GIAP-ICAC researcher Toby C. Wilkinson is participating in the conference “Inequalities in Supra-Regional Eurasian Exchange Networks (8000 – 2000 BP)“, taking place from Dec 2nd to 4th 2021, organised by the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence of Kiel University.
As stated in the organiser’s website: “Exchange networks structure and development are essential for explaining social and economic inequalities. The conference aims to detect those inequalities within the distribution of sourced raw materials over time and space. It centres on large-scale exchange networks from the Neolithic to the Iron Age.”
Friday 2nd 15.45h
Types of inequality, trade networks and measuring materials
Dr. Toby C. Wilkinson- Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica (ICAC)
Archaeology has recently begun an “inequality turn”. Many current projects and recent publications are concerned with the inequality in the past, often with a focus on its supposed origins. There are, however, many forms and axes of inequality and it is easy for us to conflate them and assume that evidence for one type correlates with another. We cannot assume that the drivers for each are the same.
The idea that trade networks are responsible for large-scale inequalities has been a common theme in archaeological and wider “development” economics since Wallerstein’s influential introduction of the concept of “world-systems”. According to this approach, the unequal geographic distributions of “raw materials” creates an automatic potential difference in initial material wealth and sets up the conditions for trade in which resource-poor regions (e.g. Mesopotamia) seek access to exotic and desirable raw materials (such as metals) in resource-rich neighbours (e.g. highland Anatolia, Iran etc.) in exchange for added-value processed products (such as textiles). World-systems analysis points to the structural imbalance created by the asymmetric relationships between the consuming “core” and producing “periphery”.
This form of inequality is both structural and regional, one we may be able to observe via archaeological proxies, but not necessarily measure. But to what degree was this regional-scale inequality palpably experienced by communities at either end of the networks? Can we plausibly talk about inequality at the grand scale of trade networks, which grew in size and density in Eurasia particularly from the 3rd millennium BC onwards?
This paper will argue that we need to look in some less obvious, and non-continuous categories of material evidence to delineate the range of inequality regimes at work. It will draw out the difference between “categorical” and “linear” inequalities, and examine the role of ancient metrology that enabled certain kinds of inequality. Without a linear metrological cognitive frame, the type of inequality we most commonly talk about today (wealth inequality, measured by money), could not even exist.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 840892 (YARNSCAPE; H2020-MSCA-IF-2018).
