The_Early_State_Its_Alternatives_and_Ana

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THE EARLY STATE, ITS ALTERNATIVES AND ANALOGUES

Edited by Leonid E. Grinin, Robert L. Carneiro, Dmitri M. Bondarenko,
Nikolay N. Kradin, and Andrey V. Korotayev
ББК 87.6 POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
ISBN 5-7057-0547-6 Copyright © ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House, 2004

Volgograd 2004 © The editors, 2004
© The authors, 2004
Issues of formation and evolution of the early (archaic) state continue

to remain among those problems which have not found generally ac-
cepted solutions yet. Contributors to The Early State, Its Alter-natives
and Analogues represent both traditional and non-traditional points of
view on evolution of statehood. However, the data presented in the
volume seem to demonstrate in a fairly convincing manner a great di-
versity of pathways to statehood, as well as non-universality of trans-
formation into states of complex and even supercomplex societies.
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INTRODUCTION
Issues of formation and evolution of the early (archaic) state continue to remain
among those problems which have not found generally accepted solutions yet.
New research shows more and more clearly that pathways to statehood and
early state types were numerous. On the other hand, research has detected such
directions of sociocultural evolution, which do not lead to state formation at all,
whereas within certain evolutionary patterns transition to statehood takes place
on levels of complexity far exceeding the ones indicated by conventional evolu-
tionist schemes. This is further complicated by the absence of a generally rec-
ognized definition of the early state (or state in general); there is no unanimity
either as regards the following problem: what size of territory/population and
complexity level distinguish early states from pre-state polities?
Contributors to this volume represent both traditional and non-traditional
points of view on evolution of statehood. However, the data presented by the
contributors seem to demonstrate in a fairly convincing manner a great diver-
sity of pathways to statehood, as well as the absence of unavoidable necessity
of transformation into states for complex and even supercomplex societies.
Henri J. M. Claessen presents his article ‘Was the State Inevitable?’. He
provides the following answer to this question:
Only when a number of specified conditions are present at the same time
in the same society, and when some triggering accident occurs, the
development of an early state will take place, provided that a positive
feedback between the ‘necessary conditions’ occurs. It is in such cases only
that the emergence of an early state was inevitable.
This is a very considerate approach. However, there were a lot of societies
where the above-mentioned combination of conditions never came about and
‘some triggering accident’ never occurred. Yet, those sociopolitical systems
continued to develop. How could we classify respective polities? Such complex
stateless systems often coped with problems comparable with ones encountered
by states, they are quite comparable with early states by the range of their func-
tions and level of their structural complexity as well as causes and prerequisites
for their formation. So it is incorrect to consider them as pre-state structures.
What were those political systems, which developed beyond the pre-state level
and competed successfully with states?
A few contributions to the volume (Bondarenko, Grinin, Korotayev, Kra-
din) try to find answer to this question. These authors consider the above-
mentioned political systems as state alternatives and analogues. They arrive at
the conclusion that processes of archaic societies' political evolution should not
be reduced to the rise of the state exclusively because this is rather a specific
version of those processes. In particular, Grinin, in his first contribution to this
volume, maintains that
i
we know of numerous polities, which are comparable to early states in
size, complexity and a number of other parameters, and, at the same time,
are significantly superior to typical pre-state formations – such as simple
chiefdoms, tribes, independent simple communities. For these reasons, it
would be wrong to regard such complex non-state societies as being at the
pre-state level of development. The most productive path to follow is to
recognize them just as early state analogues.
Claessen argues that ‘from its very beginning was the state a stronger type
of organization than all others; for the surrounding polities there were not many
alternatives’.
Indeed, most alternative sociopolitical structures were ultimately destroyed
and absorbed by states, or transformed into states. However, it is not evident
that the state was the dominant type of political organization from the very be-
ginning in general as well as in every particular case of state and non-state poli-
ties' interaction. In many regions of the world for long periods of time alterna-
tive and analogous polities were neither less complex nor less successful than
states. Thus, the long-run evolutionary superiority of the state did not become
obvious from the very beginning and though today the state can be regarded as
an almost inevitable result of global socio-political evolution, this was not evi-
dent for a great part of human history. It is not reasonable to ignore the fact that
states and their alternatives and analogues co-existed for millennia. So the di-
versity of sociopolitical forms, non-unilinearity of social evolution, presence of
alternatives to the state can be regarded as general ideas going through most
contributions to this volume.
Alternatives of social evolution cannot be only reduced to the alternativity
of state formation process. We are dealing here with a general feature of evolu-
tionary processes, which is considered in the contribution by Bondarenko,
Grinin, and Korotayev, who maintain the following:
What is important for us here is that there are reasons to suppose that an
equal level of sociopolitical (and cultural) complexity (which makes it
possible to solve equally difficult problems faced by societies) can be
achieved not only in various forms but on essentially different evolution-
ary pathways, too.
Thus, it is possible to achieve the same level of system complexity
through differing pathways of evolution which appeared simultaneously to
the formation of Homo Sapiens Sapiens and increased in quantity along-
side socio-cultural advancement. Diversity could be regarded as one of the
most important preconditions of the evolutionary process. This implies
that the transition to any qualitatively new forms is normally not possible
without a sufficient level of variability of sociocultural forms.
Another leading theme of the volume is complexity of the state formation
process. For example, the article by Korotayev considers a case of transforma-
ii
tion of state systems into chiefdoms. On the other hand, it turns out to be rather
difficult to classify many political systems and as a result, sometimes different
contributors to this volume classify the same polities in opposite ways. Thus,
Berent considers the Athenian polis as a stateless community, whereas Grinin
in his second contribution regards the same polity аs an early state of a specific
type essentially different from other (especially bureaucratic) types. Political
systems which Khazanov considers to be early states (e.g., the Hsiung-nu
polity), are regarded by Kradin as ‘supercomplex chiefdoms’.
Carneiro and Berezkin examine cultures, which can be classified as un-
equivocally pre-state; however, Berezkin shows that alternatives of social evo-
lution are attested among such cultures too.
Complexity of social evolution is also emphasized in the contribution by Cha-
bal, Feinman, and Skalník which starts with the following statement: ‘Even in the
face of a revolution in telecommunications and a powerful process of economic
globalization, it has become evident that there has been no linear progression in
political development or centralization’. This article analyzes the present- day
сhiefdom-like political formations in Africa, the Arab world, in Afghanistan, in
some parts of India, Burma and Thailand, in Oceania as well as some other parts
of the world. Chabal, Feinman, and Skalník study how the concept of chiefdom
correlates with the present day сhiefdom-like political entities.
Finally, a few words should be said about cultures represented in this vol-
ume. This list is not coincidental. We tried to collect cases representing all his-
torical epochs and all the world regions: the ancient East and West (Proussa-
kov, Emelianov, Baum, Berent, Dozhdev), the Middle Ages (Korotayev,
Lozny), and Modern period of world history (Chabal, Feinman, and Skalník,
L'vova); cultures of Oceania (Claessen), Asia (Irons, Korotayev, Skrynnikova,
Kradin), Africa (Bondarenko, L'vova), the Americas (Berezkin, Spencer and
Redmond, Schaedel and Robinson), Europe (Berent, Dozhdev, Lozny, Grinin).
Nomadic societies (Irons, Khazanov, Kradin, Skrynnikova) are treated in a
separate part of the volume to trace in a deeper way specific features of their
political evolution.
The editors believe that contributions to this volume shed additional light on
a few rather important aspects of sociopolitical evolution.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We wish to thank Alla V. Perepelkina and Helen V. Emanova for their great
help with the preparation of this volume. We thank Tat'jana T. Klujeva for her
help with preparation of cover design.
iii
Contents
Part I: Theory
1 Alternatives of Social Evolution………………………………… 3
Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Leonid E. Grinin, and Andrey V. Korotayev
2 Was the Chiefdom a Congelation of Ideas?…………………… 28
Robert L. Carneiro
3 Beyond States and Empires: Chiefdoms and Informal Politics 46
Patrick Chabal, Gary Feinman, and Peter Skalník
4 Alternative Models of Middle Range Society.
‘Individualistic’ Asia vs. ‘Collectivistic’ America?…………… 61
Yuri E. Berezkin
5 Was the State Inevitable?………………………………………… 72
Henri J. M. Claessen
6 The Early State and Its Analogues: A Comparative Analysis 88
Leonid E. Grinin
Part II: Early States

7 Early Dynastic Egypt: A Socio-Environmental/Anthropological
Hypothesis of ‘Unification’………………………………………. 139
Dmitri B. Proussakov
8 The Ruler as Possessor of Power in Sumer…………………….. 181
Vladimir V. Emelianov
9 Ritual and Rationality:
Religious Roots of the Bureaucratic State in Ancient China 196
Richard Baum
10 Conquest Warfare, Strategies of Resistance, and the Rise
of the Zapotec Early State……………………………………… 220
Charles S. Spencer and Elsa M. Redmond
11 The Pristine Myth of the Pristine State in America……………. 262
Richard P. Schaedel and David G. Robinson
12 The Transition to Statehood in Central Europe………………. 278
Ludomir R. Lozny
13 Formation and Development of States in the Congo Basin…… 288
Eleonora S. L'vova
iv
Part III: Sedentary Alternatives and Analogues
14 The Chiefdom: Precursor of the Tribe? (Some Trends of Political
Evolution in North-East Yemeni Highlands)…………………… 300
Andrey V. Korotayev
15 From Local Communities to Megacommunity: Biniland
in the 1st Millennium B.C.–19th Century A.D. ………………… 325
Dmitri M. Bondarenko
16 Greece: The Stateless Polis (11th– 4th Сenturies B.C.)…………. 364
Moshe Berent
17 Rome: Socio-political Evolution in the 8th– 2nd Centuries B.C. 388
Dmitri V. Dozhdev
18 Early State and Democraсy……………………………………… 419
Leonid E. Grinin
Part IV. Nomadic Alternatives and Analogues

19 Cultural Capital, Livestock Raiding, and the Military Advantage
of Traditional Pastoralists……………………………………… 466
William Irons
20 Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in Historical Retrospective 476
Anatoly M. Khazanov
21 Nomadic Empires in Evolutionary Perspective………………… 501
Nikolay N. Kradin
22 Mongolian Nomadic Society of the Empire Period…………… 525
Tatyana D. Skrynnikova
v
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Richard Baum, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Moshe Berent, The Open University of Israel, Tel-Aviv
Yuri E. Berezkin, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology,
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Center for Civilizational and Regional
Studies, Moscow, Russia
Robert L. Carneiro, American Museum of Natural History,
New York, USA
Patrick Chabal, King's College, London, UK
Henri J. M. Claessen, Leiden University, Netherlands
Dmitri V. Dozhdev, Institute of State and Law, Moscow, Russia
Vladimir V. Emelianov, Saint Petersburg State University, Russia
Gary M. Feinman, The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago,
USA
Leonid E. Grinin, ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House, Volgograd, Russia
William Irons, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA
Anatoly M. Khazanov, Wisconsin-Madison University, USA
Andrey V. Korotayev, Russian State University for the Humanities,
Moscow, Russia
Nikolay N. Kradin, Institute of History, Archaeology and
Ethnography, Vladivostok, Russia
Ludomir R. Lozny, University Center of the City University
of New York, USA
Eleonora S. L'vova, Institute of Asian and African Studies,
Moscow, Russia
Dmitri B. Proussakov, Institute of the Oriental Studies, Moscow,
Russia
Elsa M. Redmond, American Museum of Natural History,
New York, USA
David G. Robinson, University of Texas, Austin, USA
Richard P. Schaedel, University of Texas, Austin, USA
Peter Skalník, University of Pardubice, Czech Republic
Tatyana D. Skrynnikova, Institute of Mongolian, Buddhist,
and Tibetian Studies, Ulan-Ude, Russia
Charles S. Spencer, American Museum of Natural History,
New York, USA
vi
Part I
Theory
● Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Leonid E. Grinin,
and Andrey V. Korotayev
Alternatives of Social Evolution
● Robert L. Carneiro
Was the Chiefdom a Congelation of Ideas?
● Patrick Chabal, Gary Feinman, and Peter Skalník

Beyond States and Empires: Chiefdoms
and Informal Politics
● Yuri E. Berezkin
Alternative Models of Middle Range Society.
‘Individualistic’ Asia vs. ‘Collectivistic’ America?
● Henri J. M. Claessen
Was the State Inevitable?
● Leonid E. Grinin
The Early State and Its Analogues:
A Comparative Analysis
1
Alternatives of Social Evolution*
Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies, Moscow
Leonid E. Grinin
‘Uchitel’ Publishing House, Volgograd
Andrey V. Korotayev
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow
It has always been peculiar to evolutionists to compare social and biological

evolution, the latter as visualized by Charles Darwin1. But it also seems
possible and correct to draw an analogy with another great discovery in the
field of evolutionary biology, with the homologous series of Nikolay
Vavilov (1921, 1927, 1967). However, there is no complete identity be-
tween cultural parallelism and biological homologous series. Vavilov stud-
ied the morphological homology, whereas our focus within the realm of
social evolution is the functional one. No doubt, the morphological homo-
morphism also happens in the process of social evolution (e. g., in the Ha-
waii Islands where a type of the sociocultural organization surprisingly
similar with the ones of other highly developed parts of Polynesia had inde-
pendently formed by the end of the 18th century [Sahlins 1972/1958; Gold-
man 1970; Earle 1978]). But this topic is beyond the present paper's
problématique.
What is important for us here is that there are reasons to suppose that an
equal level of sociopolitical (and cultural) complexity (which makes it pos-
sible to solve equally difficult problems faced by societies) can be achieved
not only in various forms but on essentially different evolutionary path-
ways, too. Thus, it is possible to achieve the same level of system com-
plexity through differing pathways of evolution which appeared simulta-
neously (and even prior to the formation of Homo Sapiens Sapiens [Butov-
Bondarenko, Grinin, and Korotayev / Alternatives of Social Evolution, pp. 3–27

