The Development of Pre-State Communities in the Ancient Near East: Studies in Honour of Edgar Peltenburg

1

INTRODUCTION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-STATE COMMUNITIES IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

Diane Bolger and Louise C. Maguire

Archaeological research on the small-scale societies which preceded the emergence of the earliest states in the Near East has a long and complex history which we cannot hope to review in detail in this brief introduction. However, it is important to situate the papers in this volume within a broad theoretical and methodological framework that distinguishes them from earlier approaches based on generic typologies of social organisation and unilinear trajectories of socioeconomic development. In the first section of this chapter we summarise those earlier approaches and review the challenges to unilinear models of social change which have continued to emerge over the last 20–30 years. In the second section we consider some of the more recent approaches to the study of pre-state societies in the Near East which have effectively replaced the earlier models and which provide a backdrop for the subsequent chapters of the book; these are introduced in the third and final section.

Challenging Traditional Models of Social Transformation in Pre-state Societies

Neo-evolutionary categories of social organisation, as developed by anthropologists such as Service (1962, 1971) and Fried (1967) and further elaborated by Harris (1979) and Johnson and Earle (1987), were based on a broad social typology (bands-tribes-chiefdoms-states) that became highly influential in archaeological research during the 1970s and 1980s. While this tendency continued to some degree during the 1990s (e.g. Maisels 1990; Earle 1997), it began to fall out of use during the late 1980s as doubts arose among archaeologists concerning the ability of a limited number of abstract societal types to account for the great degree of variability and heterogeneity in past societies (for general accounts of these developments, see Trigger 1989, chap. 9; and Renfrew and Bahn 2000, chap. 5; for more specific critiques, see McGuire 1983; Shennan 1993; Yoffee 1979; 1993; 2005; and Verhoeven, this volume). An increasingly widespread attitude to neo-evolutionism among archaeologists today is perhaps best expressed by Yoffee, who has called it an illusion of history (2005, 231).

Critics of neo-evolutionism objected not only to the abstract or even fictive categories of analysis that comprise the band-tribe-chiefdom-state model, but also to the unilinear direction of social change inherent in neo-evolutionary thought. The assumption that cultures inevitably pass through a sequence of stages or steps from simple to complex, pre-state to state, and that this occurs in a progressive stadial fashion, is no longer accepted by archaeologists today other than in the most general terms. In addition to the fact that evolutionary models cannot be sustained in the face of the detailed evidence that has accumulated over the last quarter of a century, neo-evolutionism can be regarded as a ‘meta-narrative’ that reflects the ethnocentric bias of Western thought (Rowlands 1989, 36). As Yoffee, Feinman and others argued, archaeologists needed to find alternative trajectories to social inequality and complexity and to understand transitions between the two within specific historical contexts (Yoffee 1993; Feinman 1995, 273–294; see also Bender 1989, 87). It is now widely acknowledged that social change among early societies such as those of the ancient Near East is likely to have been recursive and disruptive rather than unilinear, and that for a variety of reasons change occurred at different rates and in different ways from region to region and even from locality to locality (e.g. Renfrew 1984, 358–359; Shanks and Tilley 1987, 175–185; Price and Feinman 1989; Peltenburg 1993; Miller, Rowlands and Tilley 1995).

In response to these and other like-minded criticisms, many archaeologists have chosen to avoid the word ‘evolution’ in their research vocabulary and to replace it with other terms, such as ‘change’ or ‘transformation’ (e.g. Gledhill et al. 1995; Shanks and Tilley 1987), while others have adopted multilinear models of social change which highlight the variable paths to complexity demonstrated by the archaeological record (e.g. Sanders and Webster 1978; Trigger 1985). A relatively small number of archaeologists, however, continue to use ‘evolution’ cautiously in the belief that it still provides a useful framework for discussion if carefully defined (e.g. Stein and Rothman 1994; Yoffee 2005). In the present volume the word ‘development’ has been adopted deliberately to circumvent the more problematical connotations of ‘evolution’. ‘Development’, however, is not without its own connotations of progress, so it should be stated from the outset that the use of that term in this book is not intended to imply a uni-directional trajectory of social change. The view that ‘simple’ societies develop inevitably into increasingly complex forms of social organisation needs to be investigated rather than assumed; current approaches in archaeology acknowledge that there were variable pathways to social complexity and that more often than not these were circuitous.

The gradual move in archaeological interpretation away from broad evolutionary models of social complexity has been accompanied by a shift in focus from over-arching systems or processes of social behaviour that emphasise similarities between synchronous cultures, to smaller scale research that demonstrates diversity both within and between them. At the same time, there has been a tendency in recent years to question the notion that external forces are primary causes of social change; while factors such as environment, population, climate and technology are important ingredients in social complexity it is now widely felt that they cannot, in and of themselves, explain social change (see Bender 1978 for an early example of this view). A further widespread criticism of ecosystems-based research is the contention that it provides a deterministic view of social development that tends to leave people out of the equation (see, for example, Bender 1978; 1989; Shanks and Tilley 1987; Brumfiel 1992; Hodder 2004).

