Archaeology Of Chiefdoms Research Paper

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The use of the term ‘chiefdom’ to refer to pre-state complex societies is a relatively recent phenomenon, beginning with Kalervo Oberg’s historical classification of South and Central American societies and Marshall Sahlins’s ethnographic work on Polynesian societies in the 1950s. Elman Service included ‘chiefdoms’ a decade later in his neoevolutionary categories of band, tribe, chiefdom, and state, and the concept became closely associated with the cultural evolutionary paradigm. Almost immediately, archaeologists began to apply the chiefdom concept to investigations of early societies such as the Mississippian towns of the southeastern USA and the Neolithic European builders of Stonehenge, which manifested some complexity but generally lacked the long-held archaeological indicators of ‘civilization’ (e.g., large urban centers, massive kingly tombs, written dynastic histories and legal codes, markets, and monetary systems).

1. Chiefdoms And Cultural Evolutionary Theory

Chiefdoms have been defined by some archaeologists in primarily political terms, as smaller-scale complex societies with centralized decision-making hierarchies of one or two levels above the individual village (compared to three plus levels in states). Chiefly leaders obtain their political authority through both ascription and performance (compared to largely hereditary kings), they have very generalized administrative roles (judicial, economic, ritual, military), they have few bureaucratic specialists (unlike the specialized bureaucracies of states), and they generally rely on kin-based alliances to structure political relations with subordinates (rather than the nonkinbased political institutions and formal legal codes of states). Most archaeologists would expand the definition to include social ranking that has at least some hereditary component (unlike the achieved ranking of tribal societies and the almost wholly hereditary social classes of early states) and some degree of economic centralization (control over staple production, building and managing irrigation systems, tribute mobilization, control over the production and exchange of prestige goods, and or foreign trade monopolies). Chiefs generally maintain their political power not only through varying strategies for accumulating and disbursing material resources, but also through ideological means (manipulating cosmologies, ritual, and myth, and creating power-imbuing sacred landscapes) and military coercion. Chiefdoms rarely exist or evolve in isolation, but instead are found as clusters of interacting peer polities that often share aspects of elite culture, have similar structures, and compete for regional supremacy. Many chiefdoms are also part of larger world systems that link them to more developed states and empires.

Chiefdom-level societies have been identified by cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians in many parts of the world and in many time periods (Fig. 1), often as precursors to state development but sometimes as long-term, stable structures that do not transform into more complex states. The Polynesian chiefdoms, the pre-Roman (Late Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age) societies of Europe, and eastern North American complex societies (particularly Mississippian Period) have received the most intense archaeological study. Archaeologists have recently expanded their use of the chiefdom model to societies in the Near East, Africa, East Asia, South Asia, Mesoamerica, South America, and western North America (Fig. 1), although the ‘evolutionary status’ of many as chiefdoms is controversial (e.g., the Woodland Period societies of the eastern USA, the Late Neolithic societies of Europe). Early in the development of the chiefdom concept, archaeologists identified a number of common material correlates of these types of societies (e.g., two-to three-level settlement hierarchies, monumental architecture, burials with hereditary status indicators, specialist-manufactured prestige goods, regional and interhousehold differences in wealth; see Fig. 1). However, as more of these complex societies are intensively studied by archaeologists, it has become clear that material patterns, and presumably the ideological, political, social, and economic structures underlying them, vary substantially (see below).

2. Critiques And Redefinition Of The Chiefdom Concept

A number of recent critiques of the chiefdom concept, and cultural evolutionary models in general, have emphasized the organizational diversity and historical uniqueness that is ignored when anthropologists attempt to fit societies in broadly defined classifications and assume uniform trajectories of development. Many scholars have pointed out the great deal of variability in societies designated as ‘chiefdoms.’ One response to this recognized diversity has been to subdivide pre-state complex societies into developmentally distinct types, such as Robert Carneiro’s ‘minimal,’ ‘typical,’ and ‘maximal’ chiefdoms (based on the complexity of political hierarchies), Timothy Earle’s ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ chiefdoms (based on scales of chiefly political, economic, and ritual control), and Colin Renfrew’s ‘group-oriented’ and ‘individualizing’ chiefdoms (based on differing strategies of lineage versus individual aggrandizement and social display).

Other scholars have emphasized that transformations in social, political, economic, and ideological structure that have previously defined chiefdoms do not always occur together. Some archaeologists have promoted the concept of heterarchy—in which both hierarchical and nonhierarchical relations operate simultaneously and separately along multiple dimensions (social, economic, political, ritual)—as a better way of modeling structure and process in these societies. Other archaeologists have favored a move away from the systemic evolutionary processes implied in the chiefdom concept to ‘actor-based’ approaches, Marxist theories of political control, and nonmaterialist or postprocessual analyses focused on the ideological and symbolic bases for structure. Thus, while many archaeologists favor continual refinement of the chiefdom concept and its continued utility in archaeological research, others have advocated its abandonment.

