The emergence of social inequality is one of, if not the, most important research question in anthropological archaeology. Social inequality within different types of households is relational, between individuals as well as within communities, multidimensional, multi-scalar, and is measured in degrees instead of merely being present or absent. In exploring how archaeologists develop narratives of inequality we need to keep in mind that field archaeologists do not find inequality, as if it was hidden beneath the ground or cultural ruins, so much as we create arguments for inequality based on material variability. Engaging with Jeanne Arnold’s (1993) paper Labor and the Rise of Complex Hunter-Gatherers, in this brief essay I explore how archaeologists are often quick to use the label inequality but fail to consider if this was meaningful to people in the past. At times we draw upon methods such as Gini indexes but without any sense of what we are measuring, and we often fail to consider how household social inequality might be connected to food storage.

中文翻译：

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重新思考家庭社会不平等的叙述


社会不平等的出现即使不是人类学考古学中最重要的研究问题，也是最重要的研究问题之一。不同类型家庭内部的社会不平等是相互关联的，无论是个人之间还是社区内部，都是多维度、多尺度的，并且以程度来衡量，而不仅仅是存在或不存在。在探索考古学家如何发展不平等的叙述时，我们需要记住，实地考古学家并没有发现不平等，就好像它隐藏在地下或文化废墟之下一样，我们只是根据物质的可变性来为不平等提出论据。在这篇简短的文章中，我结合珍妮·阿诺德 (Jeanne Arnold) (1993) 的论文《劳动与复杂狩猎采集者的崛起》，探讨了考古学家如何经常快速使用不平等这个标签，但却没有考虑这对过去的人们是否有意义。有时，我们利用基尼指数等方法，但对我们所测量的内容没有任何意义，而且我们常常无法考虑家庭社会不平等与粮食储存之间的关系。