4 The Early State, Its Alternatives and Analogues
skaya and Feinberg 1993; Butovskaya 1994, 2000; Butovskaya, Koro-
tayev, and Kazankov 2000]) and increased in quantity alongside sociocul-
tural advancement (Pavlenko 1996: 229–251; 2000). Diversity could be
regarded as one of the most important preconditions of the evolutionary
process. This implies that the transition to any qualitatively new forms is
normally not possible without a sufficient level of variability of sociocul-
tural forms (among both the given culture's predecessors and contemporar-
ies).
Within the first level of analysis, all evolutionary variability can be re-
duced to two principally different groups of homologous series (Bon-
darenko 1997: 12–15; 1998a, 2000; Bondarenko and Korotayev 1999,
2000b; Korotayev et al. 2000). Earlier these alternatives were distinguished
either as ‘hierarchical’ vs. ‘nonhierarchical’ (e.g., Bondarenko and Koro-
tayev 2000a), or ‘hierarchical’ vs. ‘heterarchical’ (e.g., Ehrenreich, Crum-
ley, and Levy 1995; Crumley 2001).
In a recent publication on the problem of heterarchy the latter is defined
as ‘…the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or
when they possess the potential for being ranked in a number of different
ways’ (Ehrenreich, Crumley, and Levy 1995: 3; see also Crumley 1979:
144). It is clear that the second version of heterarchy is most relevant for
the study of the complex societies.
However, when we have a system of elements which ‘possess the poten-
tial for being ranked in a number of different ways’, it seems impossible to
speak about the absence of hierarchy. In this case we rather deal with a sys-
tem of heterarchically arranged hierarchies. Hence, it does not appear rea-
sonable to denote the heterarchy alternative as ‘hierarchy’. We would rather
suggest to designate it as ‘homoarchy’ which could be defined as ‘…the
relation of elements to one another when they possess the potential for be-
ing ranked in one way only’. Totalitarian regimes of any time give us plenty
of examples of such a sociocultural situation when the ruled have no
chances to get ranked above the rulers in any possible contexts. This stands
in a sharp contrast with, say, an archetypal example of a complex heterar-
chical system – the civil community (polis) of Athens (the 5th – 4th centuries
B.C.) where the citizens ranked lower within one hierarchy (e.g., the mili-
tary one) could well be ranked higher in many other possible respects (e.g.,
economically, or within the subsystem of civil/religious magistrates). Con-
sequently, it was impossible to say that one citizen was higher than any
other in any absolute sense.
On the other hand, it seems necessary to stress that it appears impossible
to find not only any human cultures totally lacking any hierarchies (includ-
Bondarenko, Grinin, and Korotayev / Alternatives of Social Evolution 5
ing informal ones), but also any totally homoarchical cultures. Hence,
though in order to simplify our analysis in this paper we speak about heter-
archical and homoarchical evolutionary pathways, in fact we are dealing
here with heterarchy–homoarchy axis along which one could range all the
known human cultures. Within this range there does not seem to be any
distinct border between homoarchical and heterarchical cultures; hence, in
reality it might be more appropriate to speak not about just two evolution-
ary pathways (heterarchical and homoarchical), but about a potentially infi-
nite number of such pathways, and, thus, finally not about evolutionary
pathways, but rather about evolutionary probability field (see for detail Ko-
rotayev et al. 2000). Yet, as was mentioned above, in order to simplify our
analysis we speak about just two alternative pathways.
In particular, until recently it was considered self-evident that just the
formation of the state2 marked the end of the ‘Primitive Epoch’ and alterna-
tives to the state did not actually exist. All the stateless societies were con-
sidered pre-state ones, standing on the single evolutionary staircase
squarely below the states. Nowadays postulates about the state as the only
possible form of political and sociocultural organization of the post-
primitive society, about a priori higher level of development of a state soci-
ety in comparison with any non-state one do not seem so undeniable as a
few years ago. It has become evident that the non-state societies are not
necessarily less complex and less efficient. The problem of existence of
non-state but not primitive (i.e. principally non- and not pre-state) societies,
alternatives to the state (as the allegedly inevitable post-primitive form of
the sociopolitical organization) deserves attention.
Of course, in no way do we reject the fact of existence and importance
of the states in world history. What we argue, is that the state is not the only
possible post-‘primitive’ evolutionary form. From our point of view, the
state is nothing more than one of many forms of the post-primitive socio-
political organization; these forms are alternative to each other and are able
to transform to one another without any loss in the general level of com-
plexity. Hence, the degree of sociopolitical centralization and ‘homoarchi-
zation’ is not a perfect criterion for evaluating a society's evolutionary level,
though it is regarded as such within unilinear concepts of social evolution.
As Brumfiel wrote several years ago, ‘the coupling of [sociopolitical]
differentiation and hierarchy is so firm in our minds that it takes tremen-
dous intellectual efforts even imagine what differentiation without hierar-
chy could be’ (Brumfiel 1995: 130)3. Usually, even if the very existence of
complex but non-homoarchical cultures is recognized, they are regarded as
a historical fortuity, as an anomaly. Such cultures are declared as if capable
to reach rather low levels of complexity only, as if incapable to find inter-
nal stability (Tuden and Marshall 1972: 454–456).
Thus, on the further level of analysis the dichotomy turns out not to be
rigid at all as far as actual organization of any society employs both vertical
(dominance – subordination) and horizontal (apprehended as ties among
equals) links. Furthermore, in the course of their history, societies (includ-
ing archaic cultures) turn out capable to change models of sociopolitical
organization radically, transforming from homoarchical into heterarchical
or vice versa (Crumley 1987: 164–165; 1995: 4; 2001; Bondarenko and
Korotayev 2000c; Dozhdev 2000; Kradin 2000a). Perhaps the most well
known historical example of the latter case is Rome where the Republic
was established and further democratized with the Plebian political victo-
ries. Note that in the course of such transformations the organizational
background changes, but the overall level of cultural complexity may not
only increase or decrease but may well stay practically the same (for exam-
ples from ancient and medieval history of Europe, the Americas, Asia see,
e.g., van der Vliet 1987; Ferguson 1991; Korotayev 1995a, 1996a; Levy
1995; Lynsha 1998; Beliaev 2000; Chamblee 2000: 15–35; Dozhdev 2000;
Kowalewski 2000; Kradin 2000a).
Nevertheless, vertical and horizontal links play different parts in differ-
ent societies at every concrete moment. Already among the primates with
the same level of morphological and cognitive development, and even
among primate populations belonging to the same species, one could ob-
serve both more and less hierarchically organized groups. Hence, the non-
linearity of sociopolitical evolution appears to originate already before the
Homo Sapiens Sapiens formation (Butovskaya and Feinberg 1993; Butov-
skaya 1994; Butovskaya, Korotayev, and Kazankov 2000).
Let us consider now in more detail one of the most influential and wide-
spread unilinear evolutionary schemes, the one proposed by Service
(1962/1971; its outline is, however, already contained in Sahlins 1960: 37):
band – tribe – chiefdom – state. The scheme implies that the growth of the
political complexity (at least up to the stage of the agrarian state) is inevita-
bly accompanied by the growth of the inequality, stratification, the social
distance between the rulers and the ruled, the ‘authoritarianism’ and hierar-
chization of the political system, decrease of the political participation of
the main mass of population etc. Of course, these two sets of parameters
seem to be related rather closely. It is evident that we observe here a certain
correlation, and a rather strong one. But, no doubt, this is just a correlation,
and by no means a functional dependence. Of course, this correlation im-
plies a perfectly possible line of sociopolitical evolution – from an egalitar-
ian, acephalous band, through a big-man village community with much
more pronounced inequality and political hierarchy, to an ‘authoritarian’
village community with a strong power of its chief (found e.g., among some
Indians of the North-West Coast – see e.g., Carneiro 2000), and than
through the true chiefdoms having even more pronounced stratification and
concentration of the political power in the hands of the chief, to the com-
plex chiefdoms where the political inequality parameters reach a qualita-
tively higher levels, and finally to the agrarian state where all such parame-
ters reach their culmination (though one could move even further, up to the
level of the ‘empire’ [e.g., Adams 1975]). However, it is very important to
stress that on each level of the growing political complexity one could find
easily evident alternatives to this evolutionary line.
Let us start with the human societies of the simplest level of sociocul-
tural complexity. Indeed, one can easily observe that acephalous egalitarian
bands are found among most of the unspecialized hunter-gatherers. How-
ever, as has been shown by Woodburn (1972, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1988a,
1988b) and Artemova (1987, 1991, 1993, 2000a, 2000b; Chudinova 1981,
see also Whyte 1978: 49–94), some of such hunter-gatherers (the inegali-
tarian ones, first of all most of the Australian aborigines) display a signifi-
cantly different type of sociopolitical organization with much more struc-
tured political leadership concentrated in the hands of relatively hierarchi-
cally organized elders, with a pronounced degree of inequality both be-
tween the men and women, and among the men themselves.
On the next level of the political complexity we can also find communi-
ties with both homoarchical and heterarchical political organization. One
can mention e.g., the well-known contrast between the Indians of the Cali-
fornian North-West and South-East:
The Californian chiefs were in the center of economic life, they ex-
ercised their control over the production, distribution and exchange of
the social product, and their power and authority were based mainly on
this. Gradually the power of the chiefs and elders acquired the hereditary
character, it became a typical phenomenon for California... Only the
tribes populating the North-West of California, notwithstanding their re-
spectively developed and complex material culture, lacked the explicitly
expressed social roles of the chiefs characteristic for the rest of Califor-
nia. At the meantime they new slavery... The population of this region
had an idea of personal wealth... (Kabo 1986: 20).
One can also immediately recall the communities of Ifugao (e.g., Barton
1922; Meshkov 1982: 183–197) lacking any pronounced authoritarian po-
litical leadership compared with the one of the communities of the North-
West Coast, but with a comparable level of overall sociopolitical and so-
ciocultural complexity.
Hence, already on the levels of simple and middle range communities
we observe several types of alternative sociopolitical forms, each of which
should be denoted with a separate term. The possible alternatives to the
chiefdom in the prehistoric Southwest Asia, heterarchical systems of com-
plex acephalous communities with a pronounced autonomy of single family
households have been analyzed recently by Berezkin who suggests rea-
sonably Apa Tanis as their ethnographic parallel (1995a, 1995b, 2000).
Frantsouzoff finds an even more developed example of such type of polities
in ancient South Arabia in Wadi Hadramawt of the 1st millennium B.C.
(1995, 1997, 2000).
Another evident alternative to the chiefdom is constituted by the tribal
organization. As is well known, the tribe has found itself on the brink of
being evicted from the evolutionary models (Carneiro 1987: 760; Town-
send 1985: 146). However, the political forms entirely identical with what
was described by Service as the tribe could be actually found in e. g., me-
dieval and modern Middle East (up to the present): these tribal systems
normally comprise several communities and often have precisely the type
of political leadership described by Service as typical for the tribe (Dresch
1984: 39, 41; Service 1971/1962: 103–104).
The point is that we are dealing here with some type of polity that could
not be identified either with bands, or with village communities (because
such tribes normally comprise more than one community), or with chief-
doms (because they have an entirely different type of political leadership),
or, naturally, with states. They could not be inserted easily either in the
scheme somewhere between the village and the chiefdom. Indeed, as has
been shown convincingly by Carneiro (see e.g., 1970, 1981, 1987, 1991,
2000), chiefdoms normally arose as a result of political centralization of a
few communities without the stage of the tribe preceding this. On the other
hand, a considerable amount of evidence could be produced suggesting that
in the Middle East many tribes arose as a result of political decentralization
of chiefdoms which preceded the tribes in time. It is also important to stress
that this could not in any way be identified with a ‘regression’, ‘decline’, or
‘degeneration’, as we can observe in many of such cases that political de-
centralization is accompanied by the increase (rather than decrease) of
overall sociocultural complexity (Korotayev 1995a, 1995c, 1995d, 1996a,
1996b, 1996c, 1997, 1998, 2000a, 2000b). Hence, in many respects tribal
systems of the Middle Eastern type appear to be chiefdom alternatives
(rather than chiefdom predecessors).
We have argued elsewhere (Korotayev 1995b) that in general there is an
evident evolutionary alternative to the development of the rigid supra-
communal political structures (chiefdom – complex chiefdom – state) con-
stituted by the development of internal communal structures together with
soft supra-communal systems not alienating communal sovereignty (vari-
ous confederations, amphictyonies etc.). One of the most impressive results
of the sociopolitical development along this evolutionary line is the Greek
poleis (see [Berent 1994, 1996, 2000a, 2000b] regarding the statelessness of
this type of political systems) some of which reached overall levels of com-
plexity quite comparable not only with the ones of chiefdoms, but also with
the one of states. The same can be said about its Roman analogue, the civi-
tas (Shtaerman 1989). Note that polis/civitas as a form of sociopolitical
organization was known far beyond the Classical world, both in geographi-
cal and chronological sense (Korotayev 1995b; Bondarenko 1998b), though
quite a number of scholars still insist on its uniqueness.
The ‘tribal’ and ‘polis’ series seem to constitute separate evolutionary
lines, with some distinctive features: the ‘polis’ forms imply the power of
the ‘magistrates’ elected in one or another way for fixed periods and con-
trolled by the people in the absence (or near-absence) of any formal bu-
reaucracy. Within the tribal systems we observe the absence of any offices
whose holders would be obeyed simply because they hold posts of a certain
type, and the order is sustained by elaborate mechanisms of mediation and
search for consensus.
There is also a considerable number of other complex stateless polities
(like the ones of the Cossacks of Ukraine and Southern Russia till the end
of the 17th century [Chirkin 1955; Rozner 1970; Nikitin 1987; etc.], the
Celts of the 5th – 1st centuries B.C. [Grinin 1997: 32–33; Kradin 2001: 149],
or the Icelandic polity of the ‘Age of Democracy’ till the middle of the 13th
century [Olgeirsson 1957; Gurevich 1972; Steblin-Kamenskij 1984]) which
could not yet be denoted with any commonly accepted terms, and whose
own self-designations are often too complex (like Kazach'e Vojsko) to have
any chance to get transformed into general terms. Such examples can of
course be further multiplied.
And this is not all. There is another evident problem with Service's
scheme. It is evidently pre-‘Wallersteinian’, not touched by any world-
system discussions, quite confident about the possibility of the use of a sin-
gle polity as a unit of social evolution. It might be not so important if Ser-
vice were speaking about the typology of polities; yet, he speaks about the
‘levels of cultural integration’, and within such a context the world-system
dimension should be evidently taken into consideration4.
The point is that the same overall level of complexity could be
achieved both through the development of a single polity and through the
development of a politically uncentralized interpolity network. This alterna-
tive was already noticed by Wallerstein (1974, 1979, 1987) who viewed it
as a dichotomy: world-economy – world-empire. Note that according to
Wallerstein these are considered precisely as alternatives, and not two
stages of social evolution. As one would expect, we agree with Wallerstein
whole-heartedly at this point. However, we also find here a certain over-
simplification. In general, we would like to stress that we are dealing here
with a particular case of a much more general set of evolutionary alterna-
tives.
The development of a politically uncentralized interpolity network be-
came an effective alternative to the development of a single polity long be-
fore the rise of the first empires. As an example, we could mention the in-
terpolity communication network of the Mesopotamian civil-temple com-
munities of the first half of the 3rd millennium B.C. which sustained a much
higher level of technological development than that of the politically uni-
fied Egyptian state, contemporary to it. Note that the intercommunal com-
munication networks already constitute an effective evolutionary alternative
to the chiefdom. E.g., the sociopolitical system of the Apa Tanis should be
better described as an intercommunal network of a few communities (inci-
dentally, in turn acting as a core for another wider network including the
neighboring less developed polities [chiefdoms and sovereign communi-
ties] – see Führer-Haimendorf 1962).
We also do not find it productive to describe this alternative type of cul-
tural integration as a world-economy. The point is that such a designation
tends to downplay the political and cultural dimension of such systems.
Take for example, the Classical Greek inter-polis system. The level of
complexity of many Greek poleis was rather low even in comparison with a
complex chiefdom. However, they were parts of a much larger and much
more complex entity constituted by numerous economic, political and cul-
tural links and shared political and cultural norms. The economic links no
doubt played some role within this system. But links of other types were not
less important. Take, e.g., the norm according to which the inter-poleis wars
stopped during the Olympic Games, which guaranteed the secure passage
of people, and consequently the circulation of enormous quantities of en-
ergy, matter and information within the territory far exceeding the one of an
average complex chiefdom. The existence of the inter-poleis communica-
tion network made it possible, say, for a person born in one polis to go to
get his education in another polis and to establish his school in a third. The
existence of this system reduced the destructiveness of inter-poleis warfare
for a long time. It was a basis on which it was possible to undertake impor-
tant collective actions (which turned out to be essential at the age of the
Greek-Persian wars). As a result, the polis with a level of complexity lower
than the one of the complex chiefdom, turned out to be part of a system
whose complexity was quite comparable with that of the state (and not only
the early one).
The same can be said about the intersocietal communication network of
Medieval Europe (comparing its complexity in this case with an average
world-empire). Note that in both cases some parts of the respective systems
could be treated as elements of wider world-economies. On the other hand,
not all the parts of such communication networks were quite integrated
economically. This shows that the world-economies were not the only pos-
sible type of politically decentralized intersocietal networks. Actually, in
both cases we are dealing with the politically decentralized civilization,
which for most of human history over the last few millennia, constituted the
most effective alternative to the world-empire. Of course, many of such
civilizations could be treated as parts of larger world-economies. Waller-
stein suggests that in the age of complex societies only the world-
economies and world-empires (‘historical systems’, i.e. the largest units of
social evolution) could be treated as units of social evolution in general. Yet
we believe that both politically centralized and decentralized civilizations
should also be treated as such. One should stress again the importance of
the cultural dimension of such systems. Of course, the exchange of bulk
goods was important. But exchange of information was also important.
Note that the successful development of science both in Classical Greece
and Medieval Europe became only possible through an intensive intersocie-
tal information exchange, whereas the development of science in Europe
affected, to a significant extent, the evolution of the Modern World-System.
It is important to stress that the intersocietal communication networks
could appear among much less complex societies (Wallerstein has denoted
them as ‘mini-systems’ without actually studying them, for a recent review
of the research on the archaic intersocietal networks see Chase-Dunn and
Grimes 1995; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997). Already it
seems possible to speak about a communication network covering most of
aboriginal Australia. Again we come here across a similar phenomenon – a
considerable degree of cultural complexity (complex forms of rituals, my-
thology, arts, and dance well comparable with the ones of early agricultur-
ists) observed among populations with an apparently rather simple political
organization. This could largely be explained by the fact that relatively
simple Australian local groups were parts of a much more complex
whole: a huge intersocietal communication network that apparently covered
most of Australia (e.g., Bakhta and Senyuta 1972; Artemova 1987).
Thus, it is possible to contrast societies that followed the pathway of po-
litical centralization and ‘authoritarianization’ with cultures that further
elaborated and perfected democratic communal backgrounds and corre-
sponding self-government institutions. However, such a culture as the Be-
nin Kingdom of the 13th – 19th centuries can make the picture of sociopoli-
tical evolution even more versatile. In particular, it reveals that not only
heterarchical but also homoarchical societies can reach a very high (incom-
parably higher than that of complex chiefdoms) level of sociocultural com-
plexity and political centralization still never transforming into a state dur-
ing the whole long period of existence. The Benin evidence also testifies
that local community's autonomy is not a guarantee of complex society's
advancement along the heterarchical pathway. We have suggested else-
where to define this form of sociopolitical organization as ‘megacommu-
nity’ (see e. g., Bondarenko 1994; 1995a: 276–284; 1995b; 2001: 232–249).
Its structure may be depicted in the shape of four concentric circles forming
an upset cone. These ‘circles’ are as follows: the extended family, ex-
tended-family community (in which familial ties were supplemented by
those of neighbor ones), chiefdom, and finally, the broadest circle that in-
cluded all the three narrower ones, that is the megacommunity as such (the
Benin Kingdom as a whole). The specific characteristic of megacommunity
is its ability to organize a complex, ‘many-tier’ society predominantly on
the basis of transformed kinship principle within rather vast territories.
Still, another evident alternative to the state seems to be represented by
the supercomplex chiefdoms created by some nomads of Eurasia – the
number of the structural levels within such chiefdoms appear to be equal, or
even to exceed those within the average state, but they have an entirely dif-
ferent type of political organization and political leadership; such type of
political entities do not appear to have been ever created by the agricultur-
ists (e. g., Kradin 1992: 146−152; 1996, 2000a, 2000b).
Besides the Benin megacommunity and nomadic supercomplex chief-
doms, the first half of the 19th century Zulu power can serve as an example
at this point. Within that vast and mighty militaristic power one can observe
high degree of supracommunal institutions' hierarchization and high rigidity
of this institutional hierarchy (see, e.g., Gluckman 1940; Ritter 1955). So-
cieties with profoundly elaborated rigid caste systems may be a homoarchi-
cal alternative to also homoarchical (by the very definition; see Claessen
and Skalník 1978: 533–596, 637–650) early states, too (Quigley 1999: 114–
169; Kobishchanov 2000: 64).
So, alternativity characterizes not only two basic macrogroups of human
associations, i.e. homoarchical and heterarchical societies. Alternativity
does exist within each of them, too. In particular, within the upper range of
complexity and integrativity of the sociopolitical organization the state (at
least in the pre-industrial world) ‘competes’ with not only heterarchical
systems of institutions (e. g., with polis) but also with some forms of socio-
political organization not less homoarchical than the state.
Among numerous factors capable to influence the nature of this or that
society, the family and community type characteristic of it seems to deserve
notice. The distinction in the correlation of kin and neighborhood (territo-
rial) lines is in its turn connected with the dominant type of community (as
a universal substratum social institution). A cross-cultural research con-
ducted earlier (Bondarenko and Korotayev 1999; 2000b) has generally cor-
roborated the initial hypothesis (Bondarenko 1997: 13–14; 1998b: 198–
199) that the extended-family community in which vertical social ties and
non-democratic value system are usually vividly expressed, being given the
shape of kinship relations (elder − younger), is more characteristic of ho-
moarchical societies5. Heterarchical societies appear to be more frequently
associated with the territorial communities consisting of nuclear families in
which social ties are horizontal and apprehended as neighborhood ties
among those equal in rights6.
In the course of our cross-cultural research in the community forms, an-
other factor important for determining societies’ homoarchization vs. heter-
archization was revealed. It appeared that probability of a democratic (het-
erarchical) sociopolitical organization development is higher in cultures
where monogamous rather polygynous families dominate (Korotayev and
Bondarenko 2000).
However, besides social factors (including those mentioned above), a set
of phenomena stemming from the fact that political culture is a reflection of
a society's general culture type, is also important for determining its evolu-
tionary pathway. The general culture type that varies from one civilization
to another defines the trends and limits of sociocultural evolution. Though
culture itself forms under the influence of different factors (sociohistorical,
natural, etc.) the significance of the general culture type for the sociopoliti-
cal organization is not at all reduced to the so-called ‘ideological factor’
(Bondarenko and Korotayev 2000c; Claessen 2000b). It influences crucially
the essence of political culture characteristic for a given society, ‘most
probably revealing itself as fully as economic, religious, artistic potential
from the very beginning’ (Zubov 1991: 59). In its turn, political culture
determines human vision of the ideal sociopolitical model which corre-
spondingly, may be different in various cultures. This way political culture
forms the background for the development of character, types and forms of
complex political organization emergence, including the enrolling of this
process along either the homoarchical or heterarchical evolutionary path-
ways. But real, ‘non-ideal’ social institutions are results of conscious activi-
ties (social creativity) of people to no small degree, though people are fre-
quently not capable to realize completely global sociopolitical outcomes of
their deeds aimed at realization of personal goals. People create in the so-
cial sphere (as well as in other spheres) in correspondence with the value
systems they adopt within their cultures in the process of socialization.
They apprehend these norms as the most natural, the only true ones.
Hence, it is evident that the general culture type is intrinsically con-
nected with its respective modal personality type. In their turn, the funda-
mental characteristics of modal personality types are transmitted by means
of socialization practices which correspond to the value system generally
accepted in a given society and can influence significantly its political evo-
lution (see Irons 1979: 9–10, 33–35; Ionov 1992: 112–129; Bondarenko
and Korotayev 2000a: 309–312) though scholars usually tend to stress the
opposite influence, i. e. the influence of political systems on socialization
processes and personality types.
The ecological factor is also important for determination of the pathway
which this or that society follows (Bondarenko 1998b, 2000). Not only
natural environment but the sociohistorical one as well should be included
into the notion of ‘ecology’ in this case. The environment also contributes a
lot to the defining of a society's evolutionary potential, creating limits to its
advancement along the homoarchical or heterarchical axes. For example,
there is no predestined inevitability of transition from the simple to com-
plex society (Tainter 1990: 38; Lozny 2000) or from the early state to ma-
ture one (Claessen and van de Velde 1987: 20 etc.).
Let us discuss now the implications of the approach discussed above for
the study of the state formation processes and ‘politogenesis’ in general.
The tendency to see historical rules always and everywhere the same results
in gross perversion of historical reality. For example, concurrent political
processes are declared consecutive stages of the formation of the state. Be-
sides, the features of already mature state are illegitimately attributed to its
early forms and in consequence of this it becomes impossible to find any
‘normal’ early state practically anywhere.
The notion of ‘politogenesis’ was elaborated in the 1970s and 80s by
Kubbel (e. g., 1988) who employed it to define the process of state forma-
tion. But it has become evident by today that processes of archaic societies'
political evolution should not be reduced to the rise of the state exclusively
because this is rather just one particular version of those processes. We
suggest to use this term in order to denote the formation of any types of
complex political organization, which also looks more justifiable from the
etymological point of view: in ancient Greece the word politeia meant the
political order of any type, and not ‘state’.
We believe that among the students of politogenesis one can observe a
tendency to narrow the analysis to the study of the state formation process
only. This entirely legitimate intention to restrict and define the study field
still leads to the underestimation of the fact that for long periods of time the
state formation process was inseparably linked with other evolutionary pro-
cesses (e. g., processes of religious evolution), and this seems to hinder any
really profound explanation of the state formation processes themselves.
We believe that such explanations may be only achieved if the state forma-
tion processes are studied against background of all the other contemporary
evolutionary processes.
It seems impossible to say that such an approach was always ignored
(see e. g., Claessen and Skalník 1978; Claessen 2000a [especially p. 2]).
However, notwithstanding substantive achievements in the analysis of the
general cultural context of state formation processes this problem still ap-
pears to be far from its real solution.
One of the causes of this situation can be defined as ‘polito-centrism’.
Volens-nolens the state formation starts to be regarded as a central process
of the evolution of medium complexity cultures not just because of initial
definition of the research objective (which seems to be entirely legitimate);
it starts to be regarded as an objectively central process, whereas this is not
always true, because in many cases other processes (e. g., sociostructural or
religious) could be more important (for details, see Grinin 2001).
On the other hand, sure enough, there were not one but many models of
politogenesis in the time of the transition from more simple societies to
more complex (both socioculturally and technologically) ones. The resul-
tant cultures often differ from the state, but it is incorrect to consider them
pre-state structures, because they could be well compared to the early state
as regards their complexity, functions and causes of their formation.
Therefore, the evolutionary pathway within which the features of the
state familiar to us are guessed retrospectively, is only one of the possible
‘branches’ of the politogenesis. But since later most alternative sociopoliti-
cal structures were destroyed by states, absorbed into states, or trans-
formed into states7, it might be reasonable to recognize the ‘state’ branch of
the politogenesis as ‘general’ and the alternative pathways as ‘lateral’.
This, however, does not deny the fact that the alternative sociopolitical
structures mentioned above cannot be adequately described as pre-state
formations, that they are quite comparable with early states by range of
their functions and level of their structural complexity. Therefore, it seems
possible to designate them as early state analogues (for detail, see Grinin
1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2002, 2003). The term ‘early state analogue’ under-
lines both typological and functional resemblance of such forms to the early
state and differences in structure. The introduction of this term makes it
possible to describe the process of politogenesis more adequately.
In order to find solutions for a certain range of political anthropology
problems it is necessary to consider the genesis of early state in the general
context of socioevolutionary processes coeval with it. This could make it
possible to appreciate more exactly the correlation between general evolu-
tion and state formation processes. For example, it seems evident that the
early state formation is finally connected with general changes caused by
the transition from the foraging to food production. This generally resulted
in the growth of sociocultural complexity. This led to the appearance of the
objective needs in new methods of organization of societies and new forms
of contacts between them. But in different societies it was expressed in dif-
ferent ways. So, over long periods of time, the growth of sociostructural
complexity, the exploitation of neighbors, development of commerce, prop-
erty inequality and private ownership, growth of the role of religious cults
and corporations etc. could serve as alternatives to purely administrative
and political decisions of above-mentioned problems. And in these terms,
the early state is only one of forms of new organization of the society and
intersociety relations.
As a result we could suggest the following points for the future study of
the socioevolutionary processes in medium complexity cultures:
1) interrelatedness and interconnectedness of the political aspects of the
politogenesis and the other aspects (religious, sociostructural etc.);
2) causes of underdevelopment and fragmentary character of the admin-
istrative institutions in the early states;
3) causes of relative easiness of the transition from one pattern of grow-
ing sociocultural complexity to another;
4) determining of sociopolitical evolution models by historical-cultural
and geographical conditions.
NOTES
*
First published in Social Evolution & History 1 (1), July 2002, pp. 54–79 un-
der the title ‘Alternative Pathways of Social Evolution’.
1
Note, however, that in fact this was frequently essentially Spencerian vision
which was implied in such cases; that is the evolution was perceived as ‘а change
from an incoherent homogeneity to а coherent heterogeneity’ (Spencer 1972
[1862]: 71).
2
The state is understood throughout as ‘…a sufficiently stable political unit
characterized by the organization of power and administration which is separated
from the population, and claims a supreme right to govern certain territory and
population, i. e. to demand from it certain actions irrespective of its agreement or
disagreement to do this, and possessing resources and forces to achieve these
claims’ (Grinin 1997: 20; see also Grinin 2000c: 190).
3
See also its fundamental criticism by Mann (1986), the most radically negative
attitude to this scheme expressed in categories of social evolution ‘trajectories al-
ternativity’ by Yoffee (1993), several collective works of recent years (Patterson
and Gailey 1987; Ehrenreich et al. 1995; Kradin and Lynsha 1995; Kradin et al.
2000; Bondarenko and Korotayev 2000a), proceedings of recent international con-
ferences (Butovskaya et al. 1998; Bondareko and Sledzevski 2000).
4
There is considerable difference in the general ‘world-system’ and civiliza-
tional approaches. While the former tends to develop the globalistic viewpoint on
history, the latter emphasizes regional trends and tendencies of evolution. At the
same moment, our employment of the ‘world-system’ approach in this part of our
paper, in our opinion must not be apprehended as a contradiction within our overall
‘civilizational’ approach. First, there is an important aspect the respective ap-
proaches share: both of them stress supra-local (of more than one society) trends of
changes in different spheres; and, second, pre-modern ‘world-systems’ as they are
represented in the corresponding approach supporters’ works (except A. Gunder
Frank's version [e.g., Frank and Gills 1993]) look very similarly with what is called
‘civilizations’ within another approach [e.g., Abu-Lughod 1989; Sanderson 1995;
Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997]. Furthermore, it looks very much like that in the United
States the general understanding of the necessity to study evolution and history on
the supra-local level came through Wallerstein while in reality it was the civiliza-
tional approach (especially of the Danilevsky – Spengler – Toynbee ‘brand’) for
which this principle became most fundamental much earlier.
5
This appears to be especially relevant for those societies where extended fami-
lies are dominated not by groups of brothers, but by individual ‘fathers’ (see e.g.,
Bromley 1981: 202–210).
6
Note that among not only humans but other primates too, the role of kin rela-
tions is greater in homoarchically organized associations (Thierry 1990; Butov-
skaya and Feinberg 1993: 25–90; Butovskaya 1993; 2000; Butovskaya, Korotayev,
and Kazankov 2000).
7
However, such transformations could only happen when certain conditions
were present. E.g., this could happen as a result of the influence of neighboring
state systems.
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2
Was the Chiefdom a Congelation of Ideas?*
Robert L. Carneiro
American Museum of Natural History, New York
Which of you by taking thought can add one

cubit onto his stature?
Matthew 6: 27
The pioneer American sociologist Lester F. Ward thought of the rise of the
state as ‘the result of an extraordinary exercise of the rational ... faculty’, an
achievement so exceptional that ‘it must have been the emanation of a sin-
gle brain or a few concerting minds...’ (Ward 1883, 2: 224).
Nor was Ward's espousal of ideas as the paramount factors in political
evolution unique for his time. The Enlightenment had substituted the mind
of man for the will of God as the prime mover of human history, and those
who followed made free use of ideas in accounting for the origin of a multi-
tude of institutions. Let us look at some expressions of this view.
In his Cours de Philosophie Positive, Auguste Comte (1830–1842, 1:
48) affirmed that ‘it cannot be necessary to prove to anybody who reads this
work that ideas govern and overthrow the world...’ And Comte's English
disciple, John Stuart Mill (1856, 2: 517), believed that ‘the order of human
progress in all respects will mainly depend on the order of progression in
the intellectual convictions of mankind...’ Ralph Waldo Emerson, who ac-
cording to Leslie White (1949: 279) ‘provided the intelligentsia of America
with the verbal reflexes called “thought”’, declared that ‘always the thought
is prior to the fact; all the facts of history preexist in the mind ... Every
revolution was first a thought in one man's mind...’ (Emerson n.d.a: l–2).
Carneiro / Was the Chiefdom a Congelation of Ideas? pp. 28–45

Carneiro / Was the Chiefdom a Congelation of Ideas? 29
The English historian Lord Acton, best known for his aphorism about
power and corruption, gave one of the clearest expressions of the idealist
position regarding the course of history:
...a strong materialistic tendency pervades a very popular portion of our
literature. But what is really wanted, and what we ought to claim of our
historians is the reverse of this. If history is to be understood as an intel-
lectual, and not a natural process, it must be studied as the history of the
mind.
And he went on to say:
Deeds as well as words are the sign of thought: and if we consider
only external events, without following the course of ideas of which they
are the expression and the result, ...we shall have but a lame notion of
history... (quoted in Lally 1942: 216)1.
With the rise of social science, however, a profound change began to
occur in the way human history was interpreted. Material conditions began
to be assigned a larger role in history. Nonetheless, several 19th-century
anthropologists still clung to a belief in the dominant role of ideas. Adolf
Bastian, according to Gumplowicz (1899: 38, 38–39), ‘attributes all social
phenomena to human thought... With him thoughts are always primary and
deeds are an emanation from them...’ In much the same terms, Colonel
A. H. Pitt-Rivers (1906: 21) spoke of ‘the science of culture in which the
subjects treated are emanations from the human mind...’
Perhaps the strongest statement of ‘ideological determinism’ in anthro-
pology is to be found in the writings of Sir James Frazer (1913: 168):
The more we study the inward workings of society and the progress
of civilization, the more clearly shall we perceive how both are governed
by the influence of thoughts which, springing up at first we know not
how or whence in a few superior minds, gradually spread till they have
leavened the whole inert lump... of mankind.
Nor did this viewpoint come to an end with the maturing of the social
sciences. Indeed, it has its share of advocates among sociologists and an-
thropologists today. Talcott Parsons, perhaps the most influential sociolo-
gist of his generation, maintained that ‘the basic differentiating factors in
socio-cultural evolution [are] much more “ideal” ... than they are “mate-
rial”...’ (Parsons 1972: 5). And again, ‘…I believe that, within the social
system, the normative elements are more important for social change than
the “material elements”...’ (Parsons 1966: 113).
Robert Redfield (1955: 30) held a similar view:
The world of men is made up in [the] first place of ideas and ideals.
If one studies the rise of urban communities out of more primitive com-
munities, it is the change in the mental life, in norms and in aspirations,
in personal character, too, that becomes the most significant aspect of
the transformation.
It is the aim of this paper to look closely at just what might be meant
when theorists assert the primacy of ideas in the evolution of culture. And
in particular, I would like to assess how successful such an approach might
be in accounting for the first major step in political evolution – the rise of
the chiefdom.
CULTURAL MATERIALIST INTERPRETATIONS

Alongside the view that ideas are the prime movers of culture, there grew
up among the early evolutionists the opposite notion – that customs, beliefs,
and institutions could better be explained by referring them to the material
conditions which preceded and accompanied them.
To be sure, the two opposing views did not always occur separately and
unalloyed. The same scholar might express a materialist view in one regard
and an idealist view in another. Lewis H. Morgan, for example, looked to-
ward essentially ideological determinants to account for social institutions,
but to material ones to account for mechanical inventions. And a similar
‘dualism’ can be found in the writings of E. B. Tylor (see Carneiro [1973:
99–100, 102–104] for an extended discussion of this point).
Herbert Spencer, the third great 19th-century evolutionist, was more con-
sistently in the materialist camp. Or at least, he was seldom found in the
camp of the idealists. Thus, in rebutting Comte's contention that ‘ideas gov-
ern and overthrow the world’, Spencer (1891: 128) maintained that ‘ideas
do not govern and overthrow the world: the world is governed or over-
thrown by feelings, to which ideas serve only as guides’. And in discussing
political evolution Spencer (1890: 395) summed up his views of social cau-
sation by stating that, ‘as with the genesis of simple political heads, so with
the genesis of compound political heads, conditions and not intentions de-
termine’.
The inclination to look for the determinants of social forms in environ-
ment, technology, subsistence, economics, and the like, has grown in an-
thropology, receiving support in the work of such men as Clark Wissler,
Julian Steward, Leslie White, and Marvin Harris. In fact, those anthropolo-
gists who make a particular study of political evolution today, be they ar-
chaeologists or ethnologists, generally adopt a cultural materialist approach
to this problem.
The idealist position, though, as I have noted, is by no means dead. The
last two decades have seen a resurgence of interest in the symbolic and
ideological aspects of culture. All well and good. But it is one thing to
elicit, record, and interpret the system of ideas of a people, and quite an-
other to elevate these ideas to a position of causal primacy in accounting for
the socio-political structure of their society. Yet there is still a marked ten-
dency to do just this. The legacy of Robert Redfield is alive and well at the
University of Chicago and elsewhere. Indeed, it may even be spreading.
Accordingly, it may not be out of place to issue a warning: ‘Idealitis’ is not
only contagious but virulent. Still, the situation is by no means hopeless.
Where it is too late to prevent the affliction, it may not be too late to pre-
scribe an antidote and effect a cure. At any rate, let us try.
The specific aim of this paper, as I have said, is to see how valid it is to
account for the rise of the chiefdom in ideological terms. But since this
problem is but part of a larger issue – the value of ideological explanations
in accounting for cultural forms generally – it seems fitting to attack the
larger question first before focusing on the smaller one.
THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

