Testing Hypotheses About Emergent Inequality (Using Gini Coefficients) in a Complex Fisher-Forager Society at the Bridge River Site, British Columbia

Comparing ancient inequalities: the challenges of comparability, bias and precision

“…All of the sites are listed in the OSM. Geographically, they are distributed across Eurasia, North America and Mesoamerica; chronologically, they range from a single observation at 23 000-year-old Ohalo II in the southern Levant (Nadel 2003) to eighteenthcentury AD communities of the Pacific Northwest (Schulting 1995;Prentiss et al 2018). Where possible, we distinguish chronological phases within site sequences in order to avoid combining distinct periods of occupation.…”

Inequality on the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America measured by house-floor area and storage capacity

“…StatsDirect also calculates 0.95 confidence intervals for the Gini coefficient using bootstrapping with 100 000 iterations. Confidence intervals are recommended by Peterson and Drennan (2018) to improve comparability, and by Prentiss et al (2018b) to control for small sample sizes. Multiple coefficients were calculated based on floor area and storage capacity for different iterations of the sample (Table 2).…”

Inequality or insecurity? The case of pre-colonial farming communities in southern Africa

“…While studies exist for North America (Kohler & Ellyson 2018;Prentiss et al 2018), Asia (Fochesato et al 2021) and western Europe (Bogaard et al 2018;generally, Kohler & Smith 2018: 28), the current article is the first to apply the Gini coefficient to an archaeological dataset from southern Africa. Importantly, the resulting Gini coefficients serve primarily as a departure point from which to engage with African-centred knowledge.…”