Local economies and household spacing in early chiefdom communities.

C Adam Berrey,Christian E Peterson,Robert D Drennan,Jacob Freeman

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0252532

C Adam Berrey, Christian E Peterson + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252532

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Abstract

Archaeological research has by now revealed a great deal of variation in the way early complex societies, or chiefdoms, developed. This variation is widely recognized, but our understanding of the forces that produced it remains relatively undeveloped. This paper takes aim at such understanding by exploring variation in the local economies of six early chiefdoms; it considers what implications this variation had for trajectories of chiefdom development, as well as the source of that variation. Economic exchange is a primary form of local interaction in all societies. Because of distance-interaction principles, closer household spacing within local communities facilitated more frequent interaction and thus encouraged productive differentiation, economic interdependence, and the development of well-integrated local economies. Well-integrated local economies, in turn, provided ready opportunities for aspiring leaders to accumulate wealth and fund political economies, and pursuit of these opportunities led to societies with leaders whose power had a direct economic base. Wider household spacing, on the other hand, impeded interaction and the development of well-integrated local economies. In such contexts, aspiring leaders were able to turn to ritual and religion as a base of social power. Even when well-integrated local economies offered opportunities for wealth accumulation and a ready source of funding for political economies, these opportunities were not always taken advantage of. That variation in the shapes of early chiefdoms can be traced back to patterns of household spacing highlights the importance of settlement and interaction in explaining not just chiefdom development, but societal change more generally.

Highlights

Between 7000 and 1000 years ago, regional scale social formations integrating thousands of people emerged repeatedly and independently in numerous parts of the world
In the course of this exploration we develop a technique for measuring the degree of productive differentiation, discuss how those economies connected to the political economies of early chiefdoms, examine how distance-interaction principles and community layout impacted economic interdependence, and consider how community layout came to vary in the first place
This shape was a direct outgrowth of the way that stronger productive differentiation, with concomitant greater interdependence and exchange of goods, Local economies and household spacing in early chiefdom communities provided opportunities for wealth accumulation that did not exist in the Alto Magdalena or the Western Liao Valley

Summary

Introduction

Between 7000 and 1000 years ago, regional scale social formations integrating thousands of people emerged repeatedly and independently in numerous parts of the world. Local economies and household spacing in early chiefdom communities configuration, the median distance from points outside the central cluster to the cluster centroid is 0.865, reflecting greater productive differentiation than at Mesitas but less than at B97, just as the intermediate characteristics of its scaling configuration would lead us to expect. Ritual activity was certainly an important integrative force in the San Jose Mogote chiefdom, but the way it combined with strong wealth differentiation gave this chiefdom a very different shape than those of either the Alto Magdalena or the Western Liao Valley This shape was a direct outgrowth of the way that stronger productive differentiation, with concomitant greater interdependence and exchange of goods (achieved early on in Oaxaca), Local economies and household spacing in early chiefdom communities provided opportunities for wealth accumulation that did not exist in the Alto Magdalena or the Western Liao Valley. Even at these early stages, the degree to which the local economy was integrated varied substantially, and this variation correlates strongly to household spacing within local communities

Conclusions

Materials and methods

Findings

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