GINI Project receives Research Award from the Shanghai Archaeology Forum

Three SFI External Professors and their collaborators received a 2025 SAF Research Award from the Shanghai Archaeology Forum for their ongoing project, “The Global Dynamics of Inequality over the Long Term.” The collaboration, nicknamed the GINI project, was one of 10 international projects celebrated at the SAF annual meeting in Shanghai on December 15, selected from 140 nominations.

Amy Bogaard (University of Oxford), Scott Ortman (University of Colorado Boulder), and Tim Kohler (Washington State University) co-lead the project, which launched in 2021 and has grown to include an international team of two dozen researchers. The group uses the archaeological housing record to investigate the long-term dynamics of inequality and economic growth. They have built a database of more than 53,000 residential buildings in 4,000 archaeological settlements from around the world, and use housing size as a proxy for wealth to develop standardized, cross-cultural, and long-term analyses. Earlier this year, the group published a special issue in PNAS — an outcome of several meetings, including two working groups at SFI: Global Dynamics of Inequality II, in 2023, and The Global Dynamics of Inequality over the Long Term, in 2024.

“Economic growth and inequality are fundamental to how societies operate and the experiences of their members,” says Kohler. “Moreover, they are strongly connected to other aspects of the social experience, including the extent to which human rights are honored.”

The GINI project has provided an opportunity for a diverse group of archaeologists to build on previous discussions and case studies in long-term wealth inequality at SFI, led by Sam Bowles, says Bogaard. “The 2025 SAF Research Award recognizes the importance of this interdisciplinary work and its urgent relevance today.”  

“I think it is so important that projects like ours are being recognized by the global archaeological community,” says Ortman, who accepted the award on behalf of the group in Shanghai in December. “It is a sign that our approach to thinking about the archaeological record — as a tool for viewing human society from a distance — is effective and compelling for expanding knowledge of fundamental social properties and processes. I couldn't be more pleased!”