Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: From Rousseau onward, scholars have identified the transition to sedentary agriculture as crucial to the history of wealth inequality. Here, using the GINI project's global database on disparities in residential size, we examine the effects of important innovations in plant cultivation, animal husbandry, and traction on wealth inequality. Over a series of regional case studies, we find no evidence of major changes in residential disparity before or after these technological innovations became widespread, and where the effects of systemic change are recognizable, they are ambiguous. The introduction of horticulture/farming is accompanied by a slight general increase in inequality, while subsequent innovations tend to have a leveling effect. Although increasing productivity and surplus are critical to generating wealth inequality, nothing in our data suggests that rising productivity alone led to greater wealth inequality.
Institutions: Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Leipzig University, University of Cambridge, University of Georgia, Field Museum of Natural History, University of Illinois Chicago, University of York, LEIZA - Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie, Durham University, University of Maine, The University of Texas at Austin, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Santa Fe Institute, Washington State University
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4409415943