Lecture 3

Inequality, status, and wealth in the archaeological record of Caracol, Belize

Stone building with a vaulted roof: high class
To measure Gini you need housing index. Are these houses? No. Large buildings for extended family.
You can measure volume of houses using LIDAR
Can plot and do logarithmic equations: Plazuela area and volume is correlated.
Different Lorenz curvers with Caracol area and Caracol volume. More drastic with volume (?)
Gini index ranges from 0.71 to 0.32. Data fromcentral mexico isn’t necessarily right.
In nature journal: data that inequality in Teotihuacan is extremely low, 0.12 gini. 0.30 for Tenochtitlan. 0.57 for Cahokia. 0.54 for Pompeii. BUT SOME PEOPLE USED VOLUMES AND SOME PEOPLE USED AREAS.
Nature 2019. greater post neolithic wealth disparities in eurasia than in north america and mesoamerica. the data is suspect.
Common presence of inlaid teeth in Caracol.
In eastern buildings, expect ritual use.
Can track how family’s economy is over time given the change in the kinds of burials they do.

When started working, definition of Tomb: “elite internment”, but elite is unclear. power? wealth?
Found a tomb with carvings: ‘we have a king!!!! no, we have a carver, and none of these symbols actually make sense.
Polychrome pottery! symbol of wealth?
No. These bowls are emblematic of Caracol, and widely distributed there.
Many items that are usually reserved for downtown, royalty were found widely at tikal, and not strictly related to the downtown.
(Downtown IS wealth and power.)
They would do a lot with teeth. Filed, inalid, etc.
Tikal has a few burials with inlaid teeth, like tikal.
Jade doesn’t mean elite, etc
Labrets correlate with downtown a lot. So do bone tubes. (Labret is a piece of shell that has been inlaid with hematite, and should be imbedded in the lower lip.)
WE CAN TELL via: DIETS! palace diet, only ocurrs in palace places.
well to do diet for farmers. worker bees with other sort of diet.
Measure diet from the bones: maize, meat, etc. The ELITE eat a lot of maize. not so much everyone else. N, C, Strontium. The enamel on your teeth crystalizes depending on the area you are in. Looking at the DNA can tell you where people are from. You can tell who works in the kitchen because the burials in a rural place have all a farmer family and one has a kitchen diet.

Archbishop James Ussher and Archbishop Lightfoot: October 23, 4004.
Unilineal cultural evolution: Savagery to barbarism to civilization; from primitive to complex
Changed by Franz Boas: Multilinear Cultural Evolution

First by age & sex
Then, achieved (non transmissible) vs ascribed status. Flannery and Marcus: when you have transmissible status, you have inequality.
Kinship
Political and economic orgnization.

Morton Fried’s Categories of societies

Elman Service names these

Agriculture in the archaeological record

Ground stone axes
Querns/manos and metates/mortars & pestels
“Sikle sheen/glosss”: Pieces of flint that were in the blades of a sickle; polished since well-worn
perforated stone balls: helping to penetrate the ground for doing agriculture
plaster lined pits
worn teeth
Animal bones to look at the way the bones are domesticated
What age they have when they die.
Caracol: Low density agricultural urban

Why does complexity develop?

Mizhirich, Ukraine

Klasies River Mouth, South Arica

“Egalitarian never existed” - James G Flanagan

Rousseau