Long-Distance Trade in the Americas
Driving Question: How were different regions of the Americas connected by trade in this period?
Long-distance networks of exchange stretched across Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, the Andes, the Amazon Basin, and different regions of North America. These networks weren’t as extensive or dense as those in Afro-Eurasia. Still, people living in the Americas formed long-distance networks that carried goods, ideas, and people across continents.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand how Indigenous communities in the Americas interacted through networks of exchange in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
- Compare how trade networks connected societies in the Americas, and how communities were changed by these connections.
- Employ claim-writing skills to make claims about trade in the Americas.
Vocab Terms:
If you were a thirteenth-century trader in the Americas, what would you sell? Why? Embrace your inner merchant in this activity.
Long-distance trade routes moved goods, people, and ideas across every region of the Americas. These networks were key to shaping Indigenous American societies. Use the article below to both build your understanding of these networks and develop your ability to recognize a claim.
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Guiding Questions
The key here is to have students use the “Long-Distance Trade in the Americas” article and this video together as they consider how trade routes moved across the Americas.
One useful teaching move here is to consider the word center. The video explicitly asks why it’s wrong to think of Chaco as a center, which gives you a chance to help students think in terms of distributed networks and exchange relationships rather than assuming that all important trade networks were run by empires with capitals. This is a good place for comparison to Afro-Eurasia. How do the scale, transport systems, and environmental conditions of American trade routes compare to those across the Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, or Sahara Desert?
Chaco Canyon sat at the heart of an extensive trading system stretching out from the American southwest. Use this video and activity to better visualize the trade routes of the Americas.
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Guiding Questions
Build on your mapping skills and think more broadly about how networks of exchange shaped American communities.
The Caribbean was an important part of a growing center of trade for Indigenous Americans in the precolonial era.
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Guiding Questions