Taken together, the challenges to neo-evolutionary models briefly summarised above have resulted in the emergence of new approaches to the study of past societies that are not based exclusively on theories borrowed from other social sciences (particularly social anthropology), a phenomenon which frequently condemned the past to resemble some aspect of the present (Yoffee and Sherratt 1993, 8). While it is generally agreed that ethnographic evidence can provide valuable insights into the behaviour and experiences of prehistoric communities, it cannot and should not be applied uncritically. During the last 20 to 30 years, increasing numbers of archaeologists have underscored the need to develop theories and methodologies that are more in keeping with the nature of their own concerns, such as the study of material culture and an understanding of long-term changes in human history (e.g. Plog 1974, preface and chap. 1; Renfrew 1984, 13; Yoffee 1993, 74; Gledhill et al. 1995, 27); at the same time, greater emphasis has been placed on interpreting the evidence within social, rather than exclusively environmental or economic frameworks. We address some of these new perspectives in greater detail in the following section.

Current Approaches to Pre-state Societies: Diversity, Scale and Context

Over the last few decades the study of pre-state communities in the Near East has moved significantly beyond the abstract, stadial models of the 1970s and ‘80s to adopt more nuanced approaches based on the detailed evidence that has emerged from the numerous surveys and excavations in the region. These efforts have revealed the inability of broad typological categories (such as band, tribe, chiefdom, state) to explain the variability of social organisation and social relations present in the archaeological record and have encouraged the formulation of new, socially-oriented research agendas centred on issues of diversity, scale and context.

Diversity

A renewed appreciation by Near Eastern archaeologists of the diversity of cultures, patterns of social interaction, and trajectories of socio-economic development has emerged from intensive fieldwork in the region during the last 25 years. This has resulted from a number of factors, not the least of which has been the extensive rescue work carried out by local and foreign teams in association with several large dam projects in south-eastern Turkey and northern Syria, which have led to the discovery of a multitude of new sites whose developmental patterns appear to have differed considerably from those further to the south. It has also resulted from the finer-grained methods of modern archaeological fieldwork with its sophisticated means of recovering, recording and analysing data, and the multitude of specialists capable of generating detailed interpretations of the landscape, environment, technology, diet, material culture, and many other aspects of social life. Dating methods have also been refined, so that the temporal relationships between sites have become more clearly visible. The result of all of these developments has been a greater emphasis on difference and diversity that has made the traditional classification of societies into a limited number of ‘types’ appear to be overly simplistic. Similarly, the diverse nature of the archaeological evidence for the development of complex society has encouraged archaeologists investigating social change among early communities in the Near East to move beyond the broad, programmatic schemes of research based on a single evolutionary model. As we shall discuss later in this section, the ability to achieve a more nuanced understanding of early societies is most successfully achieved by interpreting evidence within particular historical contexts (Hodder 1986). As Gledhill et al. have observed, In the end there is no way to resolve the issue of state origins without attempting a detailed reconstruction, via archaeological materials, of the critical transitions which gave birth to the first manifestations of ‘civilization’ (1995, 25).

Scale

The shift in focus from general to specific and from similarity to difference has underscored the importance of scale in archaeological research. As numerous studies over the last few decades have shown, greater attention to the micro-scale is crucial for looking at society from the bottom up rather than the top down (e.g. Renfrew 1984; Renfrew and Bahn 2000, chap. 5); for constructing alternative pathways to the accumulation of wealth, power and social inequality (e.g. McGuire 1983; Bender 1989; Price and Feinman 1995); and for understanding the processes by which complex society emerged and developed (e.g. Rowlands 1989; Stein and Rothman 1994). Consequently, archaeological research has become more specific by investigating particular groups, sub-groups and individuals, and the relationships between them, rather than focussing on abstract categories such as ‘society’ or ‘culture’. Research on the micro-scale can be approached by a variety of methods, such as examining the ways in which various sectors or groups within society functioned or changed, a process Stein and Rothman refer to as ‘organizational dynamics’ (1994, 1); focussing on the social practices of day-to-day existence (Bourdieu’s habitus; see Bourdieu 1977); looking for evidence of individuals (e.g. Knapp and Meskell 1997; Meskell 2002; Meskell and Joyce 2003); or investigating changes in the human life course (Gilchrist 1999, 88–100; 2004; Bolger 2004; 2008). All of these approaches regard the seemingly mundane activities of daily life as essential for understanding the relationships between people and the material world and demonstrate the need to develop theories of social change based on individuals and groups as active agents, rather than passive adapters to extrinsic environmental and economic forces.

