Anthropology 5 -- Ancient Civilizations
Review Sheet #2: Social Organization
Social Organization - main social institutions include:
1- economy - three primary components
a) subsistence activities, including: food resource production, e.g., hunting and gathering in bands or agriculture in state
societies; roles of men, women, and children in subsistence activities; seasonal activities and/or yearly agricultural cycle
b) technology, that is, tool assemblage; food processing and storage methods; labor organization, e.g., individual or group
acquisition of raw materials and manufacture of material culture
c) trade and exchange
2- social structure
- in the simplest kinship based society social relationships are based on family ties at the nuclear and/or extended family level,
and as the size of social unit increases clan and lineage affiliation become important; social relationships in non-kin based
societies are based on heredity and craft or profession, though family relationships are still important for day to day survival
- marriage systems, can be patrilineal or matrilineal and marriage partners may come from within the group (e.g., marriage
of individuals from the same clan) from outside the immediate group (e.g., marriage of individuals from different lineages)
3- settlement and residential patterns
- distribution of population across the landscape and human ecology, e.g., state societies have centralized urban areas with
satellite towns, villages, and hamlet-farm communities; residential patterns for example can be based on kinship, craft
specialization or clan membership
4- political organization
- can be egalitarian as in bands and tribes or ranked and stratified by class as in chiefdoms and state societies; leadership may
be either temporary as in bands or permanent and heredity as in chiefdoms and states with centralized governments
5- ideology
- defines the society’s world view, it includes a system of concepts and often unstated assumptions about life
- components include a cosmology which explains the way things are in the present and a mythology which explains how
thing have came to be; in simpler societies belief in totems, spirits, and magic are important; while renewal and annual
ceremonies related to nature and subsistence activities are critical rituals in the social system at all level of social development
- in more complex societies a formal religion develops, it is usually based on a belief in supernatural beings and its main
purpose in society is to provide individuals a way to cope with the problems of human existence (e.g., birth and death, natural
disasters and disease, and human catastrophe such war)
6 - art and architecture
- level of development of art depends on complexity of society, more sophisticated art is usually found in societies which
can support craft specialists who can devote their full time to artistic pursuits
- monumental architecture requires centralized organization, skilled workers, and vast numbers of unskilled laborers
- embeddedness is the concept that social institutions are interrelated and that a change in one institution affects change in the others
Models of Sociocultural Organization
How anthropologists classify human sociocultural systems based on social and political organization. These models of cultural
evolution were primarily developed by Marshall D. Sahlins and Elman R. Service in the early 1960’s with significant contribution from
Morton Fried during the late 1960’s. Theses are generalized neo-evolutionary models and are not unilineal, that is, every society does
not past from one stage to next in a straight progression from simple to complex.
1) bands - oldest and simplest of human societies
- based on a number of primarily environmental factors, there is a wide variation in group size and complexity of social
organization; groups can range from 15-25 individuals, in a highly mobile group, moving through their environment on a
seasonal round; these family groups usually aggregate, for a couple weeks, at a specific time of the year (i.e., when food
resources are abundant) to form a temporary group of 250 – 500 individuals; at the other extreme, bands can be as large as
1000 to 7000 individuals that are dispersed in numerous villages within a delineated territory, these villages are permanently
occupied; often specific task groups leave the village for a couple days or up to several weeks in order to exploit seasonal
resource abundance (e.g., a salmon run or ripening of a certain plant resource)
- membership in band society is based on kinship
- primary subsistence activity is hunting of animals, fishing, and the gathering of plant resources
- labor is divided only by age and gender
- social relations are egalitarian (i.e., everyone is equal) and reciprocity and sharing of all resources are routine and required;
there is little or no individual property ownership
- group leadership roles are temporary and based on ability
- technology is simple and limited (often due to nomadism)
- group membership is based on kinship (usually patriilineal, patrilocal residence, occasionally, c.<15%, matrilineal)
- religion is animistic
2) tribes - when humans domesticate plants and animals major changes in sociocultural complexity occur
- economic activities are based in horticulture, but some hunter-gathering activities are still important
- groups size is 250 to 10,000, with settlement in permanent, at least for 15 to 20 years, that is, when soils are exhausted and
settlements are relocated
- groups membership is still kinship orientated but at a larger and more complex level such as clan or lineage
- tribes are basically egalitarian, some stratification based on skill and intellect
- political leadership is based on age, charisma, and group approval
- division of labor is based on age and gender
- ideology still has elements of animism, but becomes more sophisticated, often with ancestor worship predominant
3) chiefdoms - this level of sociocultural development is typical of simple agricultural societies
- population up to 30,000 or more, with a permanent settlement pattern including hamlets, villages, large towns up to 20,000
- these are kinship based and ranked societies, with some families being more wealthy, prestigious, and politically powerful
than others, there are usually three social levels a chiefly class in which membership is hereditary and power is based on
religious doctrine; a warrior class with membership based primarily on heredity, but members of both other classes can move
into the warrior class based on skill; and a peasant class based on heredity, members are farmers and craft specialists.
Note: labor specialization is well defined and common
4) State society - this level of sociocultural development is based on a complex agricultural economy
- state societies have a strong, highly centralized government
- these societies are stratified and largely divorced from the bonds of kinship, the social levels include::
- a professional ruling class
- a military elite, which usually come from ruling class
- a bureaucratic or religious class; in which positions are often hereditary
- a class of craft specialists, who are removed from subsistence activities
- a class of peasants farmers
- the economy is controlled by the elite, which maintains its authority by means of a combination of 1) law and coercive force
and 2) differential access to key goods and services
- residential patterns are often based on profession, as opposed to kinship
- population is at least hundreds of thousands to millions, mostly concentrated in cities
- a written language system and a codified system of laws
- the central government maintains a monopoly on coercive force, e.g., police and military
- states usually have powerful economic structures, e.g.: infrastructure like irrigation systems, roads, public markets,
monumental architecture, potable water systems, extensive trade networks, large scale food storage facilities and food
redistribution system
- these societies usually have highly elaborate and complex state religions
- artistic achievement is elaborate and highly developed
- monumental architecture is important, it demonstrates the wealth and power of the ruling class; it has strong symbolic
meaning for the lower classes; and it provides public work for the lower classes
Civilization is a shorthand for urbanized and state level societies
- distinction between preindustrialized civilization and modern civilization is the former relied on “traction energy” i.e., manual and
animal labor and the latter depends on fossil fuels such as coal and oil
Civilization is defined as having these characteristic:
1) urbanization, i.e., the presence of cities
- a city is a large and relatively dense settlement
- city population is at least in the thousands, sometimes over a million
- craft specialization
- interdependence between the city and its hinterland for food, natural resources, and finished goods
- monumental architecture
2) state levels societies
- a strong, centralized political government with agricultural economies based on centralized accumulation of capital and
social status through tribute and taxation
- class stratification and hierarchical status
- codified system of laws
- state religion in which the ruler plays a leading role
- written language and metallurgy are characteristics not present in all ancient civilization, e.g., Inka, Aztec
NOTES:
*Social organization: The structural organization of a society. It is first divided into institutions and then into smaller social units,
called groups. Second, it has recognized social positions, or statuses, and appropriate behavior patterns for these positions, or roles.
- words that are italicized are important term
gender roles – changed with the transition to an agricultural economy, the division of labor emphasized male labor and dominance, the
latter due to need for “civil authority” in and defense of village and crops