3. Political And Social Features

Chiefdoms are characterized by partially inherited and partially achieved political leadership, reinforced through ideological manipulation, control of economic resources, and militarism. The political power of chiefs is often reflected materially in symbols of office (e.g., the jade axes of Maori chiefs and the stone maceheads of Gerzean Period Egyptian chiefs) and in monumental architecture which demonstrates a chief’s ability to control and mobilize large labor forces (e.g., the henge monuments of Late Neolithic Europe, the monumental statuary of the Olmec and Easter Islanders). Chiefly centers, as the focal point of political, economic, and religious activities of chiefs, are generally archaeologically distinguishable from subordinate villages by their greater size, centrality, and presence of monumental architecture, wealth objects, and specialized production locales. Multiple levels of political authority ( paramount chiefs and local chiefs), typical of larger-scale chiefdoms, are often archaeologically visible in regional settlement hierarchies of up to three levels.

A number of archaeologists have offered new conceptual frameworks for analyzing differing political power strategies in chiefdoms. One recent model, offered by Richard Blanton and Gary Feinman, contrasts network versus corporate strategies of political dominance, elaborating Colin Renfrew’s earlier distinction between individualizing and group-oriented chiefdoms. These differing strategies are viewed as part of political dynamics in all complex societies, but political actors in a particular society may emphasize one mode of control more than the other. In a network strategy, political actors try to create personal networks of dominance through the strategic distribution of portable wealth and symbolic capital (e.g., ritual potency and religious knowledge). The emphasis on individual aggrandizement is archaeologically manifested in lavish individual burials, elaborate household wealth display, and competitive presentational events such as ceremonial feasting (e.g., Iron Age chiefdoms of Europe, early West African chiefdoms). The highly conflictive nature of leadership and long-term instability of political configurations are evidenced in rapidly changing settlement hierarchies. In contrast, a society emphasizing a corporate political strategy disperses power across different groups and sectors of society through bureaucratic institutions promoting consensus, solidarity, and collective action, often reinforced through archaeologically visible public architecture, collective tombs, and unifying emblems (e.g., Late Neolithic chiefdoms of Europe, Woodland Period chiefdoms of North America).

In terms of social structure, chiefdoms invariably have some form of ascribed social ranking. While social status differences are characteristic of all human societies, social ranks in chiefdoms are at least partially inherited intergeneration ally. They are given structural rigidity through behavioral taboos and symbolic expression, and in most cases, there is distinct economic advantage (differential access to resources) conferred on an ‘elite’ stratum. Social stratification in chiefdoms is often manifested in archaeologically visible rank insignia, differential wealth in households, and varying complexity of residential architecture at settlements.

Ascribed rather than strictly achieved social ranking is most archaeologically evident in burial practices. Inherited status is generally expressed through variation in body positioning, body treatment, grave forms, and burial accompaniments which cross-cut age and sex categories, making status archaeologically distinguishable from mortuary variability, attributable to age differences, gender roles, and achieved status. Mortuary analyses based on this premise have been carried out most successfully at Mississippian, Chinese Lungshan, Egyptian Gerzean, and Bronze Age and Iron Age European cemeteries, where relatively large samples of well-preserved burials have allowed the identification of distinct social hierarchies. In cases where larger burial populations are lacking, archaeologists have frequently made an argument for the presence of elites based on finds of elaborate, often monumental ‘chiefly’ burials (e.g., jade-yielding Formative Period Mesoamerican tombs, the Nok mounded tombs of West Africa, the Yayoi stone-lined crypts of Japan). Status-related dietary and health differences between elites and nonelites have also been studied through zooarchaeological and paleobotanical analyses of food remains at settlements, and through osteological assessments of nutritional stress and disease in burial populations.

4. Political Economy

Just as the chiefdoms studied by archaeologists vary in political structure, they differ in the ways in which chiefs attempt to assert economic control in support of their governing institutions. Timothy Earle and Terrence D’Altroy have made a useful distinction between strategies of staple finance and wealth finance in chiefdoms. Staple finance involves the systematic levying of tribute payments (in the form of staple goods and or labor) from subjugated commoners, with the revenue used to finance directly the power enhancing activities of the chief, such as monument building, warfare, trade, and ceremonial feasting. Since control of land and its production is essential to staple finance, chiefdoms emphasizing this economic strategy generally have strongly developed institutions for land tenure (archaeologically manifested in boundary features such as walls and corporate monumental structures) and significant chiefly investment in agricultural intensification (archaeologically manifested in large-scale irrigation works, water control, and artificial terracing). Archaeological investigations suggest that the Hawaiian chiefdoms, pre-Inca South American chiefdoms, and many pre-state Mesopotamian complex societies had political economies dominated by staple finance.

