Early State Development Research Articles

Floods, droughts, and environmental circumscription in early state development: the case of ancient Egypt

AbstractWhat explains the origins and survival of the first states around 5000 years ago? In this research, we focus on the role of weather-related productivity shocks for early state development in ancient Egypt. We present a framework of extractive state consolidation predicting that political stability should be high whenever environmental circumscription is high, i.e., whenever there is a large gap between the productivity of the area under state control (core) and that of the surrounding areas (hinterland). In such periods, the elite can impose high levels of taxation that the population will be forced to accept as exit to the hinterland is not a feasible option. In order to test this hypothesis, we develop novel proxies for both the historical productivity of the Nile banks and of the Egyptian hinterland on the basis of high-resolution paleoclimate archives. Our empirical analysis then investigates the relationship between these proxies for environmental circumscription and political outcomes such as ruler and dynastic tenure durations, the area under state control and pyramid construction during 2685–1140 BCE. Our results show that while extreme Nile floods are associated with a greater degree of political instability, periods with a greater rainfall in the hinterland (i.e., a lower effective environmental circumscription) causes a decline in state capacity and a delayed increase in political instability.

Elite chariots and early horse transport at the Bronze Age burial site of Shijia

Horses and chariots played a crucial social, cultural and military role in the emergence and development of early states in China. Little research, however, has explored the life histories of individual chariot horses or assessed their role as working animals. Here, the authors present a detailed zooarchaeological and palaeopathological study of eight adult male horses, used for pulling chariots, recovered from a single chariot-horse pit at the burial site of Shijia in north-western China. The characterisation of key osteological differences between chariot horses and ridden horses is offered as a contribution to the toolkit available for the archaeological investigation of human-horse interactions around the globe.

State history and political instability: The disadvantage of early state development

AbstractThis article hypothesizes and empirically establishes that statehood experience, accumulated over a period of up to six millennia, lies at the deep roots of the spatial distribution of political instability across non‐European countries. Using the state history index measured between 3,500 BCE and 2000 CE, I consistently obtain precise estimates that long‐standing states outside Europe, relative to their newly established counterparts, are characterized by greater political uncertainty. I postulate that a very long duration of state experience impeded the transplantation of inclusive political institutions by European colonizers, which would eventually become central to shaping countries' ability to establish politically stable regimes outside Europe. The core findings place emphasis on the long‐term legacy of early state development for contemporary political instability.

State History and Political Instability: The Disadvantage of Early State Development

State History and Political Instability: The Disadvantage of Early State Development

Isotopic investigation of skeletal remains at the Imdang tombs reveals high consumption of game birds and social stratification in ancient Korea

Understanding the development of early states on the Korean Peninsula is an important topic in Korean archaeology. However, it is not clear how social structure was organized by these early states and what natural resources were utilized from their surrounding environments. To investigate dietary adaptation and social status in ancient Korea, stable isotope ratios and radiocarbon dates were measured from humans and animals from the Imdang cemetery, Gyeongsan city, South Korea. The results indicate that the Imdang diet was mainly based on C3 plants and terrestrial animals. Animal remains in the graves were directly consumed as daily food items as well as for ritual offerings. MixSIAR modeling results revealed that the dietary sources for the humans were: game birds > C3 plants > terrestrial herbivores > marine fish > C4 plants. The finding that the game birds represented the highest contribution to the whole diet, indicates that game birds must have been intensively hunted. Furthermore, elites consumed more game birds than their retainers and they also consumed seafood as a privileged dietary item in the Imdang society. This study demonstrates that the Apdok was a stratified society having high variations in the consumption of food items available to an individual and provides new insights about the subsistence and social status of the early ancient Apdok state on the Korean Peninsula.

