Five thousand years of inequality in the Carpathian Basin

The emergence of sedentary farming economies, especially in contexts intensified by plow agriculture, has been argued to underpin marked increases in economic inequality and its intergenerational transmission across Eurasia. To assess this presumed causal relationship, we examine relational (burials) and material (house sizes) inequalities in the Carpathian Basin, a large region in central Europe, from the time the first farmers arrived in southeastern Europe through the next five millennia to the Bronze Age. We find that although farming did increase the potentials for both relational and material inequalities, the potential was rarely reached and then only for short durations. We identify a series of leveling mechanisms varying over time, including the removal of material wealth from circulation through the placement in graves, community fission, and investments of surplus labor in infrastructural investments. In the Carpathian Basin, only after at least 5000 years were the intergenerational potentials of material wealth transmissions more broadly realized.