2022
DOI: 10.1007/s12520-022-01659-3
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Empires and the acceleration of wealth inequality in the pre-Islamic Near East: an archaeological approach

Abstract: We present an approach comparing wealth inequality between c. 3000 BCE and 224 CE in the Near East using house sizes and urban area from 1060 houses in 98 archaeological sites. We divide this dataset into two chronological phases, firstly c. 3000-800 BCE and secondly 800 BCE - 224 CE. The first phase is characterised by small, relatively weak states, while the second phase is characterised by major empires and large states, termed as the Age of Empire (AoE). For these two periods, inequality is measured using … Show more

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Cited by 8 publications
(1 citation statement)
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“…This mortuary wealth seems to reflect the situation in living communities, showing a widening gap between the lower and upper classes in the Iron Age where Assyrian subjects were significantly poorer than they were in the Late Bronze Age. Parallel evidence from inequality studies conducted using other metrics, such as household sizes, generally find a similar increase in inequality between the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age (Stone 2018;Basri & Lawrence 2020;Squitieri & Altaweel 2022). Comparing the wealth in mortuary contexts between the two periods has shown that not only was less wealth available to non-elites in the Iron Age, but also that this was true for inhabitants both in the capital and in provincial centres, meaning that strategies of extraction were not limited to those beyond the Assyrian core.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 71%
“…This mortuary wealth seems to reflect the situation in living communities, showing a widening gap between the lower and upper classes in the Iron Age where Assyrian subjects were significantly poorer than they were in the Late Bronze Age. Parallel evidence from inequality studies conducted using other metrics, such as household sizes, generally find a similar increase in inequality between the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age (Stone 2018;Basri & Lawrence 2020;Squitieri & Altaweel 2022). Comparing the wealth in mortuary contexts between the two periods has shown that not only was less wealth available to non-elites in the Iron Age, but also that this was true for inhabitants both in the capital and in provincial centres, meaning that strategies of extraction were not limited to those beyond the Assyrian core.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 71%