Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Thomsen showing
antiquities to visitors
in the Copenhagen
Museum
" archaeologists today have realized that they are dealing with the concrete remains of
societies, and that these societies, albeit illiterate, have left concrete embodiments not
only of their material equipment but also of their social institutions, superstitions [beliefs],
and behaviour, fragmentary and ambiguous though these undoubtedly be. Accordingly, I
thought that the theory of social evolution, deduced by Herbert Spencer and Lewis H.
Morgan from the comparative study of existing societies, might usefully be examined in
the light of the science [ie prehistoric archaeology], which presents societies in a
chronological sequence. V.G. Childe, Social Evolution, 1951.
STAGE
Band: small kin-based group
with limited differential power
CHARACTER
low population density
mobile foragers
e.g. Eskimo; Aborigines;
Bushmen
Archaeological examples:
temporary camps, artefact
scatters, Palaeolithic
Hunter-gatherers
STAGE
Tribe - Ranked (or
Segmentary society):
villages and/or descent
groups lacking formal
government and social
classes, but some social
differences in social rank
CHARACTER
Archaeology:
permanent villages/buildings
shrines
burials
e.g. some early farming
(Neolithic) societies
Nuer village, circa 1935
STAGE
Chiefdom:
more differential
access to power
and more marked
social rank;
symbols of status
CHARACTER
Higher population densities with:
major centres
redistributive networks (?)
specialised buildings/roles
hereditary chiefs; kinship-based
ranking
e.g Kwaikutl; Hawaii
Archaeology: European
Bronze-Iron Age
societies ??
STAGE
State: autonomous
CHARACTER
Population, large (eg several
thousand)
Administration
institutions for tax, tribute,
laws (bureaucracy)
class-based stratification
cities
theistic religion
e.g. archaic states, modern
states
State
Urban, adj.
1. of, pertaining to, or comprising a city
or town.
2. living in a city.
3. characteristic of or accustomed to
cities.
Luxor, Egypt
Egalitarian Society
there are as many positions of prestige in any age/sex range as
there are persons capable of filling them
Ranked Society
positions of valued status are limited so that not all those of sufficient
talent actually achieve them
Stratified Societies and States
the maintenance of an order of stratification demands sanctions that
command power beyond the resources of a kinship system (which is
adequate for egalitarian and ranked societies)
- The categories are not discrete: the borders between one and another are bound to be
blurred
- The labels are not always well defined. E.g. there are lots of variations and different types of
chiefdoms (in the ethnographic record); some archaeologists/anthropologists prefer to call
them Middle-Range Societies
- There are many alternative trajectories in world history (neither necessarily better or
worse)
- Non-state societies may have complex or elaborate aspects (e.g. cosmologies, belief
systems, symbolic visual imagery, rituals and ceremonies)
- Archaeologists need to study the archaeological record and come up with their own ideas
about social organization
Related questions
Settlement patterns:
Early farming (Neolithic) sites in central
Europe: scattered communities or clusters of
farmsteads, but essentially a non-hierarchical
settlement pattern (ie most sites look fairly
similar to each other); also limited variation in
material remains
Settlement patterns & organisation of labour
can help to elucidate social organisation
Stonehenge
Varna cemetery (Bulgaria): rich burials circa 4000 BC (with numerous high value
grave goods, of gold, copper, stone; items of adornment and display) suggesting
individuals of high social status
Relevant reading:
C. Scarre (ed.), The Human Past, p.403.
Renfrew & Bahn, p.400.
Caere, an Etruscan cemetery in central Italy: elite burial mounds (tumuli) and
street tombs; unequal burials in an early State (700-500 BC)
A preliminary schematic
guide to various sorts of
societies and aspects of
social organisation.
Helpful, but this is also an
over-simplification.
To sum up: archaeologists and anthropologists note certain features of societies that
can shed light on social organization, and have come up with various labels to describe
them. Be wary of just applying these labels without investigating the archaeological
record. There are plenty of ways in which different kinds of social organization are
detectable using archaeological evidence.
E.g. :
- ways of life in general (hunters, foragers, farmers, (non-)sedentism)
- settlement patterns;
- large monuments or labour projects that require a considerable collective effort;
- ritual, religious or ceremonial activities;
- specialization, craft production;
- trade/exchange;
- prestige goods and anything that points to inequality or people of significantly
different rank and status (eg in burials).
There is more to social organization than just status or rank. For example, we are also
interested in all the different possible identities and roles of people in society.