Assessing Classic Maya multi-scalar household inequality in southern Belize.

ABSTRACT: Inequality is present to varying degrees in all human societies, pre-modern and contemporary. For archaeological contexts, variation in house size reflects differences in labor investments and serves as a robust means to assess wealth across populations small and large. The Gini coefficient, which measures the degree of concentration in the distribution of units within a population, has been employed as a standardized metric to evaluate the extent of inequality. Here, we employ Gini coefficients to assess wealth inequality at four nested socio-spatial scales-the micro-region, the polity, the district, and the neighborhood-at two medium size, peripheral Classic Maya polities located in southern Belize. We then compare our findings to Gini coefficients for other Classic Maya polities in the

SUBMITTER: Thompson AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7990175 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature