Download or read book Beyond Chiefdoms written by Susan Keech McIntosh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-06-10 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reintroduces an African perspective on archaeological theorizing about complex societies.
Download or read book Chiefdoms Collapse and Coalescence in the Early American South written by Robin Beck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-24 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a new framework for understanding the transformation of the Native American South during the first centuries of the colonial era.
Download or read book A Primer on Chiefs and Chiefdoms written by Timothy Earle and published by Eliot Werner Publications. This book was released on 2021-12-31 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chiefs are political operatives who hold titles of leadership over groups larger than intimate kin-based communities. Although they rule with the consent of their group, they are all about building personal power and respect. Many scholars have viewed chiefs as problem solvers--defending groups against aggressors, resolving disputes, providing support under hardship, organizing labor for community projects, and redistributing goods among those in need. Chiefs do these things, but much of what chiefs do is accumulate benefits for themselves, staying in power and legitimizing control. Anthropological archaeology is well suited to pursue the study of chiefs, their leadership institutions (chiefdoms), and long-term historical processes. The author argues that studying chiefdoms is essential to understanding the role of elemental powers in social evolution. As an illustration, he studies chiefs and their power strategies in historically independent prehistoric and traditional societies and discusses how they continue to exist as powerful actors within modern states.
Download or read book Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions written by Timothy R. Pauketat and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2007-05-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades anthropology, especially ethnography, has supplied the prevailing models of how human beings have constructed, and been constructed by, their social arrangements. In turn, archaeologists have all too often relied on these models to reconstruct the lives of ancient peoples. In lively, engaging, and informed prose, Timothy Pauketat debunks much of this social-evolutionary theorizing about human development, as he ponders the evidence of 'chiefdoms' left behind by the Mississippian culture of the American southern heartland. This book challenges all students of history and prehistory to reexamine the actual evidence that archaeology has made available, and to do so with an open mind.
Download or read book Chiefdoms written by Robert L. Carneiro and published by Eliot Werner Publications. This book was released on 2017-12-31 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What many anthropologists regard as the major step in political development occurred when, for the first time in history, previously autonomous villages gave up their individual sovereignties and were brought together into a multi-village political unit--the chiefdom. Though long neglected as a major stage in history, recent years have seen the chiefdom come in for increased attention. As its importance has been more fully recognized, it has become the object of serious scholarly analysis and interpretation. In this volume specialists in political evolution draw on data from ethnography, archaeology, and history and apply fresh insights to enhance the study of the chiefdom. The papers present penetrating analyses of many aspects of the chiefdom, from how this form of political organization first arose to the role it played in giving rise to the next major stage in the development of human society--the state.
Download or read book Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions written by Timothy R. Pauketat and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2007 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sweeps away the last vestiges of social-evolutionary explanations of 'chiefdoms' by rethinking the history of Pre-Columbian Southeast peoples and comparing them to ancient peoples in the Southwest, Mexico, Mesoamerica, and Mesopotamia.
Download or read book Beyond the Royal Gaze written by Neil Kodesh and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2010-03-12 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2011 African Studies Association Herskovits Award Beyond the Royal Gaze shifts the perspective from which we view early African politics by asking what Buganda, a kingdom located on the northwest shores of Lake Victoria in present-day Uganda, looked like to people who were not of the center but nevertheless became central to its functioning. Drawing on insights from a variety of disciplines—history, historical linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology—Neil Kodesh argues that the domains of politics and public healing were intimately entwined in Buganda from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted throughout Buganda, Kodesh demonstrates how efforts to ensure collective prosperity and perpetuity—usually expressed in the language of health and healing—lay at the heart of community-building processes in Buganda. Kodesh's work offers a novel approach to the use of oral sources and opens up new possibilities for researching and writing histories of more distant periods in Africa's past. Beyond the Royal Gaze will appeal to students and scholars of health and healing, political complexity, and the production of knowledge in places where limited documentary evidence exists.
