A place for archaeology in the study of money, finance, and debt.

• Money, finance, and debt are interdependent parts of historically contingent economies. • Money, finance, and debt are socially enacted and socially transformative. • An archaeology of money explores how it is embedded in social relations. • An archaeology of finance traces strategies for shifting resources and risk in time. • An archaeology of debt recognizes it as a fundamental component of human societies and economies. • Archaeologists study money, finance, and debt from under-represented times and places. • An archaeology of money, finance, and debt defies narratives of smooth and uncontested progress. This paper establishes the parameters for an archaeological study of money, debt, and finance as interrelated aspects of human economies. We begin with economic anthropology's roots in the works of Mauss, Malinowski, and Polanyi before proceeding to the individual topics of money, debt, and finance and the ways in which they overlap in theory and practice. Archaeological research into these topics is of particular value because it expands our view of the social and political dynamics of economies beyond production, distribution, and consumption. The insights of economic anthropology and other social sciences can push archaeologists to look beyond material instruments to the effects of money, finance, and debt in the material world. When archaeologists recognize money, finance, and debt as socially enacted and socially transformative (just as they do for production, exchange, and consumption), they are able to study the origins of these fundamental components of human economies as well as their long, contentious, and dynamic histories. This paper showcases the contributions of the other papers assembled as part of a virtual special issue and calls on all archaeologists to examine economies of the past in new ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]