Rammed-earth construction techniques (i.e., tamping or pounding loose earth into a solid mass with a rammer) were invented in the Iron Age Mediterranean and the Neolithic Middle Yellow River Valley and adopted across the globe overtime. Rammed-earth techniques were widely employed for building massive structures ranging from large tombs to the Great Wall in late Neolithic and dynastic China; as such, understanding the labor costs involved is fundamental for understanding labor organization for these public works.

Ethnographic, historic, and previous experimental accounts provide inconsistent labor estimations for rammed-earth compaction. Our research develops a method for contextually relevant and reliable labor estimations for archaeological rammed-earth structures of varying quality. We built a rammed-earth wall under realistic conditions, quantified the influential factors for rammed-earth quality, and developed the protocol for calibrating experimental results to match the archaeological record.

Our calibrated estimations for the rammed-earth walls at the Taosi and Erlitou urban sites reveal rather light labor demands on the inhabitants, implying that monumental architectures at the dawn of China's dynastic history in the Central Plain were less about manifesting power than facilitating social changes. Our method can be applied to estimate labor costs for earthen structures in general and enables reliable comparative studies across and space regarding the relations between massive earthen construction and social-political transformation.

夯土施工技术（即用夯锤夯实或捣碎疏松的泥土成固体）是在铁器时代的地中海时期和新石器时代的黄河中游谷地发明的，并在全球范围内被广泛采用。夯土技术被广泛用于在新石器时代和朝代晚期建造大型建筑物，从大型墓葬到长城。因此，了解所涉及的劳动力成本是了解这些公共工程的劳动力组织的基础。

人种学，历史学和以前的实验报告对夯土夯实提供了不一致的劳动估算。我们的研究开发了一种方法，可以对各种质量的考古夯土结构进行上下文相关和可靠的劳动估算。我们在现实条件下建造了夯土墙，量化了夯土质量的影响因素，并制定了校准实验结果的协议以匹配考古记录。

我们对陶寺和二里头市区遗址的夯土墙进行的校准估算显示，居民对劳动力的需求相当轻，这意味着中朝王朝在中原建立之初的纪念性建筑与其说是体现权力，不如在于在于促进社会变革。我们的方法可用于估算总体土工结构的人工成本，并能进行关于大型土方建筑与社会政治变革之间关系的可靠的跨领域研究。