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A study by the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence challenges widely held theories about the emergence of social hierarchies in prehistory, using Southeast Europe as an example.
The global distribution of wealth is currently the subject of controversial debate. Against this backdrop, social sciences, humanities, and economics are intensively investigating how social hierarchies arise in human communities and where these processes originate. A widely held theory to date is that the introduction of agriculture in Europe at the beginning of the Neolithic period around 8,000 years ago inevitably led to socially unequal communities. The introduction of the plough and the associated hereditary transfer of farming capital further intensified this process.
Now, a study has been published in the international journal Science Advances that questions this theory using the example of the Carpathian Basin. ‘We show that social inequalities did not increase in the five thousand years following the introduction of agriculture in Southeast Europe, and that the introduction of the plough did not rapidly promote either the extent or the permanence of inequalities,’ says the study's lead author, archaeologist Dr Paul R. Duffy from the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence at Kiel University.
The study is based on several years of research into the prehistory of the Carpathian Basin, conducted by researchers in the ROOTS subcluster ‘ROOTS of Inequalities’ together with colleagues from the USA. The Carpathian Basin is particularly well suited to this question because it represents a stepping stone for the spread of early agriculture from the Middle East via Anatolia and the Balkans to Central Europe.
‘Over the past few decades, there have been a large number of excavations in the region. This wealth of archaeological data also makes the Carpathian Basin ideal for researching the development of socio-economic inequalities in prehistory,’ says Dr Duffy.
As an indicator of inequality, the researchers used, among other things, the archaeologically quantifiable size of houses. Their construction is costly and they represent a tangible, inheritable wealth.
The results of the study show, however, that social inequality based on house sizes did not change significantly between the early Neolithic and the Bronze Age.
The researchers also collected data on other aspects of prehistoric societies, including the size of settlements, their duration, and the extent to which people collaborated on earthworks and trench construction.
They found that people had been digging ditches for defensive or ceremonial purposes since shortly after the arrival of farmers in Southeast Europe until at least the first millennium BCE, but it was not until the late Bronze Age, around 1400 BCE, that these ditches increased massively in size.
The duration of settlement also shows clear trends: earlier settlements in the Neolithic period lasted much longer than the mega-fortresses and other settlements of the Bronze Age.
‘These findings suggest that societies' ability to organise themselves for collective action increased over the course of prehistory. However, these changes did not automatically lead to measurable inequalities in material wealth. Only later groups show a greater range of inequalities,’ says co-author Dr Fynn Wilkes, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence.
At the same time, archaeological data such as the shorter period of occupancy of Bronze Age settlements suggests that people left settlements where the first hierarchies were forming. ‘Apparently, they were able to vote with their feet, undermining the ability of ambitious leaders to impose their will on early communities,’ explains Dr Duffy.
The data therefore does not show a necessary link between the introduction of agriculture and increasing inequality. Using a detailed regional example, the study confirms earlier global studies that also question the long-postulated automatic development to social inequality from the Neolithic period onwards. ‘Further detailed studies of well-researched regions are certainly necessary to better understand the mechanisms that lead to or prevent inequalities,’ concludes Dr Duffy.
Dr Paul R. Duffy
Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology at Kiel University/ROOTS Cluster of Excellence
prduffy@ufg.uni-kiel.de
Dr Fynn Wilkes
ROOTS Cluster of Excellence
fwilkes@roots.uni-kiel.de
Duffy, Paul R, Fynn Wilkes, Henry Skorna, Martin Furholt, Cait Dickie, Kata Furholt, Giacomo Bilotti, Johannes Müller, Gary M. Feinman 2025. Five thousand years of inequality in the Carpathian Basin. Science Advances https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adu0323
https://www.cluster-roots.org The ROOTS Cluster of Excellence
https://www.roots-compass.org/home?project=144 The project “Five Thousand Years of Inequality in the Carpathian Basin” of the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence
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Excavation of the Bronze Age settlement of Békés-Várdomb in Hungary. Thanks to the wealth of archaeo ...
Quelle: Paul Duffy
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