Orderly Anarchy: Sociopolitical Evolution in Aboriginal California by Robert L. Bettinger

Abstract

Orderly Anarchy: Sociopolitical Evolution Aboriginal California, by Robert L. Bettinger. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2015. xii, 286 pp. $70.00 US (cloth). In this provocative reinterpretation of California Indian prehistory, Robert Bettinger argues that California Indian societies north of the Colorado River defy standard theories of sociopolitical evolution. Or rather, Bettinger uses California Indian sociopolitical evolution to challenge the assumption that societies represent an evolutionary relic on the path to agriculture and greater political centralization. He argues that hunter-gatherer systems continued to evolve after the invention of agriculture in ways that put them on equal footing with agriculturalists, and sometimes at a definite advantage (16). He asserts that California Indian societies' persistence hunter-gatherers was not a product of California's geographic or cultural isolation, but was instead a successful economic adaptation that spread from the Owens Valley west into the rest of California and east into the Great Basin. In California, Bettinger defines this advantageous evolutionary trend having produced a political system he calls orderly anarchy, defined as a persistent state of order and productive social interaction the absence of formal authority or means of enforcement (12-13). Bettinger identifies the adoption of the bow the Owens Valley (around 600 CE) the key driver of these changes. As hunters worked smaller and smaller bands, transitioning to a more individualistic mode of procurement, production intensified personal efforts benefitted the individual, rather than the group. As political units became smaller--usually developing into extended family bands--and the individual rewards of production increased, gathering of plant resources also intensified. With the privatization of food (59), older patterns of extensive social and economic obligation and reciprocity gave way to rationalized social interactions between (237), which further rewarded more intensive production. Consequently, individuals pursued economic self-interest by gathering plant resources with ever-greater intensity, populations boomed. Population growth brought territorial expansion, which hastened the spread of these anarchic political and economic practices throughout the rest of California. Bettinger's argument is strongest where he draws upon archaeological evidence to historicize his theory. This is particularly evident descriptions of the impact of the bow on plant intensification, residential mobility, and population growth. The archaeological record makes for a compelling case that Indian societies throughout California developed into more densely settled, less organized, family-based political units. The proliferation of smaller settlements, the movement of these settlements away from marshlands and coastal areas where bow hunting was less productive, and the increased use of acorns over a wide and environmentally diverse expanse of California indicate the profound influence of the bow on settlement patterns and resource exploitation. …