Archaeological Evidence of Inequality
The goal of archaeology is to understand everyday life of those who lived in the distant past, to understand how they organized themselves and supported themselves. It could almost be said that the goal of archaeology is to understand the 'evolution of inequality in ancient societies', including 'how to recognize and quantify it'. Rich burials, or bodies buried with a vast collection of grave goods, isn't always an indicator of social stratification, but might also be indications of family regard and kinship.
Some archaeologists attempt to apply the Gini coefficient, a single number from 0-100 that indicates income inequality with lower numbers indicating more equality than higher numbers. By examining the remains of housing in cities, archaeologists working on rough distribution of wealth based on housing size and goods found in the area. As an example, modern hunter-gatherer societies have a Gini coefficient of 17 as it is difficult to accumulate wealth when everything is carried with a person. Archaeologists estimate that early farming societies from 35-46. As an example, Babylonia was given an estimated Gini coefficient of 40, though based off the records that remain, the coefficient would have been 46, though archaeologists think there was some exaggeration in the ancient records. In the Americas, though, the Gini coefficient was lower even though their societies were very hierarchical, as with the Aztec Empire. In Tenochtitlán, houses were fairly standardized and similar. By other measures, though, the Gini coefficient of the Aztec Empire is as high as 50.4, much higher than in the Old World.
Archaeologists sought to understand when inequalities appeared. Initially, it was thought that the ability to store food surpluses, allowing for inequities between people within settlements and between settlements as populations were able to increase and specialize. However, a recent study of 90 sites indicated that the Gini coefficient didn't significantly increase for 'thousands of years after the advent of agriculture', hypothesizing that the development of 'specialized plow oxen that could cultivate 10 times more land than other farmers, thereby transforming the economy toward a higher value of land in detriment of human labor'.
With the advent of metal work, inequality became more obvious in the archaeological record, with the initial power structures of chieftains or kings being able to hold power by force more easily, as well as the use of horses as 'instruments of war [that] determined the success of conquests that would alter the pattern of settlements across Eurasia at the end of the Neolithic'. The concentration of large animals in the Old World, such as oxen, cows, pigs, and horses, 'would at least partially explain how 30 empires or large states that emerged between 3000-600 BCE were all found in the Old World, where these animals roamed'.
One of the problems with using the Gini coefficient to assess inequality in ancient cities is that they also tended to rebuild on top of older sites. For example, Hisarlik, the location of the ancient city of Troy, has at least 10 cities built one atop each other within 2,000 years. This complicates disentangling each layer and ensuring that buildings belong to a certain time frame. Terrain can also change how people built, with plains leading to more sprawling houses and jagged areas leading to more vertical housing, making it more difficult to apply the Gini coefficient equally and the mingling of layers from successive societies.
