Přednáška | Modelling grave wealth display and inequality in the Czech Corded Ware culture

Modelling grave wealth display and inequality in the Czech Corded Ware culture

Mikkel Johansen Nørtoft (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel )

20. únor, 14:10 

Přednáška proběhne hybridně – v knihovně ARÚ v Letenské 4, Praha, a online přes Zoom (https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/98534499456).

Abstrakt:

Reconstructing prehistoric wealth inequality is difficult due to difficulties in defining, and thus quantifying, wealth. Can we overcome these issues and try to reconstruct social structures in the Czech CWC?

To address this, I (with Adam B. Rohrlach, MPI-EVA) applied and expanded the QuantWealth framework (Nørtoft 2022) 300+ Corded Ware culture (CWC) graves in Czechia. We took a multivariate approach to model wealth display and inequality over time, integrating published bioarchaeological data on health, genetic ancestry, paternal lineages, age, and gender.

Our wealth measures include grave good exclusivity, labour time, skill, material sourcing, grave depth, and meat expenditure, explored through PCA, resource networks, and statistical tests. We estimated inequality and potential persistent inequality using relative and absolute Gini coefficients for adults and non-adults separately, adressing also previous Gini discrepancies between grave goods (zero-inflated) and grave pits or house sizes (physical measures).

In this talk, I explore how climate, subsistence, migrant networks, competitive feasting, and shifting wealth transmission may have shaped CWC social structures and wealth display. I hope this will inspire further testing with more data from the CWC and other Neolithic-Bronze Age groups.