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Abstract: Mississippian culture in the Southeastern and Midwestern United States developed around AD 800 with the cultivation of maize and flourished between AD 1000 and 1200, with trade networks extending throughout the Eastern United States and an advanced division of labor in place. Marine shell beads were produced extensively throughout Mississippian society, even though the shells were exclusively sourced from the Gulf of Mexico. These highly valued beads seemed to serve some function as primitive money, although many authors unfamiliar with spontaneously developed money have been quick to dismiss this argument on grounds of a lack of concrete evidence. Their alternatives, however, are just as lacking in evidence, although continuity between social institutions of other Native American societies would suggest some degree of monetary function, and such an interpretation allows for a catallactic understanding of why Mississippian society flourished and how its mysterious decline may be explained.

Article

Abstract: Mississippian culture in the Southeastern and Midwestern United States developed around AD 800 with the cultivation of maize and flourished between AD 1000 and 1200, with trade networks extending throughout the Eastern United States and an advanced division of labor in place. Marine shell beads were produced extensively throughout Mississippian society, even though the shells were exclusively sourced from the Gulf of Mexico. These highly valued beads seemed to serve some function as primitive money, although many authors unfamiliar with spontaneously developed money have been quick to dismiss this argument on grounds of a lack of concrete evidence. Their alternatives, however, are just as lacking in evidence, although continuity between social institutions of other Native American societies would suggest some degree of monetary function, and such an interpretation allows for a catallactic understanding of why Mississippian society flourished and how its mysterious decline may be explained.

Pre-Colombian civilization in the modern United States reached its most developed stage during the Mississippian culture from approximately AD 800 to 1600, particularly flourishing between the years 1000 and 1200. Mississippian society began in the Mississippi Valley and spread throughout the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. The society is characterized by towns led by chiefs and identified by large earthen mounds and surrounding walls. Cahokia, just outside of modern St. Louis, was the largest of these towns, with Monks Mound prominently recognized as the largest earthen mound in the world. Extensive trade routes, at least encompassing most of the Eastern United States, played a critical role in the growth of Mississippian towns, enabled by the introduction of maize-based agriculture, creating a storable supply of calorie-dense food easily produced in surplus of the requirements for subsistence in small communities (Brown et al. 1990, 257). The origins of Mississippian culture are characterized by the development of strong local towns, evident in localized styles of cemetery building, increased long-distance trade, diminishing evidence of warfare, and a continuous growth in the number of burials with shell items, particularly marine shell beads (Brown et al. 1990, 258).

Much of the archaeological literature on Mississippian culture has struggled to understand the immense trade network in place. The presence of maizeand its role in the development of Mississippian towns implies some sort of a trade connection with Central America, where the crop was developed. The presence of hoe blades made from Mill Creek chert over four hundred miles away from their quarry location in Southern Illinois helps demonstrate the extent of these trade networks in the Eastern United States (Brown et al. 1990, 267). Marine shells from the west coast of Florida and native copper (particularly from the Great Lakes area) were consistently among the most valued possessions in Native American societies, with evidence of trade in these items beginning around 4000 BC (Brown et al. 1990, 273). Despite their exotic origins, marine shell beads and artifacts were produced throughout Mississippian settlements. While large-scale production is evident in larger towns through debris and microdrills, especially in Cahokia, marine shell beads were also produced at small farmsteads (Yerkes 1989, 102). James Brown argues that the widespread production of marine shell beads represents the development of primarily local economies with large-scale trade in exotic resources (Brown et al. 1990, 272). At the same time, Brown seems to acknowledge a greater degree of complexity in the trade networks in his discussion of trading “utilitarian objects” such as Mill Creek hoes. As the production of hoe blades peaked around AD 1000 (Brown et al. 1990, 265), this disparity in Brown’s analysis can be reconciled by recognizing an increasing division of labor within Mississippian society over time. This aligns with the decreasing presence of microdrills for producing marine shell beads in the farmsteads surrounding Cahokia over time, with production apparently centralized in Cahokia itself by AD 1200 (Yerkes 1989, 103).

Although not heavily discussed, a recurring debate exists on the extent to which marine shell beads could have served as a type of primitive money in Mississippian society. This fundamentally stems from an inconsistent understanding of how to define primitive money (or money in general) and an unjustifiable interpretation of the Mississippian economy through the political assumptions of the different authors.

Despite the inconsistent application of the definition of money, there seems to be a general acknowledgment that marine shell beads served some monetary functions in Mississippian society. Through a review of ethnographic literature, Guy Prentice concludes that marine shell beads were used as more than simply status items because of their presence in Mississippian graves regardless of gender, age, or social status; while they clearly served as an indicator of wealth and a medium for payment of social obligations (such as dowry or tribute) (Prentice 1987, 204). Although Richard Yerkes does not believe there is sufficient evidence to conclude that shell beads served as a form of primitive money, he acknowledges that they seem to have served as “tokens of wealth and exchange items that validated transactions between different social groups” (Yerkes 1989, 102). Effectively, Prentice and Yerkes believe the Mississippians used marine shell beads as a medium of exchange, at least in the context of social transactions. Likewise, Brown acknowledges the importance of the scarcity of marine shells in inland communities and the convenience of small pieces as “a good medium of exchange” and large pieces “as a major prestige good” (Brown et al. 1990, 271).

