The Archaeology of Mongolia’s Early States

2017 ◽  
pp. 707-732
Author(s):  
Byambaa Gunchinsuren
Keyword(s):  
Early States

Nasty and Brutish? an Empirical Assessment of the Violence Hypothesis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl Widerquist ◽  
Grant S. McCall
Keyword(s):  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Contemporary State ◽  
Empirical Assessment ◽  
Early States ◽  
Consensus View

This chapter empirically investigates two hypotheses often used to support the claim that virtually everyone is better off in state society than they could reasonably expect to be in any stateless environment. “The strong violence hypothesis” is the claim that violence in stateless societies is necessarily intolerable. “The weak violence hypothesis” is the claim that violence in stateless societies tends to be higher than in state society. Section 1 uses anthropological and historical evidence to examine violence in prehistoric stateless societies, early states, and contemporary states. Section 2 reviews evidence from modern stateless societies. Section 3 attempts to assemble anthropologists’ consensus view of violence in stateless societies. Section 4 evaluates the strong and weak hypotheses in light of this information, arguing that societies in which sovereignty is most absent maintain the ability to keep violence at tolerable levels. Although it is reasonable to suppose that stateless societies tend to have higher violence than contemporary state societies, some stateless societies have lower violence than some states. Because these findings reject 350 years of accumulated theory of sovereignty, Section 5 briefly discusses how bands are able to maintain peace without state-like institutions. Section 6 concludes.

Shang dynasty bronzes and society in southern China: an illustration of complexity and diversity

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-157
Author(s):  
Jingsong Shi
Keyword(s):  
River Basin ◽  
Southern China ◽  
Shang Dynasty ◽  
Central Plains ◽  
Xiangjiang River ◽  
Early States ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Different Characteristics ◽  
Ganjiang River Basin

AbstractThe production and use of bronzes had significant influences on the social developments even the formation of the early states. However, in different areas, the bronzes played different roles. By observing the different characteristics of the bronzes in the Central Plains, the Ganjiang River basin, the Xiangjiang River basin, and the Chengdu Plains, various developments of societies can be revealed. The case studies of these areas can further explain the complex relationships between the bronzes and their societies, as well as the diversity of the patterns of the developments of the ancient societies.

Rise and Fall

2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 727-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Chase-Dunn ◽  
E. Susan Manning ◽  
Thomas D. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Global System ◽  
Systems Perspective ◽  
Early States ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Regional System

The world-systems perspective was invented for modeling and interpreting the expansion and deepening of the capitalist regional system as it emerged in Europe and incorporated the whole globe over the past 500 years (Wallerstein 1974; Chase-Dunn 1998; Arrighi 1994). The idea of a core/periphery hierarchy composed of “advanced” economically developed and powerful states dominating and exploiting “less developed” peripheral regions has been a central concept in the world-systems perspective. In the last decade the world-systems approach has been extended to the analysis of earlier and smaller intersocietal systems. Andre Gunder Frank and Barry Gills (1994) have argued that the contemporary global political economy is simply a continuation of a 5,000-year-old world system that emerged with the first states in Mesopotamia. Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall (1997) have modified the basic world-systems concepts to make them useful for a comparative study of very different kinds of systems. They include very small intergroup networks composed of sedentary foragers, as well as larger systems containing chiefdoms, early states, agrarian empires, and the contemporary global system in their scope of comparison.

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

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyungcheol Choy ◽  
Hee Young Yun ◽  
Seung Hee Kim ◽  
Sangsoo Jung ◽  
Benjamin T. Fuller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Dietary Adaptation ◽  
Early States ◽  
Food Items ◽  
Animal Remains ◽  
Daily Food ◽  
Game Birds

AbstractUnderstanding 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.

Transformations in ritual practice and social interaction on the Tiwanaku periphery

Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (341) ◽  
pp. 851-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Albarracin-Jordan ◽  
José M. Capriles ◽  
Melanie J. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Central Andes ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Psychoactive Substances ◽  
Middle Horizon ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Early States ◽  
Local Elite ◽  
South Central ◽  
Ritual Practices

Ritual practices and their associated material paraphernalia played a key role in extending the reach and ideological impact of early states. The discovery of a leather bag containing snuffing tablets and traces of psychoactive substances at Cueva del Chileno in the southern Andes testifies to the adoption of Tiwanaku practices by emergent local elites. Tiwanaku control spread over the whole of the south-central Andes during the Middle Horizon (AD 500–1100) but by the end of the period it had begun to fragment into a series of smaller polities. The bag had been buried by an emergent local elite who chose at this time to relinquish the former Tiwanaku ritual practices that its contents represent.

