Debt in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East : credit, money, and social obligation

"This volume reconsiders the economic history of the ancient and late ancient Mediterranean and Near East from the perspective of David Graeber's anthropological theory. It pursues two purposes. On the one hand, it tests the accuracy of the grand narrative put forward in his 2011 monograph Debt: The First 5000 Years. Does the concept of a 'currency-slavery-warfare complex', in which monetization, state formation and the subjection of new fields of life to the logic of the market go hand in hand, shed new light on the political economies of the Near East and Mediterranean from around 700 BCE to 700 CE? On the other hand, this volume offers a history of ancient and late ancient credit systems which takes seriously the dual nature of debt as both a quantifiable economic reality and an immeasurable social obligation. By examining the multiplicity of ways in which social relationships were quantified in different societies, it tries out a method of writing the history of pre-modern systems of exchange that departs from the currently dominant paradigm of neo-institutional economics."