ARCH 1570. Cold Hard Cash: the Materiality of Money in Ancient and Modern Finance

ARCH 1570. Cold Hard Cash: The Materiality of Money in Ancient and Modern Finance

Spring 2012, MWF 1:00-1:50 pm Rhode Island Hall, Room 108

Professor Christoph Bachhuber [email protected] / tel. 401-863-7533 Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World Office: Rhode Island Hall, Room 207 Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm, and by arrangement

CultureLab point of contact: Geralyn Ducady [email protected]

INTRODUCTION Now more than ever we are in need of new perspectives on the value and meaning of money. The course prioritizes anthropological and historical approaches as ways to offer time depth, cross cultural comparison and insight into our own troubled financial systems. The anthropological perspective in the course includes handling and studying a wide range of financial objects and devices that are housed in the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University, including but not confined to objects from New Guinea, Sub-Saharan Africa, and indigenous North America. The historical perspective will be informed by handing and studying the world’s earliest coins held in the Joukowsky Institute of Archaeology and the Ancient World. Through numerous ancient, historical, ethnographic and modern case studies the course explores how specific kinds of objects, materials, and non-materials can be invested with financial value.

The course draws upon a diverse literature in order to understand how financial devices (to include currencies) are embedded in and mediate social relations. Financial devices mediate social relations because they contain within them core ideologies of the communities that use them. In this way we will explore the rich paradoxes of money at the interface between the material and ideological worlds. From the pre-coinage financial systems of ancient Mesopotamia, to the invention of coinage in the Aegean region, to the dynamics of monied interactions in historically recent colonial encounters, to the immateriality of finance in global markets today, we will explore the ‘social imaginary’ of finance and the materials, devices, and ideologies that perpetuate and legitimize financial systems.

LEARNING OUTCOMES  Understanding core anthropological approaches to economics and finance  Assessing the applicability and appropriateness of anthropological and archaeological approaches to finance in the past (e.g. in prehistory and ancient history)  Assessing the applicability and appropriateness of anthropological approaches to modern finance

 An appreciation of the diverse material and ideological manifestations of finance through prehistory, history, and across cultures

BREAKDOWN OF GRADING 1) 20% Take-home midterm (March 9) 2) 20% Course project: catalogue and presentation (presentations Weeks 15-16; catalogue due May 11) 3) 30% Course project: formal essay (due May 11) 4) 30% Attendance and participation (including contributions to the chorus) = Total: 100%

COURSE STRUCTURE AND EXPECTATIONS

Course wiki We are making use of a course wiki administered through the Joukowsky Institute’s website to post course materials and readings: http://proteus.brown.edu/coldhardcash12/Home The course syllabus, assignments, and presentations used in lectures will be posted to the ‘Cold Hard Cash Home’ (the above link). Readings will be uploaded to the password protected ‘Cold Hard Cash Private Forum’ as pdf’s: http://proteus.brown.edu/coldhardcash12private/admin/viewsignin.html?pageid=15921 You will need Adobe Acrobat or a similar program to read these files. Acrobat Reader is available as a free download at www.adobe.com. The private forum will also be used to post questions, comments and summaries related to the Friday discussions (see ‘chorus’ below).

Friday discussions and ‘the chorus’ Beginning in Week 3 the schedule generally follows this weekly pattern: two lectures (M, W) and one discussion (F). There are between 3-5 readings for every week (which I will post on the course wiki). I expect every student to read these by the Friday discussion. Every discussion is led by a ‘chorus’. I ask 4-5 students to volunteer to act as the chorus for the Friday discussions. The chorus constitutes an inner circle of discussants who are responsible for close readings and a more in-depth apprehension of the readings assigned. They are necessarily responsible for leading the discussion, which is opened to the remainder of the class who form the outer circle in the discussion. Members of the chorus are asked to post 1-2 questions on the course wiki (private forum) that they feel are most pressing or interesting from the readings assigned, by 9 p.m. the night before the Friday discussion. The outer circle is expected to review these questions before the start of the discussion on Friday. Each member of the inner circle subsequently composes a 3-4 paragraph response to the Friday discussion on the course wiki (private forum), due the following Sunday by 5 p.m.

