Long-Term Impacts of Institutionalized Inequality on Household Wealth and Well-Being

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Dr. Jessica Munson will lead a team of researchers to investigate the long-term impacts of institutionalized inequality on household wealth and well-being in ancient society. Inequality is an intrinsic element of large-scale human societies but understanding how disparities in wealth and power differentially impacted the human condition in the past is not well studied. With its long-term perspective, archaeology is poised to make significant contributions to examining the impacts of permanent institutionalized inequality on the everyday lives of past people. This project will analyze disparities in household wealth, social well-being, and health within an ancient community to develop a more detailed understanding of how increasing political power impacted socioeconomic disparities over the span of about 2000 years. Understanding how ancient societies responded and adapted to political instability and socioeconomic differences in the past can provide important lessons as one confronts similar challenges today. This research is designed to improve quality of life concerns for local communities near the field site and project laboratory as well as provide educational opportunities for students from underrepresented groups.Studying the distribution of wealth and well-being in ancient societies requires a large dataset that is representative of the range of socioeconomic differences that were present in the past. Combining new archaeological investigations with analyses of legacy data that spans an approximately two thousand year period, this large-scale excavation project will sample between 40-50 households identified in recent settlement surveys. Multiple quality of life indices will be calculated using data from burials, domestic artifacts, and residential architecture to investigate the impacts of increasing political power on the distribution of household wealth and well-being disparities over this period. The data generated from this project will facilitate an innovative conceptual framework and methodology to analyze multiple kinds of household inequality, providing an important dataset for future comparative studies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.