Now, exactly what do theorists have in mind when they assert that ideas lie
at the root of the chiefdom, or of any other institution? Is such an assertion
any more than a statement of the obvious? After all, every human action
that is not physically coerced is preceded by an idea. I pick up a stone and
throw it at a tree because I first conceived the idea of doing so. Ideas are
necessary antecedent states of mind preceding almost any human action.
And if this is all there is to ‘ideological determinism’, it seems trivial in-
deed. Of course ideas must precede actions and create the volitions that are
implemented by those actions. My pen will not move an inch unless I de-
cide I want it to. Charlemagne would not have crowned himself Emperor
of the Franks had he not conceived the idea of doing so. But what do we
gain in explanatory power by restating something that is necessary and self-
evident? Nothing. Indeed, we lose by it. We lose because we have created
the illusion of an explanation where none exists.
Ideas may be necessary preconditions for any action, but just because
they are the proximate cause does not make them the ultimate cause. Ideas
cannot be accepted as given; they must be traced to their source. And their
source is always the matrix of conditions out of which they arose, not the
individual in whose mind their elements happened to combine. The thought
may be father to the deed, but conditions are always father to the thought.
Ideas have consequences, but they also have causes.
Thus in human behavior an Idea forms but an intermediate link, a mid-
dle term, between a Condition and an Outcome. Only if we truncate the
chain of causation do we come away with the notion that the cause-and-
effect relationship involved is:
Idea Outcome,
instead of the fuller sequence:
Condition Idea Outcome.
But now, if ideas invariably result from a nexus of preceding conditions,
are we not more likely to advance our quest for the origin of institutions if
we abandon our fixation on ideas and apply ourselves to ferreting out these
conditions?
To deny this is, in effect, to argue that the ideas that transform societies
are ones that come from deep within the psyche of a few gifted individuals,
arising there, pure and pristine, untainted by any contact with surrounding
conditions. This view, of course, has had its advocates. It is implicit in the
dictum of Ralph Waldo Emerson (n.d.b: 38) that ‘an institution is the
lengthened shadow of one man...’ It is explicit in the statement by William
James (1880: 458) that the great inventions of history, social as well as me-
chanical, ‘were flashes of genius in an individual head, of which the outer
environment showed no sign’.
We find this view again in James Breasted's attempt to attribute the ori-
gin of monotheism to the uncommon genius of one man, the pharaoh Ikhna-
ton:
Until Ikhnaton, the history of the world had been but the irresistible
drift of tradition... Ikhnaton was the first individual in history. Con-
sciously and deliberately, by intellectual process he gained his position,
and then placed himself squarely in the face of tradition and swept it
away (quoted in White 1949: 237)2.
These statements clearly show that one of the dangers of an ideological
interpretation of history is the ease with which it slides over into the quick-
sand of the Great Man Theory. And, at least since the time of Herbert
Spencer, it has been recognized that there are insuperable difficulties with
the view that the great cultural advances were due to Great Ideas generated
by Great Men. The main difficulty with this view is, of course, How are
Great Men to be accounted for? Why, for instance, was there such a dense
clustering of geniuses in Athens from the 6th to the 4th centuries B.C. and
virtually none thereafter?
Those who place their faith in the Great Man or the Genius freely admit
that they find no way of accounting for him. John Fiske (quoted in Payne
1900: 142), for example, believed that ‘the social philosopher must simply
accept geniuses as data, just as Darwin accepts his spontaneous variations’.
And Justin Kaplan (1983: 250), a Pulitzer Prize winning biographer, affirms
that ‘the Genius works in a dazzling darkness of his own which normal
modes of explanation hardly penetrate’.
Earlier we saw that James Frazer attributed the progress of civilization
to ideas issuing from ‘a few superior minds’. In the same place, Frazer
(1913: 168) went on to say:
The origin of such mental variations, with all their far-reaching train
of social consequences, is just as obscure as is the origin of such physi-
cal variations on which, if biologists are right, depends the evolution of
the species... Perhaps the same Unknown cause which determines the
one set of variations gives rise to the other...
‘Genius’, then, is unfathomable and inexplicable. What a ‘genius’ cre-
ates is singular and unique, defying all laws and surpassing rational under-
standing.
Needless to say, this way of looking at the mainsprings of history is the
antithesis of science. Indeed, it is anathema to science. The job of science is
to find the network of causes that renders everything intelligible. Science
does not entertain the existence of phenomena that are inherently incom-
prehensible. If anything, it denies their existence. Or at least it makes every
effort to unmask any phenomenon that poses as incomprehensible.
Science, therefore, rejects out of hand William James' contention that
inventions are ‘flashes of genius in an individual head, of which the outer
environment showed no sign’. And it should be noted that in the very next
issue of the journal that carried James' views on this subject there appeared
a vigorous rejoinder to them by Grant Allen. Wrote Allen (1881: 381):
Dr. James's ‘fortuitous’ and ‘spontaneous’ variations, however care-
fully he may veil them, are merely long names for miracles... [T]he the-
ory of spontaneous variations accidentally producing genius ... is noth-
ing more than a deification of Caprice, conceived as an entity capable of
initiating changes outside of the order of physical causation3.
Thus, when an idea is said to be unaccountable, the gauntlet is automati-
cally thrown down to social science. And the challenge is to discover the
circumstances out of which this ‘unaccountable’ idea arose; to reveal it as
the determinate outcome of specifiable conditions.
Each of the great ideas of history – the domestication of plants, the
smelting of ores, positional notation, gravitation, evolution, relativity, etc. –
may indeed have coalesced in an individual mind. But in each case the idea
was a synthesis of other ideas that already existed and were active in the
culture. And without these preexisting, interacting elements, the synthesis
would not have occurred. Could Newton have formulated the law of univer-
sal gravitation had he not had, as stepping stones, Galileo's law of falling
bodies and the observations of planetary motions by Brahe, Kepler, and
Copernicus?
Rather than bolts of lightning issuing from the minds of geniuses, inven-
tions can more realistically be regarded as new conjunctions of cultural
elements arising from the operation of the culture process. What we call the
culture process has been described by Leslie White (1950: 76) as
a stream of interacting cultural elements – of instruments, beliefs, cus-
toms, etc. In this interactive process, each element impinges upon others
and is in turn acted upon by them. The process is a competitive one: in-
struments, customs and beliefs may become obsolete and eliminated
from the stream. New elements are incorporated from time to time. New
combinations and syntheses – inventions and discoveries – of cultural
elements are continually being formed...
A ‘genius’ is someone favorably positioned in this process so that he is
at the confluence or vortex of converging cultural streams, and can catch
and ride the new eddies and currents being formed. He is the fortunate ve-
hicle through which a new cultural synthesis takes place. As Edward Beesly
(1861: 171) phrased it more than a century ago, ‘Men of genius ... influence
their age precisely in proportion as they comprehend and identify with its
spirit’.
Culture traits, of course, do not act on each other independently of peo-
ple and the thoughts that occur in their heads. The human brain is the recep-
tacle into which the immaterial aspects of culture are poured. And it is not
just a passive receptacle. It is a neurological mixmaster, in which ideas con-
tinually act and react on one another, giving rise on rare occasions to a new
‘blend’. However, the properties of this new blend of cultural elements –
the invention or discovery – depend, not on the properties of the blender,
but on the ingredients that went into it.
The content of an invention thus depends on the cultural milieu in which
the inventor finds himself. If this milieu does not provide a fit environment
for its formation, the new idea will simply not emerge, the cultural synthe-
sis will not take place. The idea of parliamentary government, for example,
could scarcely have arisen in the mind of an Aurignacian reindeer hunter.
Nor could an Australian aborigine have invented the calculus. Indeed, had
Isaac Newton been born an Arunta he would not have invented it either. But
someone else would have. Indeed, someone else did. Independently of
Newton, and almost contemporaneously with him, Leibniz also invented
the calculus. Are we forced to ascribe this occurrence to an extraordinary
and fortuitous coincidence? Not at all. It was simply a matter of both New-
ton and Leibniz being immersed or positioned in the same maturing stream
of mathematical ideas.
This and hundreds of other instances of simultaneous but independent
inventions and discoveries show that when the time is ripe – when the cul-
ture process has advanced to the requisite point – an idea will occur to more
than one mind at the same time. No better proof than this is needed to show
that great inventions are not inexplicable emanations from inscrutable
minds. Rather, they are determinate outcomes of evolving and converging
streams of culture.
Let us return for a moment to the Arunta. The reason the Arunta never
invented the calculus was not because of any genetic deficiency. Nothing
leads us to suppose that among them, as among any human population,
there would not have been a sprinkling of individuals with the superior neu-
rological equipment required to invent the calculus. Their failure to do so
lay not in their genes but in their culture. Had their culture, and, especially,
their mathematical tradition, been comparable to that of mid-17th-century
England, some gifted Arunta might well have achieved this cultural synthesis.
The British sociologist Morris Ginsberg (1932: 74) made the same point
decades ago:
It seems probable ... that the proportion of gifted men produced is
fairly constant, while the expression or realization of their potentialities
awaits and depends upon opportunities provided by the occasions of ex-
ceptional stir and exhilaration present in the epochs of progress.
Thus, Kroeber (1948: 339) noted, ‘only a fraction of all the men con-
genitally equipped for genius ever actualize as such. Only a fraction are
ever found out, or allowed the rank by history’.
Mark Twain (1961: 151–152) expressed this same idea in a characteris-
tically striking way:
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by them-
selves or by others. But for the Civil War, Lincoln and Grant, Sherman
and Sheridan would not have been discovered, nor have risen into no-
tice. I have touched upon this matter in a small book... Captain Storm-
field's Visit to Heaven. When Stormfield arrived in heaven he was eager
to get a sight of those unrivaled and incomparable military geniuses,
Caesar, Alexander and Napoleon, but was told by an old resident of
heaven that they didn't amount to much there as military geniuses, that
they ranked as obscure corporals only, by comparison with a certain co-
lossal genius, a shoemaker by trade, who had lived and died unknown in
a New England village and never seen a battle in all his earthly life. He
had not been discovered while he was in the earth but heaven knew him
as soon as he arrived there and lavished upon him the honors he would
have received ... if the earth had known that he was the most prodigious
military genius the planet had ever produced4.
Thoughts – ideas – are both constrained and impelled. Constrained
because circumstances may greatly narrow what may be thought. (Could
the most brilliant Yahgan who ever lived, shivering on the rocky coast of
Tierra del Fuego, have possibly formulated the Second Law of Thermody-
namics?) Impelled because once the right circumstances are present, cer-
tain ideas seem to spring up irresistibly, and individuals caught in the vor-
tex of these swirling cultural elements are virtually forced to synthesize
them. If anyone doubts this, listen to Herbert Spencer (1926, II: 460):
Once having become possessed by the conception of Evolution in its
comprehensive form, the desire to elaborate and set it forth was so
strong that to have passed life in doing something else would, I think,
have been almost intolerable.
What must we conclude, then, about those who affirm the primacy of
ideas in begetting cultural change? If all they mean to say is that ideas are a
necessary middle term between conditions and consequences, then their
argument is obvious and trivial. But if they hold that culture advances only
because uniquely gifted individuals are able to generate singular thoughts,
quite independently of surrounding conditions, then their argument is de-
monstrably false.
THE IMPLEMENTATION OF IDEAS

Even granting the importance of ideas, no matter how original and brilliant
an idea might be, by itself it is not enough. It must be implanted in a seed
bed which will allow it to germinate, burgeon, and flower. Who knows if
some shambling Neanderthal ‘genius’, earnestly cogitating behind his slop-
ing brow, may not, at some point in his life, have conceived the idea of a
chiefdom? But it is one thing to conceive, quite another to effectuate. And
the cultural conditions that prevailed during the Middle Paleolithic were
simply not conducive to the rise of chiefdoms. This would have been just as
true, moreover, had Caesar or Alexander or Napoleon – or even the New
England cobbler! – been born a Neanderthal. Chiefdoms did not arise until
suitable conditions were present. And when they were, chiefdoms sprang up
in many parts of the world, like mushrooms after a summer storm. As Her-
bert Spencer put it, ‘conditions and not intentions determine’.
THE BASIS OF CHIEFDOMS

Of course, one needs to ask, what were the conditions that gave rise to the
chiefdom? And, given these conditions, what ‘ideas’ were then generated in
people’s minds to provide the link between conditions and consequences?
As I have discussed elsewhere (Carneiro 1970, 1981) several factors led
Neolithic villages to transcend local autonomy and create the multi-village
political units we call chiefdoms. These conditions were, essentially, the
presence of agriculture, the existence of environmental or social circum-
scription, population pressure, and warfare. Together, they formed the nec-
essary and sufficient conditions that triggered the process. Almost irresisti-
bly they led to the rise of chiefdoms, and then, in more limited areas, to the
emergence of the state.
Now, into what sorts of ideas would these conditions have been trans-
lated as chiefdoms began to be formed? The ideas involved, it seems to me,
would have been few and simple, and could have occurred to any ordinary
mind. They amounted to little more than this:
1. Defeat neighboring villages by force of arms.
2. Incorporate them and their territory into your political unit.
3. Take prisoners of war and make them work for you as slaves.
4. Use your close supporters to administer conquered territory if local
leaders prove rebellious.
5. Require your subjects to pay tribute to you periodically.
6. Require them also to provide fighting men in time of war.
These scant half-dozen ideas were quite enough to provide the intellec-
tual armamentarium involved in creating a chiefdom. Could any half-dozen
ideas be simpler? Could they not have occurred to anyone? Could they fail
to occur to a village chief faced with the problem of insufficient land and
covetous neighbors?
That these ideas were indeed simple and did occur to many a chief is
amply demonstrated by the facts. Look around the world during late Neo-
lithic and early Bronze Age times and you find hundreds of chiefdoms
emerging. Moreover, in terms of their basic structure, they all looked pretty
much alike. In fact, the more we learn about chiefdoms, the more we are
struck by the similarities and regularities they possess. And multiple recur-
rences of the same phenomenon are, of course, the sworn enemy of ‘strokes
of genius’, or ideas of which ‘the environment gave no outward sign’. Quite
the contrary. Rather than subtle, abstruse, and profound, the ideas that un-
derlay the chiefdom were easy and obvious. Thus chiefdoms themselves
were the predictable and inescapable outcome of a specifiable set of cir-
cumstances. Whenever these conditions were present, chiefdoms arose. It
was that simple.
The idea of a harsh, despotic, military basis for the chiefdom, which I
proposed above, does not appeal to everyone. Many find it uncongenial and
look instead for some theory that denies or abates the element of force.
Such persons would find solace and comfort in passages which appear to
contradict a martial and autocratic view of the nature of chiefdoms. Thus,
they might eagerly seize upon John Adair's characterization of chiefly
power among the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Cherokee at the time
he visited them.
...they have no words to express despotic power, arbitrary kings, op-
pressed or obedient subjects. The power of their chiefs is an empty
sound. They can only persuade or dissuade the people either by the force
of good-nature and clear reasoning or coloring things so as to suit their
prevailing passions (quoted in Peebles 1983: 185).
But as Christopher Peebles has made clear, the state of affairs Adair was
describing was that of 1775, and not the aboriginal condition of southeast-
ern chiefdoms. It was, in fact, the product of more than 200 years of disrup-
tion and deculturation, resulting directly or indirectly from European con-
tact. During the 16th century, before this disruption had occurred, the chief-
doms of the Southeast were ruled by powerful and intimidating military
leaders. Thus, an early Spanish chronicler known as the Gentleman of Elvas
wrote as follows of Tastaluca, a paramount chief encountered by de Soto's
expedition:
Before his dwelling, on a high place, was spread a mat for him, upon
which two cushions were placed, one above the other, to which he went
and sat down, his men placing themselves around, some way removed,
so that an open circle was formed about him, the Indians of the highest
rank being nearest his person. One of them shaded him from the sun
with a circular umbrella... It formed the standard of the Chief, which he
carried into battle. His appearance was full of dignity: he was tall of per-
son, muscular, lean and symmetrical. He was the suzerain of many terri-
tories, and of numerous people, being equally feared by his vassals and
neighboring nations (quoted in Peebles 1983: 184).
Only with the passage of time and the reversal of their fortunes were the
once-powerful chiefdoms of the Southeast ‘transformed into essentially
egalitarian societies made up of independent communities knit together into
loose confederacies’ (Peebles 1983: 185).
IDEOLOGY AS A VALIDATION OF REALTY

As Karl Hutterer has noted, ‘power is validated by its exercise’. That is to
say, the most effective way to make power recognized and accepted is to
wield it. Thus an Inca emperor, finding himself with 20,000 men mobilized
for work and nothing for them to do, had them move a hill from one place
to another, and when they were finished, had them move it back. More than
all the dazzling emblems and elaborate rituals of his office, it was acts of
this kind that made the Inca respected and obeyed.
Is there no way, then, to rescue ideology from the scrap heap of causal
explanations to which we appear to have consigned it? Perhaps there is. But
if ideology can be said to have served a significant function in the life of a
chiefdom, it was more in its maintenance than in its creation. Ideology can
be seen to play a role in proclaiming and sustaining the authority of a para-
mount chief after that authority has first been established by force of arms.
Once a chiefdom is in place, its leader still faces a severe challenge: to
make loyal, tax-paying subjects out of people who, shortly before, were his
sworn enemies. Created by naked force though it was, a chiefdom must at
some point begin to loosen the reins. The iron fist begins to don a velvet
glove. Efforts are made to soften oppression, or at least to justify it. In time,
a harsh fait accompli is made to seem the natural and proper order of
things. And achieving this transformation entails the creation of an ideol-
ogy – a nexus of myths, symbols, and rituals, of rationalizations and exhor-
tations, all meant to make tolerable, and perhaps even pleasant, that which
must be borne.
Although an ideology may grow up slowly and fitfully, it may eventu-
ally become an elaborate, coherent, and compelling system of beliefs and
practices. And if promoted effectively, this ideology may in time penetrate
so deeply into a chiefdom's traditions as to obscure and belie its true roots.
The ruthless conquests of a military despot may, in a few generations, be-
come transmogrified into a peaceful and benevolent joining of willing peo-
ples by an ancient leader who, if not a god himself, was at least guided by a
divine hand.
And if later generations of subjects thus come to be misled about how
the chiefdom really arose, is it any wonder that anthropologists, wrestling
with this same problem centuries later have been misled too?
THE TWO ASPECTS OF IDEOLOGY

Ideology has a double edge. It is persuasive and it is coercive. Durkheim
was right when he said that rules of conduct ‘are not only external to the
individual but are, moreover, endowed with coercive power by virtue of
which they impose themselves upon him...’ (quoted in White 1949: 146).
Implanted in an individual, cultural norms may incite a person to act, no
less than the point of a sword.
But culture operates most effectively the less coercive it appears. People
follow rules more willingly the more these rules seem, not mandates from
above, but impulses from within. One complies most readily when spoken
to by that wee small voice of conscience, unaware that, as Shakespeare
shrewdly saw, ‘Policy sits above conscience’ (Timon of Athens, Act III,
Scene 2).
Erich Fromm put the matter very neatly when he said, ‘a society works
best when people want to do what they have to do’. Paramount chiefs,
therefore, see to it that ideas of duty, allegiance, and fealty are instilled in
their subjects. In this way, as I have said, onerous and even odious tasks,
like obeying restrictive laws, paying taxes, and risking life and limb in time
of war, are made bearable. Indeed, if sufficiently imbued with societal
goals, subjects come to feel that fulfilling these demands is their patriotic
duty. And when devotion to duty is conspicuously rewarded with honor,
glory, fame, and rank, compliance with the desires and interests of the chief
becomes even more assured. Let me present just one example of this.
Ordinarily, paying taxes is regarded as a cheerless burden, but Fijian
chiefs had found a way to make it a festive occasion:
Tax-paying in Fiji, unlike that in Britain, – wrote the missionary
Thomas Williams, – is associated with all that the people love. The time
of its taking place is a high day; a day for the best attire, the pleasantest
looks, and the kindest words; a day for display: whales' teeth and cowrie
necklaces, orange-cowrie and pearl-shell breast ornaments, the scarlet
frontlet, the newest style of neck-band, ...the most graceful turban, pow-
der of jet black and rouge of the deepest red, are all in requisition on that
festive day. The coiffure that has been in process for months is now
shown in perfection; the beard, long nursed, receives extra attention and
the finishing touch; the body is anointed with the most fragrant oil, and
decorated with the gayest flowers and most elegant vines...
The Fijian carries his tribute with every demonstration of joyful ex-
citement, of which all the tribe concerned fully partake. Crowds of spec-
tators are assembled, and the king and his suite are there to receive the
impost, which is paid in with a song and a dance, and received with
smiles and applause. From this scene the tax-payers retire to partake of a
feast provided by their king.
And then Williams adds: ‘Surely the policy that can thus make the pay-
ing of taxes “a thing of joy”, is not contemptible’ (Williams 1870: 31–32).
So again we see that the heavier the overlay of rituals, the likelier a
chief's subjects are to act, as they believe, for the greater good of society.
And of course this eases the problems of the chief in his continuing efforts
to keep his chiefdom firmly under control.
Now, when political obligations, lightened in this way, are in addition
infused with religious meanings and sanctions, the silken cord of ideologi-
cal coercion is drawn still tighter. When the desire of the chief becomes
also the will of the gods, and compliance with it is rewarded with promises
of a glorious hereafter, or other supernatural recompense, who would will-
ingly demur? And to stiffen the spine of those who might, there is often
added the threat of swift and terrible reprisals by the gods if they should
fail.
As I suggested earlier, so overlaid with religious trappings may a chief-
dom (or a state) become as to give the false impression that, from its incep-
tion, it was a peaceful theocracy. The actual scenario, though, might have
been as follows. A chiefdom, arisen by conquest, might eventually push its
boundaries to their natural geographic limits, after which warfare might
cease, or at least greatly diminish for lack of enemies to fight. Thus shorn of
his original military role, the paramount chief might then begin to arrogate
onto himself more and more religious attributes and functions, seeking by
this means to maintain his power. In time, a chiefdom might take on all the
trappings of a peaceful theocracy, and someone observing it at this stage
might easily project this absence of war, coupled with the elaborate reli-
gious role of the chief, back to the chiefdom's very beginnings. Yet, if we
knew the early history of the chiefdom, we would clearly discern its martial
origins. If we must paint the primal chiefdom in bold colors, then, it is more
accurate to depict it as a secular military despotism than as a peaceful the-
ocracy.
One word of caution. An increase in ritual, myth, and symbol should not
always be taken to indicate a corresponding increase in political control.
Quite the opposite may be true. In an interesting paper, Martin R. Doornbos
has called attention to the fact that an efflorescence of ceremonialism in a
chiefdom or state may actually mask its decline and impending dissolution.
Based on his study of the Kingdom of Ankole in East Africa, Doornbos
(1985: 25, 34) writes:
...even if a political institution is increasingly decorated with gilt and
glitter, its actual functions may, nevertheless, be subject to decay. And
when most references to an institution begin to be concerned with its
pomp and circumstance and no longer with any effective ... role it might
have had, then it is not unreasonable to suspect that it has lost the es-
sence of its former role and position... [A]n inverse correlation is again
suggested, namely, the greater the ceremonialization of a particular role,
the weaker the actual ‘command’ powers of its incumbents.
Before a chiefdom or state reaches its senescence, though, its ideology
may well reflect something of its particular nature and structure. Thus, even
if we know only the ideology of a polity, we may be able to infer a number
of other things about it. Consider religious iconography, which is often the
material embodiment, in art, of certain ideas important to a society. And
take, for example, Chavín, whose total culture is very imperfectly known.
Of the little we know of Chavín, much of it comes from its ideology, as
reflected in its religious iconography. And while others may read it differ-
ently, to me this art denotes a strong military basis to Chavín society. And if
a strong and far-reaching religious superstructure – a church – characterized
Chavín, it was a church militant, acting in the service of a militant state.
Otherwise, why should the dominant symbols of Chavín religion have been
such creatures as jaguars and eagles instead of, say, guinea pigs and butter-
flies?
SIMILARITIES OF STRUCTURE AND THEIR MEANING

