@article {3967,
	title = {Debt and Credit: Entangling the Marginal and Liminal in the Non-monetary Economies of Bronze Age Ugarit},
	journal = {Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History },
	volume = {9},
	year = {2022},
	pages = {243-258},
	abstract = {In a non-monetary economy, one of the main mechanisms for the
storage of wealth is debt. For people living on the margins of the major urban
societies of the Bronze Age Near East, debt and credit offered means of participating
in larger aspects of economic life yet simultaneously allowed elites to gain
access to their bodies, their family members, and their property as means of wealth
storage. This paper seeks to explore how debt and credit were used to entangle
marginal and liminal groups but also, perhaps, offered these same groups opportunities
for resistance or for integration into larger polities. Textual evidence for
debt and credit can allow us the opportunity to gain access to different information
about the lives of marginal and liminal people. Using the Late Bronze Age Syrian
city of Ugarit as a case study, this paper will explore some of the possible ways that
the debt and credit mechanisms attested in the administrative record reflect
practices through which marginal and liminal individuals became integrated into
a larger Ugaritic society.}
}
