This paper examines the relationship between social interaction and political and economic organization throughout the Bronze Age in the Aegean. The paper approaches social interaction at several geographic and social scales to explore how systems of intra- and inter-regional exchange affected – and were affected by – changing political, economic, and ideological dynamics between the Minoans, Mycenaeans, and their neighbors. The scales of analysis include: evidence of ‘international exchange’ between the states of the Aegean and their contemporaries in the circum-Mediterranean region; evidence of exchange between different polities within the Aegean; and evidence of exchange within different Mycenaean and Minoan polities. The goal of the paper is to move theoretical discussions of interaction and exchange beyond the general predictions of peer-polity interaction and world systems theory by bringing specific data to bear upon explicit models of political and economic change.