Scott,

Yes, Keith Roberts generously agreed to a book swap, though I was laggardly,
and my effort is probably still mid Atlantic

It seems to me that the mid-20th century AD anti-commercial intellectual
empire of Finley and Polanyi is (belatedly) breaking up.  Sitta von Reden
(CUP 2010, p. 10-11) was rather forthright on that.  But what is to replace
it?  

Roberts is clearly correct to point up retailing as being prominent in the
Ancient Near East 4K years ago, and that barley, gold, silver and copper
became currency items.  But he seems to hesitate (understandably) about
getting into the full mechanics of the retail exchange media.

Prominent inheritors of the Finley/Polanyi tradition seem to be Michael
Hudson and his associates, who now lay great stress on wooden tallies, tied
money, the fore runners of checks, credit cards and electric payments. 
Roberts meanwhile seems to lean more towards weighed bullion payments,
anonymous money, the forerunner of cash, coins and banknotes.  It seems to
me there is useful debate to be hoped for here, not least in encouraging
archaeologists to search their spoil heaps more carefully for tiny bits of
bullion.

However, if we wish to get to the pre-commercial roots of the valuing of
gold, Babylonian developments perhaps occurred just too long ago, and it is
the work on barbarian Northern Europe (Bronze Age, Celtic, early Anglo-Saxon
etc) that is throwing up controversial new suggestions.  I recently saw
Richard Bradley (Reading) discuss the ritual burial etc of wealth in the
pre-Roman and barbarian period (the throwing of excaliburs into lakes etc).
 He took a line that these items were badges of wealth, and their ritual
destruction was evidence of ruling cliques controlling what we might call
the badge supply.  Provocatively he used the term “inflation”.  Holding that
ritual destruction of the objects prevented a kind of inflation which would
undermine the value put on social rankings.  I confess my first thought was
– why call it preventing inflation?  From a 21st century perspective, surely
maintaining rather extreme deflation would be more accurate?

Regards

Rob Tye, York, UK