Too many chiefs? (or, Safe texts for the '90s)

Emergent Complexity, Changing Landscapes, and Spheres of Interaction in Southeastern South America During the Middle and Late Holocene

“…These reconceptualizations demonstrate that different aspects of cultural complexity, such as inequality, differentiation, scale and integration, and their correspondent list of archaeological correlates (Creamer and Haas 1985;Peebles and Kus 1977), do not necessarily covary from one stage of cultural evolution to the other; neither do they all need be present in every Early Formative society. On the contrary, social variation in Early Formative societies can be understood to have been multidimensional and continuous (Feinman and Nietzel 1984;Plog 1974;Upham 1987;Yoffee 1993). In response to these reevaluations, archaeologists over the last two decades have begun to look beyond neo-evolutionary frameworks that stress functionally oriented ecological and economic explanations, turning instead to considerations of ideology, power, and factional competition while adopting a more historically based approach (e.g., Canuto and Yaeger 2000;Chapman 2003;Clark and Blake 1994;Dietler 2001;Parkinson 2002;Pauketat 2001).…”

Heterogeneity, power, and political economy: Some current research issues in the archaeology of Old World complex societies

“…Although studies of chiefdoms have retained a strong focus on the development of complexity, much of the research has centered around defining regularities in the enabling conditions through which strategizing elites can gain and maintain power (Earle, 1991a). The retreat from explanatory models is closely connected with a critical reexamination of the traditional evolutionary typology of bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states as appropriate units of study (Abrams, 1988;Gailey and Patterson, 1987;Kristiansen, 1991;Yoffee, 1993). The avoidance of explanation also stems from the more general critique of the "classic" processual model's emphases on systems theory, cultural ecology, and cultural evolutionary/adaptationist perspectives as ahistorical, unilineal, functionalist, and environmentally deterministic constructs (Hodder, 1986;Preucel, 1991;Shanks and Tilley, 1987;Trigger, 1991).…”

“…As part of the general dissatisfaction with the traditional cultural evolutionary paradigm, many analyses of both chiefdoms and states in both the Old and the New World shifted away from the definitional criteria suggested by Service (1962) and Fried (1967) and focus instead on agency and power relations as a way to describe the workings of complex societies (Earle, 1991a;Gailey and Patterson, 1987;Price and Feinman, 1995;Schortman and Urban, 1992;Stein, 1994b;Yoffee, 1993;Wolf, 1990). Power is "the ability to pursue and attain goals through mastery of one's environment" and can be exercised either collectively or individually by people over each other or their surroundings (Mann, 1986, p. 6).…”

Threads of continuity and change. Fabricating unity in anthropology

“…Para los arqueólogos, el peligro es el actualismo, una mentalidad etnocéntrica que proyecta al pasado la visión y las prácticas contemporáneas. Al considerar algunas similitudes puntuales entre el pasado y el presente, utilizándolas para proyectar otras prácticas contemporáneas en el pasado mediante la analogía, deformamos con facilidad nuestra comprensión de las sociedades antiguas (Freeman 1968;Gould 1980;Orme 1973;Wobst 1978;Wylie 1985;Upham 1987;Stahl 1993;Yoffee 1993). El peligro para los historiadores y antropó-logos culturales consiste en considerar ciertas prác-ticas o perspectivas como "tradicionales", sin proceder a un análisis histórico de las mismas (Ardren 2006;Chance 1996;Hayashida 2008).…”