The Decline and Rise of Mesopotamian Civilization: An Ethnoarchaeological Perspective on the Evolution of Social Complexity

Abstract

The typological schemes constructed by many archaeologists to explain the rise and fall of civilizations have neither accounted for the processual changes involved in the evolution of social complexity nor contributed to the development of a comparative method for considering regularities and variation in social behavior. This paper begins with a review of the foundations on which archaeologists have based their conceptions of social evolution. A critical test of the assumptions of “evolutionism” is then provided by case studies in Mesopotamian civilization in which materials from both preliterate and literate times are examined. Using ancient, emic documentation that is recovered as part of the archaeological record, such studies may logically be termed ethnoarchaeological. It is suggested that the customary analogy between social change and biological evolution is inappropriate and that a new problem orientation will facilitate more productive research into the dynamics of social evolution. You would be surprised at the number of years it took me to see clearly what some of the problems were which had to be solved. . . . Looking back, I think it was more difficult to see what the problems were than to solve them, as far as I have succeeded in doing, and this seems to me rather curious.Charles DarwinWhen we define a word we are merely inviting others to use it as we would like it to be used . . . the purpose of definition is to focus argument upon fact and . . . the proper result of good definition is to transform argument over terms into disagreements about fact, and thus open arguments to further inquiry.C. Wright Mills

What Maya Collapse? Terminal Classic Variation in the Maya Lowlands

“…' Yoffee and Cowgill (1988) describe this as the disintegration of a formerly centralized political system into smaller, more independent, and less specialized units, but this may be a temporary situation. Civilizations such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China had cycles of ''political fragmentation followed by … reconstitution'' (Cowgill 1988, p. 257;see also Aimers 2004b;Yoffee 1979).…”

The Archaeology of Trading Systems, Part 1: Towards a New Trade Synthesis

“…If evidence for full/part-time trade specialists now suggests their presence in the Levantine Neolitihic and the preUbaid Uruk era (Bar-Yosef and Belfer -Cohen 1989;Stein 1999), can (should) we conflate political, ritual, military, and trade elites as one category? What was the role of covert nonpolitical interest groups in decision-making (Ehrenreich et al 1995;Yoffee 1979)? What is the nature of relations between various groups in a larger political economy Crumley 2001;Feinman 1995;Knapp and Cherry 1994)?…”

Household Archaeology y el análisis de las sociedades antiguas en la península Ibérica: definiciones, aplicaciones y posibilidades. Household Archaeology and the analysis of ancient societies in the Iberian Peninsula: definitions, applications

“…A pesar de ello, algunos arqueólogos se han planteado la búsqueda de una definición teórica de la complejidad con el objetivo de estudiar las desigualdades sociales desde una perspectiva analítica. En este sentido hemos de destacar la obra de N. Yoffee (1979Yoffee ( , 1985Yoffee ( , 2005 (Fried 1967;Service 1975) del concepto "complejidad social" como una tipología de estadios de desarrollo integral de una sociedad de modo gené-rico. Este concepto integral de la evolución social, sostenía que los grupos humanos generaban formaciones políticas (jefaturas, estados, etc.)…”