Reconstructing diets and subsistence strategies of the Bronze Age humans from the Central Plains of China: A stable isotopic study on the Nanwa site

AbstractA multicrop agricultural system, including millet, wheat, rice, and soybeans, first emerged in China in the Late Longhang period and is considered to be one of the most important basic foundations underpinning the origin and development of early states in China. However, there is still a lack of studies on the specific subsistence strategies of humans from the Bronze Age, specifically addressing how widespread the multicrop agricultural system was. To explore these questions above, carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis on human bones from the Nanwa site (ca 1720–256 BC & 960–1279 AD) was undertaken to investigate the palaeodiet and subsistence strategies of the Nanwa humans. This paper also reviews the existing stable isotope data of Bronze Age humans on the Central Plains of China.The Nanwa humans from the Erlitou and Yinxu periods have a mean δ13C value of −9.4 ± 0.7‰ and −9.1 ± 0.9‰, suggesting a predominantly C4 diet, probably derived from millet agriculture or domesticated animals fed on millet. Nanwa humans of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty have a relatively low mean δ13C value of −10.5 ± 2.4‰, indicating a consumption of much more C3 foods, likely derived from rice, wheat, soybean, or animals that fed on those plants. A temporal stable isotopic comparison from the Erlitou period to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty on the Central Plains of China shows the majority of the Bronze Age humans have high mean δ13C value (−9.5 ± 1.8‰), suggesting a predominantly C4‐based diet. We infer that millet agriculture was still the primary economy for humans during the Bronze Age. However, there is a relatively large proportion of humans from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty that have decreased δ13C values, indicating a much more C3 foods consumption and diversity diet, presumably derived from a multicrop agricultural system of millet, wheat, rice, and soybean. It is possible that the trend moved from a narrowly focused, mainly millet‐based diet, to a more diverse agricultural system and was triggered by a combination of factors such as climate change, agricultural reform, social stratification, wars, migration, and so on.

Pharaoh's Cage: Environmental Circumscription and Appropriability in Early State Development

Trabajo presentado en el Power and Change - Informal mini-workshp, organizado por ESOP: Centre for the Study of Equality, Social Organization and Performan y celebrado en la Universidad de Oslo (Noruega), el 15 de mayo de 2019

SA HUYNH REGIONAL AND INTER-REGIONAL INTERACTIONS IN THE THU BON VALLEY, QUANG NAM PROVINCE, CENTRAL VIETNAM

Around 500 BC, the introduction of iron working technology caused radical changes in social structure in both mainland and insular Southeast Asia. The most important phenomenon, which had strong impacts in all aspects of life, was the transformation from small and egalitarian to large and complex societies. This complexity laid the foundations for the emergence and development of early states in the area. The causes and dynamics of these processes were various in nature and included both internal and external elements. Using site and artefact distributions in the Thu Bon Valley, one of the largest and most fertile riverine areas in the whole of central Vietnam, we examine the nature and evolution of regional and inter–regional interaction between Sa Huynh communities and the outside world, especially with the Han Chinese, the Dong Son of northern Vietnam, and contemporary cultures in South and Southeast Asia.

Revenue, Voice, and Public Goods in Three Pre-Modern States

At least since the European Enlightenment, Western theories of state formation have developed around a dichotomizing principle that distinguishes between a highly centralized non-Western other, the oriental despotic, versus a more liberal, democratic and market-driven Western form of the state (e.g., Sherratt 1989: 164). More recently, another non-Western type, the loosely integrated segmentary state, has been identified in the anthropological literature (e.g., Asad 1973), including many pre-modern states of sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Hindu South Asia (Southall 1956: 248-49; 1988: 64-65; Stein 1980: 265-74, 339; 1995). Neoevolutionists and other anthropologists interested in the development of early states focused most of their attention on non-Western forms (e.g., Harris 1979: 102; Service 1975). From this perspective they constructed their causal models on the premise that state-building reflects primarily the emergence of a strategizing governing elite able to, variously, organize networks of redistribution (Service 1975), maintain an order of stratification (Fried 1967: 235), provide irrigation services (Wittfogel 1957), reorganize managerial systems in response to socio-environmental stress (Flannery 1972), dominate commoners under conditions of resource stress (Cameiro 1970; Sanders et al. 1976), or stage rituals confirming the centrality of rulers in a hierarchical cosmos (e.g., Geertz 1980). The concept of a more democratic and market-driven Western state formation process incorporates a relatively greater role for commoner voices and strategic action in state building (e.g., Midlarsky 1999: 188-93),