Take-home midterm exam There is a take-home midterm towards the middle of the semester. Students are presented with 4- 5 essay questions, from which they select 2. The questions cover topics explored in the first half of the semester.

Course Project The Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University holds dozens of objects from around the world that were invested with financial value by the communities that they were acquired from. Many of these objects, as well as ancient coins from a collection in the Joukowsky Institute at Brown University, are presently on display in CultureLab in the Haffenreffer Museum’s Manning Hall. Choose three of these objects from CultureLab, and a fourth financial device drawn from modern finance in the USA. This fourth device can range from a copper penny to the most complex forms of repackaged debt.

You will create a virtual museum exhibit of the four devices that you have chosen, as part of a larger study of these devices and of the materiality of finance in general. Most of the objects in the CultureLab have not been studied (or published) in any comprehensive or analytical way. The project will necessarily offer a real opportunity to contribute to the knowledge store of the Haffenreffer Museum, and potentially to scholarship in general. Staff from the Haffenreffer Museum will be available to answer your research queries.

The project will be assessed on the following elements:

1) A catalogue: use current museum catalogues as a guide to present and discuss the four devices you have chosen. The four objects need to be unified in a single theme, which should be articulated in the title of your exhibit. You will be assessed on the level of analytical sophistication of your unifying theme (i.e. I will not be so impressed by an exhibit titled ‘Money’). Relevant catalogue information on the objects you have chosen from the CultureLab should include when and how the object was acquired and a general ‘biography’ of the object (consider here that these objects were originally manufactured for exchange), the material(s) used in the manufacture of the object, the method of the object’s manufacture, and a brief (user friendly) discussion that outlines how this financial device was used in the community it was acquired from. With these considerations in mind, you will also create a catalogue entry for the 4th financial device drawn from modern finance in the USA. Depending on the device you choose, you may or may not find the above considerations relevant in your 4th catalogue entry.

2) A formal essay (12-15 pages for undergraduates, 15-20 for graduates). In this essay you will be expected to articulate the major analytical themes of the course in your study of the four financial devices that you have chosen. Comparative analyses will be expected, in particular between the objects you have selected from the Culture Lab and the 4th financial device drawn from modern finance in the USA.

3) A 10 minute Powerpoint presentation. The Powerpoint presentation is in effect your ‘exhibit’. Here you will be expected to visually and verbally communicate the meaning and substance of your virtual exhibit

CLASS SCHEDULE AND ASSIGNMENTS

Week 1 (Jan. 25-7): Introduction

W: An introduction (or what is the value of this course)

F: Money in time and space and scholarship: an overview

Week 2 (Jan. 30-Feb. 3): Overview of approaches

M: Anthropological approaches

W: Historical-archaeological evidence

F: The Course Project: visit to the Culture Lab

Readings

Furguson, N. 2008. The Ascent of Money. London (Introduction and Chapter 1)

Graeber, D. 2011. Debt: The First 5000 Years. New York (Chapter 1)

Hann, C. and K. Hart 2011. Economic Anthropology. Cambridge. (Chapters 1-2).

Week 3 (Feb. 6-10): The Creation Myth of Money

M: The creation myth of money

W: The creation myth of money (critique)

F: Chorus-led discussion

Readings

Graeber, D. 2011. Debt: The First 5000 Years. New York (Chapter 2)

Smith, A. 1776. Wealth of Nations (Book 1, Chapter 2: Of the principal which gives occasion to the division of labour) http://geolib.com/smith.adam/won1-02.html (Book 1, Chapter 4: Of the origin and use of money) http://geolib.com/smith.adam/won1-04.html

Aristotle Politics (particularly Parts VIII-IX) http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics (Book V Part 5) http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.5.v.html

Hann, C. and K. Hart 2011. Economic Anthropology. Cambridge (Chapters 3-4)

