Abstract
Feathers, beads, shells, copper bracelets, and giant stones – objects that western observers have assumed serve the functions of money in so-called simple societies and other non-western contexts – come in all shapes and sizes. This chapter reviews the literature on “primitive” currencies, from early ethnology to contemporary anthropology and archeology. Showing how analysts frequently misunderstood the use of such objects in context, it hones in on the social relationships and political systems those objects operated within and reflects back on the limitations of the western imagination of currency revealed by what collectors call “odd and curious money.” It also takes up the question of whether and how standards determine value and expands the social scientific vocabulary for the diversity of forms of political authority that constitute money.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Basu S, Kirk M, Waymire G (2009) Memory, transaction records, and the wealth of nations. Acc Organ Soc 34:895–917
Bohannan P (1959) The impact of money on an African subsistence economy. J Econ Hist 19:491–503
Collier JF (1988) Marriage and inequality in classless societies. Stanford University Press, Stanford
Cook S (1966) The obsolete anti-market mentality: a critique of the substantive approach to economic anthropology. Am Anthropol 68:323–345
Dalton G (1965) Primitive money. Am Anthropol 67:44–65
Eagleton C, Williams J (2007) Money: a history. British Museum Press, London
Einzig P (1949 [1966]) Primitive money: in its ethnological, historical and economic aspects, 2nd edn. Pergamon Press, Oxford
Firth R (1929) Currency, primitive. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edn. New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Graeber D (1996) Beads and money: notes toward a theory of wealth and power. Am Ethnol 23(1):4–24
Graeber D (2011) Debt: the first 5,000 years. Melville House, New York
Gregory CA (1996) Cowries and conquest: towards a subalternate quality theory of money. Comp Stud Soc Hist 38(2):195–217
Guyer J (2004) Marginal gains: monetary transactions in Atlantic Africa. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Haddon AC (1949) Introduction to A. Hingston Quiggin, a survey of primitive money. Methuen, London, pp vii–viii
Hart K (2000) The memory bank: money in an unequal world. Texere Publishing, Cheshire
Hart K (2005) Notes toward an anthropology of money. Kritikos: an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image, vol 2, June 2005. Available at http://intertheory.org/hart.htm. Last accessed 31 Dec 2017
Hogendorn J, Johnson M (1986) The shell money of the slave trade. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Hudson M (2004) Introduction: the role of accounting in civilization’s economic takeoff. In: Hudson M, Wunsch C (eds) Creating economic order: record-keeping, standardization, and the development of accounting in the ancient near east, vol 4. CDL, Bethesda, pp 1–22
Malinowski B (1921) The primitive economics of the Trobriand islanders. Econ J 31:1–16
Maurer B (2013) David Graeber’s Wunderkammer, debt: the first 5,000 years. Anthropol Forum 23(1):79–93
Mauss M (1925 [2016]) The gift, expanded edition. Selected, edited and translated by Jane I. Guyer. HAU Books, University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Meillassoux C (1975) Femmes, greniers, et capitaux. Editions Maspero, Paris
Michell H (1949) Review of primitive money in its ethnological, historical and economic aspects, by Paul Einzig. Can J Econ Political Sci/Rev Can d’Econ Sci Polit 15(2):253–255
Opitz CJ (2000) An ethnographic study of traditional money. First Impressions Printing, Ocala
Polanyi K (1944) The great transformation. Beacon Books, Boston
Quiggin AH (1949) A survey of primitive money: the beginnings of currency. Methuen and Company, London
Ridgeway W (1892) The origin of metallic currency and weight standards. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Sahlins M (1972) Stone age economics. Aldine de Gruyter, Chicago
Schmandt-Besserat D (1992) Before writing, vol. 1: from counting to cuneiform. University of Texas Press, Austin
Schmandt-Besserat D (1995) Record keeping before writing. In: Sasson J (ed) Civilizations of the ancient near east, vol 4. Scribner, New York, pp 2097–2106
Strathern M (1988) The gender of the gift. University of California Press, Berkeley
Thilenius G (1921) Primitives geld. Arch Anthropol 18:1–34
Urton G (2012) Recording values in the Inka empire. In: Papadopoulos JK, Urton G (eds) The construction of value in the ancient world. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, University of California Press, Los Angeles, pp 475–496
Van de Mieroop M (2014) Silver as a financial tool in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. In: Bernholz P, Vaubel R (eds) Explaining monetary and financial innovation. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 17–29
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Maurer, B. (2018). Primitive and Nonmetallic Money. In: Battilossi, S., Cassis, Y., Yago, K. (eds) Handbook of the History of Money and Currency. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0622-7_2-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0622-7_2-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0622-7
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0622-7
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences