SoS 234: Anna Prentiss reflects on the origin of inequality in hunter-gatherer societies

Dr Anna Marie Prentiss joins Host Chris Lynn to discuss the origins of institutionalised inequality. Anna is an archaeologist specializing in the ancient history of the Great Plains, Pacific Northwest, and Arctic regions of North America. She has a methodological specialty in lithic technology and theoretical interests in the archaeology of villages and towns, social inequality, hunter-gatherer mobility and technological organization, and the cultural evolutionary process. She is associate editor of the scholarly journal, Current Anthropology. Dr. Prentiss is actively engaged in a long term study of the evolution of complex hunter-gatherer-fisher societies on the interior of British Columbia. The current focus of this research is a multi-year excavation at the Bridge River archaeological site, located near the town of Lillooet, British Columbia. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Prentiss, along with her students and colleagues conducted major excavations during 2008 and 2009 to examine socio-economic and political changes that occurred during the occupation span of the village. Recent research (2012-2023) at Bridge River has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation. ------------------------------ Find the paper discussed in this episode: Prentiss, A. M., Foor, T. A., Hampton, A., Walsh, M. J., Denis, M. & Edwards. A. (2023). Emergence of persistent institutionalized inequality at the Bridge River site, British Columbia: the roles of managerial mutualism and coercion. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci, 14;378(1883). doi: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0304 ------------------------------ Contact Dr. Prentiss: anna.prentiss@mso.umt.edu ------------------------------ Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Chris Lynn, Co-Host Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Anahi Ruderman, SoS Co-Producer, HBA Junior Fellow E-mail: aniruderman@gmail.com, Twitter: @@ani_ruderman