Reconsidering narratives of household social inequality

Abstract

The emergence of social inequality is one of, if not the, most important research question in anthropological archaeology. Social inequality within different types of households is relational, between individuals as well as within communities, multidimensional, multi-scalar, and is measured in degrees instead of merely being present or absent. In exploring how archaeologists develop narratives of inequality we need to keep in mind that field archaeologists do not find inequality, as if it was hidden beneath the ground or cultural ruins, so much as we create arguments for inequality based on material variability. Engaging with Jeanne Arnold’s (1993) paper Labor and the Rise of Complex Hunter-Gatherers, in this brief essay I explore how archaeologists are often quick to use the label inequality but fail to consider if this was meaningful to people in the past. At times we draw upon methods such as Gini indexes but without any sense of what we are measuring, and we often fail to consider how household social inequality might be connected to food storage.