Karl Polanyi and Markets in the Ancient Near East: The Challenge of the Evidence

The essay challenges Karl Polanyi's position—that ancient Near Eastern economies knew state and temple administration but not price-making markets. It is found that the prerequisite functions of a market economy listed by Polanyi—the allocation of consumer goods, land, and labor through the supply-demand-price mechanism; risk-bearing organized as a market function; and loan markets—were all present in the ancient Near East. Although Polanyi criticized stage theories with their “predilection for continuity” he imposed his own version of continuity on history in lumping together many thousands of years under the rubric of “archaic society.” This perspective prevented him from recognizing that ancient Mesopotamia experienced lengthy and significant periods of unfettered market activity as well as periods of pervasive state regulation.