Special PNAS feature on Global Inequality includes UGA's Birch

aerial photo of golf course contiguous to dense housing
By:
Alan Flurry
A collection of articles in a special feature published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Economic Inequality Over the Very Long Term, released findings of a large, international research team that includes University of Georgia faculty member Jennifer Birch. An expert on the archaeology of Indigenous societies in eastern North America, Birch is co-author on 4 of the eleven articles comprising the April 14 special feature in PNAS: 
The Global Dynamics of Economic Inequality over the Long Term Special Feature brings together archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and economists to analyze inequality using a global database of archaeological and ethnographic records. By examining house-size differences as a key measure of wealth—encompassing material goods, social connections, and household size—this research tracks patterns of inequality across diverse societies over the past 10,000 years. This Special Feature provides a standardized, cross-cultural, and long-term assessment of economic inequality, offering new insights into its causes, variability, and consequences for societal well-being and longevity.
Birch's scholarship on the development of organizational complexity and diversity in eastern North America has included amassing a large dataset of archaeological settlement patterns, including the kinds of maps of village and household plans essential to the Gini project's aims. 
 
"I responded to an invitation from the project leads to contribute a perspective from eastern North America to this global effort," said Birch, professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of anthropology. "Elevating the archaeological and cultural history of the Eastern Woodlands has always been central to my mission as a scholar." 
 
One study co-authored by Birch shows how high wealth inequality emerged in diverse world regions. When land came under pressure – through local population growth, investments like terracing and irrigation or specialized plough animals that boosted production – land became more valuable, fueling competition. 

The findings challenge the idea that high wealth inequality is inevitable. Instead, it was often a localised consequence of expanding societies with a lack of political mechanisms to deal fairly with land constraints. The researchers argue that some ancient societies practising land-intensive farming avoided extreme high inequality through governance. Examples include Teotihuacan in Mexico and Mohenjo-daro in the Indus River Basin.

UGA anthropology alumnus Benjamin Steere (Ph.D '11), presently head of the anthropology and sociology Department at Western Carolina University, contributed data to the project. Graduate and undergraduate students from Franklin College assisted in generating data on archaeological households in the course of seminars and CURO projects, contributing as co-authors to a preliminary paper presented at the Society for American Archaeology conference in 2024.
 
Image: Still photo from drone video by Jonny Miller of Durban South Africa, via The Guardian.
 
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