The School for Advanced Research (SAR) announces that The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow has been awarded the 2025 J. I. Staley Prize, recognizing exceptional scholarship and writing that expand the boundaries of anthropological thought. The endowed award specifies that the prize goes to a living author for a work published within the last ten years.

The Dawn of Everything, published in 2021, has received international acclaim since its release. The work offers a sweeping reexamination of human history, challenging long-held assumptions about the rise of civilization, inequality, and political organization. Drawing on archaeological and anthropological research, Graeber and Wengrow reveal a past filled with social experimentation, complexity, and creativity—inviting readers to imagine new possibilities for human freedom and cooperation.

“The Staley Prize honors work that redefines how we understand humanity,” said Morris W. Foster, President of SAR. “The Dawn of Everything does exactly that. It dares to question foundational narratives about progress, hierarchy, and civilization, and in doing so, invites a broader and more inclusive conversation about who we are and how we might live together going forward.”

Since 1988, the J. I. Staley Prize has celebrated books that cross disciplinary boundaries and reshape anthropological discourse. Previous recipients include T. M. Luhrmann (How God Becomes Real), Hugh Raffles (The Book of Unconformities), Laurence Ralph (Renegade Dreams), and Jason De León (Land of Open Graves).

The Staley Prize committee is particularly interested in works that make anthropological insights accessible to a broad readership. The committee noted about this year’s selection:

Many people assume that inequality is a natural and inevitable feature of human society. This book argues that this is not true. David Graeber and David Wengrow begin by showing how the centrality of freedom in Enlightenment thinking comes from Indigenous critiques of European philosophies. The authors lay out three fundamental human freedoms: to move freely, to disobey commands, and to reorganize social relations as people see fit. Using archaeological and historical research, they demonstrate that inevitable inequality is an illusion. This book shows how much anthropological thought has to offer to our current moment.