Archaeological Data On House Size Indicates That Inequality Is Inevitable

In a new study published in PNAS, a team of researchers led by MacArthur Curator Gary Feinman compared house size distributions over the last 10,000 years from more than 1,000 sites around the world to demonstrate that while inequality is widespread throughout human history, it’s not inevitable, nor is it expressed to the same degree at every place and time. (This article is part of a larger set of 11 papers—eight co-authored by Gary—which can be accessed here). By broadening their vantages beyond kings and courts, archaeologists in many regions of the world have been gathering data on diverse segments of past societies, farmers as well as rulers. The systematic cumulation of these data, which are focused on variable distributions of house sizes, lies at the core of the GINI project, a broad collaborative effort led by Timothy Kohler (Washington State University), Amy Bogaard (Oxford University), and Scott Ortman (University of Colorado), that has measured and coded more than 50,000 houses from more than 1000 archaeological sites. This unprecedented data set lies at the heart of the present study. The data indicate that there is not one unilinear sequence of change in wealth inequality over time, rather there are interpretable patterns and trends that cross-cut time and space. “The traditional thinking expects that once you get larger societies with formal leaders, or once you have farming, inequality is going to go way up,” Gary observes. But the reality is more complicated—factors that can foster inequality can be leveled off or modified by different human decisions and institutions. While Gary admits that variability in the sizes of houses may not indicate the full extent of wealth differences, it’s a consistent indicator of the degree of economic inequality that can be applied across time and space. Says Gary, Our global sample, along with other recent studies, also holds clues as to why the institutions of governance shift along the axis of concentrated (or personalized) power and more democratic formations with checks and balances. What we see is that when our governing institutions are financed by monopolized resources that are not drawn from the labor and fields of the local population, but rather through external resources, power in governance will likely become concentrated in the hands of a few. Herd animals, access to metals, and the control of long-distance exchange routes all seem to have a relationship to greater potentials for inequality. Whether today or in the deep past, when political power is wielded autocratically the checks and leveling mechanisms that dampen inequality will tend to break down, and, over time, disparities in wealth will move closer toward their maximal potentials. In this way, the past is a mirror for what we now see.The research was covered worldwide, in outlets like El País, Archaeology News, Focus, Popular Science, Anthropology.net, and Le Nouvel Obs.