Chapter 13
Reconstructing Social and
Political Systems of the Past
Outline
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Archaeology and Gender
Archaeology and Kinship
Archaeology and Social Status
Trade and Political Organization
Key Components of Human
Society
• Gender - Assigning specific artifacts to men
and women is difficult.
• Kinship is a major structuring principle of
human social organization, but it leaves
ambiguous traces.
• Social status - Many ancient societies may
have been organized politically in ways that
have no straightforward ethnographic
analogies today.
Social Organization
• Rules and structures that govern relations
within a group of interacting people.
• Societies are divided into social units
(groups) within which are recognized social
positions (statuses), with appropriate
behavior patterns prescribed for these
positions (roles).
Political Organization
• Formal and informal institutions that regulate
a population’s collective acts.
• Chiefdom
– A regional polity in which two or more local
groups are organized under a single chief.
– Chiefdoms consist of several more or less
permanently aligned communities or
settlements.
Archaeology and Gender
• Anthropologists distinguish between sex and
gender, and between gender roles and
gender ideology.
• Sex refers to inherited, biological differences
between males and females.
• Gender refers to culturally constructed ideas
about sex differences.
Gender
• Humans have two sexes, male and female—
but there can be more than two genders.
• Some societies recognize men who live as
women or women who live as men as a third
gender.
– In some Plains Indian tribes, berdaches
were men who chose to live as women,
performing women’s roles.
Gender Role and Ideology
• Gender role refers to the different
participation of males and females in the
social, economic, political, and religious
institutions of a cultural group.
• Gender ideology refers to the culturally
specific meaning assigned to “male,”
“female,” “sex,” and “reproduction.”
Cargo System
• Part of the social organization found in
many Central American communities in
which a wealthy individual is named to
carry out and bear the cost of important
religious ceremonies throughout the
year.
Archaeology and Kinship
• Kinship refers to the socially recognized
network of relationships through which
individuals are related to one another by ties
of descent and marriage.
• A kinship system blends biological descent
with cultural rules that define some people as
close kin and others as distant kin.
• Kin groupings condition the nature of
relationships between individuals.
Bilateral Descent
• The standard kinship in North America, as
well as many other industrialized nations.
– An individual traces his or her relatives
equally on the mother’s and father’s sides.
– In bilateral descent, the nuclear family is
the important economic unit.
Patrilineal and Matrilineal
Descent
Patrilineal Descent
• In patrilineal descent, you acquire your
patrilineage from your father.
• Patrilineal societies make up about 60% of
the world’s known societies.
• They are associated with hunting-and
gathering, agricultural, and pastoral societies.
• They are also associated with warfare with
close neighbors.
Matrilineal Descent
• In matrilineal descent, you trace relatives
through the female line.
• A matrilineal lineage includes you, your
mother, her siblings and her sisters’ offspring,
your mother’s mother, etc.
• Matrilineal societies compose only about 10%
of the world’s societies.
• They are associated with horticulture, long
distance hunting, and/or warfare with distant
enemies.
Lineages, Clans, and
Moieties
• Lineages are sometimes clustered into clans,
a set of lineages that claim to share a distant,
often-mythical, ancestor.
• Clans may be clustered into moieties.
– Moieties often perform reciprocal
ceremonial obligations for each other,
such as burying the dead of the other or
holding feasts for one another.
Lineages, Clans and
Moeties
Mikea Hamlet Map With
Kinship Chart
Residence Patterns
• Patrilocal Residence- A newly married couple
live in the groom’s village of origin; associated
with patrilineal descent.
• Matrilocal residence - A newly married
couple live in the bride’s village of origin;
associated with matrilineal descent.
• Bilocal residence - The married couple reside
either with the husband’s or the wife’s family.
Status
• The rights, duties, privileges, powers,
liabilities, and immunities that accrue to a
recognized and named social position.
• Ascribed status - Rights, duties, and
obligations that accrue to a person by
inheritence.
