Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Av., 32a, Moscow, 119334, Russia [artemova.olga@list.ru]

Oxford Brookes University, Department of Social Sciences, Gibbs Building, Gipsy Ln, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, England [wfinlayson@brookes.ac.uk]

 

Abstract. We introduce here the material arising from an academic discussion held in Kazan, within the framework of the XIIIth Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists of Russia (XIII CAER, 2–6th July, 2019). The participants in the workshop expressed considerable doubt about the popular idea that the development of inequality was an integral part of the Neolithic process, while before it there was social equality. Instead, they suggested a possibility that both Neolithic and modern hunter-gatherer equality might have emerged over time since the early Holocene. They mostly agreed that ethnographic data on modern hunter-gatherer cultures cannot be used as a simple parallel or analogy with Late Paleolithic/Epipaleolithic Southwest Asian hunter-gatherer cultures, and attempted to consider what types of archaeological data could testify to social inequality and equality in early prehistory.

 

Keywords: equality, egalitarianism, inequality, stratification, hunters, gatherers, Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, Neolithic, archaeology, ethnography.

 

Received 19.03.2020, revised 13.04.2020, accepted 13.05.2020.

DOI: 10.31600/2658-3925-2020-1-7-12

 

For citation: Artemova O. Yu., Finlayson B. Guest editors’ foreword. Prehistoric Archaeology. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. 2020 (1), 7-12 (in Russ.). DOI: 10.31600/2658-3925-2020-1-7-12

 

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