Once a status good, or a category of them, has been fully exploited and has become cheap enough to be bought by everybody and incorporated into the normal way of life of all families, it then becomes a good with a low profit margin with little significant effect on the overall economic system. It simply keeps the machine ticking over.

In modern times, it is reasonably easy to identify what is, or has recently been, a status good . For example, the motor car was a status good in the early years of the 20th century, owned only by the rich and was still considerably so by the 1930s and 40s. By the turn of the next century, however, the car had become just a standard consumer good, owned and used by almost every family, whether rich or poor, and even by unemployed people. During the whole of its lifetime, with profit margins becoming lower from decade to decade, but sales becoming more than commensurately larger, the car has been has been a very significant status good indeed. Today, however, it is produced by large firms with scarcely any profit margin whatsoever. Indeed, at the time of writing, at least two major multinational firms whose names are known all over the world, are the edge of bankruptcy and it's touch-and-go whether they will survive.

What about an ocean-going luxury yacht, such as that owned by Larry Ellison, the boss of Oracle and several more very rich individuals? It is certainly a sign of high status because only very few people can afford to buy and run these monsters. But while it is certainly a status symbol it isn't quite the status good within the definition I'm adopting for my book. Unless an awful lot of unlikely things happen (such as millions of berths and dockside facilities being developed for a mass market in all developed countries), the production of luxury yachts will never have more than a microscopic effect on the economic growth of a country. Of course, there is a sizeable market in small sailing boats and launches and, in terms of investment, profits and numbers of jobs, the industry producing them is not to be despised, but it is still a minority pursuit because, obviously, more consumers live inland rather than on or near coastlines.

The long distance trading of pigments and ochres 75,000 years ago seems to modern peolple to be such a trivial event and of little consequence except as a quaint habit of early man. However, bodily adornment -- body painting, tattoos or jewellery -- is what is known as a 'universal' by anthropologists. It is always to be found in hunter-gatherer tribes and, indeed, in almost all modern humans. Even in the case of a modern male, such as myself, who personally eschews any sort of personal adornment, he does, at least have his hair cut or, as in my case, an occasional trim of his beard (when I remember!).

Back to early man, the fact that ochres for personal adornment (with some casual cave paintings thrown in as spare time doodles) were traded over very long distances far beyond the tribal or group boundary means that such pigments must have been of the greatest importance. The evidence is that they were traded long before such items as extremely sharp flint, such as obsidian, useful for weapons and tools. It is likely that trading in these items didn't occur for tens of thousands of years after pigments were traded. The reality is that, for tens of thousands of years, the trading of ochres between groups or tribes was the totality of their economic system. There was nothing else that they needed to trade because everything else for daily survival was available. Ochres of various colours were early man's only status good, the only motivation which initated trading and then declined only when ochres became widespread and other enticing status goods, such as beads, shells and stones with enticing colours, were added.

Not all status goods will have had equal power in driving their respective economic systems, and all status goods will have varying velocities of wider acceptance, some being major players and others minor players . In my book, it is not going to be possible to identify the complete list of status goods from 75,000 years ago until today. I am sure that many of the early status goods following pigments will have been made of organic materials such as wood or cotton/wool fibres which have left no remains that archaeologists can identify. Nevertheless, I am hoping that I'll be able to spotlight enough examples of status goods at unusually vigorous periods of economic development to make my case.

One big problem to be faced is that one type of good, weaponry, also gets invented from time to time and invariably plunges people into warfare which then bangs peaceful trading and normal economic development on the head for shorter or longer long periods of time. Many if not most of the hunter-gatherer tribes, such as the Yanomoto in South America, were, until very recently (and perhaps still are) very frequently at war with one another. But, after some sort of retribution has been exacted, the tribes concerned resume peaceful, if tgense, relationships and normal trading, particularly of girls who have reached child-bearing age, resumes between them. But, in agricultural and historical times, say since about 5,000 BC in central and eastern EuroAsia, city-states or empires can take a long time to recover after warfare. Sometimes, a previously thriving region never recovers. (China is recovering its former prosperity, but this is about the only example of a major civilisation so far in man's history.) Any particular region, thus passes through three broad types of historical events

1. peaceful and vigorous trading and economic development during peacetime;

2. wartime, when trade largely ceases and economies gear themselves mainly to the production of weapons;

3. peaceful, but moribund, economic existence as the region slowly recovers if it is possible for resource reasons.

With luck, the third period in the above sequence recycles to the first again. In history, though, this doesn't happen very often because the resource base on which the economy of the previous civilisation no longer exists. Thus, although we can trace the development and accumulation of certain categories of status good within a peaceful historical period, a sharp discontinuity takes place if further economic development is interrupted by a major war. Afterwards, a very different sequence of resources and status goods takes place and, more often than not with a brand economic actors -- countries, regions, types of business organisations -- on the scene.

It is an intriguing, albeit sombre, thought that if there are going to be major wars in the coming years because of shortage of cheap oil and gas, and great devastation ensues, then it is likely that a new energy technology and a quite new retinue of status goods for the consumer will become evident.

Keith Hudson