The Global Dynamics of Inequality over the Long Term

Since 2021 the Global Dynamics of Inequality or GINI project has been investigating the long-term dynamics of inequality using the archaeological record of housing. An international team of archaeologists and other collaborators has now completed the data collection phase, which has produced a database of information on more than 45,000 houses drawn from the archaeological record worldwide. The database includes information on the size, elaboration, and demographic scale of individual houses, as well as the dates, locations, sizes, cultural traditions, sociopolitical structures, and other attributes of the settlements and societies associated with these houses.

Following our previous meeting at SFI, in April 2023, our team submitted a proposal for a Special Feature in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. We were pleased that our proposal was accepted, and we are now in the process of producing a series of ten papers utilizing the GINI project database, with a deadline for completion of initial rev. 1/5/2023 drafts of December 2023. The goal of this meeting will be for the first authors of each contribution to meet and discuss the draft papers as a step in producing a coherent and influential set of papers for submission to PNAS in mid-February 2024.