Social Complexity and Social Inequality in the Prehistoric Mediterranean.

The complex urban polities developed in the Old World (5500–3500 BP) had several structural features in common, particularly their scale, their cereal agrarianism, and their environmental patterning. Accordingly, the demographic weight borne by agrarian subsistence in these environments is causally...

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Publicado en:Current Anthropology Vol. 60; no. 3; pp. 283 - 309
Autores principales: Leppard, Thomas P., Bevan, Andrew, Campbell, Roderick, Çilingiroğlu, Çiler, Knapp, Bernard, Lillios, Katina T., Murray, Sarah C., Porčić, Marko, Stark, Miriam
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: University of Chicago Press Jun2019
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Jun2019
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        atl: Social Complexity and Social Inequality in the Prehistoric Mediterranean.
      aug:
        au:
          Leppard, Thomas P.
          Bevan, Andrew
          Campbell, Roderick
          Çilingiroğlu, Çiler
          Knapp, Bernard
          Lillios, Katina T.
          Murray, Sarah C.
          Porčić, Marko
          Stark, Miriam
        affil:
          University College London Institute of Archaeology, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, United Kingdom. 2 I 19
          Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, 15 East 84th Street, New York, New York 10028, USA. 7 XII 18
          Faculty of Letters, Protohistory and Near Eastern Department, Ege University, 35100 Bornova-Izmir, Turkey. 5 XII 18
          Archaeology, Department of Humanities, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland, United Kingdom. 29 XI 18
          Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, 114 Macbride Hall, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA. 10 XII 18
          Department of Classics, University of Toronto, 125 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C7, Canada. 10 XII 18
          Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Čika Ljubina 18–20, Belgrade, Serbia. 6 XII 18
          Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii at Mānoa, 346 Saunders Hall, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA. 23 XII 18
      su:
        Income inequality
        Economic development
        Agricultural development
        Development gap
        Income & employment theory
      sug:
        subj:
          Income inequality
          Economic development
          Agricultural development
          Development gap
          Income & employment theory
      ab: The complex urban polities developed in the Old World (5500–3500 BP) had several structural features in common, particularly their scale, their cereal agrarianism, and their environmental patterning. Accordingly, the demographic weight borne by agrarian subsistence in these environments is causally associated with emergent social complexity. Yet other Old World contexts also witness the Mid-Late Holocene emergence of socially complex societies, contexts that differ radically from those of the pristine states in their environmental organization. How can we account for this? I suggest that the model developed by Thomas Piketty, in his analysis of emergent wealth inequality in late modernity, has an unappreciated applicability in explaining the development of unequal social systems at larger time scales. I argue that Mediterranean environments are equivalent to the low-growth environments that he demonstrates exaggerate the speed at which wealth inequality grows. This has explanatory potential in the context of the otherwise problematic appearance of social complexity in low-growth environments, which, on the basis of current models orbiting around surplus, we might expect to discourage such emergence. Recognizing that highly varied ecological and economic pathways can lead to ostensibly very similar outcomes poses challenges to how we model emergent complexity in comparative perspective.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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