Wealth finance involves the use of prestige goods or valuables as political currencies by chiefs and other elites to cement politically strategic alliances with other elites and to reward subordinates for loyalty and service (particularly associated with a network political strategy). Prestige goods vary according to socially defined standards of value and can be any rare or easily controlled object (e.g., jade in Lungshan China, gold in Panamanian chiefdoms, bronze in European chiefdoms, shell and copper ornaments in eastern North American chiefdoms). Politically charged wealth can be locally manufactured or obtained through foreign trade. Emerging elites control access to this political currency through support of attached specialists (highly skilled artisans who produce these goods wholly for elite consumption), by monopolizing valuable raw materials and technologies, by dominating trade routes, and by defining limited social contexts for their circulation (e.g., elite-controlled ceremonial feasting events). While specific chiefdoms tend to emphasize one means of economic control over another, chiefs tend to use elements of both staple finance and wealth finance in varying combinations, resulting in unique forms of political economy.

In addition to the emergence of attached specialists, the rise of chiefdoms is sometimes accompanied by the growth of independent specialists, full-time specialists producing more mundane household goods for an unrestricted set of consumers who concentrate at chiefly centers due to economies of scale. While the archaeological recovery of large-scale craft workshops containing mass production equipment (e.g., large kilns or smelting furnaces, molds, potter’s wheels) is the most direct line of evidence for specialist production, such finds are rare. More often archaeologists have assessed craft production modes through analysis of the products themselves and their regional distribution. Specialized production by a limited number of concentrated, recurrently interacting, full-time craftspersons (either attached specialists or independent specialists) generally results in a more standardized product, as measured through object form, raw material, and or decoration. In addition, specialistproduced prestige goods are largely restricted to elite centers, while household-produced domestic goods are widely dispersed throughout a region, and the socially unrestricted products of independent specialists are concentrated at, but not restricted to, regional centers.

Particularly in chiefdoms relying heavily on wealth finance, political relationships and hierarchies of authority are reinforced through the continual circulation of prestige goods, most often in the context of bride wealth exchanges (e.g., gifts of porcelain in Southeast Asia and gold in Panama), political investitures (e.g., the presentation of feather capes in Polynesia), ritualized feasting, and other politically charged events. Of these exchange contexts, ritual feasting is particularly evident in the archaeological record. Specialized feasting paraphernalia (e.g., bronze drinking vessels in the European Iron Age, large ceramic cooking vessels in the Mississippian and Formative Mesoamerican chiefdoms), unusual food remains (e.g., large pig concentrations in Lungshan China), and their association with ritual architecture (e.g., ball courts in Mesoamerica) have been used to identify feasts which were likely aimed at political integration and competitive status display.

5. The Ideology Of Rulership

Ideologies are collective representations of the social and political order in particular societies, often encoded in myths, ceremonies, and various public performances, but also frequently materialized in archaeologically visible monumental architecture, iconography, and portable objects. In both state-level societies and chiefdoms, the creation of a dominant ideology and its imposition on the populace are an important basis for power. In many chiefdoms, elites developed their own language, dialect, lexicon, and or writing systems to control the flow of esoteric knowledge and to restrict the performance of religious rites. The archaeological contexts in which written texts are found and their decipherable content (e.g., stone stela found with monumental earthen works in Formative Period Mesoamerican centers, wooden tablet inscriptions associated with Easter Island ceremonial complexes) suggest that literacy was an elite prerogative which served to institutionalize cosmological notions and to legitimate the political and social domination of elites.

In the absence of written texts, archaeologists often infer shared cosmic orders and ruling ideologies from iconography on portable objects (e.g., the were-jaguar figurines of Formative Period Mesoamerica, ‘sun’ motifs and other symbols on Mississippian pottery, ‘patron-deity’ symbols on Egyptian Gerzean stone palettes and maces), from monumental constructions (e.g., the platform temple complexes of Polynesia, the henge monuments of Late Neolithic Europe), from material symbols in burials (e.g., painted scenes in Japanese Yayoi mounded tombs), and from the spatial organization of chiefly centers (e.g., the layout of Cahokia and other Mississippian centers). An influx of exotic symbols representing foreign cosmologies or religious beliefs (e.g., Buddhist and Hindu art and architecture in Southeast Asia, widespread Olmec styles in Formative Period Mesoamerica, Egyptian themes in the Nubian chiefly tombs of Kerma) has often been interpreted by archaeologists as a particularly effective strategy for chiefs to add to their monopolistic store of power-enhancing knowledge.