To prove that marine shell beads served as a form of primitive money, it is essential to define primitive money. After the Second World War, Paul Einzig published the first book dedicated to primitive money, largely as a critique of the lack of attention given to defining primitive money in ethnographic studies and the failure of many researchers to acknowledge that monetary institutions evolve differently in various circumstances. When laying out his (intentionally broad) definition of primitive money, Einzig criticizes economists for failing to acknowledge primitive moneys (which they see as pre-monetary forms of barter) and he criticizes anthropologists for trying to apply strict definitions of money to their studies (which exclude certain items that economists would consider money) (Einzig 1966, 310). Einzig proposes a broad definition of primitive money (which he believes is too narrow to be used to definitively say that an item was not used as money) as “a unit or an object conforming to a reasonable degree to some standard of uniformity, which is employed for reckoning or for making a large proportion of the payments customary in the community concerned, and which is accepted in payment largely with the intention of employing it for making payments” (Einzig 1966, 317). Marine shell beads easily fulfill the first two criteria: the beads were uniformly made as small disks with a hole in the center and at the very least they were used to pay for social obligations. Unfortunately, with no writing system, the existing evidence cannot prove the third criterion.

Fortunately, even if Einzig’s definition of primitive money is not perfectly filled by evidence of the Mississippian use of marine shell beads, Einzig places more emphasis on his definition of “what is not primitive money,” of which only one point can be reasonably contested regarding marine shell beads. In his second bullet point, Einzig clarifies that the difference between “money-barter” (primitive money outside of a monetary economy) and an object which is generally accepted in barter but cannot be considered money is whether the object conforms to “any standard of uniformity” or not (Einzig 1966, 319). If we accept that Mississippian trade occurred primarily through barter (although many of the roles of shell beads, such as dowry, clearly can be described more accurately as exchange than barter), shell beads can still be considered a form of primitive money because they bear an undeniable uniformity.

There is an established consensus that marine shell beads have served as primitive money in other Native American societies, although to what extent is debated. Early European explorers consistently describe the use of marine shell beads as money long before their arrival, and although the wampum used in the Eastern United States at the time of European settlement was not the same type of marine shell used by the Mississippians, it could have evolved out of the older use of marine shell beads by the Mississippians (Prentice 1987, 202). Although definitely a form of primitive money, wampum served many monetary purposes: Einzig describes it as a stable store of value until the 1880s, a generally accepted medium of exchange, a unit of payment and deferred payment, and a unit of account (an evolved function of string length, which Einzig compares to the evolution of the British pound from a weight to a unit of account) (Einzig 1966, 171–72). Wampum production was labor intensive, so there was little incentive to inflate the money supply beyond the demand for trade, and the supply was naturally culled down through damaged beads, the ornamental use of the beads, and beads that were either destroyed or buried during funerals (Einzig 1966, 171–72). Even when European settlers developed more efficient ways to produce wampum beads, the value was so stable that they were unable to devalue the money until the seventeenth century (Einzig 1966, 172). Although the authors who believe that the monetary function of wampum was introduced by Europeans should not be dismissed without strong evidence, they ignore the evolutionary nature of money. They are correct that the use of wampum clearly changed due to European settlement, but it was not solely a matter of the “diffusion of the Western European idea of money as Slotkin and Schmitt assert” (Prentice 1987, 201). The Native Americans had preexisting institutions playing similar roles to money as the Europeans understood it, and these institutions were integrated into their trade networks and division of labor. And just as the Roman denarius indirectly affected the US dollar through the influence of the British penny on the US cent, it would be unreasonable to assume that there is no continuity between the institutions filling monetary roles within Native American societies in the Eastern United States over time.

