Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East

In his Debt: The First 5000 Years, the anthropologist David Graeber put forward a new grand narrative of world history. In Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and the Near East, John Weisweiler explores the implications of this theory for historians of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. On the one hand, it assesses how well the interpretations advanced in Debt fit current understandings of ancient economies. On the other hand, it sketches a history of ancient credit systems which takes seriously the dual nature of debt as both quantifiable economic reality and immeasurable social obligation.