Temporal dimensions of scale are equally important. According to Annalist models, social change should ideally be investigated at multiple scales (short, medium and long term trajectories) that operate simultaneously. The coarse chronologies that most prehistorians are compelled to work with seem better suited to the investigation of long-term change, yet as several archaeologists have noted (e.g. Hodder 1986, 93; Feinman 1994; Bolger 2008), few archaeologists have specifically addressed particular social issues over considerable expanses of time. Exclusive focus on short or medium range scales fails to take full advantage of the longer term trajectories that archaeological evidence can illuminate and that are essential for formulating theories of social change on a broader scale. Moreover, while long-term developments cannot directly shape the perceptions and behaviours of individuals over the short term span of a human life, they can serve as constraining structures that influence the range of possible behaviours and choices available to individuals and communities in the processes of daily life (Bintliff 1991, 7). These and other innovative applications of Annalist thinking to archaeological interpretation emphasise the multidimensional nature of time and its variability within and between cultures. This view of time effectively serves to ‘humanise’ the more abstract, objective approaches to the past by providing links between long-term trajectories of social change and the shorter, more subjective time scales of individual experience (Gosden 1994, 9).

Context

The interpretation of evidence at different scales is closely related to questions of archaeological context. The view that it is essential to interpret the past in particular historical contexts (Hodder (1986, chap. 7) is now widely accepted, and contextual approaches have proved to be one of the most successful means of overcoming the limitations of broad evolutionary models of social change discussed above. While context in archaeology occurs in a wide range of dimensions, including temporal, spatial, typological and depositional (Hodder 1986, 125), it can also be understood to include the broader cultural and theoretical frameworks in which archaeologists interpret the past. The recognition that archaeological interpretation is a process involving an interactive or dialectical relationship between the archaeologist and the evidence lies at the heart of current research programmes and marks a radical departure with traditional methods of archaeological inference. As Tilley has stated, "contemporary archaeology is not a tabula rasa on which the context of the archaeological record simply inscribes itself awaiting its meanings to be captured" (1993, 9).

Interpreting evidence of past societies within broader cultural and theoretical contexts places demands on archaeologists for a comprehensive internal study of archaeological cultures (Trigger 1989, 350) and for greater emphasis on the social context of cultural change (Price and Feinman 1995, 9). The recognition that groups and individuals can bring about transformations in social organisation, for example, reveals the limitations of processual models in which the environment was regarded as a prime mover that motivated people to change in order to more successfully adapt. While it is, of course, important to acknowledge the constraints placed on individuals and groups by climatic, environmental and demographic forces, the greater degree of engagement with ‘the social’ in current archaeological interpretation helps us to appreciate the complexity and indivisibility of human experience in past societies and to recognise the multiplicity of meanings that can result by interpreting evidence within various contextual frameworks.

It is fair to assert that a different kind of archaeology has emerged from the focus on diversity, scale and context outlined in the previous pages. This new way of looking at the past (which includes but is not limited to post-processualism) includes research on individuals, personal relations, kinship relations, social interactions, and individual and social identities; it considers questions of status, age, gender, cognition, habitus, performance, the body and social memory; it adopts a bottom up rather than a top down perspective; and it advocates a phenomenological approach centred on the active engagement of people with their environment (Renfrew and Bahn 2000, chap. 5). All of these areas of research fall within the rubric of social archaeology since to a large degree they are the result of human agency, inter-personal relationships and social networks. As shall become evident in the following section, the various papers in this book can be included in this new socially-oriented research agenda since collectively they reflect a growing concern within the field of ancient Near Eastern archaeology for issues of agency, difference, identity, community, materiality, ritual practice and cultural interaction, as well as their variations through time and space.

The Development of Pre-state Communities in the Near East

The essays in this volume cover a variety of themes related to the development of pre-state communities in Anatolia, Cyprus, the Levant and Mesopotamia. They have been grouped, however, not by chronological period or geographical setting but according to the particular issues they address. In this way it is hoped that both the similarities and differences in theoretical and methodological approaches adopted by authors carrying out research in different regions of the ancient Near East can be appreciated more readily. The papers in Part 1 consider aspects of social organisation in pre-state communities while those in Part 2 investigate the structure of early urban communities and the development of the state. The contributions in Part 3 examine the interrelationships between technology, economy and society and those in Part 4 address various constructions of agency, identity and gender. Papers in the final section, Part 5, deal with issues of insularity, ethnicity and cultural interaction. All of the papers are introduced briefly in the pages that follow.

