Essays on Long-Run Wellbeing Evolution of Ancient Societies

Abstract

Essays on Long-Run Wellbeing Evolution of Ancient Societies attempts to study the evolution of the Ancient Near East between the Neolithic and the Iron Age, and of the Western Mediterranean between the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic period. Several dimensions of long-run wellbeing are explored. The first in importance, in the framework of the thesis, is health, measured through Linear Enamel Hypoplasia (LEH), a bioarchaeological indicator of malnutrition. The trend of nutrition and health is created from the agglomeration by region of the share of individuals affected by LEH by site-period - and share of affected teeth by site-period for a part of the Western Mediterranean sites -. This measure of health plays a key role throughout all chapters of this thesis. In the first chapter, long run trends also for textual production, trade, technology, urbanization are provided. The dataset, to a great extent newly collected, is at a site-period level. The development of the single wellbeing and welfare indicators is contextualized within the main historical processes between the Neolithic and the Iron Age. These different dimensions are then combined in one index, whose long run evolution closely reflects the main historical developments of the Ancient Near East. In the second chapter, the development of nutrition of the Western Mediterranean area between the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic is studied in comparative perspective with the Ancient Near East. In the latter region, a decline in nutrition characterizes the transition to the first proto-states. In contrast, nutrition improves in the Western Mediterranean when measured by the share of individuals affected by LEH by site-period, or remains at persistently high levels when considering the share of affected teeth. In the third chapter, the same health indicator is used as a proxy for welfare, and its relation with a bioarchaeological indicator of interpersonal violence, proxying security, linked to state capacity, is studied. The two measures result to be strongly correlated - a result which remains robust after controlling for state capacity and state characteristics -, and their pattern is consistent with the main historical phenomena involving the Ancient Near East in the time span object of the study.