Dimensions of inequality. Comparing the North Atlantic and the US Southwest

Abstract

Analysis of three different realms of inequality in two pairs of small-scale pre-industrial societies in two very different and culturally unconnected regions – Hohokam and Mimbres in the US Southwest and Greenland and Iceland in the North Atlantic – suggests that inequality can be successfully used as a yardstick to compare societies in the past. The study finds that there were significant inequalities in these small-scale farming societies – often described in previous studies as “egalitarian” – but that proxies for economic inequality like access to productive resources and to exotic goods do not fully reflect the range and nature of these inequalities. Access to ritual space is found to be a more sensitive measure of actual inequalities as experienced by members of these societies.