Unequal foundations (size of residential buildings): Tracing the origin of wealth inequality across 10,000 years. Really!

I have my doubts whether the size of residential buildings is a good metric of or proxy for wealth distribution over time. What if e.g. customs, inheritance and cultural views about private residences changed over time? What about large families versus smaller families etc.?

"Economic inequality is one of our primary global challenges and is a key research topic for archaeology — why do some societies become deeply unequal while others remain more balanced? What clues about our economic past are hidden in the ruins of ancient homes? 

A recent Special Feature in PNAS ... highlights papers by archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and economists exploring these questions using a global database of over 53,000 residential buildings from about 4,000 archaeological settlements.

Residential building size offers a durable and widely available proxy for household wealth, write the editors in the Special Feature introduction. By analyzing differences in house size, the papers in this issue offer a standardized, cross-cultural, and long-term perspective on economic inequality extending well into periods before writing emerged. 

Differences in house sizes over time record when and how wealth gaps emerged, shifted, and sometimes narrowed across 10,000 years of human history. ..."

Unequal foundations: Tracing the origin of wealth inequality across 10,000 years | Santa Fe Institute

The Global Dynamics of Inequality over the Long Term (no public access) "The Global Dynamics of Economic Inequality over the Long Term Special Feature brings together archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and economists to analyze inequality using a global database of archaeological and ethnographic records. By examining house-size differences as a key measure of wealth—encompassing material goods, social connections, and household size—this research tracks patterns of inequality across diverse societies over the past 10,000 years. This Special Feature provides a standardized, cross-cultural, and long-term assessment of economic inequality, offering new insights into its causes, variability, and consequences for societal well-being and longevity."