The main problem, discussed in the article, is the place the chief takes in the potestary-political system of the so-called chiefdom and the so-called early state. The starting point is the conception that the chief¬tain institution is a polyvariant phenomenon. The data of the cross-cultural analysis of the problem concerning the chieftain institution of the late tribal epoch, the epochs of politogenesis and of the early state, respectively, outline comparatively distinctly several categories of chiefs: firstly, the sacralized institution of the chiefs of the separate segments of the clans, delocalized in communities, i. e. the leaders of the separate structural sections of these tribal organization, still consisting of clans, organized on the principle of the classification kinship; secondly, the chiefs who were connected with the leadership in the primary age-set system, and thirdly, the category of chiefs, designated with the ethnological term bigman. It was on the basis of these three categories of chiefs on which the chieftain institutions of the epoch of politogenesis are formed, building the supreme sections of the potestary-political system of the so-called chiefdom: the category of the hereditary sacralized chief-(priest), the category of the military chiefs (which is their most general qualification), and the category of the so-called bigmen. It is the figures of these three categories of chiefs that stand out strongly in the pote¬stary-political system of the epoch of the politogenesis and determine their definition as chiefdom. Undoubtedly, the good knowledge of the chieftain institution with its categories will be of great help to the study of genesis of the monocratic institution. In the current research the attention is focused on a limited number of questions – the “class of the chiefs”, the supreme chieftain colleges and the binary chieftain institution, the paramount chief.
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