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      The farming-inequality nexus: new insights from ancient Western Eurasia

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      Antiquity
      Antiquity Publications

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          Abstract

          Abstract

          This article advances the hypothesis that the transformation of farming from a labour-limited form to a land-limited form facilitated the emergence of substantial and sustained wealth inequalities in many ancient agricultural societies. Using bioarchaeological and other relevant evidence for the nature of ancient agrosystems, the authors characterise 90 Western Eurasian site-phases as labour- vs land-limited. Their estimates of wealth inequality (the Gini coefficient), which incorporate data on house and household storage size and individual grave goods—adjusted for comparability using new methods—indicate that land-limited farming systems were significantly more unequal than labour-limited ones.

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          Crop manuring and intensive land management by Europe's first farmers.

          The spread of farming from western Asia to Europe had profound long-term social and ecological impacts, but identification of the specific nature of Neolithic land management practices and the dietary contribution of early crops has been problematic. Here, we present previously undescribed stable isotope determinations of charred cereals and pulses from 13 Neolithic sites across Europe (dating ca. 5900-2400 cal B.C.), which show that early farmers used livestock manure and water management to enhance crop yields. Intensive manuring inextricably linked plant cultivation and animal herding and contributed to the remarkable resilience of these combined practices across diverse climatic zones. Critically, our findings suggest that commonly applied paleodietary interpretations of human and herbivore δ(15)N values have systematically underestimated the contribution of crop-derived protein to early farmer diets.
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            The Urban Revolution

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              Nimrods, piscators, pluckers, and planters: The emergence of food production

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                applab
                Antiquity
                Antiquity
                Antiquity Publications
                0003-598X
                1745-1744
                September 18 2019
                : 1-15
                Article
                10.15184/aqy.2019.105
                1ad8ed51-d389-4258-a9cd-5aa0c275892b
                © 2019

                https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms

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