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Unit 9 Quiz

Unit 9 Quiz. Available from Tuesday Midnight until Thursday Midnight. This is the LAST QUIZ for the Quarter. Make sure that you have completed at least 7 quizzes. End of Quarter Logistics. Book Reviews will be returned IN CLASS on Thursday, June 3, 2004

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Unit 9 Quiz

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  1. Unit 9 Quiz Available from Tuesday Midnight until Thursday Midnight This is the LAST QUIZ for the Quarter. Make sure that you have completed at least 7 quizzes.

  2. End of Quarter Logistics • Book Reviews will be returned IN CLASS on Thursday, June 3, 2004 • Workbooks need to be turned in to Section Leader on Friday, June 4, from 2-5 pm in Social Sciences 1, Room 461 (The Section Room)

  3. Unit 9, Lecture 2 The Archaeology of Power, Inequality and the State

  4. Power • Potential to initiate or influence social action • Can be either constructive, cooperative (“power to”) • or exploitative and coercive (“power over”) • or ability to resist or circumvent authority (“power not to”)

  5. Status • Collection of rights and duties that accrue to a recognized and named social position • Criteria: Age, Gender, Kinship, Ability, Occupation, Residence, Alliances, etc. • Associated w/ different amounts of power • Achieved vs. Ascribed Social Persona = composite of multiple, overlapping and intersecting social statuses

  6. Politics • How a society organizes itself in order to make and enforce decisions, to resolve conflicts, and to control access to and distribution of social status and power. • Small Scale Societies: political structures are informal and situational. • Large Scale Societies: political power vested in formal institutions of government, coded in law, and backed by coercive force.

  7. Morton Fried: Egalitarian Ranked Stratified Elman Service: Band Tribe Chiefdom State Typological Models

  8. Egalitarian Societies (Bands) • Social Power is widely distributed; hard to monopolize • Status determined by age, gender, ability • No. of valued statuses = no. of people meeting criteria to fulfill them • Leadership situational and informal

  9. Tribal or Segmentary Societies • Social status determined by age, gender, kinship, and ability • More emphasis on relationships of kinship and marriage (lineage structures) • Corporate/communal groups (moieties, sodalities, clans) [Horizontal Integration] • Tension between egalitarian and ranked tendencies [“Big Men”]

  10. Ranked Societies (Chiefdoms) • No. of valued statuses are limited and restricted • Ascribed status determined largely by kinship (ranked lineages = Vertical Integration) • Achieved status determined by age, gender, ability • “Power Over” = “Power from” the gods and ancestors (supernaturally sanctioned authority) • Feasting, giveaways, gifting • Production and ritualized exchange of exotic and high value objects among elite

  11. Stratified Societies (States) • Social status largely determined by role and occupation (class) • Lots of economic specialization, complex division of labor • At least three classes: Rulers, Artisans/Traders, Commoners [and Slaves] • Social classes in competition with each other for power, prestige and wealth • Coercive power and authority sanctioned by law • Lots of internal stress, very unstableand subject to cataclysmic collapse.

  12. Peebles and Kus (1977) “Some Archaeological Correlates of Ranked Societies” • Moundville, Alabama • Center of Mississippian Chiefdom • A.D. 1200-1500 • 300 acre palisaded ceremonial center; plaza flanked by 20 platform mounds • Main residential area located outside of palisade

  13. Evidence for Social Ranking (1) • Burials and Funerary Monuments • “fossilized terminal status”--rank or status person held in life is directly reflected in how one is treated at death • 3000 burials--statistical analysis grouped burials by similarities in associated context and content. • Subordinate/Commonervs.Superordinate/Elite

  14. Burial Clusters at Moundville

  15. Evidence for Social Ranking (2) • Settlement Hierarchies • Three tiers--major center, minor centers, villages • Sites located at “ecotones”--areas of high agricultural potential and high diversity • Connected to each other by tribute economy

  16. Evidence for Social Ranking (3) • Organization of Production • Specialized Workshops • Attached Specialists • Sumptuary goods for ritual and display • Elite exchanges and alliances

  17. Marxist/Post-Processual Critique of Typological Models • Too static, holistic, systemic • Progressive, teleological • Do not deal with internal variability and conflict (social dynamics, human agency) • Today:archaeologists less interested in“What type of society is it?”And more interested in“How is power distributed in society? How is it negotiated? Who makes decisions in what contexts? How are decisions enforced?” [Burial Rituals = Social Arena where social status and power are negotiated, contested, reaffirmed, “up for grabs”]

  18. Break Return in 5 minutes to learn more about How and Why States developed.

  19. How and Why Do Systems of Social Inequality and the State Develop? Evidence for the Earliest States: • Mesopotamia and Egypt (3500 BC) • Mexico and Peru (ca. 500 BC)

  20. Processualist Approaches to Origins of the State • Solves some sort of problem-- • Need to redistribute resources • Need to manage information • Competition and Warfare; Need for social stability • Leadership and decision making “more efficient” • Changes seen as “adaptive” or “beneficial” to society as a whole [Altruistic, System-Serving]

  21. W.T. Sanders and B. Price (1968)Mesoamerica: The Evolution of a Civilization • Aztec state developed to manage complex, efficient market system in V. of Mexico • Mediated conflicts, prevented warfare • Promoted craft/crop specialization and exchange • Enabled growing numbers of people in Valley of Mexico to live in comfort and security

  22. Marxist/Post-Processual Critique • People in states work harder and live more precarious lives than in non-state societies • Who benefits from these changes? • Need to focus more on “human agency”--motivations and strategies employed by individuals and groups to serve their own interests • Internal dynamics vs. external causes

  23. E. Brumfiel-The View from Huexotla • Aztec power and wealth based on collection and distribution of tribute cloth • Urban elite exchanged cloth for food from rural areas in urban markets (e.g. maguey syrup, sugar and pulque from Huexotla) • Market exchange geared to provisioning urban elite not enhancing “comfort and security” of rural farmers “The questions that have most concerned me are how Aztec rulers constructed their power and how women’s lives changed as they became part of the Aztec empire”--E. Brumfiel

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