The more we look at chiefdoms around the world – in the Southeast, the
Circum-Caribbean, west, central, and east Africa, Polynesia, etc. – the more
we are struck by the similarities in their structure. And this is true not only
of their gross anatomy, but of their fine details as well. Thus we find many
traits occurring in chiefdom after chiefdom: the chief having the power of
life and death over his subjects, his indulgence in polygyny, his being car-
ried on a litter, the making of obeisances to him, burial in a special grave
along with his wives and retainers, etc., etc. And, as we noted before, the
more parallels we find in the organization of chiefdoms, the more they can
be seen as a normal, determinate, predictable, and even inevitable stage of
social evolution, and conversely, the less they will seem the result of a sin-
gular and fortuitous concourse of uncommon ideas.
CONCLUSIONS
It is now time to summarize. If ideas necessarily precede action, then ideas
must indeed be the precursors of all that was involved in the rise of the
chiefdom. However, ideas are not uncaused causes. They do not spring
from indeterminate and unfathomable sources. Nor are the ideas underlying
a chiefdom so abstruse and profound as to have required a prodigious intel-
ligence to formulate them. The conditions that brought the chiefdom into
being were simple, widespread, and recurring. And in explaining the rise of
the chiefdom we are likelier to succeed if we look carefully at these condi-
tions than if we try to penetrate the minds of those individuals who were
shaped by them.
NOTES
* First published in Social Evolution & History 1 (1), July 2002, pp. 80–100.
1
Any number of expressions of this view can be cited. Thus, the American
cleric Francis H. Johnson (1884: 638) thought it an ‘incontestable fact that mind is
the sole originating cause of which we have any knowledge...’, adding that ‘in our
experience of real causation the process is uniformly not from matter to mind, but
from mind to matter’. And the distinguished British historian John B. Bury (1930:
46), spoke of ‘history, in which thought is the characteristic and guiding force...’
2
A reliance on ‘geniuses’ as the prime movers of culture finds occasional ex-
pression in anthropology as well. Thus, Robert H. Lowie (1940: 25) wrote:
The tremendous importance of farming, then, lies not in what it did for mankind
when first introduced but what it was capable of achieving after being itself greatly
improved. The expert farmers of Peru could maintain a population of possibly three
million. This meant a chance for more geniuses to be born...
For other instances of anthropologists invoking ‘genius’ to account for cultural
advance see Wissler (1923: 331), Childe (1935: 5–6), Swanton (1930: 368), Boas
(1945: 76), and Kenyon (1959: 40).
3
Even before William James proclaimed it so unabashedly, J. F. McLennan
(1876: 231) was familiar with this mode of thought and heaped scorn upon it, call-
ing it, in Dugald Stewart's words, ‘the indolent philosophy which refers to a miracle
whatever appearance both in the natural and moral worlds it is unable to explain’.
(For leading me to this passage I am indebted to George W. Stocking, Jr. [1987:
168]).
4
Another aspect of the question of genius, but one which receives scant atten-
tion, is that of a person with little more than average intelligence who, because he is
thrust by circumstances into a particularly favorable position, is able to make a
great cultural synthesis. In my opinion, Charles Darwin lacked the intellectual acu-
ity of some of his contemporaries, such as Herbert Spencer or Thomas Henry Hux-
ley. Yet, by applying the intelligence he had to a major problem, and doing so with
extraordinary tenacity, he was able to achieve what was probably the most far-
reaching intellectual triumph of all time.
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3
Beyond States and Empires:
Chiefdoms and Informal Politics*
Patrick Chabal
King's College, London
Gary Feinman
The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
Peter Skalník
University of Pardubice
At the very beginning of the twenty-first century, the sovereignty and near
supremacy of the state are being challenged. Barely half a century ago,
some scholars envisaged an inevitable or direct historical path to more con-
solidated and larger polities: a world government, possibly a planetary state,
at the very least a concert of nation-states (Carneiro 1978; Hart 1948). Now
this appears to have been a flight of fancy. Even in the face of a revolution
in telecommunications and a powerful process of economic globalisation, it
has become evident that there has been no linear progression in political
development or centralisation. Political philosophers may find the prospect
of an unstoppable march towards homogeneous polities desirable or im-
moral. Social scientists simply register the forces which go against it and,
indeed, which may well pose dangers to the nation-state as it evolved dur-
ing the last two centuries.
* * *
Globalisation, the quest for democracy, as well as new processes of col-
lective identification, have enabled people to become increasingly aware
of the inequalities between nations, between whole continents, but also of
the sharp social divisions within states themselves. As a result various eth-
nic, regional, local, professional, party political and associational
Chabal, Feinman, and Skalník / Beyond States and Empires: Chiefdoms and Informal
Politics, pp. 46–60
Chabal, Feinman, and Skalník / Beyond States and Empires… 47
identities have emerged to compete with, and indeed defy the state. These
identities have political overtones but they may be wrapped in cultural garb
and underpinned by economic or ideological arguments.
There are today a vast number of non-state organisations across the
globe, ranging from separatist insurgencies, extremist parties, warlord net-
works, liberation movements, internationally organised crime networks, but
also various non-governmental organisations, with ambitions far greater
than those of most states. Some newly created religious bodies invoke loy-
alties never achieved by nation-states. In other parts of the world, a number
of so-called traditional polities claim back the authority they possessed be-
fore the advent of colonial rule, arguing that the state is a foreign body,
brought to those areas by the imperial rulers and that societies should be
governed by principles that evolved locally.
In brief, the contemporary world exhibits myriad political groupings
which do not fit easily within the accepted categories of nation-states and
are evolving in ways which do not match the standard expectations of po-
litical and economic development (Chabal 1992). Their very existence is a
challenge to the common conceptualisations of the world order and their
varied activities test the fabric of the international system. At the same time,
they ignore the boundaries of the nation and operate either across regions or
in the deeper recesses of individual countries. It is our view that what links
these groupings and movements is a series of attributes – political, cultural,
social and economic – most readily associated with the type of non-state,
small-scale, informal entities that have frequently been defined as chief-
doms.
Let us mention a few examples. The Kurdish people may comprise
twenty million people, yet there is no Kurdish state. Whereas the latter is
evidently not desired by those countries where Kurds live, it is also the case
that strong kinship structures with family chieftains at their head have per-
meated Kurdish political life and may have created disunity, thus prevent-
ing a nation-state from emerging. The FARC rebels have been fighting the
Colombian state for four decades. They effectively rule over large territo-
ries. Their ideology is however anti-state and the question arises as to what
form their polity takes today and what form it might take if they managed to
take over the whole country. In Lebanon, where the central state has been
comparatively weak for decades, the political culture associated with the
various confessional communities may also be seen as that of chiefdoms.
Further away, the recently defeated separatists on the island of Bougainville
in eastern Papua New Guinea had set up a military style polity, led by their
‘chief’, Francis Ona. Recently in Chad, Sierra Leone, or Angola, today still
in Somalia or Ivory Coast, parts of each country are or have been in the
hands of political movements whose existence depends to a high degree on
the outstanding personal qualities of leaders, warlords, or modern chiefs.
Even when a movement strives for national independence, the condi-
tions in which it struggles require a face-to-face organisation that is struc-
tured along informal lines, yet may be hierarchical. We know of the exis-
tence of the Palestinian National Council but this overtly democratic body
rarely assembles. The daily politics have been for decades in the hands of
Yasser Arafat and a small group of his collaborators. What is the organisa-
tional character of this group? How does it work? Are we dealing with
some kind of self-reproducing fiefdom, upon which has been erected the
ostensibly democratic edifice of the Palestine Liberation Organisation? On
the other hand, we know nearly nothing about the structure of Hamas,
which could be seen as a theocratic chiefdom at its core but is otherwise, a
loose network of supporters, would-be martyrs or suicide bombers. Equally
we hardly know little of the organisational structure of Al Qaeda and the
relationship between spiritual and executive leadership. Finally, what can
we say about religious sects such as cargo cults in Melanesia or the Johns-
town cult in Guyana which proclaim independence or simply behave as
though they were totally autonomous, ‘a state within a state’, with an inter-
nal structure that parallels chiefdoms.
Within contemporary nations there are numerous collective entities or
political groupings that act as though the state does not exist or, at times,
work in direct opposition to it. In well-established nation-states, as in West-
ern Europe, these most frequently take the form of militant organisations,
such as Greenpeace, or secretive groupings, such as masonic lodges and
religious sects (one recently announced the first successful human cloning).
In the less consolidated or more recent nation-states of the so-called Second
and Third Worlds, competitors to the established order can be located
within political parties, trade unions, professional associations, and other
bodies, many of which may nominally belong to the state structure but are
organized by people who in fact do not recognise the state's supremacy.
Even in authoritarian regimes like China, human rights and religious
movements (such as, for instance, the Falungong) are accused of being well
organized and politically motivated, although no evidence has hitherto been
produced to prove their subversive anti-state goals. At the other end of the
spectrum, we find groupings that plan and execute the overthrow of existing
governments, or are parasitic on state and society – on the model of crimi-
nal networks and mafias, whose aims are the acquisition of illicit wealth but
whose reach may sometimes impact on political power, as has been the case
in Italy.
While there is general awareness of these political groups and some in-
formation about the way in which they operate, their political significance
has not yet been fully grasped, even less analysed. There is no adequate
political theory to account for these trends within contemporary societies –
although one has developed an approach to account for the ‘informalisa-
tion’ and ‘re-traditionalisation’ of politics in the context of the African con-
tinent (Chabal and Daloz 1999). Nor are current theories of international
relations able to cope with the emergence of independent and informal non-
state formations, which do not care about the existence of borders and act in
defiance of the sovereignty of existing states. International law itself is
helpless in the face of these networks without territory or clear organisa-
tional framework. Most human and social science disciplines badly need
concepts to help explain these seemingly new political phenomena. By ex-
tending our reach into the past, sometimes the very distant past, and by em-
ploying comparative multidisciplinary analysis to develop the concept of
chiefdom, a way could be opened towards a general theory of informal poli-
tics, and conversely towards a new approach to the theory of the state.
CONCEPTS OF CHIEFDOM
Our approach is to use and build on the concept of chiefdom as formulated
by anthropologists and archaeologists and employ it for the examination of
present day non-state political entities and structures. Chiefdom has gradu-
ally become the central concept among anthropologists and archaeologists
working on archaic politics. The literature on chiefdoms is historically deep
and globally comparative (Carneiro 1981; Earle 1997; Feinman and Neitzel
1984). In reference to an organisational formation, chiefdoms first were
used to characterise relatively small, bounded, chief-led groups in the eth-
nographic present of South America (Oberg 1955) and Polynesia (Sahlins
1958). Such societies had ascribed forms of leadership and affiliation was
largely based on the rhetoric of kinship. By the middle of the twentieth cen-
tury, the term chiefdom was incorporated into neo-evolutionary schema
(Service 1962) that defined a broad class of chiefly societies poised on the
development ladder between egalitarian groups (bands and tribes) and lar-
ger, more bureaucratic, states (Feinman 1996). Generally, in such theoreti-
cal constructions, chiefdoms refer to those traditional social forms that
measure in the tens of thousands of people (or fewer), have inherited (as
opposed to achieved) forms of leadership, are integrated through kinship or
fictive kin ties, and have non-bureaucratic structures. That is, in chiefdoms,
one typically finds only one or two tiers of decision-making above the gen-
eral populace. Authority tends to prevail over raw military might or institu-
tionalised power (Skalník 1996, 1999).
Yet gradually, significant variation in chiefdoms was recognized (Ren-
frew 1974). For example, although redistributive economies were seen by
some to be one of their core features, others argued that chiefly economies
were in actuality far more diverse (Earle 1978, 1987). The key feature was
that those in power had access to whatever kinds of resources were needed
to reproduce the existing structure. This characteristic distinguishes chief-
doms from big-man societies in which leadership is more tied to charisma
and ability, and is thus more situational and less replicable over time. Build-
ing on earlier comparative analysis, recent work has described ‘corporate
chiefdoms’ in which rule was not focused on individual chiefs, but handled
by councils and sometimes grounded in strong communal codes of behavior
(Blanton et al. 1996; Feinman et al. 2000).
The implicit neo-evolutionary assumption that chiefdoms are a stepping-
stone, or way station, on the historical path to state formation also has re-
ceived much critical scrutiny. In the Caribbean, Central America, northern
South America, eastern North America, as well as in areas of Africa and
Polynesia, archaeological studies, often in conjunction with ethnographic
research, have demonstrated that chiefly formations have endured for centu-
ries and even millennia (Drennan and Uribe 1987; Redmond 1998). Al-
though specific chiefships and head-towns may rise and fall, the organisa-
tional formations persist over time. In other regions, such as pre-Hispanic
Mexico and the Andes, the break-down products of earlier states have been
referred to as chiefdoms, since they are relatively small, hierarchical, yet
not bureaucratic (Costin and Earle 1989). Others have preferred to label
these balkanized polities as petty-states or city-states (Brumfiel 1983),
given that they often have features (stratification, writing, markets) that are
not typical of the chiefdoms that preceded or were outside the reaches of
states. Although such relationships between historical sequence and struc-
ture are no doubt important, in terms of organisational politics or political
structures, petty-states and chiefdoms have significant parallels. Thus, once
thought to be unstable, many chiefdoms have been found to endure or per-
sist for centuries and sometimes longer. Elsewhere, historical cycling over
time has been described between chiefdoms and more and less hierarchical
forms (Leach 1954; Southall 1956). Significantly, there does not appear to
be a single unilinear path of change when it comes to these oscillations
(Feinman 1998: 102).
The recent neo-evolutionist fascination with early states has now so-
bered into the realisation that many of them, whether labelled ‘kingdoms’
and even ‘empires’, may not have really been the strong, well-integrated,
political entities that we sometimes presume them to be (Brumfiel 1992).
For example, a sizeable number of the ‘inchoate’ early states did not hold
together and fell apart into smaller but viable units because they lacked the
requisite attributes, such as efficient coercive mechanisms (monopoly of
violence or its threat), systematic taxation, full-time bureaucracy or com-
plex wealth stratification. In contrast to this, many centralised polities ex-
isted for centuries without ever developing the features of the state. Yet
they had hereditary or elected heads, called chiefs in professional language,
who were backed by political ideology, religion and ritual.
For their part, chiefs and chiefdoms in Africa, Oceania and parts of Asia
and South America never ceased to exist. Western colonial rule and the
subsequent modern independent states did not manage or find it possible to
get rid of them. The policy of ‘indirect rule’ relegated them to the lowest
rungs of colonial politics but that, paradoxically, enabled them to survive.
In some cases, the colonial rulers and their successor independent regimes
attempted to abolish local chiefdoms and ‘kingdoms’. Some of them, such
as the well-known Buganda and Moogo (Burkina Faso), were recently re-
stored. The fact that these chiefdoms, chieftaincies or kingdoms, persist and
function in the shadow of the modern state is obviously intriguing. As the
modern state fails to meet the most basic democratic expectations in many
parts of the world, people turn to existing chiefdoms for succour. They are
mindful of the longevity of these polities and, more importantly, they value
their local roots. Chiefdoms (or at least some of them) provide in this way a
more accountable political system. This feeds back to the Western world
which has begun to recognise the cultural and social specificities of more
informal, face to face, politics even within the orbit of liberal democracies.
The call for autonomy within these unitary nation-states may revive some
of the principles of more direct democracy common to some chiefdoms.
The return of chiefdoms onto the stage of national politics in many Afri-
can states was not smooth. For example in Ghana the ‘chieftaincy conflicts’
are closely connected to the constitutional stipulations defining particular
areas as historical chiefdom lands. However, the ability to move and estab-
lish oneself anywhere within the colonial and postcolonial state created
situations where ‘strangers’ settled in a large number of locations, usually
with the permission of local chiefs, but as their numbers increased, tensions
arose (Skalník 2002). Another intriguing development is that chiefs and
chiefdoms have more, rather than less, prestige in countries like Ghana. For
many Africans who have acquired a modern western education, becoming a
chief is a coveted personal goal. In some complex Ghanaian chiefdoms
such as Asante or Gonja, chiefs are normally well-educated, but see no con-
tradiction in promoting chiefly ideology.
In Cameroon, chiefs representing historically powerful chiefdoms in the
north-western part of the country have sometimes joined the dominant po-
litical party and fulfilled important responsibilities within its ruling body,
but they do so primarily because they want to protect and promote their
chiefdom. Even though they claim not to want to embroil themselves in
national politics, they do so in order to sustain, or even increase, the power
and reach of chiefly politics. In South Africa, the demise of apartheid has
been seen by hereditary chiefs as an opportunity to seek new roles beyond
the marginal and subordinated position they had been granted in the Bantu-
stan politics of yesteryear. The chiefs are members of a national organisa-
tion and they vie for reserved seats in the various representative bodies.
Their claims seem to be supported by ideology and rhetoric of the African
Renaissance. For them, a truly African political dispensation is unthinkable
without chiefs. Of course, problems may arise when for example Swazi-
speaking South African citizens consider themselves simultaneously sub-
jects of the Swazi king, who is the head of another independent state. The
claim that citizens of a particular country are the subjects of neo-traditional
chiefdoms whose paramountcies are located in another country, are an es-
pecially acute challenge to present African political realities. In sum, the
role and office of the chief are often ideologically identified with the very
substance and survival of a society – as in some African cases such as the
annual renewal rituals of the Swazi or the succession practices among the
Nanumba of northern Ghana.
Outside Africa chiefly politics, springing from traditional political ar-
rangements, can be observed in the Arab world, especially in the Gulf area
where most sovereign modern states are actually direct heirs of pre-colonial
chiefdoms, or emirates. In Afghanistan and in the Northwest Frontier of
Pakistan, as well as in some parts of India, Burma and northern parts of
Thailand, Laos and even Vietnam, chiefly politics is quite common. Bhutan
is a kingdom run like a chiefdom. The recent liberation of Afghanistan from
the theocratic centralising rule of the Taliban has made it possible for estab-
lished chieftains to re-assert authority and brazenly to challenge the weak
central state led by Karzai. This is not surprising since the Afghan resis-
tance movements which for years fought against the Russian occupation
and the Taliban were essentially organised as warlord chiefdoms.
In the Federated States of Micronesia, some island states rejected the
idea of an assembly of chiefs only because the local population did not
want their chiefs to come together with modern politicians and administra-
tors (Petersen 1997). However, in Polynesia, countries like Samoa or Tonga
have been monarchies in which chiefs dominate or influence politics. In
Samoa, the head of state since 1963 is Chief Tanumafili II Malietoa, and
the Fono (legislative assembly) is solely composed of matai (chiefs). Tonga
is officially an independent kingdom but in fact functions as a neo-
traditional chiefdom. Chiefs are key members of the King's Privy Council
and nine out of thirty members of the Legislative Assembly are noblemen,
or chiefs. In Fiji, officially a republic, and where the indigenous Austrone-
sian population tries to reconcile itself to the existence of a sizeable immi-
grant Indian minority, the real authority rests in the Bose Levu Vakaturaga
(Great Council of Chiefs) established in 1997 by the Fijian Affairs Act.
This chiefly council appoints and dismisses the president and vice-president
and nominates fourteen out of the thirty-two members of the senate. Ethnic
voting ensures that a number of chiefs are also elected into the 71 member
Legislative Assembly. In New Zealand administered Tokelau, the members
of the General Fono are chosen by three atoll Taupulega (Council of Eld-
ers). Finally, even New Zealand is currently discussing some form of legis-
lative status for the Maori chiefs.
As these examples imply, chiefdoms appear more durable and stable
than was originally envisaged by neo-evolutionist thinking. Not only have
they survived into the present age but, in countries where the state has col-
lapsed or failed to discharge its most minimal responsibilities, chiefdoms
are increasingly taking over a more overtly political function, buttressing
the important social and cultural role they have always played. Not surpris-
ingly, the partisans of chiefdom stress longevity and consensual patterns of
decision-making as two of the most crucial characteristics of this form of
political arrangement. Interestingly, it is precisely the claim for more cul-
turally rooted and proximate forms of social and political interaction which
proponents of non-state, more informal, organisations in the West invoke.
For this reason, scholarly debates regarding past and present chiefdoms
serve as a useful basis from which to address the diversity of radical
movements, balkanized polities, warlord groups, and emergent non-state
bodies that are active in the world today. It ought to help us to test the cur-
rent assumption that such groupings are aberrant, inherently unstable, or
unlikely to endure beyond the lifetime of their present leaders. Is it not pos-
sible that, as in the past, chiefdoms might last over time, even in the con-
temporary age? When it comes to the chiefdoms we know, what are the
economic underpinnings that ensure their continued social reproduction,
and what processes, either local or external, might undermine their integrity
and persistence? Chiefdoms are no longer defined simply through redistri-
bution, but do chiefly economies share specific features that distinguish
them from states? What about the nature and range of wealth disparities,
and how does that affect chiefly dynamics?
Archaeological and historical studies have already demonstrated that
historical sequence and pre-existing conditions may correlate with different
patterns of chiefly organisation and structure. For example, in highland
Central Mexico, the small petty-states or chiefdoms that flourished follow-
ing the fall of the urban state centred at Teotihuacan (A.D. 700–1300) had a
distinct elite class, written texts, and, by the end of this period, just prior to
the rise of the Aztec Empire, were interwoven into a regional market net-
work (Brumfiel 1983). Such features are generally not typical of chiefdoms
that precede the emergence or imposition of the state. In which ways can
such knowledge be of use to the present? Conversely, can a study of con-
temporary chiefly formations, and their relations with existing states, shed
any light on what happened in Central Mexico so many centuries ago?
What effects do historical contingencies and new technologies, such as
the written word and satellite communication, have on the small hierarchi-
cally structured groups of today? While many past chiefdoms depended at
least in part on face-to-face interactions, does that necessarily mean that
chiefly rule was always based on authority rather than brute power? Such
issues are being discussed now in respect of the Pashtun world, where most
of the populace are non-literate and myths of heroes are based largely on
oral communications. Does the use of satellite phone by warlords make it
harder to maintain control in a political situation where face-to-face meet-
ings are difficult to arrange?
Traditionally, as well as in the modern world, what means do chiefs use
to assert their will? What are the organisational consequences of the des-
potic use of personal power, or force, as opposed to the tyranny of the ‘just’
or that of the majority? Is it possible to have chiefdoms that are not directly
personified by a chief? One of us has argued that certain large pre-Hispanic
Pueblos in the United States Southwest, such as those at Chaco Canyon,
were marked by hierarchical decision-making and organised as chiefdoms
(Feinman et al. 2000). Yet at most of these great Puebloan sites, many of
the personal trappings of chiefly power (such as wealth laden burials and
elaborate residences) are rare or missing. Is the ostentatious display of
wealth, or strength, a necessary attribute of chiefly power today? Or can the
force of religion, for instance, be the greater mobilising factor?
Since almost all past and contemporary chiefdoms were part of wider
networks that exchanged goods, people, and ideas with their neighbors,
sometimes even adjacent states and empires, it is productive to examine
how such linkages affect their dynamics. Did their geographic positioning
in relation to states impinge on the patterns of resource procurement in
chiefly polities? Can we say whether known chiefdoms were more or less
able to persist when they were at the fringes of states? Can we identify the
ebb and flow of such relations? Are chiefdoms that are economically de-
pendent on productive activities (particularly agrarian economies) different
organisationally from those whose livelihoods come principally from the
circulation of goods and access to networks of exchange? Through such
questions, we aim not only to tear down the disciplinary barriers in aca-
demic languages that we use to describe political actions and processes, but
to construct a comparative set of theories and questions that can transcend
the somewhat artificial divisions that separate the past from the present, the
traditional from the modern, and the West from the rest.
QUESTIONS, THEMES, HYPOTHESES

The purpose of re-examining the work of students of archaeology, anthro-
pology, history and politics is not merely to compare the definitions of
chiefdoms they may provide. As we reassess the configuration of power in
the contemporary world, we seek to study the extent to which an under-
standing of the past may inform the present. At stake here is the question of
whether the numerous, and continuously diversifying, forms of non-state
politics found across the globe today can be analysed more fruitfully by
taking into account the history of such polities in earlier times. Conversely,
we aim to consider whether the knowledge of long disappeared political
entities may be made more critical if proper attention is given to the actual
evolution of informal polities today.
We wish to tackle this comparative task by identifying a number of key
questions, relevant to all four disciplines, and from which a number of
themes may emerge. The first, quite clearly, is that of boundaries, since
there is wide variation in the understanding of chiefdom found across the
fields. Although we need not be prescriptive on this issue, it will be neces-
sary to agree on some broad criteria. How large and dispersed can a chief-
dom be? How much do means of communications and transport impinge on
the form such a group takes? How much can such a ‘community’ grow or
shrink before it ceases to function as a chiefdom?
The second question, therefore, concerns variability, since here too there
is obviously no single model. Is it possible to compare chiefdoms of greatly
different scale and scope? Is it legitimate to contrast those that lasted but a
few decades with those that have endured through centuries? How wide do
we cast our nets? Do we not run the risk of stretching the concept over far
too many political groupings, thus undermining its usefulness as an analytical
tool?
This brings us to the issue of dynamics, or perhaps better, processes. It
is sometimes argued, though less and less convincingly, that so-called tradi-
tional polities are timeless, or unchanging. Even the most superficial ex-
amination of these groupings would make it clear that they are no more
static than other, larger or more modern, ones. Nevertheless, it is essential
to attempt to conceptualise the ways in which chiefdoms, past and present,
evolve and, even more importantly, what the factors may be that have
prompted those quantum, or catastrophic, changes which have marked their
breakdown.
What such questions point to, of course, is the key issue of the relation-
ship between structure and sequence. Once it has been admitted that neo-
evolutionism is in this respect nothing but a dead-end, it is by no means
easy to proceed with certainty in respect of the possible causalities between
these two variables. Although it would be nice to think that fairly general
rules could be enunciated, historians would probably argue that context is
all-important. There may well not be any meaningful correlation between
structure and sequence. This remains to be tested, not only within our re-
spective discipline but also by means of comparative analysis of either con-
temporaneous or cross-historical cases.
Beyond these general issues, there are a number of other questions
which a comparative study of chiefdoms must address more specifically.
The first, and perhaps most critical, is that of the nature of power and au-
thority. Although it is generally agreed that such polities are based on (real
or fictive) kinship and that they are devoid of bureaucracies, there is still a
myriad of possible forms of rulership. How do we assess types and levels of
authority? How critical are the personal attributes of the chief? What role
does charisma play? How, finally, is power reproduced over generations?
The matter of power is, naturally, linked to that of legitimacy. Whilst at
a general level it is often argued that chiefs must combine earthly and
magic qualities, in reality both the nature of these two types of authority
and the way in which they combine are subject to considerable variation.
Indeed, it may well be that some chiefdoms are singularly devoid of ‘relig-
ion’ and rely instead on other forms of ideology – nationalism or terrorism,
for instance – to cement and develop the bonds that make them rightful in
the eyes of their members.
The texture of power relations within any given chiefdom is, quite natu-
rally, related to its economic basis. Critical, therefore, to the understanding
of how such polities evolve and maintain themselves is the manner in which
they obtain and deploy resources. Here too, it is apparent that there are very
wide dissimilarities both in the ways in which they are acquired and in how
important they are to the operation of the chiefdom. At one extreme, in the
past as in the present, there are stable communities in which exchange
(and/or gift) is limited, though perhaps symbolically important. At the
other, there are movements or networks (like mafias), perhaps chiefly in
attributes, but otherwise engaged in a transcontinental trade underpinned at
once by personal and technological webs.
Equally important is the question of redistribution. It is usually agreed
that chiefdoms are characterised by high levels of resource sharing. Con-
temporary neo-patrimonial relations, for instance, are predicated on the
chiefs' ability continuously to feed the networks on which they depend for
their power. Yet, we also know that there are wide-ranging inequalities
within past and present chiefdoms. Are there limits here, beyond which
such political entities begin to disaggregate? Equally, can chiefdoms ac-
commodate substantial wealth or social stratification?
Finally, there are a range of issues linked to the interaction between
chiefdoms and more complex polities – states, kingdoms, empires, etc. To-
day, as before, the groupings with which we are concerned operate both at
the margin of, and within, such larger political entities. It is useful, there-
fore, to seek to assess the strategies employed by chiefdoms to navigate the
treacherous waters of ‘international’ relations. Now, as in the past, there is
constant dueling between the chiefdom's need for autonomy and the larger
polities' ‘imperialist’ ambitions. Contrary to common sense, however, the
struggle is far from unequal. Chiefdoms have a long record of durability,
proving thereby that some of their core attributes may well enable them to
survive and adapt to the vagaries of the ‘world’ system they confront.
Of course, these are only a few of the questions, or themes, around
which one would construct a productive comparative analysis of chiefdoms
across time periods and geographical areas. They are instruments to be
used, rather than prescriptive characteristics which we would hope to incor-
porate into our comparative work. Nevertheless, they suggest that it is pos-
sible to devise a methodology that will inform the assessment of such
smaller-scale, informal and adaptable political groupings.
CONCLUSION
Chiefdom-like political formations today often compete with the cumber-
some, over-bureaucratised, state for the allegiance of its members. Due to
the informality of its social relations, the face-to-face character of its public
sphere, a more consensual decision-making process and the very nature of
chiefly leadership – which is based on authority rather than coercive power
– chiefdoms frequently appear to suit people better in their quest for proxi-
mate forms of governance. Hierarchy in chiefdoms is more transparent,
hereditary or election principles of recruitment to offices are simple and
acceptable. On the other hand some chiefdoms may become self-contained
isolationist units of social interaction which view the world around them as
hostile. Such are the criminal or terrorist organisations which either wish to
subvert the state or to seize power.
It is clear, therefore, that there can be no simple approach to the question
of the future of chiefdoms. Whilst many will argue that they provide a more
acceptable face to political and social interaction, others will recoil at their
potential for mischief. It seems in this respect that chiefdoms, like all other
forms of human political institutions, can be either more ‘democratic’ or
more ‘tyrannical’. Although it would not do to view them in an overly ide-
alistic way, as a solution to intractable contemporary political problems, it
would be unwise to dismiss them as archaic remnants from the distant past,
deviant or mutant forms within a world in which liberal democracy is des-
tined to dominate.
What we can at least aim for is to develop a language for understanding
such political groupings, in their varied and intricate complexities, that will
cut across disciplines. Or rather, that will make it possible for students of
the various fields both to understand the work of the others and to draw
analytical tools which will facilitate the analysis of what is undoubtedly one
of the most intriguing and enduring political entity the world has ever
known.
NOTE
* First published in Social Evolution & History 3 (1), March 2004, pp. 22–40.
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4
Alternative Models of Middle Range Society.
‘Individualistic’ Asia vs.
‘Collectivistic’ America?*
Yuri E. Berezkin
Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, Saint Petersburg
Our understanding of the middle range society is largely based on Oceanic

and Amerindian data. During the last decade, there was a lot of revision of
these materials and criticism of the chiefdom concept. The American
Southwest and the 2300–800 B.C. Peruvian Coast evidenced especially
acute confrontation of views. The new reconstructions for Pueblo and for
Peru are similar in many respects, though the former have emerged as the
alternative to the under- and the latter, to the overestimation of the level of
social complexity (e.g., Burger 1995; Moseley 1992; Pozorski and Pozorski
1992; Rick 1990; Will and Leonard 1994). The absence of rich elite burials
and other forms of significant prestige consumption let archaeologist be-
lieve that the elite groups in the Initial Period Peru or in the Southwest did
not yet definitely split from the commoners though some decisions were
made much above the level of a village community of a few hundred mem-
bers. The dual hierarchy of the kin groups or other forms of corporate or-
ganization were effective enough to coordinate the activity of hundreds
(thousands) of workers during dozens (hundreds) of years to produce huge
constructions.
These ‘sequential hierarchies’ (G. A. Johnson) look, however, more like
the predecessors of chiefdoms than like a different evolutionary trend. The
structures in question provide the ready positions for leaders. The potential
power hierarchy is activated as soon as economic and demographic devel-
Berezkin / Alternative Models of Middle Range Society. ‘Individualistic’ Asia vs. ‘Col-
lectivistic’ America? pp. 61–71
opment makes possible the large-scale accumulation of prestige goods. The
chiefdoms of the Early Horizon Peru (e.g., Kuntur Wasi) followed the can-
ons of the Initial Period coastal iconography and architecture. This makes
believe that the sources of power and ways of its realization had much in
common in both ‘mild’ and ‘tough’ hierarchies.
A dispersed settlement pattern with ceremonial centers is very character-
istic for most of pre-state Amerindian societies. The ceremonial center is ‘a
clever device for integrating a dispersed population’ (De Boer and Blitz
1991: 62) when it is economically disadvantageous to live together in one
compact settlement. Initially, the society in question can belong to the
‘small range’ type (e.g., the Fuegian hunters-gatherers), so the appearance
of permanent sanctuaries in 6th–4th millennia B.C. Peru must not surprise
us. This initial paradigm of economic and ritual behavior gives impulse to
further development of similar settlement patterns when the society reaches
the middle range scale.
The nearest modern approximation to pre-Hispanic chiefdoms is proba-
bly presented by the municipios of Tzotzil in Highland Guatemala (Vogt
1969). 8,000 people of Zinacantan lived inside the area of 117 km2 (about
12 x 10). The center had about 400 inhabitants but more than half of total
population of municipio were periodically coming to Zinacantan ‘to watch
the ceremonies and to engage in the drinking, dancing’, etc. The social or-
ganization is a four-fivefold hierarchy of the units. All of them from a
household till a hamlet had their own shrines, with the most important mu-
nicipio temples (now Christian) being in the center. The land tenure system
of Guatemala Indians was based on clan holdings and usufruct.
The dispersed settlement, the existence of ceremonial centers and the
developed kinship structure (or a system of corporate groups of other kind)
predetermined certain tendencies in planning of towns and villages, in par-
ticular the lack of precise outer borders. In Inca cities (e.g., Zuidema 1986)
every unit allegedly descended from common ancestor ideally possessed
not the limited plots of land but a sector of universe from city temple to the
horizon. So, not the boundary between urban and rural areas but the radial
dividing lines between sectors were important. The usual absence of town
walls around the Amerindian settlements is a consequence of the lack of
precise town border.
Turning now to the Middle East, we can find here prehistoric societies
that are unsimilar to Amerindian ones in almost every respect. In particular,
we shall speak about Neolithic settlements of the Levant (ca. 7000–6000
B.C.) and of Asia Minor (ca. 6300–5300 B.C.) and of Chalcolithic – Middle
Bronze towns of Eastern Iran and South Turkmenistan (ca. 3750–2250 B.C.).
Berezkin / Alternative Models of Middle Range Society 63
The big Neolithic settlements ('Ain Ghazal, Beisamoun, Beida, Abu
Hureira, Çatal Hüyük) had the probable number of inhabitants at the level
of 2,000. In Iran and Turkmenistan, the sites of the similar size (12–15 ha)
appear in the 4th millennium. In 3000–2250 B.C., such settlements reach the
size of 75 ha (Shahr-i Sokhta), 26 ha (Altyn-depe) and 50 ha (Namazga-
depe) that suggests population in the order of 5–20,000. All these sites were
dwelling communities whose members formed integrated and not aggre-
gated units. It means that demographically, the social units in question were
comparable with chiefdoms. Like Olmec or Chavin capitals, the Asian set-
tlements were major regional centers. Despite this, no evidence on centrali-
zation of power is available here.
The Middle Eastern and the American settlements have the opposite ra-
tios of investments in public and in private architecture. In the Middle East,
the most undoubted cases of special community structures that are different
from the usual dwellings by size and/or by shape date to the earliest periods
(e.g., Nevali Chori and Chayonu-Tepesi in 7000 B.C. Anatolia or Pessejik
in 5500 B.C. Turkmenistan). Later during 6,000–4,000 B.C. in Mesopota-
mia and 5000–2250 B.C. in Easten Iran, the Asian shrines are difficult to
identify. Though on some Samarra, Halaf, Early and Middle 'Ubeid sites the
buildings of unusual planning or with rare types of artifacts were found, the
constructions are not monumental and their function (profane, ritual, or
both) can not be determined with certainty (Yoffee 1979: 19–20; Roaf
1984: 80–88). Only in Late 'Ubeid – Early Uruk time the sizable temples
come to being, though even Early Dynastic ziggurats are not essentially
bigger in volume than platform temples of Tahiti or Hawaii chiefs or pre-
historic mounds of Venezuela. The Peruvian monumental platforms of 1500
B.C. surpass them in size many times. No temples at all were reported from
Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Turkmenistan and Eastern Iran. Besides
Mundigak, that stands apart from the rest of the towns, the earliest example
of such a structure is the Middle Bronze stepped platform and burial cham-
ber on Altyn-depe (Masson 1988). Like the ‘high terraces’ of Tureng-tepe,
this complex is connected with the first stages of the formation and spread
of a new ideology and indicates the beginning of the radical transformation
of the Eastern Iranian society (Berezkin 1994: 34–36).
In the New World, the early emergence of corporate architecture and
monumental art correlates with the monotony of habitation structures that
usually lack non-utilitarian features. The dwellings of some Middle Eastern
settlements have ‘quasi-temple’ appearance. Two sites are of particular in-
terest. One is Çatal Hüyük where many architectural units, taken separately,
could be interpreted as religious structures, but just the extensive number of
‘shrines’ and the gradual transition from buildings with rich wall sculpture,
painting, human interments etc. and simple houses without interior decora-
tion make archaeologists consider all complexes as used both for habitation
and for ritual purposes (Hodder 1990: 1–19). A similar picture is revealed
at Ilgynly-depe in Turkmenistan. In 3500–3000 B.C., most of this settle-
ment was built up with the houses of basically uniform plan but of different
size (15,5–85 m2) and unequally rich interior decoration. Though such
houses were named ‘sanctuaries’ in preliminary publications (e.g., Masson,
Berezkin and Solovyeva 1994), no real temple was discovered.
Shahr-i Sokhta with its 75 ha and two-storeyed houses belongs to other
social dimension than Çatal Hüyük or Ilgynly-depe (e.g., Mariani 1992;
Tosi 1969). It is absolutely possible that some of the buildings were con-
nected with religious functions, but the very topography of the site argues
against the possibility of finding monumental buildings on platforms that
would need more labor for their construction than the rich households.
The Southwest Asian settlements are invariably nucleated; only small
rural population is recorded for surrounding areas in many cases. The clear
border between the build up territory and rural area is visible. When popu-
lation was growing, new households occupied the empty ground inside vil-
lage or town limits. Because people built their houses on the same place
where they had been living before, the cells up to 30 m high appeared. In
America, settlements of this type are rare and contain much less cultural
layers. Already since 8000 B.C., the Middle Eastern settlements were sur-
rounded by walls. There is no unanimous opinion about their function but
symbolic significance was at least as important as the defensive one.
Because both in Western Europe and in the Americas the treasures in in-
terments appear later than monumental corporate architecture, it is not a
surprise to testify their absence in pre-3000 B.C. Mesopotamia and pre-
2250 B.C. Eastern Iran and Turkmenistan. Judging by temple decorations
and other golden objects of Late Uruk time found in Northern Mesopotamia
and Levant, relatively rich funeral goods could be sent to the afterlife with
some of the dead already since Uruk period. But even if it was so, the ap-
pearance of the first gold in South Mesopotamian graves was simultaneous
with the emergence of the first states. In Peru, these two events are sepa-
rated by a millennium (between Kuntur Wasi gold and Mochica IV state).
By now we have no Mesopotamian treasures earlier than the Royal Ceme-
try of Ur. The Jamdet Nasr elite graves contained but stone and copper ves-
sels and small beads of gold and lapiz lazuli.
In Turkmenistan, Ilgynly-depe burials are explicitly egalitarian. The in-
terments of Altyn-depe and Shahr-i Sokhta do not contain large concentra-
tions of valuables. Skilled craftsmen rather than nobles were buried in the
richest graves there (e.g., Piperno 1979). The lack of elite burials evidences
against the existence of elite groups that are sharply differentiated from the
rest of society.
What could be an explanation for all those features that differ the prehis-
toric Middle East from the demographically similar (2,000–20,000 mem-
bers) Amerindian societies? Without a historical example, any theoretical
model is doomed to remain either too vague or highly speculative. It is
clear, that the chiefdom does not fit Middle Eastern case. The Pueblos,
Huron or Iroquois are, perhaps, one step nearer to it but they themselves
either need reconstruction or existed in a too exotic environment. The cul-
tural and political situation of the Middle East itself became so different
from the prehistoric one so long ago, that the ethnographic materials or cu-
neiform documents from these regions are of very limited help. Fortunately,
the society that can become a key case for understanding the early social
patterns existed till recently (or exists even now) in the Eastern Himalayas.
The Apa Tanis, an ethnic group of Tibetan affiliation, were described in
the 1940's before they were taken under Indian government control (Fürer-
Haimendorf 1962). About 11,000 of Apa Tanis lived in the fertile valley
that is 10,5 km long and 3,2 km wide. In 1961, 2520 households were con-
centrated in seven densely built up villages. Though every one represented
a separate social unit, all Apa Tanis formed an integrated community. The
Apa Tanis cultivated wet rice, raised cattle and pigs. Domestic animals, first
of all bulls, were important as units of value. Land, in particular, could be
acquired only in exchange for bulls. The Apa Tanis often bought cattle
from their Mira and Dafla neighbors who lived in the nearby mountains.
The position of Miris and Daflas in respect to Apa Tanis strongly resembles
the position of semi-nomadic pastoralists on the periphery of oases in
Greater Mesopotamia.
In case of inner conflict and fighting, the Apa Tani property, in particu-
lar crucially important granaries, could be quickly destroyed, their economy
ruined and their territory invaded by Miris and Daflas. Keeping in mind
Amerindian data, the situation seems to be ideal for emergence of the dy-
nasty of chiefs who would suppress quarrels, organize defense and mobilize
the commoners for the construction of an earthen mound for the community
temple. And nevertheless, the decision-making in Apa Tanis society was
decentralized. This decentralization corresponded to the almost complete
lack of any power beyond and above separate households. Individual prop-
erty was much more important than clan or village rights, and everybody
could buy a plot of land both in his own village and in any other.
The possibility to buy and sell land would lead to concentration of
wealth in the hands of the richest families. However, many institutions in
Apa Tani society prevented the monopolization of power. Every son inher-
ited an equal part of the land, so large concentrations of land rarely survived
one generation. Another institution was Lisudu (potlatch). The more pros-
perous an Apa Tani was, the easier his dignity could be wounded by his
equal. There was no way to restore personal honor but to sacrifice property,
mainly the bulls, that would demand greatest manifestations of generosity
on the part of the opponent. The big Lisudu was an important event also
economically, because the meat of the slaughtered animals was distributed
first among the village dwellers and afterwards throughout the valley.
Several mechanisms helped to smooth over conflicts inside the society.
On the occasion of mass ceremonies and feasts, people of different clan and
village affiliation exchanged gifts, this way a pan-valley system of interper-
sonal relations and obligations was formed. The institute that helped to pre-
serve personal ties across social borders was patang (labor-gangs). Boys
and girls who became the members of one and the same patang continued
to support one another during all their life.
The councils of respected men functioned in every village, with a sepa-
rate participation of adult heads of the households, senior persons, and the
young. Before any decision was made, the matter was discussed with repre-
sentatives from all sides so long as was needed to find an acceptable solu-
tion. In the most extreme cases, the disputes were resolved by means of
ritual fightings. If no group interests were affected, the opponents were let
alone to clarify their relations. Such ‘mini-wars’ inside one and the same
village could continue for months. The same could be said about the skir-
mishes with Miri and Daflas. While a family was engaged into an armed
conflict, its neighbors made the commerce.
Among Apa Tanis clans, the ‘plebeian’ ones were ritually dependent on
the noble but enjoyed the same economic rights. Differences in wealth were
between families, rather than corporations. This was another important ob-
stacle against the monopolization of power in a stratified society. The kin-
ship groups system was dynamic and flexible. No symmetrical divisions of
moiety type were observed.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Economic and social organization of Apa Tanis demonstrates parallels to
situation in prehistoric Southwest Asia in several respects: 1) the irrigated
agriculture as a primary activity and the animal husbandry in the second
place; 2) a local level settlement pattern of nucleated villages with no
monumental architecture but with many small shrines; the intercommunica-
tion across the valley that was as easy and quick as in any nucleated prehis-
toric settlement of 10,000 inhabitants; 3) a degree of economic differentia-
tion (difference in wealth is significant but not overwhelming; no accumu-
lation of real treasures); 4) a degree of craft specialization (in the 1940's,
Apa Tanis had several families of hereditary iron smiths; some groups of
women had exclusive rights over pottery production; generally, the level of
technology was rather archaic, e.g., wheeled vehicles were not used; 5)
forms of external relations which included both war skirmishes and eco-
nomic symbiosis between densely populated agricultural core and sparsely
populated extensive periphery; some rare prestige goods were acquired via
long distance trade.
On the other hand, it is instructive to compare Apa Tanis with Amerin-
dian societies of similar size. In addition to the above mentioned data on
Zinacantan, the so called Copan Pocket in Honduras provides us with an
eloquent illustration (e.g., Freter 1994). Both Copan Pocket and Apa Tani
represent fertile valleys with comparable territorial and demographic di-
mensions surrounded by less productive mountain lands. Apa Tani valley is
33,5 km2, and Copan Pocket is 24 km2 with potential to sustain 9–12,000
people and maximum population during A.D. 700–850 (including the Ur-
ban Core) of 18–22,000 people. The latter were partly supplied from the
lands inside Copan valley (30 km long) but outside of the Pocket. During
A.D. 550–700, 4–5,500 people lived in Copan Pocket, total population of
the whole valley being 5–7,000.
Despite such a comparability, the political, social and settlement pat-
terns of two valleys have little in common. Instead of the few densely built
up villages, the continuous dispersed settlement with maximum (80 per-
sons/ha) density in the Urban Core and its gradual decrease to the periph-
ery. Instead of independent position of nuclear family, the predominance of
the lineages that structured political and economic relations. Instead of the
moderate economic and social stratification, the tremendous break in the
level and style of life between the elite (10 per cent or less of the popula-
tion) and the commoners.
What could be the causes of all these profound differences? The crucial
aspect of Apa Tanis' peculiarity is the autonomous position of individual in
respect to any kin or territorial ties. An individual private property of land
and cattle and the absence of significant corporate property block the for-
mation of elite whose position would be enhanced by way of symbolizing
communal interests. This, however, does not explain why so many institu-
tions in Apa Tani society work also against concentration of power and
wealth in hands of separate families who do not claim to be the mouth-
pieces of the community.
There is an impression, that something like dominant psychological ori-
entation of the society is the ultimate cause responsible for development of
particular social institutions. In the last decades, the anthropologists were
trying to reveal under what economic, ecological and other conditions some
of the hunting and gathering groups are egalitarian, individualistic and tol-
erant to the violation of social rules while others are collectivistic, have the
hierarchy of institutionalized social statuses and a system of strict taboos
and severe punishments for their breakers. No general explanation was pro-
vided; the very possibility of such an explanation seems to be unlikely be-
cause both types of society (or better say tendencies) are connected with
different levels of social complexity (Artemova 1993: 58–68). A character-
istic trait of ‘individualistic’ societies is the weak identification of a person
with her or his social unit during contacts with outsiders. This trait revealed
for the bushmen is typical also for Apa Tanis (family ‘mini-wars’ with
Miris and Daflas). According to P. Gardner (1966: 406) ‘the intercultural
pressure is the cause of non-cooperative, non-competitive social structure
and of individualism in the ideational sphere’. However, the Apa Tanis are
far from being ‘pressed’; they are the strongest ethnic group of the respec-
tive area, highly esteemed by others. So, the non-marginal position of pre-
historic Middle Eastern societies is not an argument against the ‘individual-
istic’ trends in their culture.
The Apa Tani model permits to explain not only the lack of treasure ac-
cumulation and of corporate architecture but also the tendency to settlement
nucleation. The developed corporate organization (usually, kinship based)
provides a ready program for interrelationships between individuals, and
the powerful center (would it be represented by the hereditary chief or by
any person who acts on the temporal basis from the name on behalf of the
deity, ancestors, etc.) regulates, in its turn, the behavior of society members.
In a society of Apa Tani type, both the tradition is more flexible in prescrib-
ing norms of behavior and a decision-making center is absent. Because
every head of the household is a more or less independent focus of power,
the unit as a whole looks like a horizontally intertwined network of hun-
dreds and thousands of social knots. For making decisions, members of a
system need a possibility of frequent, diverse and not delayed mutual con-
tacts and consequently of living together inside one great settlement.
The same lack of effective system of a decision-making permitting to
administrate at a distance provides a probable explanation for the superur-
banisation in some of the early states. E.g., the concentration of population
in Teotihuacan (Gorenflo 1986) and in Uruk (Adams 1981: 74, 90, 94) is
far from the patterns optimal for agricultural production. Removing the
population into the cities, the rulers were making their task easier. When the
governmental tradition was firmly established, the proportion of urban
population diminished.
The shortage of place inside nucleated settlements could stimulate fur-
ther development of the institute of private property of immovables, on the
one hand, and the creation of strongly integrated territorial communities, on
the other. The members of the latter shared the idea that all of them live
together inside their town while those who live outside are alien. Hence the
emergence of town wall as a symbolic border. No such border is imaginable
between the concentration of dwellings near the Amerindian ceremonial
center and the far off countryside.
In the ceremonial centers of chiefdoms and early states, the ceremonies
accomplished in a great scale for all the members of social unit. In an
acephalous society of Apa Tanis type, they were performed in every house-
hold for a relatively small group of people. That can be the reason why so
many houses of Çatal Hüyük or Ilgynly-depe demonstrate features destined
for ritual and public events and why they do it to a variable degree. The
restricted access to secret knowledge is a usual basis for creating social hi-
erarchies in relatively small size societies that were unable to support non-
producers and to build a hierarchy through differentiated access to material
resources. The lack of a community temple and the accomplishment of the
rituals inside all or most of the households can be considered as a crucial
feature of the society with ‘individualistic’ tendencies. Such a trait is ex-
pected to correlate with the relatively high position of women and weak
militarism.
ACKNOLEDGEMENTS
My seven months research in American libraries in 1992–1993 was
supported by International Research & Exchange Board (Washington).
It was R. Carneiro who suggested that I would check Apa Tanis as a
possible alternative to chiefdom.
NOTE
* First published in Kradin, N. N., and Lynsha, V. A. (eds.), Alternative Path-
ways to Early State, Vladivostok: Dal'nauka, 1995, pp. 75–83.
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5
Was the State Inevitable?*
Henri J. M. Claessen
Leiden University
This article poses the problem to what extent the emergence of the state was
inevitable.
According to some anthropologists the development of the (early) state
was the inevitable outcome of the evolution of political organization. The
sequences developed by scholars such as Service (1971), and Fried (1967)
place the state at the highest level of development, and suggest, moreover,
that under normal circumstances the state level would be reached. This or-
thodox view has come recently heavily under fire. Practically all contribu-
tors to the collection volume Beyond Chiefdoms. Pathways to Complexity in
Africa (McIntosh 1999) reject this unilinear view, and state that numerous
developments can be pointed out that produced complex societies, but not
the state (for similar views: Crumley 1987, 1995). Instead of the develop-
ment of hierarchy, these authors point to the development of heterarchy,
i.e., a society in which power and leadership is divided over several groups
or persons, or, as Crumley (1995: 30), formulated: ‘a system in which ele-
ments are unranked relative to one another or ranked in a variety of ways
depending on conditions’. And indeed, the ethnographical record shows
many cases of heterarchy – but also of states. In the recent volume Alterna-
tives of Social Evolution (Kradin, Korotayev, Bondarenko, De Munck and
Wason 2000), several of the contributors describe evolutionary develop-
ments that led to heterarchical forms of sociopolitical organization – though
other contributors to the volume do not neglect state formation.
According to other anthropologists the development of the state might
even have been prevented, if only people had been more aware of its dan-
ger. Society could have resisted the formation of the state. The work of Pierre
Clastres, La Société contre l'Etat (1974), might have been a good example,
Claessen / Was the State Inevitable? pp. 72–87

Claessen / Was the State Inevitable? 73
but its promising title notwithstanding, it does not describe efforts to pre-
vent the formation of the state, but the efforts of some Brazilian tribes to
prevent hierarchization – which is not the same. The Brazilian efforts thus
did not prevent the development of the state.
From the foregoing it follows that, in the evolution of a great variety of
more or less complex types of sociopolitical organization, at least in some
cases an early state organization emerged. The state as type of organization
appeared to be most viable, and nowadays it is all over the world the domi-
nant form of polity. This leads to the question if, and if so, to what extent,
state formation was inevitable. I will first define the two central terms of
this question. ‘Inevitability’ expresses the fact that, given specified circum-
stances, the emergence of a certain phenomenon cannot be prevented; it is
sure that it will happen or appear. The definition of ‘state’ is less easy to
formulate. This may seem strange, for there are numerous definitions of
‘state’. The problem with most definitions is that they are based on ideo-
logical considerations. Already in The Early State (1978) Peter Skalník and
I pointed to the existence of a veritable watershed between the definitions
formulated by people who thought the state was wrong and despicable, and
those formulated by people who considered the emergence of the state a
major achievement of cultural evolution, opening up most promising per-
spectives to humankind. I will try to evade the pitfalls of both approaches,
and formulate a relatively ideology-free definition of the state. In order to
do so I will first state some facts about the state. The state is a phenomenon
which first appeared only several thousand years ago. The state, being a
product of social relations must not be reified, personified or sacralized. It
is a specific kind of social organization, expressing a specific type of social
order in a society. It gives expression to the existing social, economical and
political relations in that society and to ideas pertaining to power, authority,
force, justice, and property (Claessen and Skalník 1978: 4). Or, as Friedrich
Engels put it more than hundred years ago:
The state has not existed from all eternity... At a definite stage of
economic development, which necessarily involved the cleavage of so-
ciety into classes, the state became a necessity because of this cleavage.
(1884/1972: 232).
According to Patricia Shifferd (1987: 47 ff.) the course of state forma-
tion did not run smooth, and caused problems for many of its inhabitants:
The emergence of the state, whatever its benefits, carried economic
and political costs for most of the individuals and corporate groups in
the affected societies. The enlarged coercive, expropriative, and imperi-
alistic potential of the state, even the very early one, was paid for by
some loss of independence and discretionary action by the majority of
the people.
She continues – and I think the following statements of hers are most
important for our discussion –
...continued centralization, although clearly observable taking human
cultural evolution as a whole, is certainly not inevitable for individual
cases. In fact such continued centralization was the least common out-
come in the sample at hand.
Or, stated in a different way:
The probabilities of all the necessary conditions being present in any
single case are doubtless quite small.
From these statements we may conclude that:
– the development of the state is only one of many developments, and
– only when certain, ‘necessary conditions’ are present, the state will
emerge.
I will limit my analysis to the emergence of early states, for all later
types of states developed out of earlier forms. As a definition of the early
state I take (with some minor modifications) the one formulated in The
Early State (1978: 640):
The early state is a three-tier (national, regional, local level) socio-
political organization for the regulation of social relations in a complex
stratified society, divided into at least two basic strata, or emergent so-
cial classes – viz., the rulers and the ruled – whose relations are charac-
terized by political dominance of the former and the obligation to pay
tax of the latter, legitimized by a common ideology of which reciprocity is
the basic principle.
With regard to this definition some comments are necessary. In the first
place the reciprocal obligations between rulers and ruled have, of course, an
asymmetrical character; put in a simple way, it is an exchange of goods for
‘Good’. The existence of a common ideology does not necessarily mean
that rulers and ruled have an identical ideology. The views on Christianity
of elite and commoners differed greatly in medieval West Europe – and yet,
they shared the same Christian doctrine (Duby 1985). As long as there ex-
ists a certain overlap between the views of both categories, small differ-
ences in ideology will not endanger the legitimacy – and thus the stability –
of the (early) state. Secondly, a sound economy does contribute greatly to
the acceptance of the rulers; as long as there is available sufficient food and
goods for all, the legitimacy of the government will be easily accepted and
maintained, as Donald Kurtz (1984) points out. There were, of course, early
states where the economic situation was poor; only by applying brute force
the elite could exact the food and goods they needed to live in luxury (e. g.,
Cohen 1991 on pre colonial Bornu; Van Bakel 1991 on Hawai'i). A pre-
carious economic situation seems to have been more the exception than the
rule, however, for – speaking generally – some prosperity is needed to
make it possible for a state to function (Claessen 2000). Thirdly, prosperity
or no prosperity, there is always found great inequality in (early) states.
Some people, the happy few, are rich and powerful and all others, the great
majority, are poor and powerless. This is the situation that made Aidan
Southall ask ‘how people succeeded in deceiving themselves into accepting
the rise of the state round and above them, until the point was reached when
they no longer had any choice and had lost the power to reject it’ (1991: 78;
for a similar view: Paynter 1989).
The answer to this question is that such a choice never was presented to
people. The state developed gradually out of earlier forms of organization,
such as chiefdoms, large big-man conglomerates, or poleis, where existed
already social inequality, the obligation to pay tax, the obligation to work
for the leaders, and the necessity to obey rules and regulations (for exam-
ples of chiefdoms: Earle 1991, 1997; Carneiro 1981; Kirch 1984; for big-
men systems: Vansina 1991, 1999; for the Greek polis: Van der Vliet 1987,
2000). The legitimation of leadership, whether in chiefdoms, poleis, or in
states, was not a matter of deceit on the side of the rulers, as Joyce and
Winter (1996: 37) suggested, but a matter of shared beliefs and convictions.
It was common in those days to believe that some people had better rela-
tions with the gods, spirits, or ancestors than others, and because of this
they were expected to be better placed to act as intermediaries between the
people and the supernatural forces than whoever else in that society. This
type of convictions lay at the bottom of their higher social and political
status (Claessen and Oosten 1996; Thomas 1990: 26–33; Claessen 2000).
In the discussion so far several elements came to the fore that were im-
portant in the development and acceptation of states. Most important seems
to be the fact that already long before the state came into being people lived
in well-organized societies, and were accustomed to leadership, rules, taxes,
obligations, etcetera. The development of a state out of such a form of or-
ganization depended upon the emergence of some ‘necessary conditions’
(as Shifferd has called them). In some cases the ‘necessary conditions’
emerged in but a short period of time, and consequently the formation of
the state took only a short time. This holds for example for the state of the
Betsileo in Madagascar (Kottak 1980; Claessen 2000).
The Betsileo lived at the east side of the island, where they cultivated
rice in the coastal plains on irrigated terraces. Their existence was threat-
ened when in the early seventeenth century slave hunters tried to capture
people. To protect themselves against this danger they erected hill top forts,
and defended themselves from there against the slave hunters. In this way
they were able to stay near their rice fields. Because of the relative safety of
the hill forts great numbers of people sought refuge there. This led to popu-
lation pressure in the hill top settlements, and strong administrative meas-
ures became necessary to maintain order within the forts. This demanded
stronger leadership than was customary. In Betsileo society there existed
already clan leaders, endowed with some form of sacred legitimacy. From
their midst persons came to the fore who took the necessary measures to
organize social life in the forts. As clan leaders they possessed already a
sacred status, and, together with their increasing powers, they soon became
considered to posses this quality in a stronger measure than the other lead-
ers, and they were elevated above all others. The growing complexity of the
society made it inevitable to develop mechanisms to ensure that rules and
regulations were carried out – if necessary by force. In this way a reason-
able degree of order in the overcrowded forts was reached and safety as
well as a sufficient flow of food and goods was ensured.
The case of the Betsileo presents several clues to the identification of the
‘necessary conditions’ under which state formation occurs, such as an im-
minent danger, the necessity to organize some defense, some collective
building activities, the necessity to keep order in densely populated settle-
ments, the need to produce food supplies; in the course of these activities
the need for more developed forms of legitimized leadership came to the
fore.
In order to find additional data on the ‘necessary conditions’ a survey of
the evolution of some Polynesian societies will be presented now. These
island societies have a more or less similar economic and ideological back-
ground. For our goal it is important to realize that from its very beginning,
Polynesian sociopolitical organization had a hierarchical basis (Kirch and
Green 2001). There are in Polynesia small-scale local societies, as well as
large, well-organized chiefdoms and early states (Kirch 1984; Van Bakel
1989; Claessen 2000). The main incentives behind the socio-political de-
velopments are on the one hand the size of the island and the percentage of
arable land, and the number of people on the other. The little atolls, where
only a few hundred people did live on a few square kilometers, are charac-
terized by small-scale societies, where sacred headmen exercise modest
forms of leadership. In such face-to-face communities, with only limited
resources are but few tasks for leaders. In case of communal fishing parties
they give instructions, and in ceremonial matters they had a say (see: Alkire
1977; Mason 1968; Huntsman and Hooper 1996). On larger islands, such as
the Marquesas, conditions for the development of more complex forms of
leadership were favorable. Here the relatively large population put too great
a pressure on the available resources. Therefore the sacred chiefs were no
longer able to fulfil the expectations of their people that they would procure
fertility and well-being, and the people lost their faith in them; the chiefs
lost their ideologically based legitimacy, and soon after that the political
system collapsed; sacred chiefs made place for warring big men (Van Bakel
1989; Thomas 1990; Kirch 1991). On the large, fertile islands of the Samoa
group the political organization remained embryonic. The actual power lay
with the village community, and the village leaders had to consult all family
heads before any decision could be taken. If decisions were not acceptable
to some villagers, they could go away, and settle into another village. This
unique situation is connected with the low density of population here (Van
Bakel 1989, 1991; Bargatzky 1987; for a different view: Tcherkézoff 1997).
In the large islands of Tahiti, Tonga and Hawai'i early states developed. In
these islands a large population, concentrated mainly in the coastal plains,
and a rich economy made the development of a large ruling class possible –
though it seems that on the Hawai'ian Islands the limits of the resources
were reached, for irrigation works and artificial fishponds were needed to
feed the population (for Tahiti: Claessen 2000; for Tonga: Douaire-
Marsaudon; for Hawai'i: Tuggle 1979; Sahlins 1992 presents a less pessi-
mistic view, but describes also irrigation works and fishponds).
The combined data on the Betsileo and Polynesia enable us to formulate
in a more general way the ‘necessary conditions’ under which (early) states
emerge (see also Claessen and Oosten 1996: 5):
– There must be a sufficient number of people to form a complex
stratified society. The necessary number of administrators, servants,
courtiers, priests, soldiers, agriculturalists, traders and so on, can only be
found in a population running into the thousands. Even the smallest early
states on Tahiti numbered at least some 5,000 people. Such large numbers
of people, living together in one society has a number of consequences, the
most important of which is the need of more developed forms of leadership.
An explanation of this need is given by Gregory Johnson. First he demon-
strated that in larger groups a greater mass of information becomes avail-
able; few people are able to manage such a stream of data. This promotes
the position of those who possess this quality (1978). He then explains that
when a large number of people live together in one society, some form of
decision-making is needed. If no persons come to the fore who are entitled
– or capable, or sufficiently strong – to take decisions, the large group will
fall apart (Johnson 1981). The atoll societies of Oceania clearly were too
small to need a strongly developed form of leadership. The Samoan case
shows that as long there is a possibility to ‘escape’ strong leaders, such a
leadership will not develop. On the large islands, such as Tahiti, Tongatapu,
or Hawai'i complex sociopolitical organizations emerged, societies that
qualify as early states.
– The society must control a specified territory. The territory is in
first instance the place where the society lives. In the long run such a terri-
tory can be no longer sufficient for the maintenance of the population. In
the Marquesas Islands pressure on the means of subsistence, made worse by
devastating wars, led to hunger and misery, and the chiefly organization
collapsed. Elsewhere, as was the case with the Aztecs (Hicks 1986) or the
Vikings (Sawyer 1982) conquest, plunder, or trade were the means to
amend for its shortcomings. In both cases the society in question main-
tained its original territory.
– There must be a productive system yielding a surplus to maintain
the specialists and the privileged categories. The specialists may be po-
litical, religious and administrative functionaries, but also craftsmen, trad-
ers, servants, etc. The collection of the surplus may be in the form of taxa-
tion, tribute, or even plunder (see Hicks 1986; Claessen and Van de Velde
1991: 11–12; Cohen 1991). As long as sufficient means are collected to
‘pay’ the chiefs, the kings, the priests, the servants, and eventually the
needy, a complex socio-political structure can be maintained, even en-
larged. A poor economy simply prevents the maintenance, or even the
emergence of such a type of society; a more complex political organization
eventually will collapse by declining income, as was the case on Easter Is-
land (Claessen 2000).
Where societies occupy a large territory, but people live in small village
communities, having no more than a simple subsistence economy, and but
limited contacts, a stratified sociopolitical organization usually does not
emerge. There is simply no need for chiefs or administrators. Households
care for themselves, and there are but few overarching institutions (sodali-
ties, as Service 1971 called them). Good examples of such societies are the
Nuer (Evans-Pritchard 1940), or the Plateau Tonga (Colson 1968). The im-
plication of this is that there must be tasks for leaders will it be possible for
them to develop positions of power and status. In this respect Johnson and
Earle (1987) speak of risk management, and see that as one of the crucial
tasks of sociopolitical leaders. This does not contradict Johnson's theories
on the development of leadership, but rather adds to it. Such tasks will de-
velop, for example, when economic activities demand co-operation on a
more permanent scale, when religious convictions ask for temples or sanc-
tuaries, or when a growing need for water demands irrigation works. I am
aware that in several places irrigation works were constructed without the
intervention of chiefs or kings – e.g., in the island of Bali it were the village
communities that constructed irrigation works (Grader 1984; Geertz 1980)
– yet, generally speaking, management is a great impetus for the develop-
ment of leadership, and many times the servant of the community grew into
its ruler (Engels 1960: 219; Wittfogel 1957).
– There must exist an ideology, which explains and justifies a hier-
archical administrative organization and socio-political inequality. The
existence or the development of such an ideology makes it possible for the
less fortunate to understand and to accept their modest position. If such an
ideology does not exist or emerges, the formation of a state becomes diffi-
cult, or even outright impossible (cf. Clastres 1974; Earle 1997), and other
types of sociopolitical organization will emerge. Many of such societies can
be characterized by the term heterarchy – mentioned already at the begin-
ning of this article. Such heterarchical societies can be quite complex, and
they are found all over the world. Asiatic societies, such as the Kachin, be-
long to this category (Friedman 1979; Hagesteijn 1989), as well as the
Northwest Coast Indians (Suttles 1990), and many African societies
(McIntosh 1999). The African Mbundu are a good case in point. Here a
large population lived under favorable economic conditions, and there were
several efforts to organize overarching religious and/or sociopolitical struc-
tures. None of these efforts succeeded, however; the egalitarian ideology of
the population was too strong to accept the domination by a centralized ad-
ministrative apparatus (Miller 1976).
The development of a convincing form of legitimation is crucial for the
establishing of more complex forms of leadership. The concept of legiti-
macy was introduced into the social sciences by Max Weber (1964: 24 ff.),
who stated that legitimacy of a leader was based in the first place on the
beliefs of his people. If a ruler acted conform to the beliefs of his people he
acted in a legitimate way. Though also to Beetham (1991: 11) the sharing of
norms and values by rulers and ruled is a necessary condition, he thinks that
also the legal validity of the acquisition and exercise of power has to be
established. This seems a valuable addition to Weber's views (see also
Cohen 1988).
The ideological legitimation appears to have a strong materialistic com-
ponent, however. As stated above, Kurtz (1984) refers to the obligation of a
government to fulfil the economic needs of the people; as long as that is
done, people will obey the demands and rules the ruler issues. Stated differ-
ently: the people has obligations toward its ruler, but the ruler also has obli-
gations towards his people. This relation is a reciprocal one: we, the people,
work for the government, the government has to take care of us. In Polyne-
sia and Micronesia the legitimizing ideology is based on the belief that the
founder of the group – the oldest descendant of the oldest line – is a direct
descendant of one of the gods. This birth endows the founding father with
sacred qualities. These qualities pass over to the eldest son, and his eldest
son, and so on. Because of this these descendants were rightfully the leaders
of the group. Only they could approach their divine forefathers directly, and
procure fertility and well-being for all. In reciprocity the commoners gave
food, labor, and women to the leaders, and obeyed their commands (Tho-
mas 1990).
In many African cases leadership was connected with the idea of ‘the
first’. It was believed that the person who was the first to open the earth (for
agriculture) met with the earth spirits, with whom he concluded a kind of
contract, and in exchange for certain rituals, he could procure fertility for
women, cattle, and land. According to the myths this earth priest lost in
several regions his political prerogatives to the ‘hunter’, a person assumed
to have come from abroad and who is connected with the distribution of
meat. By marrying the daughter of the earth priest the hunter and his de-
scendants became sacred political leaders (Claessen and Oosten 1996; Mul-
ler 1999; McIntosh 1999).
The Southeast Asian Kachin believed that a man who produced more
food than others, and because of this could hand out more than others, had
good connections with the gods, the spirits or the forefathers. When his
good fortune remained, people started to give the man small presents, in
return for his blessings. In this way – and when his agricultural luck contin-
ued – he could become a sacred leader and the gifts became obligatory;
Friedman (1979) even connects the development of the Asiatic mode of
production with this type of structure. Hagesteijn (1989) describes the fur-
ther development of such polities into unstable early states.
The occurrence of these four conditions at the same time and at the same
place is already quite exceptional (see Shifferd 1987), but is in itself not yet
sufficient for the development of a state; there is also needed some cause
that triggers the developments. This cause may be considered as the fifth
necessary condition. In the case of the Betsileo this cause was the arrival
of slave hunters. Not willing to be captured, but at the same time not willing
to leave the rice terraces, the Betsileo decided to withdraw to nearby hill
forts, and defend themselves. This ‘first step’ had the serious – but not in-
tended – consequence that an early state emerged here. In other places the
necessity to develop irrigation works, or the need to protect long-distance
trade demanded stronger leadership. This all was stated already in The
Early State (Claessen and Skalník 1978: 624–625):
...the development into statehood, in all cases, was triggered off by some
action or event which took place a long time before, and was not di-
rected especially towards this goal. The other obvious characteristic of
the development to statehood is that it always shows something of a
snowball effect: once it comes into motion, it grows faster and faster.
In view of the data presented, it is clear that a number of factors should
be present, and some influence – internal or external – that triggered the
developments. This influence could be a danger, as happened with the Bet-
sileo, a shortage of food and goods, as was the case with the Aztecs, or the
introduction of new ideas and beliefs that were crucial in the development
of South East Asian early states (Hagesteijn 1989). It should be realized,
however, that this combination not always resulted in more complex socio-
political organizations; this happened only when the factors reinforced each
other; when a positive feedback occurred. When the strength of the factors
varied greatly there is every reason to believe that some other type of so-
ciopolitical organization would emerge – a big-man structure, a heterarchy.
If, what must have happened many times, the factors contradicted or ham-
pered each other, stagnation was the case (negative feedback), and eventu-
ally an early state did not emerge. In the Complex Interaction Model
(Claessen and Van de Velde 1985, 1987) we formulated the interrelation of
the crucial formative factors – the societal format (i.e., the territory and the
number of people), the ideology, and the dominance of the economy. A
mutual, reciprocal influencing of each other causes changes in the factors
(or groups of factors), creating the conditions under which more complex
sociopolitical organizations emerge. Once it has been established, the so-
ciopolitical organization becomes the fourth factor in the model, which in
its turn influences the other three and acts as a co-determinant – provided,
of course, that no negative feedback prevents or postpones this.
An analysis of historic cases makes clear that in many cases the devel-
opment of a state was a process of long duration. During the process pro-
gress and stagnation could both occur; yet, in the end the state was a fact.
The checkered history of the Frankish kingdom is a good example of such a
prolonged development. The state of the Capetians emerged only after an
eventful history of seven centuries. A history that began with Clovis, who
started the process of state formation in the fifth century with the creation
of an emergent early state, and ended with Philippe II August, who in the
12th century rounded off the building of a mature state (Claessen 1985). The
history of the Betsileo demonstrates, however, that the formation of an
early state can be a matter of some fifty years only (cf. Kottak 1980). And,
there are many cases where, even though most of the necessary conditions
were present, a state never emerged at all, as the history of the Mbundu of
Angola shows (Miller 1976; cf. also Shifferd 1987).
It is in this context that the answer to our question should be sought.
Only when a number of specified conditions are present at the same time in
the same society, and when some triggering accident occurs, the develop-
ment of an early state will take place, provided that a positive feedback be-
tween the ‘necessary conditions’ occurs. It is in such cases only that the
emergence of an early state was inevitable.
This is not the end of the story. Nowadays everywhere the modern,
highly developed state is the dominant form of government, and alternative
models of sociopolitical organization are tolerated only as a kind of districts
or provinces in modern states. From its very beginning was the state a
stronger type of organization than all others; for the surrounding polities
there were not many alternatives. They could try to imitate the powerful
organization – peer polity interaction (Renfrew and Cherry 1986) – and try
to maintain their independence or they would become subdued or colonized
after some time. In that respect one cannot but conclude that in the end the
state has been inevitable. And, even this seems not to be the end of evolu-
tion. We do not know what the consequences of growing globalization and
localization will be; prediction in the social sciences is rather hazardous.
That, however, the state in the form we know it now will have had its long-
est time seems not improbable – it is perhaps even inevitable (Kloos 1995).
NOTE
* First published in Social Evolution & History 1 (1), July 2002, pp. 101–117.
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6
The Early State and Its Analogues:
A Comparative Analysis*
Leonid E. Grinin
‘Uchitel’ Publishing House, Volgograd
It is recognized widely enough that a pre-state society in order to get trans-

formed into a state must have a certain size of territory and population, a
necessary degree of sociocultural complexity and an ability to produce suf-
ficient quantities of surplus. However, sometimes cultures significantly ex-
ceed required levels of those parameters without forming states. In addition
to this, we know historically and ethnographically a considerable number of
stateless societies not at all inferior to the early state societies with respect
to their territory, population, sociocultural and/or political complexity. So,
the question is: how to classify such societies? Compared to unquestionably
pre-state societies, such as, for example, simple chiefdoms, they are not
only larger in size but much more complex as well. In certain sense, they
can be regarded as being at the same level of sociocultural development as
early-state societies. And, since both types of societies faced similar prob-
lems and solved similar tasks, I denote (identify) complex stateless societies
as early state analogues. This article is an attempt to analyze such ana-
logues and compare them with early states.
INTRODUCTION
I can hardly be wrong stating that the view of a state as the only possible,
and hence ‘alternativeless’, result of the development of pre-state polities, is
predominant among the students of the early state formation. Such a unilin-
ear approach, no doubt, aggravates methodological problems encountered
by many political anthropologists in their studies of complex societies (see,
e.g., Belkov 1993, 1995; McIntosh 1999a; Popov 1995a, 1995b, 2000;
Grinin / The Early State and Its Analogues: A Comparative Analysis, pp. 88–136
Possehl 1998; Vansina 1999). ‘It is often said that research on the forma-
tion of complex political organization is currently in a state of methodo-
logical deadlock’ (Bondarenko 2000a: 213). However, it will be easier to
get out of this methodological deadlock if we reject the idea that the state
was the only and universal possibility of development for complex post-
primitive societies and recognize that there were alternative pathways,
other than transformation into early states (Bondarenko 2000a; Grinin
2001). Luckily, the idea that non-state societies are not necessarily less
complex and less efficient than the state ones, nowadays looks less blas-
phemous than a few years ago (Bondarenko, Grinin, and Korotayev 2002:
56; also Claessen 2002: 101)1.
I have denoted those alternatives of the early state as early state ana-
logues (Grinin 1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2002d,
2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2004). Some of these analogues turn out to be inca-
pable to get transformed into states at all. Other systems of this kind do be-
come states – but when reaching quite a high level of development and
complexity that is fairly comparable with those of many state societies.
Therefore, it is important to accept the fact that the societies that preceded
the formation of the state historically differed strongly among themselves in
size and complexity. This means that in different societies the transition
to the state started not from the same but from different levels of so-
ciocultural and political complexity.
Thus, a society, after reaching a certain size and a certain level of so-
ciocultural complexity (at which the transition to the state is already possi-
ble), may continue to develop – and at the same time not to build political
forms of an early state for a long time. In particular, a culture may have a
very high level of social stratification (examples are given further in the
text) but lack a state system. However, if we understand the early state only
as a product of antagonistic social contradictions (e.g., Engels 1961; Fried
1967, 1978; Krader 1978 etc.), such phenomena could be hard to explain2.
Although the analysis of existing points of view, as regards what the
state is and what its basic features are, is beyond the scope of this paper (for
detail see Grinin 2004), it is necessary to point out that throughout this pa-
per within this context the early state is regarded first of all as a special po-
litical organization of a society (a system of political and administrative
institutions) that could emerge (not always, but only under certain condi-
tions) in societies that have already reached a necessary level of develop-
ment, and, particularly, a certain level of sociocultural and political com-
plexity, that produce necessary amounts of surplus, and have necessary ter-
ritory size and sufficient populations3.
Grinin / The Early State and Its Analogues: A Comparative Analysis 91
EARLY STATE ANALOGUES:
SIZE AND SOME CHARACTERISTICS
We know many historical and ethnographic cases of polities which differ
from the early state significantly in political organization and power as well
as administrative structure, but are similar to the state in size and complex-
ity (Beliaev, Bondarenko, and Frantsouzoff 2002; Bondarenko 1995, 2000a,
2000b, 2001; Bondarenko and Korotayev 2000a; Bondarenko and Sledzev-
ski 2000; Crumley 1995, 2001; Girenko 1995; Grinin 1997, 2000b, 2000c,
2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2002d; 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2004; Korotayev
1995, 2000a, 2000b; Kradin et al. 2000; Kradin, Bondarenko, and Barfield
2003; Kradin and Lynsha 1995; McIntoch 1999b; Popov 1995a, 1995b,
2000; Possehl 1998; Schaedel 1995 etc.).
It is recognized universally enough that, to form a state, a pre-state soci-
ety must possess a certain set of minimum characteristics with respect to
territory, population, complexity, sociopolitical differentiation and ability to
accumulate surplus (cf. e.g., Claessen 1978a, 2000, 2002). Societies, how-
ever, can significantly outgrow respective levels of those indices – but
without forming a state. How then should such societies be classified? Still
as pre-state cultures, or as something else?
I am convinced that the most productive path to follow is to recognize
them just as early state analogues (Bondarenko, Grinin, and Korotayev
2002; Grinin 1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2002d,
2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2004). This is because, on the one hand, if compared
with doubtlessly pre-state societies, such as, for example, simple chief-
doms, tribes etc., they are not only bigger in size but much more complex
as well. On the other hand, their size and complexity were comparable to
those of early states and dealt with problems of comparable scale and es-
sence. That is why they may, in a certain sense, be regarded as being at the
same level of sociocultural and/or political development as the early state
societies. The latter, certainly, differ significantly from their analogues, but
not as much in the development level as in some peculiarities of political
organization and in ‘the mechanics’ of administration. However, despite the
differences in the mechanics of regulation of sociopolitical life, similar
functions were still performed in both types of societies4. Below I shall give
some examples of such analogues. However, before doing this, I should
provide some additional explanations.
First of all, the size of the analogues should be mentioned. This issue
becomes of a rather great importance because of the following relationship:
the bigger is the population of a polity, the more complex its structure is (all
other conditions being similar), because a higher population and a larger
territory may require new levels of hierarchy and administration (see, e.g.,
Carneiro 1967; Feinman 1998; Johnson and Earle 2000: 2, 181). But since
we compare early state analogues with the early state proper, first it should
be established what is considered to be the minimum size required for an
early state.
To start with, there is no uniformity of opinion on this subject (for de-
tails, see Feinman 1998: 97–99); however, something like the following
pattern tends to be traced:
simple chiefdom – population of thousands;
complex chiefdom – population of tens thousands;
state – population of hundreds of thousands or millions
(Johnson and Earle 2000: 246, 304; see also Vasilyev 1983: 45).
This produces an elegant and perfect line of levels of cultural evolution:
the family – the local group – the Big Man collectivity – the chiefdom – the
archaic state – the nation-state (Johnson and Earle 2000: 245).
In general, such a line is a fruitful method of constructing evolutionary
patterns, but it is useless for our purposes since it completely ignores states
with population from several thousand to one hundred thousand although
there are quite enough of such states even in the modern times (e.g., Nauru,
Kiribati, etc.), while in the ancient and medieval times their number was
even larger. At the same time, an opinion (arguable but deserving attention)
has been voiced according to which the first states (meaning pristine states
as termed by Fried) must have been small in size at any time and anywhere
and must have incorporated one single territorial community or several in-
terconnected communities (D'jakonov 2000a: 34). In this respect, therefore,
the early states counting from several thousands to 100–200 thousand peo-
ple are of special interest to the researchers of state formation process. In
general, I am inclined to consider the point of view expressed by Claessen
(2002: 107) to be more true to fact. In his opinion, for a polity to become a
state it must have a population of not less than several thousand people.
And he adds that population of the smallest Tahiti states counted not less
than 5,000 (ibid.). But this, certainly, is the lowest limit for an early state.
D'jakonov (1983) cites some interesting facts regarding the assumed
population numbers of Mesopotamian city-states (the ‘nomos-states’ ac-
cording to this author) in the 3rd millennium B.C. In the 28th – 27th centuries
B.C. the population of the Ur city-state (90 sq. km) encompassed 6,000
people, of which two thirds resided in the city of Ur itself. In the 27th – 26th
centuries B.C. the population of the Shuruppak nomos could amount to
th th
15,000–20,000 people (1983: 174). In the 25 – 24 centuries B.C. the
population of Lagash approached the figure of 100,000 people (D'jakonov
1983: 203). Presumably, the population of 40,000–50,000 people could live
in the early state that existed around 100 B.C. – A.D. 250 at Monte Albán
in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico (Kowalewski et al. 1995: 96).
Other examples can be cited as well. Thus, if in the 5th century B.C. the
population of even such a small Greek city as Argos, Thebes, Megara was
around 25,000–35,000 people (Struve et al. 1956: 241), the population of
many Greek poleis including rural areas (of course, with the exception of
such cities as Athens, Corinth, Syracuse), was within tens of thousands, and
it probably was even less in the earlier epoch. The population of Olbia
[Olivia] (the North Black Sea area) even during its florescence (the 5th and
4th centuries B.C.) did not exceed 15,000 (Shelov 1966: 236). Population of
the largest North Italian city-states (such as Milan, or Venice) in the 12th –
15th centuries did not exceed 200,000 (Batkin 1970: 252; Bernadskaya
1970: 329; Luzzatto 1954: 283). Population of most other city-states was
substantially smaller. The one of San Gimignano at the beginning of the 14th
century reached 14,000, the population of Pisa in 1233 was no more than
50,000 (Skazkin et al.1970: 208, 261). Florence population in the 14th cen-
tury was of the same order of magnitude [(50–60,000) Rutenburg 1987: 74,
112].
Thus, the differences in population numbers and, respectively, in the
complexity of organization of early states may conventionally be reflected
in the following graduation (also see Table 1):
a small early state – from several thousand to several dozen thousand
people;
a medium early state – from several dozen thousand to several hundred
thousand people;
a large early state – from several hundred thousand to 2–3 million people;
a huge early state – more than 3 million people.
Respectively the early state analogues must be classified as small early
state analogues, medium early state analogues and large early state
analogues (about the possibility of the existence of a huge early state ana-
logue see Table 1). It goes without saying that all three of them appreciably
differ from each other. The relation between the sizes of early states and
their analogues are given in Table 1.
TABLE 1
Type of early state Type of early state
Polity size
and examples analogue and examples
Several thousand A small early state An analogue of a small
to several dozen (Ur in the 28th– 27th early state (Iceland in the
thousand people centuries B.C.) 11th century A.D.)
Several dozen A medium early state An analogue of a medium

thousand to several (Hawaii in 19th cen- early state (Aedui,
hundred thousand tury) Arverni, and Helvetii of
people Gaul before Caesar)
Several hundred A large early state An analogue of a large
thousand to 2–3 (Poland in the 11th– early state (Hsiung-Nu in
million people 14th centuries5) 200 B.C. – A.D. 48)
> 3,000,000 A huge early state Analogues of huge early
(Rome in the 2nd cen- states do not appear to
tury B.C.; the Inca exist
state6)
The watershed between the states and the analogues runs within the
polity size of several hundred thousand people. For the analogues, this size
is, probably, the final limit beyond which such a polity either breaks down
or transforms into a state. That is why large state analogues are very rare.
The only case of such analogues among the examples given further, are the
large nomadic ‘supercomplex chiefdoms’ (Kradin 2000a, 2000b, 2002).
The population of such supercomplex chiefdoms, even by the most optimis-
tic estimates, never exceeded 1,500,000 people (Kradin 2001: 127). Thus,
such analogues only correspond to relatively smaller varieties of large
states, whereas analogues of huge states could not simply exist.
From what has been analyzed above the following conclusions can be
made:
1. Though any society that historically precedes the formation of an
early state is a pre-state society, it may be a predecessor of not necessarily a
small state, but immediately of a medium or a large one. Respectively, the
larger and more complex the ‘pre-state’ society is, the higher is the prob-
ability of its transition directly to a larger state system bypassing small and
medium state stages. Really, will it be right to regard the complex chiefdom
in Hawaii, the largest island of the archipelago, numbering up to one hun-
dred thousand people (Johnson and Earle 2000: 285), as being inferior, in
its level of development and complexity, to the smallest Tahiti states or the
nomos-state of Ur which was mentioned above? Absolutely and evidently
no. Indeed, after the Europeans had arrived in the Hawaiian Islands, a me-
dium size state got formed there – meaning that its population reached
200–300,000 if we base upon the pre-contact population estimates (Johnson
and Earle 2000: 284; Seaton 1978: 270).
But since the transition to the early state was from historically pre-state
societies of variable complexity and size, a necessity arises to subdivide
such pre-state societies into two types. The first group includes societies
that may be described/termed as inherently pre-state since their existing
size and complexity prevent their transformation even into a small state.
The other group includes polities that, with their existing features, poten-
tially may transform into small or larger states. These are the polities that I
denote as ‘early state analogues’.
2. At the same time a society may transform into an early state both
from the principally pre-state level – for example, by way of synoikism of
small communities as described (for example, by Сlaessen for the Betsileo
of Madagascar in the early 17th century [2002: 105–106]); – and from the
levels of small-7, medium-8, or even large-scale9 early state analogues.
Such approaches allow to single out, within the politogenesis10, evolu-
tionary alternatives to the early state, both at any level of its complexity
and development and from the point of view of correspondence with its
size. Reverse metamorphoses, from an early state to its analogue, though
rare, are also known (Korotayev 2000a; Trepavlov 1995).
3. Belonging to ‘the analogue group’ are also polities which for different
reasons did not become states: e.g., the Iroquois, the Tuareg, the Hsiung-
Nu, the Gauls, etc. These societies may be regarded as being stateless and
alternative to early states of this or that type. All this serves to demonstrate
that the notion of an early state analogue is a complex one and includes a
vast variety of polities, which differ from each other with respect to their
size, complexity, form and development level. The primary aim of bringing
such quite dissimilar societies under the common name of ‘early state ana-
logues’ is to single out trajectories of development of complex post-
primitive societies which are alternative to the evolutionary pathway lead-
ing to the formation of the state.
EARLY STATE ANALOGUES: CLASSIFICATION

All the analogues, no doubt, differ from early states in their peculiarities of
political organization and administration. However, this distinction is mani-
fested in each analogue type in a different way. For example, the separa-
tion of the power from the population in self-governing communities is
rather weak; confederations exhibit the weakness of power centralization,
etc. That is why I did my best to classify the early state analogues according
to peculiarities of their political forms, although this principle is hard to
keep to consistently. The following types and sub-types of analogues may
be distinguished:
First, one could single out some self-governing communities and terri-
tories, such as:
a) Urban communities, especially the ones with developed commercial
structure (Grinin 2001; Korotayev 1995). As examples of self-governing
townships the following can be cited: certain Greek poleis (Korotayev
1995), although too few of them can be classified as analogues11; some
temple-civil communities of ancient Arabia (Korotayev 2000b: 266; Koro-
tayev et al. 2000: 23); possibly, some towns of Gaul where the number of
‘true towns’ reached 1,000 (Shkunaev 1989: 143), some of them with the
population of several dozen thousand (Shkunaev 1989: 134).
b) Large enough self-governing settlers' territories (e.g., Iceland in 10th–
th
13 century A.D.).
Iceland was sectioned into territorial areas and dozens of legal-
administrative districts, with Althing (the people's assembly) and
Lögretta (a kind of senate) as supreme organs of government. The level
of electoral procedures and conventions was high, the proof of which be-
ing the decisions adopted from time to time by the Althing by voting.
Thus, in A.D. 1000 it was decided to change the religion and adopt
Christianity. At the same time toleration was preserved: it was allowed
to secretly worship pagan gods and eat horseflesh, the basic food for the
population. It was also decided to divide big land possessions of the no-
bility and distribute them among the farmers; this process was com-
pleted in the middle of the 11th century A.D. (Olgeirsson 1957: 179–
191). However, in the 12th century the wealth and social inequality be-
came again so strong that it started influencing the transformation of the
basic institutions of the Icelandic society (Gurevich 1972: 8, 9). In the
13th century the population grew up to 70,000–80,000 people (Filatov
1965: 343).
c) Territories inhabited by large groups of déclassé persons of various
descent (‘outlaws’), that had their own bodies of self-government and con-
stituted an organized and formidable military force-like, for example, the
Cossacks of Don or Zaporozhye (Korotayev et al. 2000: 19; Rozner 1970),
and, if Gumilev (1993: 11–13) is right, possibly the Juan-juan in Central
th
Asia (4–6 centuries A.D.) as well. But on the whole the question of the
origin of the Juan-juan is rather arguable (for detail see Kradin 2000: 80–94).
Second, some large tribal ‘confederations’ with a supreme chieftain ex-
ercising power strong enough (such as ‘kings’, khans, etc.), such as:
a) More or less stable tribal unions, ethnically uniform or having a firm
monoethnic main body. German tribal unions of the period of the Great
Migration of the Peoples in the 4th – 6th centuries A.D. (Burgundianes, Sa-
lian Franks, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, etc.) that counted from 80,000
to 150,000 of population (Bessmertny 1972: 40; Le Goff 1992: 33; Neusy-
hin 1968; Udaltsova 1967: 654), tribal unions of some Gallic peoples, par-
ticularly in Belgica and Aquitaine (Shkunaev 1989: 140), and others may
serve as examples.
b) Very large polities that emerged as a result of successful wars (like
the Huns ‘empire’ under Attila in the 5th century A.D. or the Avars ‘empire’
in the 6th– 7th centuries A.D.), usually rather unstable and ethnically hetero-
geneous. In the 4th century A.D. on the northern Black Sea coast the union
under the Gothic leader Ermanaric was similar to such a type and it con-
sisted of a number of heterogeneous multilingual tribes including nomadic
and agricultural ones (Smirnov 1966b: 324). But the Goths arrived at higher
level of social stratification and culture than the Huns or the Avars and had
more unruly aristocracy (see Tikhanova 1958).
c) The unions that can be defined as a transitional type between the ana-
logues described in items ‘a’ and ‘b’ are the ones under the leadership of this
or that outstanding chieftain and consisting of ethnically close peoples but
rather unstable and usually breaking apart after their leader's death or even
during his life (as it happened with Maroboduus's alliance). For example, in
the 1st century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D. the Germans had large unions:
Ariovistus's union of the Suebi, Arminius's union of the Cherusci, Marobod-
uus's union of the Marcomanni, Claudius Civilis's union of the Batavi and
others (Neusyhin 1968: 601–602; Oosten 1996). It is possible to judge the
scale of some of these phenomena if we consider, for example, the Germanic
tribal union under the king Maroboduus (the end of the 1st century B.C. up to
the 1st century A.D.) who created a large army following the Roman pattern
and numbering 70,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry. ([Kolesnitskij] 1966: 123).
The Geto-Dacians tribal union under the king Burebista (Fyodorov and
Polevoy 1984) and the union of the Slavonic tribes of Bohemia and Mora-
via (the so-called Samon state [Lozny 1995: 86–87]) are other examples of
analogues of this kind. To a similar type one should also refer different no-
madic unions of smaller size with one leader; those unions did not usually
outlast leader's death, though sometimes they had short dynasties. To set an-
other example of this type one can name the eastern Kipchak union (the
Don area) under the leadership of Khan Konchak and his son Yuri Kon-
chakovich (Pletnyova 1966b: 457–462; see also further on the Kipchak tribes
Vasyutin 2002: 95–96).
d) Large formations held together basically by the power of the chiefs'
authority and not by coercion. For example, the pre-Incan (the 15th century
A.D.) Lupaca chiefdom of southern Peru had the population of over
150,000 people and was ruled by two paramount chiefs without the institu-
tion of coercive force, and both specialized and corvee labor was supplied
on an essentially consensual basis (Schaedel 1995: 52).
Third, large tribal unions and confederations without royal power.
a) Saxons of Saxony ([Kolesnitskij 1969a]); Aedui, Arverni and Helvetii
in Gaul (Shkunaev 1989: 140) may serve as examples of such tribal unions
without royal power. At the same time it should be specifically pointed out
that the processes of social and proprietary differentiation had gone quite
far within them, going ahead of political development.
The Saxons (of Saxony), before they were conquered by Charles (the
end of the 8th century), had had no royal power but their tribal units were
headed by dukes. General military command was in the hands of a duke
who was chosen by lot (Kolesnitskij 1963: 186). Politically, all the terri-
tory was organized as a kind of federation of separate provinces. Com-
mon issues were discussed and tackled at a congress of representatives
of the provinces (Kolesnitskij 1963: 186). The Saxon society, except for
the slaves, was divided into three strata: the tribal nobility (aethelings,
nobiles), the free (liberi) and the semi-free (liti). At the same time, the
legal statuses of the nobiles and the liberi differed sharply, which was
legally affirmed in Lex Saxonum. In the first twenty articles of this code
the nobiles appeared as the sole bearers of legal standards and rules
([Kolesnitskij] 1969a: 479; 1969b; Neusyhin 1968: 608). It goes without
saying that inequality in wealth was also considerable.
Gaul, by the Caesar's conquest, was a very rich territory with large
population – 5 to 10 or even more million people (Brodel 1995: 61–62)
– with numerous towns, trades and well-developed commerce. Social
differentiation was considerable (Clark and Piggott 1970: 310–328). Ac-
cording to Caesar, the common people lived like slaves (Le Roux 2000:
125). At the same time the Gallic nobles had, each of them, up to several
hundred – and even several thousand (up to ten thousand) – of clients to
form cavalry troops as a substitute for levies and in this way to confront
the majority of Gallic commoners (Bessmertny 1972: 17; Caesar 1993:
9). In the aristocratic civitas (a Roman name for the territory under tribal
unions in Gaul) a distinct military unity was observed, while the mecha-
nisms of making political or other decisions were realized through one
of several elected magistrates (Shkunaev 1989: 139, 144). The popula-
tion of certain tribal units and confederations was very large. For exam-
ple, the number of the Helvetti who in 58 B.C. tried to migrate to the
western parts of Gaul was, according to different sources, from 250,000
to 400,000 (e.g., Shkunaev 1988: 503).
b) Confederations of societies, at times making quite stable and strong
(from the military point of view) political formations as, for instance, tribal
confederations of the Iroquois (Fenton 1978; Morgan 1983; Vorobyov
2000), the Tuareg (Pertshyts 1968) or the Pechenegs (Marey 2000);
c) Township confederations of the type of the Etruscan Confederation.
The Etruscan towns proper, with their oligarchic rule of militaristic and
priestly nobles (Neronova 1989; Zalessky 1959), were rather not states, as
far as scarce data make it possible to judge, but small state analogues
(Grinin 2001: 21), while a federation of them may be regarded as a medium
state analogue12;
d) Autonomous rural territories forming a federation or a confederation
of politically independent rural communities, as, for example, it was ob-
served among many highlanders (Korotayev 1995).
Highland Dagestan may be cited as an example (Aglarov 1988). The
communities, jama'ats, that formed federations (the so-called ‘free so-
cieties’), were themselves, at times, large enough settlements – some of
them up to 1,500 and more households [ibid: 207] (which is comparable
to a small polis) – and had a multilevel system (up to five levels) of self-
government (ibid: 186). As to a federation (sometimes including 13 or
more settlements each), it was a political unit of an even more complex
constitution and uniting dozens of thousands people. Family groups
(toukhoums) were unequal socially and in rank (ibid: 131). Another ex-
ample is the village groups in southeastern Nigeria, sometimes including
dozens of villages with total population of dozens of thousands (up to
75,000). Each village group had its own name, internal organization, and
a central market (McIntosh 1999a: 9).
Fourth, superlarge nomadic amalgamations, such as Hsiung-Nu (which
superfluously resembled large states), termed by Kradin (1992, 2000a,
2000b, 2001a, 2001b) as ‘nomadic empires’ and referred to as supercom-
plex chiefdoms. According to Kradin, the ‘nomadic empires’ of Inner Asia
counted up to 1,000,000–1,500,000 of population (2001a: 127; 2001b: 79).
In my opinion, Scythia in the 6th– 5th centuries B.C. may also be de-
noted a supercomplex chiefdom. It was a large multilevel hierarchical
amalgamation with the ideology of clan unity for entire society, with the
principle of redistribution (of both tribute and duties) and united into a
single military force. Scythia was divided into three kingdoms each headed
by a king who had armed forces of his own and one of those kings was
probably the supreme ruler. There is also an opinion that on the whole
Scythia was governed by a detached governor's kin that ruled according
the ulus principles (Khazanov 1975: 196–199). The cast of priests and
aristocracy stood out, whereas aristocrats had their own armed forces
and possessed great wealth. However, the administration methods in
Scythia still remained basically traditional; therefore, on the one hand, it
cannot be regarded as an early state, while on the other hand, it had
nothing to do with an ordinary pre-state society. At the end of the 5th –
beginning of the 4th century B.C., during the rule of king Ateas Scythia
witnessed the transition to early state ([Smirnov] 1966: 220). This king
disposed of other kings, usurped the power, united the country within
the boundaries from the Sea of Azov to the Danube and even began to
move further westward (ibid.)13.
Fifth, in connection with the above said, it becomes evident that at least
some of the very large complex chiefdoms (maximal chiefdoms in the
terms of one of Carneiro's early typologies of chiefdoms [1981: 47]) may be
regarded as early state analogues since in size, population and complexity
they are not inferior to small and even medium states. Certainly, if histori-
cally they precede the formation of a state, it is rightful to regard them as
pre-state societies – but pre-state historically and not inherently. (But if
their development did not result in the emergence of a state it would be
more precise to term them as stateless polities). Some examples of such
complex chiefdoms have been given earlier. However, it is worthwhile to
have a look at the Hawaiians, too. This appears to be especially important,
as ‘at contact the social organization of the Hawaiian Islands was the most
complex of any Polynesian chiefdoms and probably of any chiefdoms
known elsewhere in the world’ (Earle 2000: 73; see also Johnson and Earle
2000: 284).
As it is known, the Hawaiians achieved considerable success in
economy, particularly in irrigation (see Earle 1997, 2000; Johnson and
Earle 2000; Wittfogel 1957: 241), a very high level of stratification and
accumulation of surplus by their elite (Earle 1997, 2000; Johnson and
Earle 2000; Sahlins 1972/1958), a fundamental ideological justification
of privileges enjoyed by the top stratum. By the time they were discov-
ered by James Cook, their political system had already formed when
several large chiefdoms co-existed. Although wars were a natural thing,
30 years before Cook's arrival a peaceful treaty had been concluded be-
tween the chiefdoms (Seaton 1978: 271). The population of certain
chiefdoms varied from 30,000 to 100,000 people (Johnson and Earle
2000: 246). Chiefdoms were subdivided into districts with population of
4,000 to 25,000 people (Harris 1995: 152). Thus, all the conditions re-
quired for the formation of an early state were available, namely: suffi-
ciently large territory with subdivision into districts and large popula-
tion, high level of social stratification and considerable surplus produc-
tion, strong power of a paramount chief and a strict hierarchy of power,
developed ideology, territorial division, as well as other things. How-
ever, there was no state as such.
Nevertheless some scholars (e.g., Seaton 1978: 270; Van Bakel
1996) believe that early states had existed in the Hawai'i Islands already
before Cook's arrival. But such statements are based rather on the as-
sumptions, as there is no archaeological data or written evidence, which
would allow to decide if there had already been an early state or a para-
mount chiefdom before Cook's arrival. It is clear that much depends on
the definitions used. So I believe the correct point would be to join a
more widespread opinion (e.g., Earle 1997, 2000; Harris 1995: 152;
Johnson and Earle 2000; Sahlins 1972/1958), that there was not any
state on the Hawaiian Islands at that moment. Of course, such a conclu-
sion does not explain, why being so highly developed the Hawaiians did
not create a state. However, I suggest the concept of analogues of the
early state just for explaining such cases, when the state is not present
yet, but the society obviously has developed beyond the pre-state level.
Thus, there was no state in the Hawaiis. At the same time, the size
and development level of Hawaiian chiefdoms provide a reason to re-
gard them as small early state analogues and the chiefdom on the Hawaii
Island proper – as a medium state analogue. To prove this statement, it is
worthwhile to make some comparison. The population of this largest
chiefdom of the Hawaiian Archipelago amounted to one hundred thou-
sand people (Johnson and Earle 2000: 285) which is one hundred times
more than the population of a typical simple chiefdom of the kind that
existed on the Trobriand Islands (Johnson and Earle 2000: 267–279).
According to Johnson and Earle (2000: 291), only the number of chiefs
in it could be up to one thousand which equals to the total population of
a Trobriand chiefdom. This is the difference between an inherently pre-
state polity and a polity analogue of an early state! And if other repre-
sentatives of the elite (land managers, priests, warriors and their fami-
lies) were added to the number of the chiefs in the Hawaii Island, I guess
the numbers of the elite would exceed the total population of the whole
smallest state in Tahiti which, according to Claessen (2002: 107), was
5,000 people. Therefore, the Hawaiian polities are quite comparable to
early states and even exceed some of them in size, population, complex-
ity, degree of social stratification and power centralization. All this
proves that the Hawaiian complex chiefdoms may be viewed as ana-
logues of small and medium early states.
Sixth, polities whose structure can be hardly described because of
scarce data but, on the other hand, there are important reasons to regard
them neither prestate nor state ones with respect to their scale and culture.
The Indus, or Harappan civilization could serve here as an example.
Some researchers have reasons to believe that it was not an early
state. But it is much more important that at the same time it was not a
pre-state society either. For instance, Shaffer maintains the Harappan
civilization was not a ‘prestate’ in its form and thinks that it was not a
state and could have been a unique form of organization in the sense that
there is no close parallel in the archaeological, historical, or ethno-
graphic record’ (see Possehl 1998: 283–285). Thus, according to Possehl
(1998: 290) that civilization was ‘an example of ancient sociocultural
complexity without archaic state form of political organization’. So I
can sum up these opinions to say, that in other words the Indus civi-
lization was a specific type of an early state analogue. It was a huge
ancient civilization that surpassed greatly such most ancient civilizations
as Egypt and Mesopotamia with respect to its territory (Bongard-Levin
and Il'yin 1969: 92). Several dozens thousand of citizens or perhaps even
more could live in the biggest cities like Mohenjo-daro (Bongard-Levin
and Il'yin 1969: 92; Jacobson 2000: 394). There was a class and social
stratification within the Indus civilization (Bongard-Levin and Il'yin
1969: 111; Possehl 1998: 287). Crafts and trades were highly developed
(Bongard-Levin and Il'yin 1969: 101–103; Possehl 1998: 289). But there
is reason to believe that the political system was segmented and decen-
tralized, lacking a ‘king’. Also there is no evidence for a central gov-
ernment, or bureaucracy, implying that older ‘tribal’ organizations
wielded political power within regional contexts. But whole civilization
held in place through a strong Harappan ideology, which crossed the
segmented, regional political boundaries, reaching into every Harappan
family. There are other forms of solidarity as trade (Albedil 1991: 56;
Bongard-Levin and Il'yin 1969: 102–103; Possehl 1998: 289). Also it is
possible to imagine strong temporary alliances among a number of
groups (Possehl 1998: 288) though the actual form of organization for
the mature Harappan is obviously not well understood (Possehl 1998: 290).
‘The “nonstate” model has to include the notion that Mature Harap-
pan institutions were strong, since there is evidence for strength in
Harappan culture. There is suite of artifacts and associated style that
covered about 1,000,000 km² for a period of about 600 years. It includes
such things as the writing system, the system of weights and measures,
and a host of artifact categories like ceramics, beads, figurines, and
metal objects. Architectural standards are apparent… The control and
manipulation of water within settlements is a notable feature of many
Harappan cites. These peoples were also adventurous seafarers…’
(Possehl 1998: 288).
So I completely agree with Possehl in his deduction that ‘what we
learned from the new studies of the Harappan civilization is that ancient
civilizations, or complex societies, are far more variable in their form and
organization than typological schemes of traditional, unilineal evolution can
accommodate’ (p. 291). However as we see not only ancient civilizations,
but also different others complex societies of very different epochs show
the same variety of sociopolitical form and the alternativity of state forma-
tion process14.
ANALOGUES: SOME OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

