Different types of egalitarian societies and the development of inequality in early Mesopotamia

Abstract

There is no single form that equality takes in past societies. Some societies, horizontal egalitarian systems, manifest absence of hierarchy, but in other societies (vertical egalitarian systems) privileged status coexists with substantial equality. A detailed comparison of the Halaf culture of northern Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia with the Samarra and Ubaid cultures of central and southern Mesopotamia, examining settlement pattern, economy and burial customs, reveals the ways the vectors of egalitarianism in these two contrasting systems and enables key variables determining the nature and distribution of equality to be distinguished.