Social inequality before farming? Multidisciplinary approaches to the study of social organization in prehistoric and ethnographic hunter-gatherer-fisher societies

Social inequality before farming? Multidisciplinary approaches to the study of social organization in prehistoric and ethnographic hunter-gatherer-fisher societies

Edited by Luc Moreau

Archaeological investigations over the past 50 years have challenged the importance of domestication and food production in the emergence of institutionalized social inequality. Social inequality in the prehistoric human past developed through multiple historical processes that operate on a number of different scales of variability (e.g. social, economic, demographic, and environmental). However, in the theoretical and linguistic landscape of social inequality, there is no clear definition of what social inequality is. The lifeways of hunter-gathererfisher societies open a crucial intellectual space and challenge to find meaningful ways of using archaeological and ethnographic data to understand what social inequality exactly is with regard to variously negotiated or enforced cultural norms or ethoses of individual autonomy. This interdisciplinary edited volume gathers together researchers working in the fields of prehistoric archaeology and cultural and evolutionary anthropology. Spanning terminal Pleistocene to Holocene archaeological and ethnographic contexts from across the globe, the nineteen chapters in this volume cover a variety of topics organized around three major themes, which structure the book: 1) social inequality and egalitarianism in extant hunter-gatherer societies; 2) social inequality in Upper Palaeolithic Europe (c. 45,000–11,500 years ago); 3) social inequality in prehistoric Holocene hunter-gatherer-fisher societies globally. Most chapters in this volume provide empirical content with considerations of subsistence ecology, demography, mobility, social networks, technology, children’s enculturation, ritual practice, rock art, dogs, warfare, lethal weaponry, and mortuary behaviour. In addition to providing new data from multiple contexts through space and time, and exploring social diversity and evolution from novel perspectives, the collection of essays in this volume will have a considerable impact on how archaeologists define and theorize pathways both towards and away from inequality within diverse social contexts.

• Complete volume - Social inequality before farming? Multidisciplinary approaches to the study of social organization in prehistoric and ethnographic hunter-gatherer-fisher societies
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - Mobility, autonomy and learning: could the transition from egalitarian to non-egalitarian social structures start with children?
• Chapter 2 - Social inequality among New Guinea forager communities
• Chapter 3 - The impact of equality in residential decision making on group composition, cooperation and cultural exchange
• Chapter 4 - Surplus, storage and the emergence of wealth: pits and pitfalls
• Chapter 5 - Leadership and inequality among the Iñupiat: a case of transegalitarian hunter-gatherers
• Chapter 6 - Egalitarianism and democratized access to lethal weaponry: a neglected approach
• Chapter 7 - Adaptation and cumulative processes in human prehistory
• Chapter 8 - Did secret societies create inequalities in the Upper Palaeolithic?
• Chapter 9 - Responses of Upper Palaeolithic humans to spatio-temporal variations in resources: inequality, storage and mobility
• Chapter 10 - A comparative perspective on the origins of inequality
• Chapter 11 - Could incipient dogs have enhanced differential access to resources among Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe?
• Chapter 12 - Social ecology of the Upper Palaeolithic: exploring inequality through the art of Lascaux
• Chapter 13 - Naturalism: a marker of Upper Palaeolithic social inequalities?
• Chapter 14 - Reciprocity and asymmetry in social networks: dependency and hierarchy in a North Pacific comparative perspective
• Chapter 15 - Exploring fisher-forager complexity in an African context
• Chapter 16 - Unequal in death and in life? Linking burial rites with individual life histories
• Chapter 17 - Did prehistoric people consider themselves as equals or unequals? A testimony from the last hunter-gatherers of the Eastern Sahara
• Chapter 18 - Social complexity, inequality and war before farming: congruence of comparative forager and archaeological data
• Appendices to Chapter 9