Week 4 (Feb. 13-17): Gifts and commodities

M: Marx and commodities

W: Gift exchange and debt obligations

F: Chorus-led discussion

Readings

Appadurai, A. 1986. ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value,’ in A. Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, 3-63. Cambridge

Kopytoff, I. 1986. ‘The cultural biography of things’, in A. Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, 64-94. Cambridge

Gregory, C. 1982. Gifts and Commodities. London (Chapters 1-3)

Week 5 (Feb. 20-24) Ethnographic case studies of financial value—Melanesia

M: Holiday

W: Morality and Spheres of exchange

F: Currencies and Morality in Melanesian communities

Readings

Akin, D. 1999. ‘Cash and Shell Money in Kwaio, Solomon Islands’ in In D. Akin and J. Robbins (eds.) 1999. Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia, 103-30. Pittsburgh.

Baric, L. 1964. ‘Some Aspects of Credit, Saving and Investment in a ‘Non-Monetary’ Economy (Rossel Island)’, in R. Firth and B.s. Yamey (eds.) Capital, Saving and Credit in Peasant Societies, 35-52. London.

Bohannan, P. 1955. ‘Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv’, American Anthropologist 57: 60-70

Douglas, M. 1967. ‘Primitive Rationing: A Study in Controlled Exchange’, in R. Firth (ed.) Themes in Economic Anthropology, 119-45. London

Malinowski, B. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific (chapts. 2-3). New York.

Week 6 (Feb. 27-March 2): Ethnographic case studies of financial value--Iceland

M: Guest Lecture: Michele Smith: Icelandic textiles

W: Guest Lecture: Michele Smith: Icelandic textiles

F: Chorus-led discussion; project abstracts due

Readings

Bek-Pedersen, K. 2009. ‘Weaving Swords and Rolling Heads. A Peculiar Space in Old Norse Tradition’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 5: 23-39.

Smith, K. 2004. ‘Patterns in Time and the Tempo of Change: A North Atlantic Perspective on the Evolution of Complex Societies’, in J. Matthieu and R. Scott (eds.) Continuity or Change: The Role of Analytical Scale in European Archaeology, 83-99. Oxford.

Smith, K. 1995. ‘Landnám: the settlement of Iceland in archaeological and historical perspective’, World Archaeology 26.3: 319-47.

Week 7 (March 5-9): Money in colonial encounters

M: holiday

W: Money in colonial encounters

F: Chorus-led discussion Take-home Mid-term

Readings

Robbins, J. and D. Akin1999. ‘An Introduction to Melanesian Currencies’, in Akin D, Robbins J, (eds.) 1999. Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia, 1-40. Pittsburgh.

Bloch, M. and J. Parry 1989. ‘Introduction: money and the morality of exchange’, in J. Parry and M. Bloch (eds.) Money and the Morality of Exchange, 1-32. Cambridge.

Week 8 (March 12-16): Introduction to the Ancient World

M: Introduction to problems and potentialities in the Ancient World Collection of mid-term

W: Introduction to problems and potentialities in the Ancient World

F: Chorus-led discussion

Readings

Polanyi, K. (et al.) 1957. Trade and Market in the Early Empires. Chicago.

Smith, M.E. 2004. ‘The Archaeology of Ancient State Economies’, Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 73-102

Stein, G. 1994. Economy, ritual and power in Ubaid Mesopotamia’, in G. Stein and M. Rothman (eds.) Chiefdoms and Early States in the Near East: The Organizational Dynamics of Complexity, 35-46.

Week 9 (March 19-23): Prehistory and prehistoric approaches

M: Early Mesopotamia: wealth finance, commodification and cognition

W: Chorus-led discussion

F: holiday

Readings

Algaze, G. 1993. Uruk World System: the dynamics of expansion of early Mesopotamian civilization. Chicago (Chapter 1: Intro)

Liverani, M. 2006. Uruk: the first city. London.

Wengrow, D. 2008. ‘Prehistories of Commodity Branding’, Current Anthropology 49.1: 7-34.

