| Autor: |
Kohler TA; Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4910, USA.; Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, USA.; Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, 23390 C R K, Cortez, Colorado 81321, USA., Smith ME; School of Human Evolution & Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, Arizona 85287-2402, USA., Bogaard A; Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, USA.; Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PG, UK., Feinman GM; Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605-2496, USA., Peterson CE; Department of Anthropology, 2424 Maile Way, 346 Saunders Hall, University of Hawaii at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822-2223, USA., Betzenhauser A; Illinois State Archaeological Survey, American Bottom Field Station, 1510 N 89th Street, Fairview Heights, Illinois 62208, USA., Pailes M; Department of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma, 455 W Lindsey, Dale Hall Tower 521, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USA., Stone EC; Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794-4364, USA., Marie Prentiss A; Department of Anthropology, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 59812 USA., Dennehy TJ; School of Human Evolution & Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, Arizona 85287-2402, USA., Ellyson LJ; Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4910, USA., Nicholas LM; Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605-2496, USA., Faulseit RK; Pierce College, 6201 Winnetka Avenue, Los Angeles, California 91371-0002, USA., Styring A; Institut für Archäologische Wissenschaften, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Grueneburgplatz 1, RuW, 60323, Frankfurt am Main, Germany., Whitlam J; Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PG, UK., Fochesato M; Social Sciences Division, New York University Abu Dhabi, PO Box 129188, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates., Foor TA; Department of Anthropology, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 59812 USA., Bowles S; Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, USA. |
| Abstrakt: |
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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