Unequal foundations: Tracing the origin of wealth inequality across 10,000 years
Economic inequality is one of our primary global challenges and is a key research topic for archaeology — Why do some societies become deeply unequal while others remain more balanced? What clues about our economic past are hidden in the ruins of ancient homes? A new Special Feature in PNAS, edited by SFI External Professors Tim Kohler (Washington State University), Amy Bogaard (University of Oxford), and facilitated by Scott Ortman (University of Colorado Boulder), highlights papers by archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and economists exploring these questions using a global database of over 53,000 residential buildings from about 4,000 archaeological settlements.