While past archaeological research has largely focused on ideologies of domination in chiefdoms, many researchers now recognize that the many individuals and social factions comprising these complex societies have distinct, and sometimes conflicting, worldviews based on personal experiences and interests. Increasingly, archaeologists are attempting to tease out diverse values and perspectives related to gender, class, ethnicity, occupation, and individuality. For example, a number of recent archaeological studies have focused on gendered views of cultural norms and social orders (e.g., Joyce Marcus’s and Kent Flannery’s analyses of feminine depictions in human figurines and gender-segregated work spaces in Formative Period Mesoamerica).

6. Warfare And Militarism

Anthropological studies have suggested that warfare in chiefdom-level societies differs from that in tribal societies by its expansionistic focus on acquisition of territory, resources, and captives, and by its concentration of military power in the hands of chiefly leaders who use it to expand their political sway. Robert Carneiro has suggested that both the rise and evolution of chiefdoms are related to warfare. Under conditions of land shortages and population stress, militarily powerful leaders systematically assault settlements along polity boundaries. Conquered enemies are incorporated into the expanding chiefdom, resulting in the elaboration of political hierarchies and the coalescence of a polity of greater complexity as well as scale. However, warfare is an almost continuous process in many chiefdoms, one of a number of forms of ‘peer polity’ interaction that are politically transformative. Militarism can often result in more subtle changes in power relationships among competing chiefdoms, over both the short and long term, without territorial conquest. Political loyalties may be shifted to military victors who control the ideology of warrior prestige and who increase their political currency through captured labor and valuables, resulting in larger alliance networks.

Archaeologists have focused on a variety of material evidence to document changes in the scale, intensity, and behavioral and ideological aspects of warfare in chiefdom-level societies. These include the development of fortifications or other defensive works, changes in regional settlement patterns (e.g., concentration of population in large centers, depopulation along polity boundaries, relocation of settlements to defensible positions), and systematic destruction of power-symboling architecture (e.g., dismantling of monumental architecture, toppling of statuary, burning of chiefly centers). Examples are the alternating rebuilding and burning of fortifications surrounding Iron Age European towns such as Heuneberg, the creation of ‘no man’s lands’ between Mississippian centers, and the defacement of sacred monumental statuary on Easter Island. Osteological evidence from burials allows archaeologists to evaluate rates of violence in populations (e.g., scalping, skeletal trauma, embedded projectiles), the ritualized use of body parts in prewar and postwar ceremonialism (e.g., decapitation for trophy head taking), and debilitating physical conditions and malnutrition related to prolonged exposure to military siege. Archaeological studies of burials also allow archaeologists to identify ‘warrior insignia’ associated with the development of specialized warrior classes and strong ideologies of warrior prestige exemplified in the elaborate bronze horsefittings of Bronze Age European warriors and the gold-pegged teeth of island Southeast Asian warriors. The development of new warfare technologies associated with escalating military competition can be traced archaeologically in intensified metals or stone mining, labor-saving equipment (e.g., molds) or large-scale facilities for mass production of weapons, and the adoption of horses for mounted cavalry.

7. The Evolution Of Chiefdoms

Many archaeologists view the transition to inherited, institutionalized power and status, associated with chiefdoms but further developed in states, as the key transformation in human societies. Since the organizational dynamics of chiefdoms are viewed as similar to that of states, theories of state development are commonly applied at the chiefdom level. Early theories emphasized the managerial benefits of chieftainship as societies expanded in scale. Chiefs arose to administer irrigation works (Karl Wittfogel), coordinate localized production and exchange (Elman Service), mediate land conflicts and warfare (Robert Carneiro), ameliorate economic risk through ritual intervention (Robert Drennan), and to meet other organizational challenges.

More recently, archaeologists have criticized the functionalist nature of these theories and their simplistic emphasis on single factors, instead focusing on the varied acquisitive and power-seeking strategies of political actors as they vie for symbolic capital and control over the labor and resources of others. In this view, the origins of permanent forms of social inequality and political authority are to be found in the competitive and aggrandizing behavior of ‘big men’ in tribal societies. Archaeologists now examine this transformation at varying scales of analysis, ranging from the transfiguring actions and motivations of individual political actors, to multiple polities developing together through forms of peer polity interaction, to change-stimulating contacts with more complex states and empires (world systems theory). In addition, many archaeologists now recognize that not all chiefdom-level societies have unilinear evolutionary trajectories leading inevitably toward greater complexity. Many chiefdoms fail to develop state-level institutions over the long-term, instead perpetually cycling between complex and simple forms, ‘devolving’ into tribal societies (e.g., New Zealand’s South Island Maori, possibly Amazonian societies), mysteriously collapsing (e.g., the Mississippian chiefdoms, Easter Island), or otherwise maintaining a chiefdom-level organization until eventual absorption by colonizing states and empires (e.g., many chiefdoms of the Central American Isthmus, North America, the Caribbean, island Southeast Asia, Europe and Polynesia).

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