Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T15:44:59.540Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Pathways from Farmers to States around the Globe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2019

Robert D. Drennan*
Affiliation:
Center for Comparative ArchaeologyUniversity of Pittsburgh3302 WWPH Pittsburgh, PA [email protected]

Extract

In Against the Grain, James Scott has produced an admirably broad and sweeping account of state origins. He takes humans’ first use of fire as his starting point and works his way toward states by way of the transition to settled agricultural life in the Neolithic. The intended audience would seem to be primarily the general public, for whom Scott's goals are ‘condensing the best knowledge we have … and then suggesting what it implies’ (p. xii). It is clearly, however, an audience more professionally concerned with state origins that he has in mind when he says ‘…these implications … are meant to be provocations … intended to stimulate further reflection and research’ (p. xiii), and his book provides plenty of fuel for such stimulation.

Type
Review Symposium
Copyright
Copyright © McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bocquet-Appel, J.-P. & Bar-Yosef, O. (eds.), 2008. The Neolithic Demographic Transition and Its Consequences. New York (NY): Springer.Google Scholar
Carballo, D.M. (ed.), 2013. Cooperation and Collective Action: Archaeological perspectives. Boulder (CO): University Press of Colorado.Google Scholar
Childe, V.G., 1936. Man Makes Himself. London: Watts.Google Scholar
Drennan, R.D. & Peterson, C.E., 2006. Patterned variation in prehistoric chiefdoms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103, 3960–67.Google Scholar
Drennan, R.D. & Peterson, C.E., 2012. Challenges for comparative study of early complex societies, in The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies, ed. Smith, M.E.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 6287.Google Scholar
Drennan, R.D., Peterson, C.E. & Fox, J.R., 2010. Degrees and kinds of inequality, in Pathways to Power, eds. Price, T.D. & Feinman, G.M.. New York (NY): Springer, 4576.Google Scholar
Earle, T.K., 1997. How Chiefs Come to Power: The political economy in prehistory. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, L.H., 1877. Ancient Society. Chicago (IL): Charles Kerr.Google Scholar
Peterson, C.E. & Drennan, R.D., 2012. Patterned variation in regional trajectories of community growth, in The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies, ed. Smith, M.E.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 88137.Google Scholar
Price, T.D. & Feinman, G.M. (eds.), 2010. Pathways to Power. New York (NY): Springer.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M.D., 1968. Notes on the original affluent society, in Man the Hunter, eds. Lee, R.B. & DeVore, I.. Chicago (IL): Aldine, 85–9.Google Scholar