ABSTRACT
Why is there so little evidence for inequality in the world’s first cities? Because they were high-growth economies. Thomas Piketty differentiates economic growth from capital returns and found, using historical records, that as economic growth falls, inequality rises. We believe Piketty’s theory explains a prominent pattern in the global archaeological record. In this chapter, we begin our narrative by arguing that Neolithic megasites and the world’s first cities are evidence of high economic growth in the past. Following Piketty’s logic, we should not, therefore, be surprised that they were conspicuously egalitarian. High economic growth therefore yields cities without citadels, an argument we develop first through an examination of Neolithic settlements, then through a review of the first cities of South Asia, Mesopotamia, the Sahel, the Andes and Mesoamerica. We then argue that archaeology must escape the stratification trap to understand the interconnections between economic growth, craft specialization and agro-pastoral diversity.
