Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 THE EVOLUTION OF A FACTOID
- 2 DIMENSIONS OF POWER IN THE EARLIEST STATES
- 3 THE MEANING OF CITIES IN THE EARLIEST STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS
- 4 WHEN COMPLEXITY WAS SIMPLIFIED
- 5 IDENTITY AND AGENCY IN EARLY STATES: CASE STUDIES
- 6 THE COLLAPSE OF ANCIENT STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS
- 7 SOCIAL EVOLUTIONARY TRAJECTORIES
- 8 NEW RULES OF THE GAME
- 9 ALTERED STATES: THE EVOLUTION OF HISTORY
- Acknowledgments
- References
- Index
2 - DIMENSIONS OF POWER IN THE EARLIEST STATES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 THE EVOLUTION OF A FACTOID
- 2 DIMENSIONS OF POWER IN THE EARLIEST STATES
- 3 THE MEANING OF CITIES IN THE EARLIEST STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS
- 4 WHEN COMPLEXITY WAS SIMPLIFIED
- 5 IDENTITY AND AGENCY IN EARLY STATES: CASE STUDIES
- 6 THE COLLAPSE OF ANCIENT STATES AND CIVILIZATIONS
- 7 SOCIAL EVOLUTIONARY TRAJECTORIES
- 8 NEW RULES OF THE GAME
- 9 ALTERED STATES: THE EVOLUTION OF HISTORY
- Acknowledgments
- References
- Index
Summary
The state drew its force, which was real enough, from its imaginative energies, its semiotic capacity to make inequality enchant.
clifford geertz (1980:123)In this chapter I delineate what is not explained in “neo-evolutionary theory” and devise new means to investigate the evolution of ancient states and civilizations. Neo-evolutionary theory depicted the rise of states as a series of “punctuated” (that is, extremely rapid) and holistic changes from one stage (or type of society) to another. In each stage, all social institutions – politics, economy, social organization, belief system – were linked so that change had to occur in all institutions at the same time, at the same pace, and in the same direction. The prehistoric representations of these social types were modeled after “our contemporary ancestors,” societies studied by ethnographers. This progression of ethnographic societies, however, was no more than a metaphysical construction, since San in southern Africa did not become Enga in New Guinea and Enga didn't become Hawaiians (see Figure 1.2).
THE PURSUIT OF THE WILY CHIEFDOM
One may see how archaeologists had implemented neo-evolutionary theory by reviewing why a mighty company of archaeological wallahs pursued the wily chiefdom so diligently.
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- Myths of the Archaic StateEvolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations, pp. 22 - 41Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005