Re:Ancient Eastern European mega-sites: a social levelling c...
by card_zero on Wednesday May 15, 2024 @06:56AM
(#40365230)
Well, no. I mean kind of. These grain-farming Cucuteni were squeezed out by the Kurgan culture, tall pastoralists coming from the East (that culture became the indo-europeans, us), the process possibly assisted by a few hundred years of drought. Ordinarily, the farmers had food surpluses, though having all the bread you can eat is not the same as having all the meat, admittedly.
Your nomadic herding warriors leave graves behind - Kurgan - as well as distinctive pottery, as clues to the general area they were being nomadic in, which was initially elsewhere while the Cucuteni were thriving. I don't think maintaining slaves at a distance works as a concept.
> The use of house size as a proxy for the economic status and social power of households in a society is based on broad cross-cultural evidence from ethno-archaeological studies and archival sources as it has been found that household wealth and house size are correlated in many societies
Basic premise of this study is wrong, based on recorded history from the same region. Nomadic herding warriors do not live in houses, and do not leave the same mark in archaeology records.
Early agriculture can support a huge number of people, but they will be malnourished, and always be dominated by meat fed elites!