Part One: Social Organisation and Complexity in Pre-state Communities

The first paper in this section, by Marc Verhoeven (Chapter 2), examines the concept of social complexity, a term which is still widely used by archaeologists, including many of the contributors to this volume, to indicate differences in the socio-economic structures of prehistoric communities. He argues that words such as ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ are value-laden terms which serve to promote the continuation of neo-evolutionary thinking; they can also distort our understanding of pre-state communities since various aspects of ‘complexity’, such as ritual behaviour, can be identified in some ‘simple’ Neolithic societies. The questions raised in this paper form a useful framework for the more specific treatments of social organisation that follow.

The other papers in this section consider various aspects of social organisation and social practice among particular prehistoric communities in Cyprus, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. In Chapter 3, Peter Akkermans examines the shift from rectangular to circular buildings in Syro-Mesopotamia, which began around the middle of the 7th millennium or shortly afterwards and increased in importance during the 6th millennium. While a number of theories have been proposed to explain this change, Akkermans suggests that social characteristics, such as mobility and temporary habitation in small autonomous groups dispersed over the landscape, are of central importance to this discussion.

In the following paper (Chapter 4) Demetra Papaconstantinou examines the life histories of houses in prehistory, focussing in particular on evidence from the Late Neolithic site of Ayios Epiktitos-Vrysi in Cyprus. After addressing issues of materiality, identity and ritual in the archaeological record, she looks at the relationships between ritual and domestic life and underscores the need for archaeologists to look for different ways of ‘narrating’ the past by drawing upon multiple strands of archaeological data.

In Chapter 5, David Frankel presents evidence from the recently excavated site of Politiko-Kokkinorotsos in central Cyprus during the Middle-Late Chalcolithic periods. After summarising the major features of the excavations, and comparing the results with better-known material from the south-west of the island, he offers an alternative perspective on local economic patterns, cultural regionalism and chronology on the island during the first half of the 3rd millennium BC.

The final paper in this section, by Hermann Genz (Chapter 6), examines the interpretation of EB II–III settlements in the Southern Levant as city-states, urban communities, or corporate villages by questioning the function(s) of non-domestic structures which have traditionally been regarded as public buildings and temples. Since a number of sites in the region have buildings that do not fit neatly into these categories, the socio-political organisation of these communities is likely to have been more complex than has generally been acknowledged.

Part Two: Early Urban Communities and the Development of the State

The papers in this section investigate the structure and development of early urban communities in the Near East, as well as the social processes by which particular communities became, or failed to become, more complex states. Chapter 7, by Tony Wilkinson, is concerned with the social archaeology of the Middle Eastern tell. By examining multiple strands of evidence (i.e. stratigraphic sequences, landscape archaeology, ethnographic evidence and historical documents) Wilkinson considers the ways in which the settlement community as a corporate group may have functioned and developed through time. He concludes that tells and the fields that surrounded them formed an indivisible social and landscape unit in which the social and economic processes of everyday life were carried out.

In Chapter 8, Lindy Crewe discusses the social and economic forces that led to a concentration of power within the coastal centres of Cyprus during the Late Cypriot II period by considering evidence from the site of Kalopsidha. This small urban community in eastern Cyprus, which was located inland, played an important role in international relations during the transitional Middle Cypriot III–Late Cypriot I period. Crewe suggests that this may be due to its possible specialisation as a cult or agricultural production centre, and that its eventual marginalisation and abandonment was closely linked to the emergence of nearby Enkomi as a dominant urban coastal emporium.

The paper by Anne Porter (Chapter 9) demonstrates the limitations of traditional models of the early state for explaining the emergence of early polities in the ancient Near East. On the basis of evidence concerning settlement hierarchies, settlement morphologies and burial practices in the Euphrates and Jazirah regions of Syria, she argues for kinship as a central attribute of social organisation and explores the complex and seemingly contradictory relationships between kinship and class that lay at the heart of the transformation from pre-state to state level political organisation in these regions.

In Chapter 10, Marcella Frangipane examines the dialectical interplay of social and environmental factors that led to the development of different economic and political systems in the prehistoric Near East. By considering evidence for the growth of social complexity and political hierarchy in three different areas (northern Mesopotamia, southern Mesopotamia and western Anatolia) she demonstrates the inability of unilinear models of social change to account for the variable trajectories of social and economic development adopted in different regions.

In the final paper (Chapter 11) Lisa Cooper looks at archaeological and textual evidence from Ebla and Mari in Syria to investigate the emergence and development of early Near Eastern polities. By examining the social, economic and political developments at these sites both before and after they exerted hegemonic authority over their surrounding regions, she highlights the importance of considering long-term changes in material culture in order to effectively understand patterns of behaviour associated with increasing levels of socio-economic complexity.

