scholarly journals Local economies and household spacing in early chiefdom communities

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. e0252532
Author(s):  
C. Adam Berrey ◽  
Robert D. Drennan ◽  
Christian E. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Social Power ◽  
Wealth Accumulation ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Societal Change ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Economic Base ◽  
Local Economies ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
Distance Interaction ◽  
Primary Form

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.

Ephemeral Traces: Archaeology of a Medieval Rural Settlement

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 281-319
Author(s):  
Supriya Varma ◽  
Jaya Menon ◽  
Deepak Nair
Keyword(s):  
Rural Settlement ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Human History ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Integrated Network ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
Article Deal ◽  
Urban Settlements

For a considerable span of human history, following the adoption of agricultural economies but prior to the emergence of settlements that we label as ‘urban’, small permanent communities or ‘villages’ were the main types of settlements, as also were places intermittently occupied by mobile, nomadic groups. The context of these, however, differed from those small or rural settlements that existed within an integrated network of centres in urban and state societies. A third scenario is the case of small-scale rural settlements that may exist at the margins of complex societies and, hence, outside state/political control but could still be socially and economically networked with other centres. Thus, the concept of ‘rural’ needs to be situated and interrogated within specific political, social and economic contexts. While archaeological research has addressed village settlements in pre-urban periods, once urbanism and the state societies emerged, urban settlements became the focus of attention. Even though surveys have shown the distribution of settlements of varying sizes, we do not seem to know much about early historic and medieval villages, in terms of settlement layouts, domestic spaces, crafts, if any, or even subsistence practices. It is this lacuna that we are trying to address through our work at a small, rural settlement in the Upper Ganga-Yamuna Doab. Some of the questions that we raise in this article deal with terms like ‘urban’, or ‘rural’, whether these should be viewed as binaries, or whether it may be more fruitful, as others have suggested, to see settlements in a continuum.

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF SOUTHERNMOST AFRICA FROM c. 2000 BP TO THE EARLY 1800s: A REVIEW OF RECENT RESEARCH

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER MITCHELL ◽  
GAVIN WHITELAW
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Excellent Opportunity ◽  
The Past

Southernmost Africa (here meaning South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland) provides an excellent opportunity for investigating the relations between farming, herding and hunting-gathering communities over the past 2,000 years, as well as the development of societies committed to food production and their increasing engagement with the wider world through systems of exchange spanning the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. This paper surveys and evaluates the archaeological research relevant to these communities and issues carried out in the region since the early 1990s. Among other themes discussed are the processes responsible for the emergence and transformation of pastoralist societies (principally in the Cape), the ways in which rock art is increasingly being incorporated with other forms of archaeological data to build a more socially informed view of the past, the analytical strength and potential of ethnographically informed understandings of past farming societies and the important contribution that recent research on the development of complex societies in the Shashe-Limpopo Basin can make to comparative studies of state formation.

ASKING MORE AND BETTER QUESTIONS: OLMEC ARCHAEOLOGY FOR THE NEXT KATUN

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Pool
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Research ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Future Research ◽  
New Work ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Local Economies ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Interregional Interaction ◽  
Future Research Directions

AbstractThe two decades since the publication of Regional Perspectives on the Olmec have seen a great expansion of basic archaeological research in the “Olmec heartland” region of Mexico's southern Gulf lowlands as well as important new work on Formative period interregional interaction and its effects on local economies and polities. Olmec research, however, has not achieved as prominent a place as it merits in comparative research on the evolution of social complexity. In this essay I review this work and make some suggestions for future research directions.

The Archaeology of Political Complexity in West Africa Through 1450 CE

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Dueppen
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
West African ◽  
Organizational Forms ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Political Complexity ◽  
Power And Authority

Political complexity in archaeological research has traditionally been defined as socio-political differentiation (roles, statuses, offices) integrated through centralized systems of power and authority. In recent decades the assumption that complex organizational forms tend to be hierarchical in structure has been called into question, based upon both archaeological research and ethnological observations worldwide, including in classic archaeological case studies of centralization. Moreover, there has been an increasing interest in exploring variability in political legitimizations and articulations of power and authority globally. Until these theoretical shifts, West African complex societies, both archaeological and from ethnographic analyses, were largely ignored in discussions of political complexity since many (but not all) conformed poorly to the expectations of highly centralized power and administration. West African ethnohistoric and archaeological examples are now playing important roles in current discussions of heterarchical organizational structures, checks on exclusionary power, cooperation, urbanism, ethnicity, and the nature of administration in states.

Early States and Complex Societies in Eastern and Southern Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chapurukha M. Kusimba
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Arable Land ◽  
The State ◽  
Eastern Coast ◽  
Wealth Accumulation ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Early States ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Eastern And Southern Africa

How and in what ways did socially complex societies emerge on the East African coast and southern Africa? Scholarship has shown that elite investment in interregional trade and in extractive technologies, monopolization of wealth-creating resources, and warfare may have played a key role in the emergence of early states. To what extent was elite and non-elite engagement in local, regional, and transcontinental economic networks crucial to development of social complexity in eastern and southern Africa? Extensive research on the eastern coast of Africa (Kenya and Tanzania) and southern Africa (Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa) has yielded adequate data to enable a discussion on the trajectories of the evolution of social complexity and the state. So far, three crucial factors: (a) trade, (b) investment in extractive technologies, and (c) elite monopolization of wealth-creating resources coalesced to propel the region toward greater interaction and complexity. Major transformations in the form and increase of household size, clear differences in wealth and status, and settlement hierarchies occurred toward the end of the first millennium ad. Regional scholarship posits that elite control of internal and external trade infrastructure, restricted access to arable land and accumulation of surplus, manipulation of religious ideology, and exploitation of ecological crises were among the major factors that contributed to the rise of the state. Could these factors have also favored investment and use of organized violence as a means to gain access to and monopolize access to information and wealth-creating resources? Scholarship in the 21st century favors the notion that opportunistic use of ideological and ritual power enabled a small elite initially composed of elders, ritual specialists, and technical specialists to control the regional political economy and information flows. The timing of these transformations was continent-wide and date to the last three centuries of the first millennium ad. By all measures, the evidence points to wealth accumulation through trade, tribute, and investment in agrarianism, pastoralism, and mining.

The Archaeology of Early Modern South East Asia

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Stark
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Precious Metals ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
East Asians ◽  
Local Economies ◽  
Modern Period

South East Asians in the early modern period (c.1450–1800) embraced technological innovations and novel ideas that crossed their paths. The fifteenth century ushered in the collapse of large empires and the rise of local craft industries; multi-ethnic diasporic communities developed in port cities; and standardized currencies structured local economies. Europeans entered this world in search of luxury goods and precious metals—in two centuries they would colonize most of the region. Although most historians explain the emergence of South East Asia’s ‘Age of Commerce’ through external factors, indigenous documents and archaeological information from this period offer insights on internal dynamics that contributed to region-wide transformations. Two objectives structure this chapter: to assess the range of issues that archaeological research has raised, challenged, or refuted, and to weave historical and archaeological threads into a series of themes that might guide future archaeological research on the period 1450–1850.

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