Seleucid Uruk: An analysis of ceramic distribution

The ancient city of Uruk holds a pre-eminent place in the history of early state development in Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium BC. However, extensive evidence survives to indicate that the city underwent a very separate cultural flowering during the late first millennium BC, synchronous with the rule of the Seleucid successors of Alexander III of Macedonia.Traditionally, the Seleucid period has been viewed as one of extensive cultural interaction (e.g. Colledge 1987), when the beneficial impact of Greek “Hellenism” was felt throughout western Asia (e.g. Droysen 1836; Tarn 1951). For this period, Babylonia, and particularly Uruk, are exceptional, both in the quality of preservation and the scope of work that has been conducted there. In addition to Uruk's substantial archaeological remains, we have the added survival of a variety of textual material relating to numerous administrative, economic and ritual activities. If we are to discuss processes of cultural interaction, it is imperative to attempt an integrated study of archaeological material and textual records, and although each type of evidence is limited by constraints of interpretation, a co-ordinated analysis will allow us to address various aspects of the impact of Seleucid domination.The German excavators have published a wealth of material based on their investigations at the site, including an extensive ceramic corpus for the Seleucid period. The most recent publications of this material have coincided with a shift in approaches to the interpretation of Seleucid rule in western Asia, where attempts to avoid the oversimplification of traditional explanations of cultural interaction are now desirable. An interpretation of the Uruk ceramic material aiming to avoid generalised preconceptions is similarly possible.

Seleucid Uruk: An Analysis of Ceramic Distribution

The ancient city of Uruk holds a pre-eminent place in the history of early state development in Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium BC. However, extensive evidence survives to indicate that the city underwent a very separate cultural flowering during the late first millennium BC, synchronous with the rule of the Seleucid successors of Alexander III of Macedonia.Traditionally, the Seleucid period has been viewed as one of extensive cultural interaction (e.g. Colledge 1987), when the beneficial impact of Greek “Hellenism” was felt throughout western Asia (e.g. Droysen 1836; Tarn 1951). For this period, Babylonia, and particularly Uruk, are exceptional, both in the quality of preservation and the scope of work that has been conducted there. In addition to Uruk's substantial archaeological remains, we have the added survival of a variety of textual material relating to numerous administrative, economic and ritual activities. If we are to discuss processes of cultural interaction, it is imperative to attempt an integrated study of archaeological material and textual records, and although each type of evidence is limited by constraints of interpretation, a co-ordinated analysis will allow us to address various aspects of the impact of Seleucid domination.The German excavators have published a wealth of material based on their investigations at the site, including an extensive ceramic corpus for the Seleucid period. The most recent publications of this material have coincided with a shift in approaches to the interpretation of Seleucid rule in western Asia, where attempts to avoid the oversimplification of traditional explanations of cultural interaction are now desirable. An interpretation of the Uruk ceramic material aiming to avoid generalised preconceptions is similarly possible.

Settlement Patterns, Chiefdom Variability, and the Development of Early States in North China