Download or read book Beyond Collapse written by Ronald K. Faulseit and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2015-12-07 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maya. The Romans. The great dynasties of ancient China. It is generally believed that these once mighty empires eventually crumbled and disappeared. A recent trend in archaeology, however, focusing on what happened during and after the decline of once powerful societies has found social resilience and transformation instead of collapse. In Beyond Collapse: Archaeological Perspectives on Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Complex Societies, editor Ronald K. Faulseit gathers scholars with diverse theoretical perspectives to present innovative approaches to understanding the decline and reorganization of complex societies. Essays in the book are arranged into five sections. The first section addresses previous research on the subject of collapse and reorganization as well as recent and historic theoretical trends. In the second section, contributors look at collapse and resilience through the concepts of collective action, eventful archaeology, and resilience theory. The third section introduces critical analyses of the effectiveness of resilience theory as a heuristic tool for modeling the phenomena of collapse and resilience. In the fourth section, contributors examine long-term adaptive strategies employed by prehistoric societies to cope with stresses. Essays in the fifth section make connections to contemporary research on post-decline societies in a variety of time periods and geographic locations. Contributors consider collapse and reorganization not as unrelated phenomena but as integral components in the evolution of complex societies. Using archaeological data to interpret how ancient civilizations responded to various stresses—including environmental change, warfare, and the fragmentation of political institutions—contributors discuss not only what leads societies to collapse but also why some societies are resilient and others are not, as well as how societies reorganize after collapse. The implications of the fate of these societies for modern nations cannot be underestimated. Putting in context issues we face today, such as climate change, lack of social diversity, and the failure of modern states, Beyond Collapse is an essential volume for readers interested in human-environment interaction and in the collapse—and subsequent reorganization—of human societies.
Download or read book Archaeologies of Complexity written by Robert Chapman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-12-08 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An up-to-date and critical analysis of how archaeologists study past societies, Archaeologies of Complexity addresses the nature of contemporary archaeology and the study of social change, and debates the transition from perceived simple, egalitarian societies to the complex power structures and divisions of our modern world. Since the eighteenth century, archaeologists have examined complexity in terms of successive types of societies, from early bands, tribes and chiefdoms to states; through stages of social evolution, including 'savagery', 'barbarism' and 'civilisation', to the present state of complexity and inequality. Presenting a radical, alternative view of ancient state societies, the book explains the often ambiguous terms of 'complexity', 'hierarchy' and inequality' and provides a critical account of the Anglo-American research of the last forty years which has heavily influenced the subject.
Download or read book African Connections written by Peter Mitchell and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2005 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the exodus of early modern humans to the growth of African diasporas, Africa has had a long and complex relationship with the outside world. More than a passive vessel manipulated by external empires, the African experience has been a complex mix of internal geographic, environmental, sociopolitical and economic factors, and regular interaction with outsiders. Peter Mitchell attempts to outline these factors over the long period of modern human history, to find their commonalities and development over time. He examines African interconnections through Egypt and Nubia with the Near East, through multiple Indian Ocean trading systems, through the trans-Saharan trade, and through more recent incursion of Europeans. The African diaspora is also explored for continuities and resistance to foreign domination. Commonalities abound in the African experience, as do complexities of each individual period and interrelationship. Mitchell's sweeping analysis of African connections place the continent in context of global prehistory and history. The book should be of interest not only to Africanists, but to many other archaeologists, historians, geographers, linguists, social scientists and their students.
Download or read book The Precolonial State in West Africa written by J. Cameron Monroe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-09 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume incorporates historical, ethnographic, art historical, and archaeological sources to examine the relationship between the production of space and political order in the West African Kingdom of Dahomey during the tumultuous Atlantic Era. Dahomey, situated in the modern Republic of Bénin, emerged in this period as one of the principal agents in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and an exemplar of West African state formation. Drawing from eight years of ethnohistorical and archaeological fieldwork in the Republic of Bénin, the central thesis of this volume is that Dahomean kings used spatial tactics to project power and mitigate dissent across their territories. J. Cameron Monroe argues that these tactics enabled kings to economically exploit their subjects and to promote a sense of the historical and natural inevitability of royal power.
Download or read book The Land beyond the Mists written by David Newbury and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The horrific tragedies of Central Africa in the 1990s riveted the attention of the world. But these crises did not occur in a historical vacuum. By peering through the mists of the past, the case studies presented in The Land Beyond the Mists illustrate the significant advances to have taken place since decolonization in our understanding of the pre-colonial histories of Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern Congo. Based on both oral and written sources, these essays are important both for their methods—viewing history from the perspective of local actors—and for their conclusions, which seriously challenge colonial myths about the area.
Download or read book Beyond the Blockade written by Susan Kepecs and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2010-12-12 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a series of essays based on dialogues that have recently opened between Cuban archaeologists & their international colleagues.
