Inequality, Past and Present | A Roundtable Discussion of The Dawn of Everything

With the publication of The Dawn of Everything in 2021, David Graeber and David Wengrow made a bold new contribution to long-standing debates about the origins of inequality. Does inequality in fact have an origin? What happens to our understanding of the long history of humanity if we assume that inequality is a choice rather than an inevitability? A panel of distinguished speakers address these and other questions, with a response by Professor Wengrow, followed by general audience discussion.

About the Speakers:
David Wengrow, Institute of Archaeology, University College London
Sue Alcock, Classics and Letters, University of Oklahoma
Gojko Barjamovic, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Philip Deloria, History and American Studies, Harvard University
Aja Lans, Inequality in America Initiative, Harvard University

Convened by:
Rowan Flad, Archaeology, Harvard University
Daniel L. Smail, History, Harvard University

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Inequality in America Initiative, the Mahindra Humanities Center, the Standing Committee on Archaeology, the Science of the Human Past, the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, the Department of History, the Department of Anthropology, Ancient Studies, the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and the GSAS Workshop on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East.


Harvard University occupies the ancestral homelands of the Massachusett people. Our university is governed by the Harvard Charter of 1650, which committed our institution to “the education of English and Indian youth of this country.”