Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

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.