Schmandt-Besserat, D. 2010. ‘The token system of the ancient Near East’ in I. Morley and C. Renfrew (eds.) The Archaeology of Measurement: Comprehending Heaven, Earth and Time in Ancient Societies, 27-34. Cambridge

Week 10 (March 26-30): Spring recess

Week 11 (April 2-6): Pre-coinage finance in Mesopotamia

M: Early Mesopotamia: temples, palaces and the relationship between debt and finance

W: Considering the origins and adoption of metallic finance in Mesopotamia

F: Chorus-led discussion Readings

Hudson, M. 2004. ‘The Development of Money of Account in Sumer’s Temples’ in M. Hudson (ed.) Creating Economic Order: record-keeping, standardization, and the development of accounting in the Ancient Near East, 303-29. Bethesda

Powell, M.A. 1978. ‘A Contribution to the History of Money in Mesopotamia prior to the Invention of Coinage’. In B. Hruşka and G. Komoróczy (eds.) Festschrift Lubor Matouš: 211-44. Budapest.

Rahmstorf, L. 2010. ‘The concept of weighing during the Bronze Age in the Aegean, the Near East and Europe’, in The Archaeology of Measurement: Comprehending Heaven, Earth and Time in Ancient Societies, 88-105. Cambridge.

Week 12 (April 9-13): The invention of coinage

M: Socio-historical overview: the Archaic World of Western Turkey and the Aegean

W: Social consequences of the invention of coinage in the Mediterranean

F: Chorus-led discussion

Readings

Morris, I. 1986. ‘Gift and Commodity in Archaic Greece’, Man 21: 1-17

Seaford, R. 2004. Money and the Early Greek Mind. Cambridge (chapts. 2,4,5)

Schaps, D.M. 2001. ‘The Conceptual Prehistory of Money and its Impact on the Greek Economy’, in M.S. Balmuth (ed.) Hacksilber to Coinage: New Insights into the Monetary History of the Near East and Greece, 93-103. New York.

Week 13 (April 16-20): Beyond numismatology: archaeological approaches to early coinage

M: Text vs. context: rethinking the (interpretive) value of coins

W: Coin hoards: case studies

F: Chorus-led discussion

Readings

Fitzpatrick, A.P. 2005: ‘Gifts for the golden gods. Iron Age hoards of torques and coins’, in C. Haselgrove and D. Wigg-Wolf (eds.), Iron Age coinage and ritual practice, 157-82. Mainz.

Kemmers, F. and M. Nanouschka 2011. ‘Rethinking numismatics. The archaeology of coins’, Archaeological Dialogues 18.1: 87–108

Papadopoulos, J.K. 2002. ‘Minting identity. Coinage, ideology and the economics of colonization in Akhaian Magna Graecia’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 12.1: 21– 55.

Skre, D. 2011. ‘Commodity Money, Silver and Coinage in Viking Age Scandinavia’, in J. Graham-Campbell, S. Sinbaek and G. Williams (eds.) Silver Economies: Monetisation and Society in Scandinavia, 67-92

Week 14 (April 23-27): Metal in modern historical finance and the invention of paper money

M: The Gold Standard

W: Gold bugs and paper men

F: Chorus-led discussion

Readings

Milward, A.S. 1996. ‘Origins of the Gold Standard’, in J. Braga de Macedo et al (eds.) Currency Convertability. The Gold Standard and Beyond. London.

Martín, P. and J. Reis (eds.) 2000. Monetary Standards in the Periphery: Paper, Silver and Gold, 1854-1933. London.

Shell, M. 1993. Money, Language and Thought. Baltimore (Chapter 1)

Week 15 (April 30-May 4): Reflections on mondern finance/presentations

M: Chorus-led discussion

W: Project presentations

F: Project presentations

Readings

Appadurai, A. 2005. in W. M. J. van Binsbergen and P. Geschiere (eds.) Commodification: Things, Agency and Identities.

Mauer, B. 2006. ‘An Anthropology of Money’, Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 15-36

Week 16 (May 7-11): Project presentations

M : Project presentations

W: Project presentations

F: Project presentations/final project due