• Achieved status- Rights, duties, and
obligations that accrue by virtue of what a
person accomplishes.
Egalitarian Societies
• The number of valued statuses is equal
to the number of persons with the ability
to fill them.
• No individual wields complete authority
over another.
• Members of egalitarian societies
generally have equal access to lifesustaining resources.
Egalitarian Societies
• Small-scale egalitarian societies are called
bands.
• The key to leadership is experience and
social standing; a social position is not
inherited in an egalitarian society.
• Gender and age are the primary dimensions
of status in egalitarian communities.
Ranked Societies
• Limit the positions of valued status so that not
everyone of sufficient talent can achieve
them.
• Relatively permanent social stations are
maintained with people having unequal
access to life-sustaining resources.
• Economies that redistribute goods and
services throughout the community, with
those doing the redistributing keeping some
for themselves.
Death and Social Status
• Mortuary remains are one important source of
information on extinct political systems.
• Social ties existed between the living and the
once living, and the ceremonial connections
at death reflect these social relations.
• Mortuary rituals reflect who people were and
the relationships they had with others when
they were alive.
Mississippian
• A widespread cultural tradition across much
of the eastern United States from AD 800–
1500.
• Mississippian societies engaged in intensive
village-based maize horticulture and
constructed large, earthen platform mounds
that served as substructures for temples,
residences, and council buildings.
Southeastern Ceremonial
Complex
• An assortment of ceremonial objects
that occurs in the graves of high-status
Mississippian individuals.
• Ritual exchange of these artifacts
crosscut the boundaries of many
distinctive local cultures.
A Map of the Site of
Moundville
Hierarchical Social Clusters in
Burials at Moundville
Human Trade Systems:
Direct Acquisition
1. You go to the natural source of a raw
material.
2. Extract the material
3. Exchange goods or services for it or
receive an artifact or raw material as a
gift.
Human Trade Systems:
Down-the-line Trade
1. People acquire a raw material from people
who have immediate access to it.
2. These people trade it to others who live
farther away from the source.
3. They may in turn trade it to people living
even farther away.
Hopewell
• A cultural tradition found in the Ohio River
Valley dating from 200 BC–AD 400.
• Engaged in hunting and gathering and
horticulture of indigenous plants.
• Known for their mortuary rituals, which
included charnel houses and burial mounds;
some central tombs contained exotics.
• They constructed geometric earthworks as
ceremonial enclosures and effigy mounds.
Tracing an Artifact to it’s Source
• Energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence
(XRF) Uses obsidian’s trace elements to
“fingerprint” an artifact and trace it to its
geologic source.
• Instrumental neutron activation analysis
(INAA) - Determines the trace element
composition of the clay used to make a pot to
identify the clay’s geological source.
Tracing an Artifact to it’s Source
• Petrographic analysis - Identifies the
mineral composition of a pot’s temper and
clay through microscopic observation of thin
sections.
Quick Quiz
1. Societies are divided into social units within
which are recognized _____ with
appropriate ____ prescribed for these
positions.
Answer: statuses, roles
• Societies are divided into social units
within which are recognized statuses,
with appropriate roles prescribed for
these positions.
2. ___ refers to inherited, biological differences
between males and females. _____ refers to
culturally constructed ideas about sex
differences.
Answer: sex, gender
• Sex refers to inherited, biological
differences between males and
females. Gender refers to culturally
constructed ideas about sex
differences.
3. If a newly married couple live in the groom’s
village of origin, they are using the following
pattern of residence:
A. Matrilocal
B. Bilocal
C. Unilcoal
D. Patrilocal
Answer: D
•
If a newly married couple live in the groom’s
village of origin, they are using the
patrilocal pattern of residence:
4. In a ranked society, the number of
valued statuses is equal to the number
of persons with the ability to fill them
and no individual wields complete
authority over another.
A. True
B. False
Answer: B. False
• In a egalitarian society, the number of
valued statuses is equal to the number
of persons with the ability to fill them
and no individual wields complete
authority over another.