Part Three: Technology, Economy and Society

These chapters investigate technological and economic aspects of pre-state communities in Near Eastern society within particular social and temporal frameworks. The first paper, by Olivier Nieuwenhuyse (Chapter 12), discusses innovations in ceramic technology and style that transformed ceramic assemblages across Upper Mesopotamia in the late 7th millennium BC by focussing on pottery production at the Burnt Village of Tell Sabi Abyad in northern Syria. The detailed evidence for the production and use of pottery at this site indicates a complex network of intra- and inter-communal relationships involving the manufacture, consumption and exchange of raw materials and finished products, and furnishes insights into the ways in which material culture was used actively by pre-state communities to create and maintain social identities.

In Chapter 13, Louise Steel considers some of the wider issues of socio-political organisation associated with developments in ceramic production and craft specialisation in Late Bronze Age Cyprus. After examining evidence for regionalism in ceramic traditions and tracing changes in ceramic production through time, she concludes that prior to the 13th century BC the island was divided into small regional groups that may reflect heterarchical rather than hierarchical forms of social organisation. Only in the 13th and 12th centuries did ceramic production on the island cut across regional boundaries, perhaps in connection with the increasingly centralised organisation of ceramic production and political control.

In the following chapter (Chapter 14), Gordon Thomas considers the social practices and beliefs associated with the creation and development of lime plaster technology in the Neolithic period of the Levant. Following ideas developed by Pierre Lemonnier and others, Thomas focusses on the social variables of lime plaster technology rather than the functional aspects of its manufacture and use, and considers the roles it is likely to have played in ritual and cognitive dimensions of social behaviour at this time.

Drawing upon Jacques Cauvin’s concept of the ‘revolution of symbols’, by which he characterised the origins of the Neolithic, Danielle Stordeur (Chapter 15) investigates the relationships between the use of symbols and the domestication of plants and animals in the Levant during the Pre-pottery Neolithic A and B. Differences in the symbolic repertoires of these two periods, which involved the replacement of animal figures during the Pre-pottery Nelithic B by representations of human figures, are used as metaphors for shifting patterns of social and economic development as agriculture and herding became part of everyday life.

In the final chapter of this section (Chapter 16), Paul Croft considers patterns of animal exploitation in the Late Neolithic period of Cyprus by analysing faunal evidence from the site of Philia-Drakos A, which he has examined recently for the first time. While Croft’s study of this material is not yet complete, he postulates on the basis of an initial sample that the faunal patterns observed at Philia conform to the standard pattern of very heavily deer dominated animal economies observed at other Late Neolithic sites on the island. It is hoped that continued study of the animal remains from this important site will establish in greater detail the ways in which various communities in Late Neolithic Cyprus functioned and interacted.

Part Four: Agency, Identity and Gender

The papers in this section, which concern themes of agency, identity and gender, address some of the current issues in contemporary social archaeology. The first paper, by Bill Finlayson (Chapter 17), adopts a ‘bottom up’ approach to the growth of sedentism, agriculture and materiality during the Pre-pottery Neolithic A period. By focussing on internal social processes, such as agency, and considering detailed archaeological evidence at the local scale, he demonstrates how our understanding of the important transformations that occurred at this time can be enhanced by looking at various ways that Neolithic people inhabited their world.

In the following paper (Chapter 18) Stuart Campbell investigates the symbolic aspects of prehistoric painted pottery from northern Mesopotamia. While painted decoration of the Samarran, Halaf and Ubaid periods has traditionally been used to define cultural divisions or chronological periods, little research has been carried out to interpret the meaning of the motifs and designs used in this pottery. Campbell explores various methods of extracting meaning from abstract geometric motifs and considers the ways in which pottery can play an important role in the development of social interaction and integration among pre-urban communities.

The paper by Diane Bolger (Chapter 19) considers long-term changes in gender and social identity in Cyprus from the Neolithic period to the Early Iron Age. After discussing the ways in which genderless narratives of the past distort our understanding of ancient societies, she argues for a contextual approach that draws upon multiple strands of evidence (mortuary, figurative, material, etc.) in order to shed greater light on the changes in gender constructs during the prehistoric and protohistoric periods on the island. Her results suggest that gender constructs changed considerably over time but did not necessarily follow a straightforward path.

In the following chapter (Chapter 20), Louise Maguire moves beyond the standard typological study of prehistoric pottery in Bronze Age Cyprus by presenting a systematic reconstruction of the painting processes of White Painted ware. On the basis of a detailed analysis of brushstroke sequences on more than 200 vessels, she shows that major differences existed in various regions of the island that were the result of the positioning of the pot during the painting process, and that these practices changed over time. The complete transformation of communities of practice that occurred at the end of the Middle Bronze Age reflects a wider picture of social transformation which took place on the island at this time.

