EAA 2023: Abstract

In this paper we seek to understand the relationship between wealth inequality and social complexity over the long-term in Southwest Asia. We apply Gini coefficients to house size and storage volume data to investigate trends in wealth inequality at a variety of temporal and spatial scales. We then compare these trends with those for a range of proxies commonly related to social complexity, including overall population, levels of settlement hierarchy and evidence for political centralisation and landscape modification. Our results show that inequality increased from the Neolithic to the Iron Age, with distinct regional trajectories. We see a step change in levels of inequality around the time of the emergence of urban sites in each region, but initially urban and rural sites were similarly unequal, suggesting that, outside the elite, the inhabitants of each enjoyed a similar range of wealth. The situation changes during the Iron Age, when inequality in urban environments increases and rural sites become both poorer in absolute terms and more equal. This coincides with a new level of landscape coordination and management, including an unprecedented phase of settlement dispersal and the construction of large-scale irrigation schemes. We therefore argue that the shift from inequality operating at a site scale to a settlement system scale may be related to the operational and integrative capacities of ancient polities.

Wealth Inequality, Social Complexity, Southwest Asia, Mesopotamia, Households, Gini

Oral presentation

  Abstract (PDF)

Dan Lawrence¹

Valentina Tumolo^1,2,3
Pertev Basri¹
Francesca Chelazzi¹