What is it about?
Modern conceptions of sustainability emphasise both continuity and equality - a sustainable settlement or state is one which has the capacity to persist through time without generating high levels of inequality. We use archaeological data on the distribution of house sizes and information on the longevity of occupation of settlements to understand how persistence and inequality are related. We find that more unequal settlements last longer, and that this relationship grows stronger in more hierarchical societies. However, we also find that inequality and persistence are not causally linked.
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Why is it important?
Our findings reveal a tension in the definition of sustainability, since inequality seems to correlate with settlement longevity. However, we also find that the two are not causally linked, meaning we can design interventions which reduce inequality without impacting the survival prospects for settlements. The approach taken also demonstrates the rich potential for using archaeological data to think about current global challenges
Perspectives
The article was the product of over two years work collating and analysing data from the last 10,000 years at a global scale. This sort of work is very rare in archaeology, and involved a team of specialists with expertise on different parts of the world. I really enjoyed figuring out how to make all of our data comparable, and learning about the myriad ways humans have found to build house and settlements. The work also felt important, since it allows us to comment on challenges facing the world today
Dan Lawrence
Durham University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Housing inequality and settlement persistence are associated across the archaeological record, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2400696122.
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