Download or read book Raiding Trading and Feasting written by Laura L. Junker and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1999-09-01 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As early as the first millennium A.D., the Philippine archipelago formed the easternmost edge of a vast network of Chinese, Southeast Asian, Indian, and Arab traders. Items procured through maritime trade became key symbols of social prestige and political power for the Philippine chiefly elite. Raiding, Trading, and Feasting presents the first comprehensive analysis of how participation in this trade related to broader changes in the political economy of these Philippine island societies. By combining archaeological evidence with historical sources, Laura Junker is able to offer a more nuanced examination of the nature and evolution of Philippine maritime trading chiefdoms. Most importantly, she demonstrates that it is the dynamic interplay between investment in the maritime luxury goods trade and other evolving aspects of local political economies, rather than foreign contacts, that led to the cyclical coalescence of larger and more complex chiefdoms at various times in Philippine history. A broad spectrum of historical and ethnographic sources, ranging from tenth-century Chinese tributary trade records to turn-of-the-century accounts of chiefly "feasts of merit," highlights both the diversity and commonality in evolving chiefly economic strategies within the larger political landscape of the archipelago. The political ascendance of individual polities, the emergence of more complex forms of social ranking, and long-term changes in chiefly economies are materially documented through a synthesis of archaeological research at sites dating from the Metal Age (late first millennium B.C.) to the colonial period. The author draws on her archaeological fieldwork in the Tanjay River basin to investigate the long-term dynamics of chiefly political economy in a single region. Reaching beyond the Philippine archipelago, this study contributes to the larger anthropological debate concerning ecological and cultural factors that shape political economy in chiefdoms and early states. It attempts to address the question of why Philippine polities, like early historic kingdoms elsewhere in Southeast Asia, have a segmentary political structure in which political leaders are dependent on prestige goods exchanges, personal charisma, and ritual pageantry to maintain highly personalized power bases. Raiding, Trading, and Feasting is a volume of impressive scholarship and substantial scope unmatched in the anthropological and historical literature. It will be welcomed by Pacific and Asian historians and anthropologists and those interested in the theoretical issues of chiefdoms.
Download or read book Beyond War written by Douglas P. Fry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A profoundly heartening view of human nature, Beyond War offers a hopeful prognosis for a future without war. Douglas P. Fry convincingly argues that our ancient ancestors were not innately warlike--and neither are we. He points out that, for perhaps ninety-nine percent of our history, for well over a million years, humans lived in nomadic hunter-and-gatherer groups, egalitarian bands where warfare was a rarity. Drawing on archaeology and fascinating recent fieldwork on hunter-gatherer bands from around the world, Fry debunks the idea that war is ancient and inevitable. For instance, among Aboriginal Australians, warfare was an extreme anomaly. Fry also points out that even today, when war seems ever present, the vast majority of us live peaceful, nonviolent lives. We are not as warlike as we think, and if we can learn from our ancestors, we may be able to move beyond war to provide real justice and security for the world.
Download or read book The Deep Roots of Modern Democracy written by John Gerring and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-25 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the deep roots of modern democracy, focusing on geography and long-term patterns of global diffusion. Its geographic argument centers on access to the sea, afforded by natural harbors which enhance the mobility of people, goods, capital, and ideas. The extraordinary connectivity of harbor regions thereby affected economic development, the structure of the military, statebuilding, and openness to the world – and, through these pathways, the development of representative democracy. The authors' second argument focuses on the global diffusion of representative democracy. Beginning around 1500, Europeans started to populate distant places abroad. Where Europeans were numerous they established some form of representative democracy, often with restrictions limiting suffrage to those of European heritage. Where they were in the minority, Europeans were more reticent about popular rule and often actively resisted democratization. Where Europeans were entirely absent, the concept of representative democracy was unfamiliar and its practice undeveloped.
Download or read book Socialising Complexity written by Sheila Kohring and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2007-11-30 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Socialising Complexity introduces the concept of complexity as a tool, rather than a category, for understanding social formations. This new take on complexity moves beyond the traditional concern with what constitutes a complex society and focuses on the complexity inherent in various social forms through the structuring principles created within each society. The aims and themes of the book can thus be summarized as follows: to introduce the idea of complexity as a tool, which is pertinent to the understanding of all types of society, rather than an exclusionary type of society in its own right; to examine concepts that can enhance our interpretation of societal complexity, such as heterarchy, materialization and contextualization. These concepts are applied at different scales and in different ways, illustrating their utility in a variety of different cases; to reestablish social structure as a topic of study within archaeology, which can be profitably studied by proponents of both processual and post-processual methodologies.
