Measuring Hohokam Household Inequality with Construction Costs of Domestic Architecture at Pueblo Grande

Abstract

Recent archaeological efforts to explain the emergence and persistence of social inequality have been hampered by little information about how wealth was transmitted across generations, and how it may have accumulated or diminished over time. Building on studies that have shown domestic architecture to be an excellent material expression of household wealth, we provide a method for reconstructing the amount of labor invested in house construction among the Hohokam of southern Arizona. We also account for different architectural styles from different time periods. To illustrate the utility of the method for addressing broader social issues, we investigate the relationship among population increases, resource shortages, and wealth differentials at Pueblo Grande—one of the preeminent settlements in the Hohokam region. Inequality at Pueblo Grande was tracked over time and compared to similar results at the Grewe site. High-status households at both sites were distinguished architecturally by larger and, in some instances, more elaborate houses. The proximity of these households to public areas for ceremonial expression further suggests that access to ritual played a key role in creating and maintaining inequality in Hohokam society.

Measuring inequality: The effect of units of analysis on the Gini coefficient

“…Although there are different dimensions and manifestations of inequality, house size (in the past and present) serves as a key indicator to assess patterned inequalities while yielding a material basis for comparison. Here, we build on foundational and global studies that have examined how sample size (Peterson and Drennan 2018), construction methods (Abbott et al 2021), material culture (Feinman et al 2018; Hutson 2016; Munson and Scholnick 2022), storage, and scale of community (Thompson et al 2021a) affect inequality in specific cultural contexts using a Gini coefficient. As highlighted in this article and in this Compact Special Section of Ancient Mesoamerica , we find that assessments of wealth inequality using house size provide a robust empirical foundation for comprehensively evaluating ancient societies (Ames and Grier 2020; Barnard 2021; Basri and Lawrence 2020; Betzenhauser 2018; Bogaard et al 2019; Brown et al 2012; Chase 2017; Ellyson et al 2019; Feinman et al 2018; Hutson 2016; Hutson and Welch 2021; Kohler and Ellyson 2018; Kohler and Higgins 2016; Kohler et al 2017; Pailes 2018; Porčić 2012; Smith et al 2014; Stone 2018; Strawinska-Zanko et al 2018; Thompson et al 2021a, 2021b).…”