Ten Thousand Years of Inequality: The Archaeology of Wealth Differences (Amerind Studies in Archaeology)

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Description

Is wealth inequality a universal feature of human societies, or did early peoples live an egalitarian existence? How did inequality develop before the brand new era? Did inequalities in wealth increase as people settled into a lifestyle dominated by farming and herding? Why in general do such disparities increase, and how contemporary are the high levels of wealth inequality now experienced in many developed nations? How can archaeologists tell?

Ten Thousand Years of Inequality addresses these and other questions by presenting the first set of consistent quantitative measurements of ancient wealth inequality. The authors are archaeologists who have adapted the Gini index, a statistical measure of wealth distribution ceaselessly used by economists to measure latest inequality, and applied it to house-size distributions over the years and around the globe. Clear descriptions of methods and assumptions serve as a model for other archaeologists and historians who wish to document past patterns of wealth disparity.

The chapters cover various ancient cases, including early hunter-­gatherers, farmer villages, and agrarian states and empires. The final chapter synthesizes and compares the results. A few of the new and notable outcomes, the authors report a systematic difference between higher levels of inequality in ancient Old World societies and lower levels in their New World counterparts.

For the first time, archaeology allows humanity’s deep past to provide an account of the early manifestations of wealth inequality around the globe.

Contributors

Nicholas Ames
Alleen Betzenhauser
Amy Bogaard
Samuel Bowles
Meredith S. Chesson
Abhijit Dandekar
Timothy J. Dennehy
Robert D. Drennan
Laura J. Ellyson
Deniz Enverova
Ronald K. Faulseit
Gary M. Feinman
Mattia Fochesato
Thomas A. Foor
Vishwas D. Gogte
Timothy A. Kohler
Ian Kuijt
Chapurukha M. Kusimba
Mary-Margaret Murphy
Linda M. Nicholas
Rahul C. Oka
Matthew Pailes
Christian E. Peterson
Anna Marie Prentiss
Michael E. Smith
Elizabeth C. Stone
Amy Styring
Jade Whitlam

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