Thursday, 18 December 2025
9.30 am ET / 2.30 pm GMT / 8 pm IST
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This is a free, virtual lecture.
Why did people start treating certain objects as money?
In Money without the State: On the Origins of Money, Mikael Fauvelle revisits classic stories about money’s beginnings and shows why barter-first accounts don’t fit the evidence. Engaging with debates shaped by anthropologists such as David Graeber, he draws on archaeology and ethnography to examine nonstate currencies (especially shell beads and cowries) and asks how they came to measure value, settle debts and support long-distance exchange.
Mikael Fauvelle is an Associate Professor and researcher in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University, and the author of Shell Money.
This lecture is part of Money before Capitalism, a series on premodern finance—property, credit and currencies—and the worlds it might have brought into being.
Fact or Value 