In the third millennium B.C., the Longshan culture in the Central Plains of northern China was the crucial matrix in which the first states evolved from the basis of earlier Neolithic societies. By adopting the theoretical concept of the chiefdom and by employing the methods of settlement archaeology, especially regional settlement hierarchy and rank-size analysis, this paper introduces a new approach to research on the Longshan culture and to inquiring about the development of the early states in China. Three models of regional settlement pattern correlating to different types of chiefdom systems are identified. These are: (1) the centripetal regional system in circumscribed regions representing the most complex chiefdom organizations, (2) the centrifugal regional system in semi-circumscribed regions indicating less integrated chiefdom organization, and (3) the decentralized regional system in noncircumscribed regions implying competing and the least complex chiefdom organizations. Both external and internal factors, including geographical condition, climatic fluctuation, Yellow River's changing course, population movement, and intergroup conflict, played important roles in the development of complex societies in the Longshan culture. As in many cultures in other parts of the world, the early states in China emerged from a system of competing chiefdoms, which was characterized by intensive intergroup conflict and frequent shifting of political centers. However, what is unusual about the Chinese case is the fact that the earliest states did not develop from the most complex of the chiefdom organizations, but from the least complex chiefdom systems then existing there.

Early states and hero cults: a re-appraisal

An interest in the Greek idea of the hero, and in the cults established in Greek states to historical or legendary figures endowed with this status, has for long been one of the chief concerns of research into Greek philology and religion. But it is only through the gradual accumulation of archaeological evidence of Geometric and Archaic date that the origins of ‘hero cults’ have begun to be seen as an historical problem requiring an historical explanation. The most recent general works on Geometric and Archaic Greece, by J. N. Coldstream, Anthony Snodgrass and François de Polignac, have long sections devoted to discussing the significance of hero cults, and general ‘pan-hellenic’ explanations have been offered for their occurrence. Whilst there may be much truth in their suggestions, such ‘pan-Hellenic’ explanations ignore important local differences in the archaeological and material manifestations of hero cults. These differences, I would argue, relate in part to the different paths that were taken in the formation and development of early states in Greece. I shall use as examples the two regions of Attica and the Argolid, two areas of Greece where differences both in the manifestations of hero cults and in the paths of social evolution can most easily be traced. Before embarking on a detailed comparison of the two areas however, some discussion of the other general explanations that have been put forward is in order.

Processes of Early State Development. A Review Article

An earlier generation of studies which portrayed political development as a continuous, generalizable process has largely been superseded. The more recent generation of work has taken a more limited approach., focusing narrowly on processes of European state building rather than attempting to generalize beyond the European case. These studies have emphasized such prototypical European problems as the rise of absolutism, differences in the effects of feudal development between eastern and western Europe, and the transition from standestadten to centralized bureaucracies. V/hether any of these processes have generality beyond Europe has remained an open question. The books under consideration here provide, collectively, an opportunity to assess the generality of recent political development models for non-European cases. None of the cases with which they deal falls within the context of usual European-based discussions. Ranging from Burma and China, to the Ottoman Empire and Iraq, to the Sudan, these studies encompass cases that differ radically in prehistory, culture, and political trajectory. When read together, they offer an unusual glimpse of the diversity of paths along which political development has progressed.

Some recent radiocarbon dates from Southern Africa

In this paper we review radiocarbon dates which have become available over the past three years for the more recent archaeological sites south of the Cunene and Limpopo Rivers, assessing the determinations within the broader context of economy and society. For a framework, we make use of broad physiographic divisions of southern Africa, thus breaking from the artificial constraints of modern political divisions and allowing greater possibilities of synthesisWithin the set of new dates there are several fields in which recent radiocarbon determinations have been particularly important. The nature of hunting and gathering and herding communities in the arid western regions of the sub-continent is now more fully understood and more information is available about the succession of lithic industries in the south-western interior. In the south-eastern coastal areas the geographical extent of the earliest farming communities has been firmly dated. New determinations are beginning to provide a firmer chronology for the succession of ceramic industries in the east, and reassessment of the dating of the important sites of Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe demands a revision of concepts of early state development and trading contact with the east coast.

An investigation of Uruk settlement patterns in Susiana

Gregory Alan Johnson. Local Exchange and Early State Development in Southwestern Iran. Anthropological Papers No. 51. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 1973. x + 205 pp. Figures, tables, maps, appendixes, and bibliography. $4.00 (paper).