Gifts, Goods and Money. Comparinf currency and circulation system in past societies

The papers gathered in this volume explore the economic and social roles of exchange systems in past societies from a variety of different perspectives. Based on a broad range of individual case studies, the authors tackle problems surrounding the identification of (pre-monetary) currencies in the archaeological record. These concern the part played by weight measurement systems in their development, the changing role of objects as they shift between different spheres of exchange, e.g. from gifts to commodities, as well as wider issues regarding the role of exchange networks as agents of social and economic change. Among the specific questions the papers address is what happens when new objects of value are introduced into a system, or when existing objects go out of use, as well as how exchange systems react to events such as crises or the emergence of new polities and social constellations. One theme that unites most of the papers is the tension between what is introduced from the outside and changes that are driven by social transformations within a given group.

Table of Contents

Introduction: comparing currency and circulation systems in past societies – by Dirk Brandherm, Elon Heymans and Daniela Hofmann

Indeterminacy and approximation in Mediterranean weight systems in the third and second millennia BC – by Nicola Ialongo, Agnese Vacca and Alessandro Vanzetti

Weight units and the transformation of value: approaching premonetary currency systems in the Nordic Bronze Age – by Lene Melheim

Heads or tails: metal hoards from the Iron Age southern Levant – by Elon D. Heymans

Weighing premonetary currency in the Iberian iron Age – by Thibaud Poigt

Of warriors, chiefs and gold. Coinage and exchange in the late pre-Roman Iron Age – by David Wigg-Wolf

New wealth from the Old World: glass, jet and mirrors in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century indigenous Caribbean – by Joanna Ostapkowicz

Gifts of the gods — Objects of foreign origin in traditional exchange cycles in Palau – by Constanze Dupont