The final chapter in this section (Chapter 21), by Jennifer Webb, investigates the ceramic industry at the Middle Bronze Age site of Deneia in north-western Cyprus. Drawing on the extensive body of published material from the cemeteries at this site, she explores the use of form and decoration to produce the assertive ceramic style which is a marked feature at the site and considers the ways in which community-specific styles, forms and motifs were used to craft social identities and to assert and maintain community affiliations.

Part Five: Insularity, Ethnicity and Cultural Interaction

Like the papers in the previous section, those in this final section of the book (Part 5) address issues that are of current concern in social archaeology. The paper by McCartney (Chapter 22) looks at processes of Neolithisation in Cyprus and challenges traditional concepts of early island communities based on a priori assumptions about ‘insularity’, ‘island colonisation’ and ‘isolation’. Using multiple strands of evidence (e.g. economic practices, stone tool technology and the built environment), she argues for an historical approach that places Neolithic Cyprus within a wider Near Eastern context, and concludes that patterns of increasing sedentism, materialism and village development on the island follow similar trajectories to those observed in other regions of the Near East.

The paper by Joanne Clarke (Chapter 23) addresses many of the same issues raised by McCartney by questioning traditional assumptions about the ‘insularity’ of Cypriot communities during the later Neolithic period. Recent research in the central Levant, she argues, warrants a reconsideration of the island’s insularity and isolation after the Pre-pottery Neolithic B. By looking at evidence for chipped and ground stone technologies, pottery manufacture, settlement organisation, economy and environment, she maintains that a complete cessation of interaction between island and mainland is a highly unlikely scenario and that cultural connections with the Levant probably continued at this time.

In the following chapter (Chapter 24), Douglas Baird investigates the social and economic relationships between the Neolithic community of Çatalhöyük and contemporary settlements in the surrounding region. Through a comparative study of flint and obsidian technology, he tests the proposal made by some archaeologists that Çatalhöyük served as a center of economic production. Since there is little evidence to suggest that Çatalhöyük played a distinctive role in terms of the distribution of chipped stone, he proposes that its centrality may have had more to do with the social networks through which material flowed around the landscape and between source area and consumption zones than with centralised production.

In the final chapter of the volume (Chapter 25), Andrew McCarthy considers evidence for ethnicity in late prehistoric Iran through a stylistic and statistical analysis of 4th and 3rd millennium seals from Susa. His results suggest that two distinctive craft traditions at this site, a Mesopotamian and a proto-Elamite style, co-existed during the 4th millennium and became more sharply divergent during the 3rd millennium. He concludes that these differences were based on ethnic distinctions and that ethnicity may have been an important aspect, or even a defining quality, of the expression of state-level identity in Iran at this time.

As this body of papers demonstrates, unilinear models of social change, which for many years were entrenched in the archaeological literature, have undergone a profound transformation. They are being replaced by more socially-oriented approaches that cannot be reduced to a single explanatory model, but which embrace a wide variety of theories and methods. Through their joint concern with issues of diversity, scale and context, they are beginning to shed new light on the ways in which pre-state communities in the ancient Near East functioned, interacted and changed.

References

Bender, B. 1989. The roots of inequality. In D. Miller, M. Rowlands and C. Tilley (eds) Domination and Resistance. London, Unwin Hyman.

Bintliff, J. 1991. The Annales School and Archaeology. London and New York, Leicester University Press.

Bolger, D. 2004. Gender in Ancient Cyprus: Narratives of Social Change on a Mediterranean Island. Walnut Creek (CA), AltaMira.

Bolger, D. 2008. Introduction: Temporal dimensions of gender in ancient Near Eastern archaeology. In D. Bolger (ed.) Gender through Time in the Ancient Near East, 1–20. Lanham (MD), AltaMira.

Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Brumfiel, E. 1992. Distinguished lecture in archaeology: Breaking and entering the ecosystem − gender, class and faction steal the show. American Anthropologist 94(3), 551–567.

Earle, T. 1997. How Chiefs Come To Power: The Political Economy in Prehistory. Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press.

Feinman, G. M. 1994. Social boundaries and political change: A comparative perspective. In G. Stein and M. Rothman (eds) Chiefdoms and Early States in the Near East: The Organizational Dynamics of Complexity, 225–236. Madison, Prehistory Press.

Feinman, G. M. 1995. The emergence of inequality: A focus on strategies and processes. In T. D. Price and G. Feinman (eds) Foundations of Social Inequality, 255–279. London, Plenum.

Fried, M. 1967. The Evolution of Political Society. New York, Random House.

Gilchrist, R. 1999. Gender and Archaeology: Contesting the Past. London and New York, Routledge.

