Economic inequality is fueled by population scale, land-limited production, and settlement hierarchies across the archaeological record
Abstract
Defining wealth broadly to include wealth in people, relational connections, and material possessions, we examine the prehistory of wealth inequality at the level of the residential units using the consistent proxy of Gini coefficients calculated across areas of contemporaneous residential units. In a sample of >1,100 sites and > 47,000 residential units spanning >10,000 y, persistent wealth inequality typically lags the onset of plant cultivation by more than a millennium. It accompanies landscape modifications and subsistence practices in which land (rather than labor) limits production, and growth of hierarchies of settlement size. Gini coefficients are markedly higher through time in settlements at or near the top of such hierarchies; settlements not enmeshed in these systems remain relatively egalitarian even long after plant and animal domestication. We infer that some households in top-ranked settlements were able to exploit the network effects, agglomeration opportunities, and (eventually) political leverage provided by these hierarchies more effectively than others, likely boosted by efficient intergenerational transmission of material resources after increased sedentism made that more common. Since population growth is associated with increased sedentism, more land-limited production, and the appearance and growth of settlement hierarchies, it is deeply implicated in the postdomestication rise of wealth inequality. Governance practices mediate the degree of wealth inequality, as do technical innovations such as the use of animals for portage, horseback riding, and the development of iron smelting.
Article Details
Journal Info
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Sciences
Authors (28)
Timothy A. Kohler
Department of Anthropology, Washington State University
Amy Bogaard
Santa Fe Institute
Scott G. Ortman
Santa Fe Institute
Enrico R. Crema
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge
Shadreck Chirikure
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford
Pablo Cruz
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Adam Green
Department of Archaeology, University of York, King’s Manor
Tim Kerig
Cluster of Excellence ROOTS, Kiel University
Mark D. McCoy
Department of Anthropology, Florida State University
Jessica Munson
Department of Anthropology-Sociology, Lycoming College
Cameron Petrie
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge
Amy E. Thompson
Department of Geography and the Environment, The University of Texas at Austin
Jennifer Birch
Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia
Gabriela Cervantes Quequezana
Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh
Gary M. Feinman
Negaunee Integrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History
Mattia Fochesato
Department of Social and Political Science, Bocconi University
Detlef Gronenborn
Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie
Helena Hamerow
School of Archaeology, University of Oxford
Guiyun Jin
Institute of Cultural Heritage, Shandong University
Dan Lawrence
Department of Archaeology, Durham University
Paul B. Roscoe
Department of Anthropology and Climate Change Institute, The University of Maine
Eva Rosenstock
Bonn Centre for Archaeoscienes/Pre- and Early Historical Archaeology, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Grace K. Erny
Department of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, University of California
Habeom Kim
Independent Researcher
René Ohlrau
Cluster of Excellence ROOTS, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
J. W. Hanson
Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford
Lane Fargher Navarro
The PAST Foundation
Matthew Pailes
Department of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma