Ancient Civilizations of the
World
Theories on the Origin of the State
Neoevolutionism
• Julian Steward: Multilinear evolutionism
1902-1972
Social evolution will have assumed different
trajectories and will have moved at varying
speeds in different regions of the world
depending upon the ecological and
technological resources that were
available.
• Steward pioneered the concept of levels of
sociocultural integration.
“In the growth continuum of any culture,
there is a succession of organizational
types which are not only increasingly
complex but which represent new
emergent forms.”
Elman Service proposed the
following four levels in
Primitive Social Organization (1962):
Band Tribe Chiefdom State
Allen Johnson and Timothy Earle have
modified these levels somewhat in The
Evolution of Human Societies (1987):
Family Level Societies
The Regional Group
Chiefdoms
States
This class is concerned with just the later
two levels.
Complex Chiefdoms
• Society is organized into conical clans.
• Social rank
is determined
by ones’
descent with
respect to an
apical founding
ancestor.
• Ancestor veneration is an important
dimension of religion.
• The chieftain often claims a semi-sacred
status.
• There is an aristocracy of people recently
descended from chieftains.
• The Chieftain controls access to critical
resources like land or bulls.
• Chieftains and
aristocrats set
themselves apart from
commoners by the
consumption of
sumptuary or prestige
goods.
• Chieftains can appropriate the labor,
goods, and women of commoners by
various means.
• Chieftains are war leaders and chiefdoms
are caught up in high levels of interpolity
violence.
Chiefdom / State Contrasts
Chiefdom
• Chieftain and other
nobility are related.
• Social rank depends
upon genealogical
position.
• Troops are raised for
combat by levy.
• Income generated by
traditional rights to portion
of economic activity.
State
• King and aristocracy
constitute separate
castes.
• Aristocratic social rank
depends upon favor from
king.
• Often military leaders and
troops are professionals.
• Income generated by
taxation.
Some scholars, e.g. Norman Yoffee, have
argued that some societies transitioned to
state-level complexity without having
passed through a chiefdom stage of social
complexity.
In his view Mesopotamian society
transitioned from communities led by
councils of elders to states.
20th Century Theories of State Origins
Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957)
Man Makes Himself (1936)
Childe, a Marxist, is often
viewed as the last
of the Victorian
speculative
theorists (still used terms
like “savages” and
“barbarian”).
• Neolithic Revolution – desiccation of the
Eastern Mediterranean after the Ice Ages
led to humans animals concentrating
around permanent sources of water.
Animals were receptive to being fed by
humans.
• Cultivation of grain led naturally to the
accumulation of a surplus.
• Mixed farming economy led to the
expansion of the population.
• The Neolithic economy lead to new
technologies and increased sedentism,
especially in Egypt and Mesopotamia, due
to the effort involved in improving the river
bottom land for farming, and the inception
of arborculture = fixed capital resources.
• Urban revolution – metallurgy, trade, and
warfare stimulated the growing of
agricultural surpluses and population
expansion.
How have Childe’s theories fared?
-“Oasis theory”: Tested at Abu Hureyra,
Syria.
-Craft specialization as a prime mover.
-Hydraulic hypothesis – Karl Wittfogel
A managerial theory.
-Trade as a prime mover – Susan
Frankenstein and M.J. Rowlands “prestige
goods system.”
Heuneburg and Vix Burial
Hallstatt D Period
Vix, France
Heuneburg, Bavaria
Ecology, demography, and social systems
in the 1960’s and 70’s
• Elman Service (1962) Redistribution
(managerial theory)
• Boserup, Ester (1965). The Conditions
of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian
Change under Population Pressure.
• Kent Flannery: The cultural evolution of
civilizations (1972) Systems theory.
Robert Carneiro and Social Circumscription
1970
• Carneiro is a specialist on
South America.
• Theory was inspired by the
coastal valleys of Peru.
These river valleys are
geographically
circumscribed by lifeless
deserts.
• Social circumscription: when faced with
adversity or economic hardship, people
will move to a new locality. Population
growth may lead to a situation when there
aren’t any open areas for people to move
to – then violence ensues as communities
fight over resources.
• Carneiro’s model is a conflict model of
social evolution.
Critique of Models involving Population
Pressure
• In Ancient Mesoamerica (1981) and other
publications Richard Blanton, Gary
Feinman, and Stephen Kowalewski offer
evidence that increases in social
complexity in the Valley of Oaxaca in
southern Mexico followed population
declines.
Other Key Variables
• Ideology: what Marxists call religion. Marx
equated religion with “false consciousness.”
• Agency: the role played by individuals and their
motives. The view is to identify strategies by
which individuals may accumulate power.
• Power: the ability to make someone do
something that they would not otherwise do.
Dual Processual Theory (1996):
Richard Blanton; Gary Feinman, Stephen
Kowalewski, & Peter Peregrine
• “Network” strategies vs. “Corporate” strategies
for obtaining power.
Individuals following a network strategy aim to
monopolize sources of power, establishing
small-scale networks of personal dominance.
Within a corporate strategy, power is shared
across the social structure and the
monopolization of power is inhibited.
Dual processual theory acknowledges the
differences that early states exhibit in their
organization.
It has a fundamental weakness in that they
can point to no historical examples of
societies organized in a “corporate”
fashion. Instead archaeological examples
like Teotihuacan are put forward.
The Collapse of States
• Joyce Marcus and Joseph Tainter view
complex states as inherently expensive
and unstable.
• In many localities efforts at agricultural
intensification, after initially yielding gains
in food production, may have damaged
fragile environments beyond immediate
recovery, e.g. Copan in Honduras.
Copan, Honduras
Collapsed 822 AD