Journal article
Greater post-Neolithic wealth disparities in Eurasia than in North America and Mesoamerica
Nature (London), Vol.551(7682), pp.619-622
11/30/2017
PMID: 29143817
Abstract
How wealth is distributed among households provides insight into the fundamental characters of societies and the opportunities they afford for social mobility. However, economic inequality has been hard to study in ancient societies for which we do not have written records, which adds to the challenge of placing current wealth disparities into a long-term perspective. Although various archaeological proxies for wealth, such as burial goods or exotic or expensive-to-manufacture goods in household assemblages, have been proposed, the first is not clearly connected with households, and the second is confounded by abandonment mode and other factors. As a result, numerous questions remain concerning the growth of wealth disparities, including their connection to the development of domesticated plants and animals and to increases in sociopolitical scale. Here we show that wealth disparities generally increased with the domestication of plants and animals and with increased sociopolitical scale, using Gini coefficients computed over the single consistent proxy of house-size distributions. However, unexpected differences in the responses of societies to these factors in North America and Mesoamerica, and in Eurasia, became evident after the end of the Neolithic period. We argue that the generally higher wealth disparities identified in post-Neolithic Eurasia were initially due to the greater availability of large mammals that could be domesticated, because they allowed more profitable agricultural extensification, and also eventually led to the development of a mounted warrior elite able to expand polities (political units that cohere via identity, ability to mobilize resources, or governance) to sizes that were not possible in North America and Mesoamerica before the arrival of Europeans. We anticipate that this analysis will stimulate other work to enlarge this sample to include societies in South America, Africa, South Asia and Oceania that were under-sampled or not included in this study.
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Details
- Title
- Greater post-Neolithic wealth disparities in Eurasia than in North America and Mesoamerica
- Creators
- Timothy A Kohler - Washington State University, Anthropology, Department ofMichael E Smith - School of Human Evolution & Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, Arizona 85287-2402, USAAmy Bogaard - Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PG, UKGary M Feinman - Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605-2496, USAChristian E Peterson - Department of Anthropology, 2424 Maile Way, 346 Saunders Hall, University of Hawaii at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822-2223, USAAlleen Betzenhauser - Illinois State Archaeological Survey, American Bottom Field Station, 1510 N 89th Street, Fairview Heights, Illinois 62208, USAMatthew Pailes - Department of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma, 455 W Lindsey, Dale Hall Tower 521, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USAElizabeth C Stone - Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794-4364, USAAnna Marie Prentiss - Department of Anthropology, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 59812 USATimothy J Dennehy - School of Human Evolution & Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, Arizona 85287-2402, USALaura J Ellyson - Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4910, USALinda M Nicholas - Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605-2496, USARonald K Faulseit - Pierce College, 6201 Winnetka Avenue, Los Angeles, California 91371-0002, USAAmy Styring - Institut für Archäologische Wissenschaften, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Grueneburgplatz 1, RuW, 60323, Frankfurt am Main, GermanyJade Whitlam - Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PG, UKMattia Fochesato - Social Sciences Division, New York University Abu Dhabi, PO Box 129188, Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesThomas A Foor - Department of Anthropology, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 59812 USASamuel Bowles - Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, USA
- Publication Details
- Nature (London), Vol.551(7682), pp.619-622
- Academic Unit
- Anthropology, Department of
- Grant note
- 312785 / European Research Council
- Identifiers
- 99900590462801842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article