The farming-inequality nexus: new insights from ancient Western Eurasia

Abstract

Abstract

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

“…Bogaard et al (2018) follow this suggestion, and more recent studies (e.g. Bogaard et al 2019;Fochesato et al 2019) further elaborate how the Gini coefficient offers a robust method for evaluating inequality. The present article uses data from excavated houses in the Lower Columbia River region of the Pacific Northwest of North America to test both the pattern of higher Gini coefficients for storage capacity and the explanation that storage capacity-measured by storage volume-may reflect income.…”

Killing the Priest-King: Addressing Egalitarianism in the Indus Civilization

“…And yet, the assumption that the political economy of complex societies will inevitably stratify remains firmly entrenched, even in settings where there is no empirical evidence for a separate group of rulers who are better off than everyone else. For example, a popular argument is that there is a causal link between urbanization, increasing agricultural labor demands, and wealth disparity (Bogaard et al 2018(Bogaard et al , 2019Fernández-Götz and Krausse 2017;Fochesato et al 2019;Porčić 2019;Smith et al 2018). Even in contexts where archaeologists are confident that power is diffuse and collectivity predominates, it is often assumed that wealth stratification lies behind large societal endeavors.…”

Household storage, surplus and supra-household storage in prehistoric and protohistoric societies of the Western Mediterranean

“…Moreover, the development and transformation of storage methods over time can be linked to profound changes in ancient economy, settlement patterns, social relationships and demography [ 23 , 36 , 37 ]. Storage on many occasions is identified as key to the analysis of social inequality and is behind a surge of social complexity, the emergence of an elite and socio-economic inequality [ 38 (p. 3), 39 ]. Both domestic and surplus management, in fact, is fundamental to any stratified hierarchical society [ 40 ].…”

“…The findings of Halstead [ 36 ] demonstrate, nonetheless, that surpluses are intrinsic the productive model. An increase of surplus capacity is not infinite in nuclear families or in non-mechanised contexts as the workforce is one of the major limiting factors [ 37 , 39 ]. Thus, a means to increase the volumes of a surplus is to multiply the number of household unit members [ 42 (p. 622)].…”

“…Furthermore, among the different storage systems, the underground silo is the only type that can be approached on a broad scale from quantitative perspective. It must be noted that the study area, the NE of the Iberian Peninsula, is devoid of Tell type settlements known for other types of storage systems notably the “bin type” features [ 39 , 68 , 69 ] that have been the subject of research adopting a similar approach to that of this study.…”