Gilchrist, R. 2004. Archaeology and the life course: A time and age for gender. In L. Meskell and R. W. Preucel (eds) A Companion to Social Archeology. Oxford, Blackwell.

Gledhill, J., B. Bender and M. T. Larsen (eds) 1995. State and Society: The Emergence and Development of Social Hierarchy and Political Centralization (1st paperback ed.; orig. hardcover published by Unwin Hyman in 1988.) London, Routledge.

Gosden, C. 1994. Social Being and Time. Oxford, Blackwell.

Harris, M. 1979. Cultural Materialism. New York, Random House.

Hodder, I. 1986. Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Hodder, I. 2004. The social in archaeological theory: An historical and contemporary perspective. In L. Meskell and R. Preucel (eds) A Companion to Social Archaeology, 23–42. Oxford, Blackwell.

Johnson, A. W. and T. Earle 1987. The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press.

Knapp, A. B. and L. Meskell 1997. Bodies of evidence on prehistoric Cyprus. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 7(2), 183–204.

Maisels, C. K. 1990. The Emergence of Civilization: From Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture, Cities and the State in the Near East. London and New York, Routledge.

McGuire, R. H. 1983. Breaking down cultural complexity: Inequality and heterogeneity. In M. Schiffer (ed.) Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 6, 91–142. New York, Academic Press.

Meskell, L. 2002. Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

Meskell, L. M. and R. A. Joyce 2003. Embodied Lives: Figuring Ancient Maya and Egyptian Experience. London, Routledge.

Peltenburg, E. 1993. Settlement continuity and resistance to complexity in Cyprus, ca. 4500–2500 B.C.E. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 292, 9–23.

Plog, F. 1974. The Study of Prehistoric Change. New York, Academic Press.

Renfrew, C. 1984. Approaches to Social Archaeology. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.

Renfrew, C. and P. G. Bahn 2000. Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice (3rd ed.). London, Thames & Hudson.

Rowlands, M. A. 1989. A question of complexity. In D. Miller, M. A. Rowlands and C. Tilley (eds) Domination and Resistance, 29–40. London, Unwin Hyman.

Sanders, W. T. and D. Webster 1978. Unilinealism, multilinealism, and the evolution of complex societies. In C. Redman, M. J. Berman, E. V. Curtin, W. T. Langhorne, Jr., N. M. Versaggi and J. C. Wanser (eds) Social Archeology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating, 249–302. New York, Academic Press.

Service, E. 1962. Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective. New York, Random House.

Service, E. 1975. Origins of the State and Civilization: The Process of Cultural Evolution. New York, Norton.

Shanks, M. and C. Tilley 1987. Social Theory and Archaeology. Cambridge, Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell.

Stein, G. and M. Rothman (eds) 1994. Chiefdoms and Early States in the Near East: The Organizational Dynamics of Complexity. Madison, Prehistory Press.

Trigger, B. 1985. The evolution of pre-industrial cities: A multilinear perspective. In F. Geus and F. Thill (eds) Mélanges offerts à Jean Vercoutter, 343–353. Paris, Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations.

Trigger, B. 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Yoffee, N. 1979. The decline and rise of Mesopotamian civilization: An ethnoarchaeological perspective on the evolution of social complexity. American Antiquity 44, 1–35.

Yoffee, N. 1993. Too many chiefs? (or, safe texts for the ’90s). In N. Yoffee and A. Sherratt (eds) Archaeological Theory: Who Sets the Agenda?, 60–78. New Directions in Archaeology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Yoffee, N. 2005. Myths of the Archaic State. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Yoffee, N. and A. Sherratt 1993. Introduction: The sources of archaeological theory. In N. Yoffee and A. Sherratt (eds) Archaeological Theory: Who Sets the Agenda?, 1–9. New Directions in Archaeology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

PART 1

SOCIAL ORGANISATION AND COMPLEXITY IN PRE-STATE COMMUNITIES

2

SOCIAL COMPLEXITY AND ARCHAEOLOGY: A CONTEXTUAL APPROACH

Marc Verhoeven

Introduction

The notion of complexity is commonly used by archaeologists to indicate differences in the socio-economic structure of ancient societies. The use of the term implies that there are non-complex (simple) and complex societies, with the latter having evolved out of the former (e.g. ‘the rise of socioeconomic complexity’). In many cases, therefore, the use of the concept of complexity is a form of (neo-)evolutionary thinking. More particularly, in Near Eastern archaeology the term ‘complexity’ surfaces time and again in relation to societies dated to the Bronze Age and later, i.e. to (incipient) states and ‘civilisation’.

