Social complexity without Inequality

Functional household differentiation among early Neolithic communities in Central Europe

Bibliographic Data

ID19488593
AuthorsPeter Tóth (0000-0002-5010-9456, Masaryk University), Veronika Brychová (0000-0002-3624-2955, Institute of Physics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences), Johana Malíšková (0000-0002-7267-1722, Masaryk University), Miriam Nývltová Fišáková (0000-0001-8467-4712, Masaryk University), Dalia A Pokutta (0000-0003-2049-6886, Stockholm University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume73
Pages105796
Publication date2026-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Archaeological Science Reports (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2352-409X • E-ISSN: 2352-4103
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105796
OpenAlexW7160332912
LanguageEN
References cited68

Ruminant fats dominated LBK pottery (66%) over non-ruminant (27%) and dairy (7%). • Lipid concentrations can reflect processing intensity, not unequal resource access. • Statistics show no link between house size and food resource distribution. • Household vessel specialization occurred alongside equal access to food. • LBK households show functional, not hierarchical, social organization. Understanding how early farming societies developed social complexity remains central to comprehending human social evolution. While architectural differentiation in Neolithic settlements is often interpreted as reflecting emerging hierarchy, household-level analyses linking architecture to food processing remain understudied. We conducted organic residue analysis of 62 pottery vessels from four Linear Pottery culture (LBK) households (5300–5000 BCE) of varying sizes at Těšetice-Kyjovice, Czech Republic, integrating lipid analysis and faunal evidence with statistical modeling to examine relationships between household architecture and food access patterns. Across all sampled households, compound-specific isotope analysis identified ruminant adipose fats as the predominant lipid fraction (66%), followed by non-ruminant sources (27%) and dairy (7%). Statistical analysis showed no significant correlation between house size and food source access, despite clear architectural differentiation. Vessels containing ruminant fats showed higher lipid concentrations than non-ruminant vessels, indicating processing intensity variation rather than differential resource access. These findings provide the first biomolecular demonstration that architectural variation in early Neolithic communities reflected functional household specialization within egalitarian resource-sharing systems, rather than hierarchical wealth differentiation. This challenges models linking house size to social status, demonstrating that social complexity could develop without economic inequality, offering new insights into alternative pathways of social organization in early agricultural societies

Differentiation · Social complexity · Social relationship · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology