Pre-state Societies Research Articles

Beyond identifying elites: Feasting as a means to understand early Middle Formative society on the Pacific Coast of Mexico

Feasts provide a public forum where social statuses can be affirmed or challenged among pre-state societies. Documenting feasting behavior thus provides insight into the construction of prehistoric political power. This paper presents expected material patterns of feasting by focusing on intra-site variability in food preparation, presentation, and consumption. Expectations are evaluated by comparing ceramic, ground stone, obsidian, and faunal data recovered from Conchas phase (900–800 BCE) elite and village midden deposits at Cuauhtémoc in the Soconusco region of southern Mexico. I argue that elite feasting at Cuauhtémoc created political cohesion between elite and non-elite segments of society during the Conchas phase as a new polity emerged that was more socially stratified and politically hierarchical than anything previously known in the region.

The Establishment and Defeat of Hierarchy: Inalienable Possessions and the History of Collective Prestige Structures in the Pueblo Southwest

ABSTRACTThe role of social valuables in establishing and defeating hierarchies in prestate societies is explored through the use of Annette Weiner's concept of “inalienable possessions.” Inalienable possessions are objects made to be kept (not exchanged), have symbolic and economic power that cannot be transferred, and are often used to authenticate the ritual authority of corporate groups. Ethnographic examples from Zuni are used to understand the range of individually and collectively owned inalienable objects in Pueblo societies. I then use three classes of these objects from archaeological contexts to gain insight into the history of collective prestige structures in the Southwest. I argue that inalienable goods are more useful than shape prestige goods for understanding the role of social valuables in many nonstate societies, especially those in which inequalities are based on ritual knowledge.

Enlightened Views of the Transition to Agriculture

Mark Pluciennik has correctly pointed out that many of our current views of social and economic development in prehistory have their roots in the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His critique focuses on the assignment of primacy to subsistence change as a way of dividing pre-state societies into meaningful categories. Although he and I probably approach archaeology from very different theoretical positions, I must confess that I have also marveled (privately) from time to time at the amount of attention that archaeologists pay to food-getting and consumption. This may be a bit surprising to the reader, since my research has been focused on early farming societies and my analytical specialty is the study of animal bones. Thus, it would be fair to conclude that I must have some intellectual stake in maintaining the conceptual distinction between foragers and farmers.

War in the Southwest, War in the World

The study of warfare in the ancient Pueblos of the U.S. Southwest has become politicized and contentious, and southwestern data are only rarely used to address larger anthropological theories of war. A cross-cultural model of violence proposed by Carol and Melvin Ember (1992) suggests that war in pre-state societies is predicted by resource unpredictability and socialization for fear. The Ember and Ember model is evaluated using syntheses of southwestern warfare by Steven LeBlanc (1999), environmental variability by Jeffrey Dean (1988, 1996), and political history by Stephen Lekson (1999). The fit between the southwestern data and the model is close, and supports the Ember and Ember model.

The Archaeology of War: A North American Perspective

This article reviews recent archaeological research on warfare in prestate societies of native North America. This survey comprises six regions: Arctic/Subarctic, Northwest Coast, California, Southwest/Great Basin, Great Plains, and Eastern Woodlands. Two lines of evidence, defensive settlement behavior and injuries in human skeletal remains, figure prominently in archaeological reconstructions of violence and warfare in these regions. Burning of sites and settlements also has been important for identifying the consequences of war and investigating more subtle aspects of strategy and directionality. Weaponry and iconography have to date provided important but more limited insights. Although considerable disparities exist between regions in the archaeological evidence for intra- and intergroup violence, all regions show a marked increase after A.D. 1000. These findings suggest that larger forces may have been responsible for escalating violence throughout North America at this time.

The Pattern of Fighting in Simple, Small-Scale, Prestate Societies

This article shows that the pattern of human fighting among hunter-gatherers and simple horticulturalists was not very different from that prevailing among animals species; indeed, it is explained by a similar evolutionary logic. The article addresses all scales of both inter and intragroup fighting, for fighting and killing take place both within and between groups. This pattern is more complex than the simple ingroup cooperation/outgroup rivalry suggested by Herbert Spencer and W. G. Summer. The distinction that has been made between blood and warfare, homicide, and war killing, while of course not wholly arbitrary, largely reflects our point of view as members of more or less orderly societies. The phenomenon dealt with here is deadly aggression, whose forms differ little within or between groups, in individual feuds or in large-scale fighting.

Dancing and the Beginning of Art Scenes in the Early Village Communities of the Near East and Southeast Europe

Dancing is depicted in the earliest art of the ancient Near East. It appears in many variations from the ninth to the sixth millennium BP over a vast geographical range. This article discusses the dancing performance, the social context of the dance and cognitive aspects of the dancing scenes. Ethnographic observations are used in order to gain a wider view of dancing and dancing scenes in pre-state societies. A correlation can be observed between art, symbolism, religion and social organization.

Tempting Simplicity and Robust Complexity: Conflict Management in Selected Prestate Societies

Tempting Simplicity and Robust Complexity: Conflict Management in Selected Prestate Societies

Settlement Discontinuity and Resistance to Complexity in Cyprus, ca. 4500-2500 B. C. E.

This article presumes that small prestate societies possessed fluctuating asymmetrical political relationships and that those relationships may have left material correlates in the archaeological record. Settlement discontinuity in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods of Cyprus may be due in part to recurrent community fissioning caused by resistance to attempts by subgroups to extend power. Following Trigger (1990: 145), a brief attempt is made to isolate and assess those new features that eventually eroded resistance to the establishment of stratified society.

The Inca Empire: The Formation and Disintegration of a Pre-Capitalist State

The historical landscape - pre-state societies in the Andes, class and state formation - some theoretical considerations, class and state formation in the Andes Inca society before the Empire - the creation of Inca society, the prelude to Empire, the constitution of the Empire the impact of Empire - the formation and organization of the Imperial State, conquest, succession, and the changing composition of the Imperial ruling class quiescence and rebellion in the Imperial State - border wars and Imperial expansion, rebellion and civil wars the clash of Empires and the formation of colonial society - the plunder economy - war, resistance, and immigration, the crisis of the 1560s, the formation of colonial society.

Protecting Strangers: Establishing a Fundamental Value in the Religions of the Ancient Near East and Ancient Greece

Abstract(1) In the current discussions about the rights of asylum on one hand there is urgency for decisions and actions of the politicians, on the other hand these actions must not erode the human right of asylum. It is not a question of the quantity of applicants but of the quality of their rights. Religionists are asked for the foundation of the rights of strangers, because the roots of these rights reach into the archaic past, when there was not yet a state with institutionalized laws ("Rechtsstaat"). The treatment of the stranger was both in (2) Ancient Israel and (3) Ancient Greece the test of the righteousness of the people. Not the exact and continuing performance of the cult of the Gods demonstrates the piety of the people, but the treatment of the poor and weak. In pre-state societies the right of the strongest does not rule. However, the pride of the citizens and the token of the richness of a city is the granting of protection to outcasts. The sacrality of the holy place ("sanctuary") does not automatically grant protection. The talk of divine protection enables the protectors to gain the advantage of wide acceptance which compensates for a deficit of actual power. (4) Human rights have to be defended against attempts of political administrations to cut them short, that is, in consequence: to take away an individual's right to enjoy asylum.

Development and Cultural Genocide in the Sudan

Genocide is easily defined: ‘the deliberate extermination of a people’. It appears to occur in human history primarily in association with the emergence of the state, or in the effort of an established régime to maintain or expand its domination, and is virtually unrecorded for ‘traditional’ or pre-state societies. Although the concept of ‘development’ is by contrast exceedingly ambiguous (other than as an ideal process or social form in an evolutionary typology), the meaning conveyed would be antithetical to the definition of genocide, being some form of material or moral improvement in social existence, rather than a means towards the rapid extinction of a cultural tradition.

Development and Cultural Genocide in the Sudan

Genocide is easily defined: ‘the deliberate extermination of a people’. It appears to occur in human history primarily in association with the emergence of the state, or in the effort of an established régime to maintain or expand its domination, and is virtually unrecorded for ‘traditional’ or pre-state societies. Although the concept of ‘development’ is by contrast exceedingly ambiguous (other than as an ideal process or social form in an evolutionary typology), the meaning conveyed would be antithetical to the definition of genocide, being some form of material or moral improvement in social existence, rather than a means towards the rapid extinction of a cultural tradition.

Primitive and Peasant Markets.

This book deals with a subject which is central to the economic, social and political history of the world, and to several of the most influential ways of interpreting this history. In his study of the role of markets from antiquity to the present day, Richard Hodges examines the nature of markets, of exchange, and the significance of markets in peasant, proto-capitalist and capitalist societies. The first part of the book looks at the definition and origins of markets. In particular, it assesses change and commerce in pre-state societies. The next section focuses on peasant markets, marketing and the media of exchange. It discusses, for example, what it was like to be part of such an economic institution and how embracing this system was. Finally, Richard Hodges considers whether the rise of capitalism led to the decline or even demise of peasant markets. This book is for students and specialists in early modern history, historical sociology, anthropology and economics.

The Fish People: Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia.

The Bara, or Fish People, of the Northwest Amazon form part of an unusual network of intermarrying local communities scattered along the rivers of this region. Each community belongs to one of sixteen different groups that speak sixteen different languages, and marriages must take place between people not only from different communities but with different primary languages. In a network of this sort, which defies the usual label of 'tribe', social identity assumes a distinct and unusual configuration. In this book, Jean Jackson's incisive discussions of Bara marriage, kinship, spatial organization, and other features of the social and geographic landscape show how Tukanoans (as participants in the network are collectively known) conceptualize and tie together their universe of widely scattered communities, and how an individual's identity emerges in terms of relations with others. As theoretically challenging as it is unique, the Tukanoan system bears on a wide range of issues of current anthropological concern, such as how to analyze open-ended regional systems in small-scale societies, ideal versus actual patterns of behaviour, identity as both structure and action, and indigenous use of multiple, even conflicting, models of social structure. Professor Jackson's thoughtful discussions also extend to broader social scientific issues concerning the relation of language to culture, the presence or absence of individualism in pre-state societies, the nature of ethnic boundaries, the interplay between observation of behaviour and its interpretation (on the part of both native and anthropologist), and the achievement of flexibility and self-interested goals while applying seemingly rigid social structural principles.

Comments on “Tribalism as a Socioeconomic Formation”

The argument proposed by Professor Leonard M. Helfgott in a recent article in Iranian Studies (Vol. X, Nos.1-2, 1977) cannot be accepted as an accurate evaluation of the social and economic structure of tribalism in Iran. The picture presented in his article portrays the situation almost solely in terms of theoretical considerations, with relatively little attempt to substantiate the theories with fact. As a result, a monolithic view of tribal society is put forth. The most objectionable theoretical approach proffered in his article is expressed in the following statement: “Tribal societies contain neither a concrete superstructural entity such as the state nor a separate economic sphere….But that is not to say that these functions do not exist or are not necessary for the production of pre-state societies. Rather superstructural functions appear as embedded within the kinship system.” Traditionally, tribes throughout Iranian history existed above and beyond the reach of the various kinship entities that they governed or controlled; indeed, they provided formal superstructures by which they exploited the various sources of wealth, and maintained order.

Gender and class: An archaeology of knowledge concerning the origin of the state

The recent wave of feminism has prompted many anthropologists concerned with the status of women to return to Engels' work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. While anthropologists vary widely in their assessment of the autonomy of women in prestate societies, there seems to be a general consensus that with the rise of civilization, women as a social category were increasingly subjugated to the male heads of their households. That is, civilizations are properly described as patriarchal. This con? sensus is based, implicitly or explicitly, on the tradition in which Engels was writing. His schema links the growth of private productive property to the dismantling of a communal kinship base in prestate society. In this pro? cess, marriage grows more restrictive, legit? imacy of heirs more important, and wives generally become means of reproduction to their husbands. At the same time, reciprocal relations amongst kinsfolk are curtailed, un? equal access to strategic productive resources gradually develops, and estates or classes arise out of formerly kin-based social organizations. In this analysis, the creation of a class hierar? chy is intimately linked to the creation of the patriarchal family. Restrictions on women's autonomy emerge with class society. Engels' analysis informs many of the themes concerning women that are currently being investigated, such as the relation between productive contribution, control over distribu tion of products, and female status in society; the relation of the mode of reproduction to the mode of production; and the effects of the relative separation or merger of the domestic and public spheres of activity on the roles available to women [ 1 ]. Consciously or not, our questions are often framed within the general territory mapped in Origins. Yet the major problematic of the book the postulated intertwined origins of class oppression and gender oppression ? has bare? ly been examined. Engels was working with a paucity of ethnological, archaeological and historical cases; he lacked data on primary or pristine state formation, and knew only minimally of highly stratified prestate societies. We, however, have access to a great deal more information concerning societies in transition between primitivity and civilization with which to examine his theory [2]. Twentieth-century archaeologists and social theorists have amassed a substantive and growing body of theory and data concerning state origins to which we can, in principle, turn. Yet when we do, we discover that our question is certainly not theirs. We face a double theoretical problem in using their models. First: their search for "prime mover" explanations severely limits the questions that are being asked. There exists within evolution? ary anthropology a strongly entrenched tradi? tion which seeks to universalize its explana? tions. Such theories tend to be extremely reductive, and often condense a multiplicity of processes into unilinear variables. These Rayna Rapp is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research.

War, Peace, and Marital Residence in Pre-Industrial Societies

Tefft and Reinhardt recently reported that peacemaking mechanisms and periods of stable peace are associated with internal warfare, while peacemaking mechanisms are absent and peace is unstable in societies with external warfare. We suggest an explanation for these findings based on the argument that in pre-state level societies internal and external war are entirely different types of conflict. Internal war (conflict between communities of the same society) is part of a system of population control in pre-state level societies which also involves female infanticide, polygyny, and patrilocal residence. Internal war is thus a regulatory type of warfare requiring several mechanisms to initiate and inhibit it. In contrast, external warfare among pre-state level societies occurs between societies which have recently migrated to their locales and adopted matrilocal residence. External war is thus an intense struggle for survival between two or more societies trying to occupy the same niche in an ecosystem that cannot support all of them. There can be no regulation of this type of warfare–only victory–and hence there can be no peacemaking mechanisms.