Complexity, however, is a very subjective term which immediately leads one’s thoughts in specific directions. But what exactly is it? Is there an alternative to using the notion of complexity in terms of successive types of society? Are there perhaps different forms of complexity? In this contribution these issues will be explored. First, to set the stage, a critical account of what has been termed the ‘rise of civilisation in the Near East’ is given. This is followed by a discussion of social complexity and a critique of the common use of the notion of social evolution. In the second part of the paper two examples are presented of complex (ritual) contexts in communities that are generally regarded as (socio-economically) non-complex.

The Rise of Civilisation?

For many years, Near Eastern archaeology has been preoccupied with the rise of socio-economic complexity and the development of states and civilisation. It is one of the most popular themes in introductory books as well as in academic teaching. Frequently one reads about the evolution or development of complex society (e.g. Rothman 2004) or the evolution of early states (e.g. Stein and Rothman 1994; Yoffee 2005). The term ‘civilisation’ is less common in academic circles nowadays, but major publications have used it to structure their narratives. Oates and Oates (1976) and Redman (1978), for instance, speak of the rise of civilization, Maisels of the emergence (1990) and cradle (1993) of civilisation, and Algaze (1993) of the dynamics and expansion of early Mesopotamian civilization. In fact, these publications are not only structured by this notion; they are largely founded on it. For example, in the first chapter of his book Redman (1978, 1) writes:

The Agricultural and Urban Transformations as they occurred in the ancient Near East are among the truly significant milestones in the history of humankind. The social changes that these processes fostered influenced all aspects of society and formed the structure out of which today’s world has emerged. The Near East has been selected as the geographical setting in which to examine the rise of civilization because changes took place there at a very early date, perhaps earlier than anywhere else in the world. In addition to this temporal priority, the history and prehistory of the Near East directly affected the emergence and growth of Western civilization.

Although this was written more than 30 years ago and, as already indicated, the term ‘civilisation’ seems to be less common nowadays in academic contexts, it is still regularly used in popular media, and I suspect that Redman’s ideas are still shared by a large number of Near Eastern archaeologists, especially those dealing with the historic periods. Moreover, many prehistorians dealing with the so-called Neolithic Revolution explicitly or implicitly use the idea of a rise of civilisation as well (e.g. Özdoğan and Başgelen 1999; Hauptmann and Özdoğan 2007). There are three main problems with this idea. Firstly, like the notion of complexity, the term ‘civilisation’ is very subjective and involves a value judgement. For most people it means to be civilised, but what, then, about people who did or do not live in civilisations? Were and are they uncivilised? Not many would probably dare to say this nowadays, but the notion of civilisation, consciously or unconsciously, sets up a qualitative difference. Secondly, the concept of a ‘rise of civilisation’ is teleological, i.e. it supposes that ‘pre-civilised’, pre-state, and pre-historic communities and cultures were designed for or directed toward a final result: (modern Western) civilisation. In other words, in an explicitly evolutionary fashion, prehistoric societies are treated as stages towards more developed conditions and not as societies in their own right. Thirdly, the use of the notion of ‘civilisation’ often goes hand in hand with that of complexity, generally without mentioning what exactly is meant by it (but see Rothman 1994). In fact, ‘complex society’ is nowadays frequently used as a synonym for civilisation. Just like the term ‘civilisation’, the terms ‘emerging complexity’, ‘complex society’ and so on implicitly make a distinction between non-complex (simple) and complex societies, with the former being regarded as somehow inferior to the latter. In the following pages I wish to address some of the problems related to this dichotomous way of thinking and to argue for a more nuanced use of the notion of complexity.

Social Complexity

Complexity is an intricate issue which is studied in many different disciplines outside the social sciences, e.g. biology, computer science, physics, mathematics. In this contribution I shall obviously be concerned with social complexity, i.e. complexity in past human societies (e.g. Randsborg 1981; van der Leeuw 1981; Price and Feinman 1995). This is a huge field of study (there is even a Journal of Social Complexity), but for the purposes of this paper I shall limit myself to terminology and the problems of the concept of social complexity.

There are many different definitions of complexity, but recurrently it is stated that it denotes a whole made up of differentiated and interrelated parts: the more parts and the more connections between parts, the more complex the system or society. Flannery (1972) was one of the first archaeologists to explicitly use the concept of social complexity. He argued that there were two main dimensions to be distinguished: segregation, the degree of differentiation and specialisation within a system; and centralisation, the degree to which the parts of the system were interrelated. In an analysis of chiefdoms and early states in the Near East, Rothman (1994, 4) used Flannery’s ideas to define complexity as: … the degree of functional differentiation among societal units or sub-systems. Such units can be households, political associations or villages. Moreover, Rothman distinguishes two axes of complexity: a horizontal axis made up of the individual parts of the system (segregation); and a vertical axis consisting of hierarchical