It’s around page 39-ish he says the Mesopotamian records shows his take. but It may be pertinent to ask to what extent others in the anthropology field, if any, contradict him. I think it’s fair to agree with him that economists are not the people to ask about this, it’s an anth/archeo question.
Anyway, apologies to posters for tone of posting I’m a bit cranky and tired.
Archaeological record can refer to things that no longer exist. like “we used to have that paper based system but now we use beads”, and the paper doesn’t survive. Type of thing. Don’t know if that’s the case here.
When I first moved in with housemates there was an analogous development. At first we all paid for everything in an ad-hoc way assuming it would all even out. Just buy milk or toilet roll or washing powder whatever when you see there’s none left. It was an egalitarian utopia for a few weeks and then the doubt kicks in.
‘I always seem to be buying the milk around here, I think I’m being taken advantage of.’
you start keeping track and eventually writing everything down. At no point did I ever say ‘you can use some of my milk if I can use some of your toilet roll.’
Does he give specific cites? Because it contradicts what I know of the field.
For example, here’s a pdf of a book analyzing the barter tallies from ancient Mesopotamia. Pages 25-29 discuss the development of signs representing numbers. There’s strong evidence that there was no sense of numbers existing independently of countable things. There was no single “number system” at first. There were a hodgepodge of different number systems depending on the type of thing being counted.
How do you have money if you don’t even have a sense of “number” as an abstraction that can be separated from the things being counted?
Don’t think you’ve been at all impolite to anyone. Nothing wrong with saying ‘what are you basing that on exactly?’ (Certainly someone with a username like mine could hardly take offence at that.)
Thanks for sharing the book. 
I’ve done something similar, only I went straight to exact accounting because I thought sooner or later someone is going to get pissed off and think they were giving too much, so I pre-empted it.
I was just going to mention what Graeber says about precise quantification.
He says it’s to do with law. usually people don’t quibble over exact equivalences until it becomes a matter of a legal system and fines.
Maybe it’s difficult to avoid that feeling of disadvantage using things that are priced when we buy them.
I also think it’s a sign of loose connections with the people your dealing with, it works differently within families. How much do get away with re parents ? I think most families are fairly loose with money, though some are like accountants and some even charge their kids interest.
Numbered references in the text. I haven’t checked them myself yet just skimmed a bit of the text. Your book is from 1993 BTW, maybe the field moved on ?
But going on the house-share thing - you can quantify toilet roll and milk values - but how about cooking and housework ? How do you decide whether a bit of vacuuming is worth washing the dishes ? These have market rates, but people usually are completely informal about it and just go with what they feel like doing, i think.
Cite?
As far as I know, the standard narrative that letters and numerals evolved from clay barter tallies has not been overturned. That would be a pretty big deal, since it would completely rewrite our understanding of how literacy developed.
Graeber seems to have a different opinion than the majority of the people in the field. What is his evidence for his non-standard view?
Okay, but aren’t ‘favours given’ countable things? If you can say ‘I’ll swap you 3 sheep for twenty bags of grain’ and know that that’s a good deal, why can’t you also say ‘I gave that guy 20 bags of grain, I’m gonna write that down and remind him if he ever gets stingy with his sheep’?
Oldest known civilisation now is Gobekli Tepe (about 9,000BCE), several thousand years older than Babylon, maybe that will offer something on this, or there are discoveries yet to be made ?
Maybe, but that’s the beginnings of writing, not economic activity. Anyway I’m not digging for the answers now, I’ve done my bit. Someone else’s turn.
Aha, so, do you owe David Graeber or Libcom anything now ?
Was that free pdf really free ? Was it an informal favour to be paid back in some undefined manner, some rainy day ?
Doesn’t that follow naturally? I can forgive your enormous toilet roll debt if you do the washing up. You can accept or reject my offer depending on how highly you value your labour in units of toilet roll. You may accept my offer naively and it may be very informal, but as soon as you get the idea that you’re being ripped-off, you will be incentivised to declare exactly how many toilet rolls it’s worth to you.
The point is that currency requires the invention of an abstract unit of value. But how do you invent an abstract unit of value if you lack the notion of an abstract number? You know “three sheep” or “three favors”, but you don’t have the concept of “three” separate from specific instances of three things.
The archaeological record provides strong evidence that abstract numbers did not exist in 4000 BC. Which suggests that currency was impossible – they didn’t have the theoretical framework in place to invent it yet. It wasn’t until they had a thousand years of experience with barter tallies that the idea of numbers as free-floating abstractions developed.
If Graeber has evidence to the contrary, I’d like to know what it is. Because as far as I can tell, he’s the outlier here.
Quantity has been around a long time before the records of money. For one thing babies and animals can estimate quantity, as can illiterate people, and blind people that can’t see writing.
But does money require such an abstract notion ? Currency can be used in an immediate physical way, especially if it was based on silver. You can tell when one piece of silver is bigger than another, or how many bits there are. Could you not carry out currency transactions, at the Babylonian temple, without ever needing the abstract ?
Thanks
Sorry if I’m being dense here. Are abstract numbers really essential for currency? I’ve never owed anyone the concept ‘5’, always 5 pounds or 5 cigarettes or whatever. I understand that keeping complex accounts becomes a lot easier with abstract numbers, but if I buy 5 cigarettes for 5 pounds, does it matter that they are both ‘5’ of a thing? I would have thought that it only mattered that both could be counted and judged to be of equivalent value. True, you can’t quickly extrapolate that if 5 cigarettes are worth 10 pounds, 10 cigarettes will be worth 20 pounds. You’d have to use you judgement every time to decide what X number of cigarettes is worth to you. I can see it causing major arguments, but I don’t see it as being impossible.
Good point, let’s see how this one goes.
Is he even an outlier, in the Mesopotamian field or in the broader global anthropology field ?
How can I find this out ?