Many of the authors critical of the argument that marine shell beads served as primitive money bear implicit assumptions of power and coercion as leading causes in the development of civilizations. These ideas should not be dismissed without good reasoning, but they are at least as difficult to prove as the function of shell beads as primitive money when most of the evidence of the structure of Mississippian institutions has been lost to time or remains undiscovered. The bias in many of these articles is self-evident. For example, Kathleen DuVal writes in the second paragraph of an article (published in a prominent peer-reviewed journal!) discussing the friendly reception of European settlers by Native Americans in the Arkansas River Valley that “one might be tempted to caution the delegates: ‘kill them, run away, do whatever it takes to avoid being drawn into their world. . .’” (DuVal 2003, 61). DuVal is not alone in her open contempt of European economic institutions. Prentice justifies his analysis of marine shells by citing Jonathan Friedman’s assertion that “big men” rise to power through their ability to redistribute wealth; somehow this “big man” phase is an inevitable step between egalitarian societies and chiefdoms, and this tribal leader must force the society to produce a greater surplus in order to build his power (Prentice 1987, 194). Prentice provides no discussion of the potential for agriculture to allow for the accumulation of surplus and, as a result, an enhanced division of labor and increased specialization. Although Brown’s proposed “prestige goods economy” still fails to properly acknowledge the likelihood of cooperative incentives to enhance the division of labor and enable the sort of human flourishing necessary to allow people to devote their effort to producing “prestige goods,” he acknowledges the lack of evidence of a centrally planned economy and recognizes the essential role that agricultural development played in enabling the flourishing of Mississippian society (Brown et al. 1990, 256–57).

With the production of surplus enabled by maize cultivation established, Carl Menger’s understanding of the evolution of money allows for an alternate explanation of why it makes sense to interpret marine shell beads as primitive money in Mississippian culture. According to Menger, money develops spontaneously as individuals realize the potential to benefit from indirect exchange (Zelmanovitz 2016, 100). If individuals in Mississippian towns spontaneously decided that marine shell beads, in addition to their ornamental purposes, could be a useful medium to enhance trade due to their easy storage, consistency in value, and general acceptance (at least in payment of social obligations and in times of great need), we get a better picture of the increased division of labor and extension of trade seen in the Mississippian culture, in which an individual’s surplus could be traded for beads which could be used ornamentally, spent on something the individual desired, or stored for a time when the individual might be in a situation where he needed something that he could not produce himself. As this understanding of primitive money would anticipate, the beginning of the Mississippian period coincides with “an unmistakable rise in both the number and proportion of burials with shell beads” (Brown et al. 1990, 258).

Georg Simmel’s understanding of the evolution of money takes Menger’s conception even further, arguing that increased division of labor and urban life can only exist with increasingly abstract forms of exchange through the evolution of money (Zelmanovitz 2016, 97). Simmel’s argument offers an explanation for why Mississippian culture, as the most extensively urban Native American society in the modern United States with the most extensive trade routes and division of labor, would have needed to develop some form of primitive money. This can be affirmed by noting that every complex urban civilization in Mesoamerica had some form of primitive money.[1]

Understanding marine shell beads as primitive money has several important implications. The decentralized production of marine shell beads favors a catallactic understanding of the evolution of money, in which monetary functions evolve naturally and the state does not seize a monopoly of money production initially (Zelmanovitz 2016, 11). If future evidence confirms that Yerkes’s interpretation of the centralization of bead production in Cahokia around AD 1050 (as measured by the distribution of microdrills) represents the elites in society creating a monopoly on bead supply (Yerkes 1989, 103), this understanding allows for an explanation of the potential monetary prerogatives the town leadership may have sought to establish—perhaps trying to influence the relative scarcity of these beads or to allow for a means of paying any outstanding debts with other tribes.

With further research, a monetary interpretation of the use of marine shell beads in Mississippian culture could also explain the mysterious, gradual decline of Mississippian settlements. We currently do not have concrete evidence of any market institutions in Mississippian society. While the evolution of primitive bead money would have enhanced the division of labor and created increasingly indirect methods of exchange, we have no evidence that indirect exchange ever fully developed in Mississippian society, so increased intervention from town leadership could have easily destroyed the incentives that new, spontaneously developed economic institutions had created. Commonly cited potential factors include famine, political instability, and warfare; all of which would complement a decline in monetary incentives. With changing political, economic, and social patterns heightened by the beginning of European colonization, Mississippian institutions gradually became less recognizable, but later Native American institutions such as local confederations and wampum money show a degree of continuity with Mississippian institutions.

References

Brown, James A., et al. 1990. “Trade and the Evolution of Exchange Relations at the Beginning of the Mississippian Period.” In The Mississippian Emergence, edited by Bruce D. Smith, 251–80. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press.

DuVal, Kathleen. “‘A Good Relationship, & Commerce’: The Native Political Economy of the Arkansas River Valley.” Early American Studies 1, no. 1 (2003): 61–89.

Einzig, Paul. 1966. Primitive Money. 2nd ed. London: Pergamon Press.

Prentice, Guy. “Marine Shells as Wealth Items in Mississippian Societies.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 12, no. 2 (1987): 193–223.

Thomas, Larissa A. “A Study of Shell Beads and Their Social Context in the Mississippian Period: A Case from the Carolina Piedmont and Mountains.” Southeastern Archaeology 15, no. 1 (1996): 29–46.

Yerkes, Richard W. “Mississippian Craft Specialization on the American Bottom.” Southeastern Archaeology 8, no. 2 (1989): 93–106.

Zelmanovitz, Leonidas. 2016. The Ontology and Function of Money: The Philosophical Fundamentals of Monetary Institutions. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.