Chapter 6: Context—Found Where Money Would Be

Where artifacts are found tells us how they were used.

Accounting records belong in archives. Money belongs with people—in homes, in pockets, in everyday life.

Domestic Settings

Schmandt-Besserat documents numerous examples of tokens in domestic contexts:

"At Ali Kosh, some of the counters were recovered inside buildings among flint tools and ground stone implements such as mortars and grinding stones. Others were found outside buildings mixed with animal bones and other debris."
—p. 25

This is not where you keep records. This is where you keep everyday items.

Tokens were mixed with cooking tools. Food preparation debris. General household refuse. They were part of daily life, not administrative procedure.

Storage Areas

Tokens frequently appear in storage locations:

"The cache of thirty-four cones and a sphere at Tepe Gaz Tavila, southern Iran, was located in a storage room."
—p. 26

"The artifacts were recovered among the maze of storage cubicles occupying the ground floor of buildings."
—p. 24

You keep money secured. You store it in safe places. You do not leave money lying around.

Why would you secure counting devices? They have no value apart from counting. But money must be stored securely because money is valuable.

Portable Containers

This is crucial evidence:

"Groups of two to three dozen tokens clustered together suggest that the artifacts were kept in perishable containers such as leather pouches."
—p. 24

Leather pouches. This is how you carry money.

You put coins in a purse. You carry them on your person. You spend them as needed.

You do not carry accounting records in leather pouches.

Scattered Distributions

At many sites, tokens were scattered randomly rather than organized in archives:

"The objects are never clustered together along a wall, as was the case of the archive... but were scattered randomly."
—Schmandt-Besserat, p. 62

"Their distribution through the palace does not allow for any further conclusion as to their use or significance. All contexts in fact appear to be random, the tokens chance-finds."
—MacGinnis et al. (2014), p. 299

The Catalhoyuk study found the same pattern:

"Forty-two per cent of Catalhoyuk's clay objects come from broad 'midden' contexts... This type of context indicates clay objects were readily disposed of and held no intrinsic value."
—Bennison-Chapman (2020), p. 119-120

Archives are organized. Records are filed systematically for retrieval.

Money is scattered. It moves through the economy. It ends up wherever people drop it, lose it, or spend it. People discard worn-out currency. They lose coins in the street. They drop bills in the trash.

The fact that tokens were "readily disposed of" and found as "chance-finds" is precisely what we would expect from currency—not from accounting records that would be carefully preserved.

The Contrast with Complex Tokens

Complex tokens show a completely different pattern:

"At Uruk the majority of the tokens was recovered in the temple of Inanna in monumental structures."
—p. 50

"The totality of the Susa counters originated from the Acropolis... the seat of a major temple."
—p. 46

Complex tokens were found in temples and administrative buildings. Institutional contexts.

Plain tokens were found in houses and villages. Personal contexts.

The patterns match their functions. Complex tokens were institutional ration cards. Plain tokens were personal money.