Economic inequality is one of our primary global challenges and is a key research topic for archaeology — why do some societies become deeply unequal while others remain more balanced? What clues about our economic past are hidden in the ruins of ancient homes?
A recent Special Feature in PNAS, edited by SFI External Professors Tim Kohler (Washington State University) and Amy Bogaard (University of Oxford), and facilitated by External Professor Scott Ortman (University of Colorado Boulder), highlights papers by archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and economists exploring these questions using a global database of over 53,000 residential buildings from about 4,000 archaeological settlements.
Residential building size offers a durable and widely available proxy for household wealth, write the editors in the Special Feature introduction. By analyzing differences in house size, the papers in this issue offer a standardized, cross-cultural, and long-term perspective on economic inequality extending well into periods before writing emerged.
Differences in house sizes over time record when and how wealth gaps emerged, shifted, and sometimes narrowed across 10,000 years of human history. This approach sheds new light on the causes and consequences of inequality, and on how social and political choices shaped the distribution of resources and opportunities in societies around the world. Collectively, the ten studies in this Special Feature offer new insights into the roots and complexity of economic inequality.
“These patterns are deeply embedded in our history,” Kohler says. “By studying them, we can better address their implications for the future. If we can understand how inequality emerged and evolved, perhaps we can learn how to mitigate its impact today.”
Read the Special Feature, “The Global Dynamics of Inequality over the Long Term” edited by Tim Kohler and Amy Bogaard in PNAS (April 14, 2025) at https://www.pnas.org/topic/567
Researchers
Tim KohlerRegents Professor of Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology (emeritus), Washington State University, and External Professor at SFI
Amy BogaardExternal Professor
Scott OrtmanExternal Professor