The Workshop “Quantifying Social Inequalities – New Proxies, New Methods. Possibilities and Limitations to Determine Social Inequalities in Archaeological Contexts”, organized by Ralph Großmann for the Subcluster ROOTS of Inequalities, took place on October 7 and 8 2019 at the Kiel University.

In the framework of this workshop, invited speakers from Kiel, Germany, Europe and the USA illustrated the range of different approaches for the study of social inequalities in past societies. Case studies included investigations on the Copper Age cemetery of Durankulak (Arne Windler, Bochum) and the Middle Bronze Age urn cemetery of Dunaújváros-Duna-dűlő (Julian Laabs, Bern/Switzerland) with reconstructions based on the quantification of grave goods and the application of the so-called Gini Index. Other contributions presented multi-proxy analyses that combine bio-anthropological and archaeological data. These included studies on the southwest German Iron Age burial mound Magdalenenbergle (Ralph Großmann, Kiel), investigations on transformation processes in the Neolithic/Copper Age on the Iberian Peninsula (Marta Cintas Peña, Seville/Spain) and studies on the North Caucasian Bronze Age cemetery Kudachurt 14 (Katharina Fuchs, Kiel). Furthermore, Adrian Chase and Timothy J. Dennehy (both Tempe, Arizona/USA) presented results of quantified settlement differences and economic transformation processes of the Maya in Belize, Central America. Intense discussions followed contributions that, for example, linked life expectancy with economic prosperity (Nils Müller Scheeßel, Kiel), contrasted social inequality with the concept of diversity (Penny Bickle, York/UK), and showed alternative concepts to conventional, economically based approaches to inequality (Vesa Arponen, Kiel).

The workshop demonstrated the relevance of multiple proxy approaches as well as the importance of including not only economically based concepts but also alternative models that consider the “quality of life” in order to quantify social inequality.