Economic Inequality Over the Very Long Term
A PNAS Special Feature
The Project is a large collaborative team that is investigating long-term, global changes in wealth inequality has had a collection of papers published as part of a of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The project brought together 27 scientists worldwide, including Prof. Cameron Petrie and Dr Enrico Crema from the Department of 91探花视频 at the 91探花视频, and investigated wealth inequality using the disparity of housing floor measurements as a proxy. The international team led by Prof. Amy Bogaard (Oxford University), Prof. Tim Kohler (Washington State University), and Prof. Scott Ortman (University of Colorado Boulder) and funded by the National Science Foundation, have analysed a record of over 53,000 houses from 4,000 archaeological sites, covering a chronological span of over 10,000 years and a geographical range that includes all five continents. “The collaborative team collected and examined a huge dataset that is publicly available on , and can be added to in the future. Beyond the results of the GINI project, we have no doubts that this will be an invaluable resource to many colleagues” says Prof. Petrie.
The Special Feature contains ten papers spanning a diverse range of topics, providing new insights on the relationship between wealth inequality and different social and economic factors, such as the emergence of agriculture, labor organisation, warfare, and settlement persistence.
The team also developed a new range of statistical approaches to investigate their dataset. A study led by Dr Crema investigated different statistical measures of house size disparity and how they relate to the issue of scale. Dr Crema points out that “Inequality is inherently a relational concept, and as such statistical measures of inequality depend on scales of aggregation. We developed new ways to discern inequality within and between different scales of aggregation, providing a more nuanced picture on how wealth disparity can be organised in different societal levels”.
The papers in this Special Feature consider inequality from several perspectives, including the effects of land use and war on housing disparities and the relationship between housing disparities and how long housing sites are occupied. Prof. Petrie notes that: "Inequality is clearly a major issue today, and has also been something that our forebears across the world have lived with. Past societies variously succeeded or failed in adapting to new environments, coming up with workable solutions to social, economic, and political challenges, responding to changing climate, and maintaining stability and sustainability in the face of crises. Inevitably there is a much we can learn from them."
The following papers included in the Special Feature were co-authored by Dr Enrico Crema and Prof Cameron Petrie:
- A. Bogaard, P. Cruz, M. Fochesato, J. Birch, G. Cervantes Quequezana, S. Chirikure, E.R. Crema, G.M. Feinman, A.S. Green, H. Hamerow, G. Jin, T. Kerig, D. Lawrence, M.D. McCoy, J. Munson, S.G. Ortman, C.A. Petrie, & P. Roscoe, Labor, land, and the global dynamics of economic inequality, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (16) e2400694122, (2025).
- E.R. Crema, M. Fochesato, A.G. Mejía Ramón, J. Munson, & S.G. Ortman, Toward multiscalar measures of inequality in archaeology, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (16) e2400700121, (2025).
- G.M. Feinman, G. Cervantes Quequezana, A. Green, D. Lawrence, J. Munson, S. Ortman, C. Petrie, A. Thompson, & L.M. Nicholas, Assessing grand narratives of economic inequality across time, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (16) e2400698121, (2025).
- A.S. Green, G.M. Feinman, A.E. Thompson, P. Cruz, S. Chirikure, T. Kerig, D. Lawrence, C.A. Petrie, & S.G. Ortman, Kuznets’ tides: An archaeological perspective on the long-term dynamics of sustainable development, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (16) e2400603121, (2025).
- T. Kerig, E.R. Crema, J. Birch, G.M. Feinman, A.S. Green, D. Gronenborn, D. Lawrence, C.A. Petrie, P. Roscoe, A.E. Thompson, & T.A. Kohler, 100 generations of wealth equality after the Neolithic transitions, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (16) e2400697122, (2025).
- T.A. Kohler, A. Bogaard, S.G. Ortman, E.R. Crema, S. Chirikure, P. Cruz, A. Green, T. Kerig, M.D. McCoy, J. Munson, C. Petrie, A.E. Thompson, J. Birch, G. Cervantes Quequezana, G.M. Feinman, M. Fochesato, D. Gronenborn, H. Hamerow, G. Jin, D. Lawrence, P.B. Roscoe, E. Rosenstock, G.K. Erny, H. Kim, R. Ohlrau, J.W. Hanson, L. Fargher Navarro, & M. Pailes, Economic inequality is fueled by population scale, land-limited production, and settlement hierarchies across the archaeological record, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (16) e2400691122, (2025).
Published 15th April 2025
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