Archaeology is developing new techniques to describe and explain the origins of economic inequality

What is it about?

We developed a systematic method to assess degree of wealth inequality and rate of economic growth through time using the archaeological record of house sizes. We apply this to sites all over the world, some pre-Holocene in age and some as recent as Anglo-Saxon Britain. Worldwide, wealth inequality does not increase immediately on the development of domesticated plants or animals. In most areas it begins to increase one or two thousand years after the local arrival of Neolithic lifeways, as growing populations create shortages of arable land and as some settlements grow in size, creating central-place hierarchies. Throughout the period we analyze there is a slow and relatively steady accumulation of both economic growth and wealth inequality, although periodic reversals (such as the fall of the Roman Empire in Europe) are also visible. Horseback riding and use of animals for portage typically increase wealth inequality, but perhaps surprisingly, the development of metallurgy actually decreases it in most times and places.

Featured Image

Photo by Nika Benedictova on Unsplash

Photo by Nika Benedictova on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Other research has convincingly demonstrated that high economic inequality contributes to political polarization, distrust of institutions, and weakening democratic norms in contemporary democracies. The research we report here is the first step in allowing us to assess whether it also destabilized past societies, or whether that is unique to industrial democracies. This research will also make it possible to determine the general relationship between economic growth and inequality over long sweeps of time, a question of central interest to both economists and archaeologists.

Perspectives