Economic inequality is fueled by population scale, land-limited production, and settlement hierarchies across the archaeological record.

ABSTRACT: Defining wealth broadly to include wealth in people, relational connections, and material possessions, we examine the prehistory of wealth inequality at the level of the residential units using the consistent proxy of Gini coefficients calculated across areas of contemporaneous residential units. In a sample of >1,100 sites and > 47,000 residential units spanning >10,000 y, persistent wealth inequality typically lags the onset of plant cultivation by more than a millennium. It accompanies landscape modifications and subsistence practices in which land (rather than labor) limits production, and growth of hierarchies of settlement size. Gini coefficients are markedly higher through time in settlements at or near the top of such hierarchies; settlements not enmeshed in these systems remain re

SUBMITTER: Kohler TA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12037049 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature