  Class endogamy is a phenomenon in which nobles only marry other nobles and
commoners only marry other commoners. The origin of class endogamy, and of
social stratification in general, is a major open question in archaeology. This
paper implements a verbal model proposed by Marcus and Flannery as a class of
agent-based computer models by generalizing and simplifying a mathematical
model of marriage markets developed by Burdett and Coles. One force that can
produce class endogamy occurs if agents are only willing to marry suitors
having status no less than some fixed value below the status of their
highest-status suitor, which they can learn. Another such force results if
children inherit the average of their parents' statuses. In contrast, status
achieved over an agent's lifetime can be viewed as noise, analogous to mutation
in biological evolution. I propose that class endogamy may have resulted from
the interaction of forces such as these, along with other factors such as
ideology. Simulation results are presented, and potential areas for future
research are sketched out. The validity of these models for any particular
culture depends, of course, on whether these forces were actually operating in
that society.
