Even in small groups you still need a currency (unit of account) before you can keep a tally, though—unless you're going to keep separate tallies for each kind of good, which quickly becomes impractical since even similar kinds of goods may not have equal value. Also, you need some standard good with broad marketability as a means of settling debts which can't be paid in kind (i.e. legal tender or equivalent).
They certainly had a unit of account (bushels of grain, for example) to quantify debt, but they didn't have a currency, which has additional necessary criteria besides unit of account.
What these cultures had, according to Graeber, were essentially ledgers for keeping track of debt.
