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Social Complexity & the Origins of Inequality

How and why human societies transitioned from egalitarian to hierarchical — the archaeological and theoretical evidence.

18 works

Bodley JH (2003)

The power of scale: a global history approach

Armonk, New York & London, England: ME Sharpe.

Boehm C (1996)

Emergency decisions, cultural-selection mechanics, and group selection

Current Anthropology 34:227-54.

Boehm C (1999b)

Forager hierarchies, innate dispositions, and the behavioral reconstruction of history

In Diehl MW (ed) Hierarchies in action: cui bono! Southern Illinois University Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper 27: 31-58.

Boehm C (2000)

Conflict and the evolution of social control

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7, No. 1–2, 2000, pp. 79–101.

Gowdy J (2021a)

Ultrasocial: the evolution of human nature and the quest for a sustainable future

Cambridge University Press.

Harris M (2001)

Cultural materialism: the struggle for a science of culture (updated edition)

Walnut Creek, Lanham, New York, Oxford: Altamira Press.

Hayden B (1994)

Competition, labor, and complex hunter-gatherers

In Burch ES & Ellana LJ (eds) Key issues in hunter-gatherer research. Oxford: Berg: 223-239.

Hayden B (1995)

Pathways to power: principles for creating socioeconomic inequalities

In Price TD & Feinman GM (eds). Foundations of Social Inequality. New York: Plenum Press: 15-86.

Hayden B (1996)

Thresholds to power in emergent complex societies

In Arnold JE (ed) Emergent complexity: the evolution of intermediate societies. International Monographs in Prehistory, Ann Arbor, Michigan: 50-58.

Hayden B (2022)

Understanding chipped stone tools

Clinton Corners, New York: Eliot Werner Publications.

Hayden B (2001)

Richman, poorman, beggarman, chief: the dynamics of social inequality

In Archaeology at the millennium: a sourcebook. Feinman GM & Price TD. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers: 231-272.

Hayden B (2004)

Sociopolitical organization in the Natufian: a view from the Northwest

In Delage C (ed), The last hunter-gatherers in the Near East. British Archaeological Reports International Series 1320, 2004. Oxford: Hadrian Books. Pp 263-308.

Hayden B (2014)

Social complexity

In Cummings V, Jordan P, & Zvelebil M (eds) The Oxford handbook of the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 643-662.

Johnson AW and Earl T (1987)

The evolution of human societies: from foraging group to agrarian state

Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.

Scott JC (2017)

Against the grain: a deep history of the earliest states

New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

Singh M & Glowacki L (2022)

Human social organization during the Late Pleistocene: Beyond the nomadic-egalitarian model

Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 43, Issue 5, September 2022:418-431.

Tainter JA (1988)

The collapse of complex societies

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

Widlok T & Cruz MD (eds) (2022)

Scale matters: the quality and quantity in human culture and sociality

Culture and Theory Vol. 263. The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.