Chiefdoms Examples of “Regional Polities”
Mar 31, 2015
Chiefdoms
Examples of “Regional Polities”
Some comments on J&E’s assessment of regional polities
• Underestimate the size of acephalous societies
• Overestimate
need for formal
organization
up to societies
~ 10,000 people
• Population pressure can’t be rate limiting step• What is?
– Technology?
– Social organization?
• Many people suspect social organization– Douglas North, Bob Bettinger
– The work-arounds hypothesis• Hard to adapt people to live in big complex societies
• Social organization not observable” and not trialable
Macroevolution again
Some other important issues• Functional versus conflict theories of social complexification:
untangling a major social science paradox
– Leaders do have prosocial functions
– Formal offices invariably (?) lead to social stratification
– Polities do expand by violent conquest
• Why not democracy?
– Simpler societies egalitarian
– Big Man system proto-democratic
– Yet main path to complexity is via ranked lineages and hereditary elite classes
• Group selection favors social system with best work-arounds
– By conquest and by imitation
– Slow process
• More about this in Part II
Historical examples of social-organizational breakthrus
• Shoshone minimalism• Chinese Confucian merit bureaucracy
– Develops after ~ 600 BC– In West after ~ 1700 AD
• Settling of California– Anglos pioneered as family units, but with cooperation
via democratic institutions– Hispanics pioneered as larger extended family groups– Anglo frontier moved faster because of greater social
flexibility
Marshall Sahlins (1963) Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man,
Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia
• Pacific islands as natural experiment
• Melanesia versus Polynesia – Similar distribution of large and small islands
– Melanesians have Big Man systems even on very big islands
– Polynesians have chiefs even on small islands
• Human social organization is conservative on millennial time scales: historical versus ecological causation?
• Trobriand Islanders an exception? Melanesians with a chiefdom?
• Big advances in Oceanian anthropology since 1963– Melanesia turns out to be culturally and biologically
heterogeneous
Austronesian phenomenon:Patrick Kirch (2000) On the Road of the Winds
Language map
Lapita Phenomenon
Lapita pottery very diagnostic
(oddly, Polynesians in the E. Lapita realm later abandon pottery!)
Lapita expansion very rapid
Core technology: basic tropical horticulture plus
Sailing leeward vs windward. Safeto beat to windward. If you get into trouble you can sail a jury rigged canoe downwind home.
Lapita navigation strategy
Austronesian sailors could
point fairly close to the wind
Austronesian exploration stategy
Ranked lineage social organization
Polynesian clans patrilinealTrobriand clans matrilinealThe novel element is formaloffices not dependent uponthe entrepreneurship of an ambitious individual
Proto-Oceanic term for ancestor:*tumpu
In the Lapita case,chieftainship in anopen environmenta stimulus to pioneering:Every successful pioneer a chief!
The Functions of Chiefs
• “Domestic tranquility”—suppression of small-scale warfare so prevalent in local-group societies
• Provision of food security– Store surpluses on large scale for redistribution
– Investment in large scale production
• Supervision of intertribal trade– Investment in high tech canoes
• Provision of supernatural services (?)
Dysfunctions of Chiefdoms
• Hereditary principle unreliable supplier of talent (but limits destructive competition for office??)
• Stratification breeds intra-societal tensions
• Violent conflict between chiefs often destructive
• Ideological exploitation of human credulity
The Trobriand Islands Case
Pioneering ethnographer Bronislaw Malinowski studied Trobrianders 1914-
1917
Subsistence: tropical horticulture & fishing
Gardening highly ritualized
Rather intricate gender division of labor in gardening
Mature garden
Fishing major protein source
Stratified social organization
Chief Touluwa
Chief and his storehouse
Ceremonial display of harvest
Modern yam shelter
Kula Trade system
Kula Ring trade
Kula Ringtrade
Armband
Necklaces
Ceremonial trade
Substantial canoes carry mundane cargo:clay pots, fine stone
Kula “market”
Evolution of Chiefdoms in Polynesia Rather Diverse
Open systems: small, highly competitive chiefdoms
Near-state systems
Tonga-Samoa: Division of religious and secular authority
Hawai’i: Class-based distinctions
Marquesian Open Sytem
Easter Island: Collapse of open system
Hawai’i
• Large island system– Large population: 250,000-800,000
– Several competing chiefdoms at contact
– United by Kamehameha with trade guns
• Notable for class system– Chiefs ranked three deep
– Class of junior aristocrat managers
– Commoners divorced from ranked lineage system
Chiefly display: feather cloaks
Economic intensification under chiefly supervision
Reef-flat fishponds
Pond-field irrigation systems
Population equilibrium?
Basseri
Notable features
Pastoral tribe
Component of state
Tribal chief part of state elite
Conclusions
• Tribes have formal leadership and usually inegalitarian, stratified social relations
• Kinship still the dominant social institution• Chiefly economic functions various but important• Inter-chiefdom trade and warfare often highly
organized• Easy to see how big chiefdoms become states