Dams, moats, and cities: climate and societies in late-Holocene China

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 295-318
Author(s):  
Yijie Zhuang
Keyword(s):  
Late Holocene ◽  
Summer Rainfall ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
Subsistence Strategies ◽  
Early States ◽  
Decadal Scale ◽  
Huai River ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
Land Water

Whilst the late-Holocene climate was becoming drier with an increasing number of climatic anomalies, with notably more frequent fluctuations in summer rainfall on an annual or decadal scale, many walled sites or cities emerged and became regional centres that witnessed population agglomeration and technological flowering. To feed their growing populations and their increasing demands on land, water, food, and other resources, these �cities� were drawn closer physically to riverine environments and wetlands. By diversifying and intensifying their subsistence strategies, and constructing infrastructure on a colossal scale, these late-Holocene walled towns or cities also fundamentally transformed their local landscapes. Examining key sites from the Huai river and the Yangtze Delta, this paper will compare the dynamic interactions between society, landscape, and the environment under different socio-economic conditions across different regions of late-Holocene China and investigate how these factors influenced and led to the emergence of complex societies or early states.

Spytihněv I (CE 875–915), Duke of Bohemia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall Joseph Becker
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Life History ◽  
Individual Variation ◽  
Growth Process ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Early States ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
Skeletal Robusticity ◽  
Shed Light

Becker applies a life history (or osteobiographic) approach in the study of the remains of individuals who have been identified as Prince Spytihn?v, Duke of Bohemia, and his wife. Specifically, Becker seeks to learn how the confluence of diet and royal social status in the 9th century A.D. early Czech state affected these two elite people’s growth process and physical activity. This contextually rich work tests the notion that terminal adult stature and skeletal robusticity may have embodied lives of privilege. The data reveal that while Spytihn?v and his wife were notably more robust than people of the lower social rank, their stature falls within the range of all other males and females from this population. Stature variation may not always hold a one-to-one correlation with social rank, especially considering individual variation and the biocultural vagaries of the early Czech state. The bioarchaeology of such “emergent elites” helps shed light on the early states of late first millennium Europe.

ASIA, NORTHEAST, EARLY STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS

2008 ◽  
pp. 642-651
Author(s):  
Sarah Milledge Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Early States

Power and the City

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harm De Blij
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Early States ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Post Offices ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
Silk Route ◽  
The City

The city is humanity’s most enduring symbol of power. States and empires rise and fall, armies conquer and collapse, ideologies come and go, but the world’s great cities endure. If there is a force that can vanquish a city, it is natural, not artificial. Ancient cities that anchored early states in Southwest, South, and East Asia fell victim to climate change as deserts encroached on their hinterlands. Modern cities on low ground at the water’s edge would not survive the sea-level rise that could accompany sustained global warming. But no political upheaval or economic breakdown would end the life of a major city—not even destruction by atomic bombs. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt because the advantages and opportunities offered by their sites and situations were unaltered by the catastrophes that struck them. Silk route terminal Chang’an morphed into Xian and Tenochtitlan became Mexico City because their locational benefits, sites, and regional networks outlasted their violent transitions. Not for nothing is Rome known as the Eternal City. With the maturation of the modern state came the notion of the “capital” city, focus of its administrative system and emblematic of its power. Cities had always dominated their hinterlands, but now their power radiated far afield. From Athens to Amsterdam and from Madrid to Moscow, these national capitals became imperial headquarters that launched colonial campaigns near and far. London was synonymous with this early wave of globalization, but Paris also lay at the heart of a global network of power and influence. In these capitals, cityscapes substantiated national achievements through elaborate palaces, columned government buildings, decorative triumphal arches, spacious parade routes, and commemorative statuary. Museums bulging with treasure attested further to the primacy of the culture, leading one observer, long ago but memorably, to designate such centers as “primate” cities (Jefferson, 1939). The trappings of this primacy reappeared in the architecture of colonial headquarters from Dakar to Delhi and from Luanda to Lima, incongruous Greco- Roman-Victorian-Iberian imprints on administrative offices, railroad stations, post offices, even prisons half a world away from Europe. More than ever before, the city in the global periphery was the locus of authority and transculturation.

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