[scott_s]

I read "Debt" as well, so I had the same reaction. But it should hearten you that the author agrees! Two paragraphs down, he argues:

"But modern research in the domain of commercial history and numismatics, and especially recent discoveries in Babylonia, have brought to light a mass of evidence which was not available to the earlier economists, and in the light of which it may be positively stated that none of these theories rest on a solid basis of historical proof—that in fact they are false."

A few paragraphs later, he even says:

"In both these instances in which Adam Smith believes that he has discovered a tangible currency, he has, in fact, merely found—credit."

In other words, the author who wrote this piece, A. Mitchell Innes in 1913, is one of those "contemporary anthropologists of money."