<HTML>Anthony,
I don't think it would be possible to build a case that slaveholding and agriculture are necessarily linked (at least not one that would ever build a concensus opinion). Owning slaves is just one symptom of social stratification (perhaps its most extreme).
My main point was that gatherer/hunter societies were not as egalitarian as popular opinion seems to hold. As usual, human social organization is very complex and can't be explained with simplistic, over-arching theories of everything.</HTML>