Social inequalities create profound problems in the world today yet are far from universally present in human history. This project seeks to investigate how and why social inequalities first became persistent - that is transferable from generation to the next in late prehistory.

The reconstruction of social inequalities on the basis of archaeological data is challenging and fascinating puzzle. In some cultural contexts power and wealth are flouted and in other they are concealed. To uncover past realities we need to apply mixed methods to a variety of archaeological datasets, and our research is developing new methods to do exactly this.

Leiden University is a key center for research into the past through archaeological methods, with leading researchers, a range of laboratories, and the right mix of empirical and theoretical approaches.

The research will look at late prehistoric houses, burials, figurative objects, craft technologies and exchange networks. It will apply the best available isotope techniques to study diet and mobility, non-destructive chemical characterization (XRF) to source objects and materials, and petrographic techniques to reconstruct craft technologies.

The project will transform our understanding of how social inequalities were first consolidated through an in depth analysis of the rich datasets of late prehistoric Cyprus, and the development of new methods for investigating social inequalities from ambiguous archaeological datasets.

The project aims to initiate a new wave of research into the key topic of how social inequalities became socially possible and how we can mitigate the problems that extreme social inequalities create.