ABSTRACT
What happens to human economies when people start to measure things? The traditional view holds that measurement was invented by the agents of elites as tools of extraction. However, elites only emerged in low-growth economies, while measurement was a common feature of both high- and low-growth economies. This chapter presents the elements for a historical political metrology and applies this new approach to the archaeological record of Eurasia. It draws on insights on the political nature of measurement from Withold Kula and on the role of debt from David Graeber to explore a deep history of money. We argue that the egalitarian economies of the Neolithic and Bronze Age first invented certain metrological technologies—tokens and seals—to distribute community labor and materialize debt. Some Bronze Age communities discovered an alternative mode of measurement, weight metrology, which enabled the first metallic bullion currency to facilitate trade beyond community boundaries. Each mode had differing social and political consequences and long-term effects on inequality. Later Iron Age Eurasian states combined these modes in the form of coinage, increasing money’s mobility and creating an ideology of value which continues to obscure the role of money today.
