmen
>risk piracy and storm with a few ships laden with goods
>travel the length of the southern Anatolian Coast making contact in modern day Rhodes
>These guys are rich as it is pirating and trading along the coast into the Aegean and west towards modern Cyrprus
>Translator reinforces your speculation that the Kings of Crete are always buying.
>Go a few more days south west
>Land on the beaches to a small crowd of deeply tanned topless men and women
>They are shouting with glee recognizing you a trade ship from the east, their first bit of excitement since the bull-jumping festival
>You and your translator and a small detachment are led to this
>Some of your men are too scared to enter a building this size not knowing what sort of beasts may lay inside
>You convince them that the only beasts to be afraid of is other men, and a building that size means the guy inside has got to be $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
>Get led through long winding corridors masking the true size of the building you entered as you lose your sense of direction.
>Finally, enter a shrouded throne-room
>???????
>Profit

>>3318186
I didn't say there wasn't any relationship, but as you mentioned it was irrelevant things, meaning it was slow and not "industrial". Contacts occured at a modest scale (and frankly, given their sailing means it's obvious).