As the analogues of the early state differ much from each other the possibil-
ity of their different classifications should be revealed.
First, the analogues can be divided depending on the degree of their
similarity with the early states taking into account their maturity in both
political and social spheres.
– The analogues that can be compared with the early state only in scale
and their political and military influence but not in the level of their social
and cultural development can be called incomplete analogues. That is why I
have made a reservation that the analogues are at the same level of social and
cultural and/or political development with the early state societies. The ana-
logues of this type mostly emerge under the environmental influence (or
through the necessity of an adequate response to it or in the search for obtain-
ing some advantages over the others). The Iroquois are a vivid example of
such an incomplete analogue. They had a low social differentiation (though
there are some records of social inequality in their society, e.g., Averkieva
1973: 54). But the population, complexity of their political organization and
military power marked them out of the other Indian tribes (Vorobyov 2000: 158).
– Respectively those analogues, which are comparable to the state in
both political and social development levels will be complete analogues. In
particular they can be found among the polities, which Carneiro called con-
solidated chiefdoms (1992: 37; 2000: 57). In their turn, the complete ana-
logues can be sub-divided depending on the prevailing – political or social
– sphere. If the social sphere is more developed, then these are social ana-
logues, if the political sphere is more developed – then the analogues can be
called the political analogues. The Saxons, or the Gauls can be referred to
as the social analogues, while the Hsiung-Nu, the Huns and some others
may be denoted as political analogues.
– As for the analogues with both political and social spheres well-
developed which moreover were similar in many respects to the state in
their structure, the characteristics of the supreme power I would call them
complex analogues. The Hawaiian chiefdoms are an example of such
complex analogues.
Secondly, there can be distinguished unitary and compound ana-
logues. It is a question of neither ethnic homogeneity nor of an uttermost
unity of the phenomenon. The matter is whether the analogues are governed
by a volition authoritarian enough (it is of no significance if it is a monarch
or a collective body like the Roman Senate), or the constituent parts of the
analogue are independent to a great degree but their opinion should be
taken into consideration when this or that consensus should be achieved
while making a decision. The Iroquois, the Tuaregs, the Pechenegs, the con-
federations of communities and cities and others are examples of compound
analogues. And Hawaiian chiefdoms, German unions led by the kings, the
Huns and the Avars polities, Icelandic democracy are unitary.
Thirdly, it should also be pointed out that these analogues may differ in
their development level or, using the terminology by Claessen and Skalník
(1978b: 589), the analogues of inchoate, of typical and of transitional
early states may be encountered.
Most analogues correspond to the level of the inchoate state. Probably
the most advanced Gauls polities can serve as examples of analogues of the
typical state. Some analogues function similar to the typical state only in
certain ways, for example, foreign policy, military skill (sometimes in
commerce). I think that the large analogues like the Hsiung-Nu belong to
this type. It was noticed, that the size, power and the level of complexity in
realization of foreign policy functions in nomadic unions (empires) corre-
lated closely with the size, power and the level of political culture and ac-
tivity of the states the nomads constantly contacted with.
It is quite difficult to find examples of transitional state analogues (for
more detail see Grinin 2003a: 37–38).
PRE-STATE, ANALOGOUS AND EARLY-STATE

POLITIES: PROBLEMS OF COMPARISON
The above classification of pre-state and stateless polities into such groups
as a) inherently pre-state and b) early state analogues, allows, as I see it, to
make some further steps in solving the problem of the early state criteria.
One of the important reasons of the failure to make a decisive step in this
direction is the fact that both inherently pre-state societies and early state
analogues are referred to as ‘pre-state societies’. The result is in confusing
of different criteria. In fact, the early state has evident enough features that
distinguish it from inherently pre-state societies, namely: food production
yielding regular surplus used to maintain the specialists and the privileged
categories; scale; level of sociocultural and political complexity; an appre-
ciable social and wealth stratification; emergence of strata, or classes of the
rulers and the ruled. These criteria have been suggested, more than once, as
distinguishing the early state (see Claessen 1978a: 586–588; 2002; Claessen
and Skalník 1978b). However, all attempts to apply these characteristics to
pre-state and stateless societies, which in fact are early state analogues in-
evitably faced difficulties since these features may be found in many, or at
least in some, analogues as this has just been demonstrated. But if we do
not classify all pre-state and stateless societies into inherently pre-state and
analogues of early state, then, when applying early state criteria, in practice,
the result may be that in certain ‘pre-state’ societies many features of a full-
fledged state will be encountered.
I think it would be much more productive to approach the problem in
such a way when all the early state criteria specified were used only for the
purpose of comparing early states with inherently pre-state societies – but
not for comparing early states with their analogues since the latter possess
themselves all or some of these features.
It follows that, to distinguish an early state from its analogue, some
different criteria are required, other than those serving to distinguish
an early state from an inherently pre-state society, since major distinc-
tions between early states and their analogues are contained not in quantita-
tive indices and in the complexity level but in the peculiarities of political
organization and in the methods of governing a society. That is why the rest
of this article is dedicated to the analysis of the differences between the
early state and its analogues.
COMPARING THE EARLY-STATE

WITH ITS ANALOGUES
To distinguish the early state from its analogues, I had derived four criteria
(Grinin 2002b, 2002c, 2003c), namely:
1. Specific properties (attributes) of supreme power.
2. New principles of government.
3. Non-traditional and new forms of regulating social life.
4. Redistribution of power.
Prior to spelling out these criteria and describing them, some explana-
tions must be given.
These criteria are a system, each of them largely supplementing and in-
terpreting the others. But, certainly, in any early state these criteria follow
different paths of evolution, and in the end, some of them turn out to be
more mature than others.
Nevertheless, each of these four features must, to this or that extent,
be present in every early state. Analogues that would exhibit all the
features described above do not exist. In other words, even one of these
features missing means that we are dealing not with an early state but
with its analogue. Therefore, one single feature from the mentioned above,
when discovered in a given polity should not be taken as an indication that
it is a state and not an analogue. Since analogues differ very much among
themselves, some of them may exhibit none of the mentioned features while
others may have only some of them. To my mind, the presence of even
more than two features, out of four, in an analogue poses a problem. Further
in the discussion I shall draw the readers' attention to such specific distinc-
tions between the state and its analogues of this or that type. So ‘we must
not think in terms of “pure” types. The state is distinct even though it holds
many features in common with chiefdoms’ (Wason 1995: 23).
The four stated criteria are abstract enough, and this is expressed in their
verbal formulations (‘new principles’, ‘specific properties’, ‘new forms’).
As I see it, when reaching our aim – which is to reveal the distinctions be-
tween the early state and its analogues, – such broad generalizations seem
to be most productive, and I can explain why.
First, they reflect the fact that in every early state corresponding to all
the four criteria, some or other narrower lines predominated. It must be
clear that not in a single early state all the new principles and forms could
come to existence simultaneously – just some of them at a time. That is
why I compare early states with their analogues in such a way that serves to
single out the narrower directions marked by using a special font. Second,
the features I singled out make it possible to combine within them many of
the moments pointed out by various researchers as the early state criteria.
For example, power differentiation, and specialization, and the ability to
delegate this power as well as the emergence of administrative apparatus
have been included into the criterion ‘The new principles of government’.
A. SPECIAL PROPERTIES OF SUPREME POWER
To analyze this supreme (or central) power seems to be an exceptionally
important task for the purpose of investigating the process of state forma-
tion (Claessen 1978a: 586–588; Claessen and Oosten 1996: 2; Ember and
Ember 1999: 158, 380; Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1987/1940; Haas 2001a:
235; Grinin 2002b, 2002c; Spencer 2000: 157 etc.).
– Sufficient potential of the supreme power is what makes early states
different from their such analogues which have formal and weak supreme
power – like this was observed in certain Gallic polities (see Le Roux 2000:
123–127), or no supreme power at all – like in complex horizontally inte-
grated societies (horizontal complexity [McIntosh 1999a; see also Grinin
1997; Korotayev et al. 2000]). It also makes them different from such ana-
logues within which the main task of the supreme power is to preserve
unity and consensus (like in heterarchical polities [Crumley 1995, 2001]),
and from confederations where the need of consensus causes instability in
the center and loss of connections with ‘the outskirts’ (Fenton 1978: 114).
However, in an early state the supreme power acquires some features
that are not attributable even to the analogues where the actual power of the
chief and his court is quite strong. I think the large Powhatan chiefdom in
the 17th century A.D. (in present it is Virginia in the USA) was such a non-
state polity with a strong supreme power. Its paramount chief had system-
atically removed from office the original political leaders of several con-
quered chiefdoms and replaced them with his own relatives (Carneiro 2000:
57). An early state is distinguished from such analogues by its ability to
introduce essential changes into socio-political organization of the society
and to expand the domain of authoritative control.
This may manifest itself as reforms of all kinds or changing some
important traditions, or in some other ways which will be discussed
later. For example, the rulers of early tyrannies in Greece sometimes se-
verely limited not only the influence of the nobility but their private life
as well, but at the same time they introduced important reforms (Berve
1997). Another case is the reforms by Montezuma II in the Aztec Em-
pire at the beginning of the 16th century who limited the numbers of the
nobility, under the pretext of questionable descent he banned access to
government service for many of them, and cancelled their privileges
(Kurtz 1978: 176).
When a state is formed on the basis of complex chiefdoms where the
power of the chief is strong, the power of the new ‘king’ becomes stronger
and more unquestionable. This is what happened in the Hawaii Archipelago
where Kamehameha I, who united the islands at the beginning of the 19th
century, partially exterminated native nobility, transferred the power from
local dynasties to his relatives and retinue, and rearranged land ownership
in the conquered territories (Tumarkin 1964: 88–90; 1971: 21), and with the
help of Europeans, established a regular army counting several thousand in
strength and equipped with firearms and artillery guns, and a navy of 60
decker boats, several brigs and schooners; he also arranged the construc-
tion of several forts (Tumarkin 1964: 102–103; 1971: 20).
In principle, a strong enough supreme power is required to guarantee the
territorial integrity of a state as well (Cohen 1981: 87–88; Gledhill 1994:
41), but this subject will be discussed later on.
– Completeness of the functions of supreme power.
The more functions are performed by the state, the more reasons are
there to take them as an evidence of increasing statehood, in general. How-
ever, the amount of functions being largely dependent on various provisions
(like, for example, whether the state is the organizer of production or not),
we need to at least establish the fact of sufficient completeness of the func-
tions of supreme power. At the same time, the state is required to perform
both the functions of interior control and the exterior functions. This is what
makes early states differ from their analogues with their weak interior and
strong exterior functions, which is characteristic of large political nomadic
unions with their social organization resembling a military hierarchy where
the supreme power, not exceeding the commission granted by old traditions
for taking part in interior affairs, had active control over foreign trade and
military actions, external sources of income being more important than in-
ternal ones (Kradin 1992, 2000a, 2000b, 2001b).
B. NEW PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT
As societies become more complex and new levels of power are built up,
some shift towards division of labor inevitably occurs in the management of
the society. In the early state analogues this division, however, is based
upon the old (tribal, sacral, self-government, etc.) principles. In the early
state new principles of labor division in the management of the society
come to existence that with time become the new principles of society
management. The most important of these are:
• delegation of power;
• new distribution of administrative functions (separation of deci-
sion-making from execution);
• new approach towards the formation of administrative body
(changing the ways of its formation, enhancement of the impor-
tance of the new types of managers, giving a start to special eth-
ics, etc.). These principles will be discussed in detail later on.
Prior to this, however, it must be specified that I do not distinguish the
bureaucratization of administration as a new principle not because this pro-
cess was not new or important (on the contrary, it was), but only because
not in all the early states bureaucratization was significant. In some cases –
for example, in Egypt, or in the Lower Mesopotamia in the times of the 3rd
dynasty of Ur – this process took vivid, classic forms. In other cases, bu-
reaucratization took a comparatively mild way, especially in the conquered
territories – even in such of them as the Aztec State (Johnson and Earle
2000: 306), or the Roman Republic (Shtaerman 1989). Other states, such as
Ancient Rus, were of druzhina type, and, therefore, all their administrative
body was reduced to the ruler's military retinue. I do consider it wrong not
to regard such polities as early states, and for this reason I have tried to
characterize the principles of government in as much a universal way as
possible, so that they could be applicable to both bureaucratic and non-
bureaucratic states. However, even in bureaucratic states the managers did
not resemble at all the type of clerks depicted by Weber (1947: 333–334;
see also Bondarenko 2001: 244–250; Grinin 2002b, 2003c). Thus in this
context the bureaucratization of administration is included as a constituent
part in such a new principle of government as a new approach towards the
formation of administrative body.
– Delegation of power and power divisibility.
In general, pre-state and stateless societies stood out for their weak ca-
pacity to delegate powers (Spencer 2000; Wright 1977). Such limitations –
since the chief could not attend to all the things at the same time – seriously
hampered the process of administration and put obstacles for the evolution
of the political system. In the end, however, the difficulties of power dele-
gation began to be gradually overcome (on the importance of power delega-
tion in an early state see Claessen 1978a: 576; Spencer 2000; Wright 1977).
At the same time, it is the ability of power delegation as well as other
principles of administration based upon this new property of the power that
deserves special mentioning. I termed this property as ‘power divisibility’
(Grinin 2002b, 2002c). Its essence is in the possibility for the power to be
shared in required proportions among a required number of people for
a fixed period of time, without losing the power and the control over it.
Accordingly, power divisibility presumes the possession of a realizable
right to take the power away or redistribute it. Power divisibility also means
that the subjects' consent to the right of the holder of the power to share it
and transfer it to others. In an early state, the rate of power divisibility is
already considerable.
In pre-state societies and in the most of state analogues the power was,
as a rule, non-divisible – that is, it could not be temporarily transferred, or
distributed, or divided between different persons or bodies, without the risk
of losing it completely or partially, or meeting a refusal to recognize the
legality of such an act.
It is essential to point out that power indivisibility also means indivisi-
bility of the responsibility of the ruler for all kinds of faults, misfortunes,
plagues and disasters. At the same time, just like in a state, the ruler could,
very often, transfer responsibility to the executor.
In pre-state and stateless societies, using a sociological term, the rule of
the zero sum is in force, meaning that if somebody's amount of power has
increased, somebody else's amount of power has decreased (Smelser 1994:
545). As the apparatus develops, the center may delegate power to some-
body and the amount of its power does not decrease because of this delega-
tion (at least, it should not). But since every functionary also has the power,
on the whole the amount of power increases the opportunities of an early
state in comparison with its analogues.
– Separation of performance of functions from the bearer of func-
tions.
The trait common to both early states and their analogues – which is the
growth of complexity levels – leads to its being more and more problematic
for the center to preserve effective enough connections with the periphery.
In the analogues this problem is solved primarily by means of hypertrophy-
ing traditions and bringing previous traditions of development – such as, for
example, increasing the number, the rank and the titles of the chieftains as
well as the growth of their lineages (one may remember, at this point, one
thousand chiefs in the Hawaii) – to the maximum limit; by a more distinct
differentiation of the amount of power between the regional and the su-
preme rulers; by a more precise assignment of functions to definite clans
and lines; by developing the genealogical principle as well as the sacral,
ceremonial and ideological moments associated with application of power.
In many ways similar processes take place in the early state as well.
However, along with old tendencies something new emerges, namely:
separation of the performance of functions by the supreme power from
the power itself (as a bearer of these functions). As a result, a qualita-
tively different distribution of functions is reached15. The supreme power,
figuratively speaking, turns into ‘a brain’ that controls various society ‘or-
gans’ while its local duties are carried out by messengers representatives,
governor-generals and functionaries16. This emerging administrative appa-
ratus assumes the role of a transmission between the supreme power and the
society. As a result of this distribution of functions, according to Wright
(1977: 381), the internal specialization starts and leads to the differentiation
of central processes into separate actions that can be carried out in different
places and at different moments of time. This also leads to level changing in
the hierarchy of decision-making (Lozny 1995).
– New traits in the system of administration in the early state and
the changes in the body of administrators.
In the early state the administrative apparatus was basically formed of
the material at hand – and not of ideal officials who were simply unavail-
able – and, therefore, was not total-lot professional. In most cases, the cen-
ter just adapted these already available forms of self-government, govern-
ment and performance of certain functions by clans, sections and delegates,
to its needs (see, e.g., the case of Ancient Japan [D'jakonova 1989: 214;
Paskov 1987: 29–37; Patterson 1995: 131–132]). However, although the
administrative apparatus resembled a kaleidoscopic mixture of the old and
new elements, pre-state and state components, we can observe the begin-
ning of the formation of a new system of administration under the influ-
ence of new tasks and new potentials of the supreme power in the early
state. This can already be found in the changing body of administrators.
Wittfogel said that the state is ‘management by professionals’ (1957:
239; see also Weber 1947: 333–334). However, ‘a professional’ is a broad
enough notion, which implies the possibility of ‘hereditary professionals’,
referring to those who are destined to perform the duties of certain kind
from birth (like it is observed, for example, within the caste systems). It is
also what the chiefs of various ranks were in chiefdoms. There were plenty
of ‘hereditary professionals’ who occupied their posts or offices independ-
ently of the center in the early states. But gradually the administrators of a
new type, as well as previously unimportant types of administrators (such
as, for example, the approvees who inherited their positions or received
them from their clans but had to be approved by the center) start to play a
more and more important part.
The number and the importance of the functionaries (their classifica-
tion see in Claessen 1978a: 576) acting as administrators also grow consid-
erably. The distinction between a functionary and, say, a chief is substan-
tial. A chief, at his level, concentrated all the power in his hands, while the
people approved by the center were often restricted in their authority (Dia-
mond 1999: 274). On the whole, the administrative sector becomes very
mixed; the rights of different administrators to occupy certain offices were
different.
Within the new formation of administrators special attention should be
paid to appointees or those who are appointed to certain posts or offices (or
hired) and depend on the ruler and the authority.
Certainly, this group was also a mix. It included even those who were
well provided and could do without any government service at all, or
were even burdened with their social status. However, there was also a
sub-group of those for whom state service was of primary importance,
and who strongly depended on the higher authority. For this reason, the
higher authority considered persons with no roots, slaves, servants and
foreigners to be the most convenient candidates, so they were recruited
to perform administrative duties (see, e.g., Janssen 1978: 223, on the
role of court servants in the government of the Old Kingdom, Ancient
Egypt; Claessen 1978b: 456, on the admittance of foreigners to the ad-
ministrative bodies in Tahiti). In the Oyo Kingdom, Africa, foreign
slaves held most of the key positions both in the capital and the prov-
inces (Kochakova 1986: 255). In the Hawaii, foreign counselors started
to play an important part in state government after the death of Kame-
hameha I, but even during his reign some foreigners were granted estates
plus free labor for their personal use (Tumarkin 1964: 94; 1971). In
some states, the administrators were required to have special knowledge,
which initiated the formation of a new generation of specialized admin-
istrators, including scribes; this group, of course, had a considerable
evolutionary potential.
C. NEW AND NON-TRADITIONAL FORMS OF REGULATING
SOCIAL LIFE
In state analogues, the change of traditions that regulate socio-political
life was associated primarily with ‘overdevelopment’ of old trends and po-
tentials, such as, e. g., strengthening of the ruler's sacrality, development of
the genealogical principle, etc. In early states, along with overdevelopment,
non-traditional and new methods of regulating social life (necessarily asso-
ciated with direct or indirect participation of the supreme power, immediate
or represented) started to play an important role. The will of the supreme
power was clearly expressed in these new methods, and they may have
brought about certain changes in traditions and laws.
I have formulated the most important ones as follows (see details further
in the text):
• reformation and/or gradual modification of administration and of
various aspects of the mode of social life including ‘control and
regulation of some areas of social activity (different for each par-
ticular state: from sexual activity to blood feud – L. G.) which in
stateless societies are exclusive prerogatives of kin groups’ (Kurtz
1978: 183);
• break-off from certain traditions and the tendency to substitute tra-
ditions with political will (or with the activity of administrators or
magistrates, legislation, coercion, etc.);
• growing importance of compulsion and control of performance, in-
cluding establishment of control over previously autonomous offi-
cials and bodies (such as courts, seniors, headmen, etc.).
– Reforms and regulated changes.
Reforms undertaken by the supreme power in the early state can be
viewed as a very important indication of transition of the power to new
methods of social regulation.
In the early history or in the legends of very many societies, one can
find information on various great reformers. For example, such are
Shun, Wuh Ch'ih, Shang Yang and other ancient rulers and administra-
tors of China (Bokshchanin 1998; Perelomov 1974), Lycurgus in Sparta,
Servius Tullius in Rome, UruKAgina in Lagash (D'jakonov 1951, 1983:
207–274; 2000b: 55–58, 62, 92), Sargon of Akkad (e.g., D'jakonov
2000c: 57–59), Saul and David in Israel (Weinberg 1989: 99), etc. The
history of many early states offers instances of various reforms associ-
ated with departure from traditions, for example, religious traditions.
King Aśoka attempted to spread Buddhism in India, for which suppos-
edly was removed from power (Bongard-Levin 1973: 71–74). Clovis I,
king of Franks, Vladimir I in Kievan Rus and many others rejected the
old religions themselves and compelled their subjects to follow suit.
So, the capability of the power to reform increases in the early
states. However, reforms were a rare thing (although there were periods of
quite active reformation). In between reforms and stagnation, there were
regulated changes associated with the activity of supreme power. And
in this respect the early state differs noticeably from its analogues since in
the early state this process becomes considerably much more orderly. In
Athens, for instance, the people's assembly gathered monthly at first and
then, beginning from the 4th century B.C., four times a month, that is,
weekly (Kuchma 1998: 113). And, since it was supposed to take some deci-
sions, many changes, beside routine issues, were discussed as well.
– Break-off from certain traditions.
To many of the traditions the early state was indifferent since they did
not yet influence its activity. On the contrary, it relied on some of them for
support, converting minor traditions into important or even most important
ones. Quite frequently this was relevant with respect to such ‘traditions’ as
performance of various labor or military duties and services, payment of
tribute, etc. In the Hawaiian state, for instance, the duties and services per-
formed by commoners grew considerably due to prodigality of the royal
court and the nobility, as well as endless state debts. It was especially
strikingly expressed in the compulsory collection of sandalwood which pe-
riodically resulted in agricultural crises (Tumarkin 1971). On the other
hand, many traditions were disliked by the supreme power; however, it
could not touch them considering it impossible and even being afraid of
doing this.
Finally, the fourth group of traditions includes the ones that put obsta-
cles in the way of solving urgent problems, or achieving important targets,
or posed a threat to the stability of the supreme power or even its position.
The power, when strong enough, eliminated such traditions or transformed
them, as well as broke people's ties with local traditions (Kurtz 1978: 185).
And this very urge to alter certain important traditions or break off
from them is very much characteristic of early states. Why? The matter
is that administration only according to tradition requires neither special
apparatus nor the performance of special control functions. In other words,
where a tradition is self-sufficient, no state is required since other prin-
ciples of social organization do the job perfectly well.
Here is a direct confirmation of this idea by a historian: ‘For lack of
state institutions, the relations among people in the Society of Raybūn (in
Wadi Hadramawt, South Arabia, the 1st millennium B.C. – L. G.) were en-
tirely regulated by traditions whose principal keeper proved to be the
priesthood’ (Frantsuzoff 2000: 263).
On the contrary, the state is a political form that emerged in the circum-
stances when departure from certain important traditions, especially from
the ones that may be called non-state traditions, was a must. Serious devia-
tions from a standard situation – such as broken isolation, emergence of a
military or other threat, successful wars, sharp growth of trade, internal con-
flicts, that serve as a sort of stimulus for essential, sometimes even radical,
changes in administration and political organization – facilitate transition to
the state (Claessen 2002; Grinin 2002b, 2002c).
In early states the orientation towards the change of traditions becomes
more defined and systematic than in their analogues. But, of course, in any
society such deviation from traditions was strictly oriented. Here are only a
few of numerous examples:
Continuing the Hawaii theme, it may be recollected that the Hawai-
ian rulers, especially after the demise of Kamehameha I, started imitat-
ing Europeans in court ceremonies and rituals, clothing, housing, mili-
tary display (Johnson and Earle 2000: 294). In Akkad at the end of the
3rd millennium B.C., the Kings of the Sargonid dynasty ‘broke off with
the traditions of early dynasties, including titles, customs, aesthetic
tastes’ (D'jakonov 2000c: 59). In some ancient Chinese states the rulers
forced the nobility to settle in virgin lands (Perelomov 1974: 23). Shang
Yang in the ancient Chinese state Ch'in revised the system of granting ti-
tles and divided the country into districts (Perelomov 1974: 23–24). Law
was frequently aimed at limiting the rights of the population to use vio-
lence, and banning blood feud and similar traditions, as for example, fol-
lows from Lex Salica (e.g., XLI, 7; Batyr and Polikarpova 1996, I: 249).
What has been said with regard to break-off from traditions, does not
contradict the fact that during the formation of most states conquest was of
special importance (Ambrosino 1995; Carneiro 1970, 1978). In a certain
sense, conquest may be regarded as an abrupt break-off from some tradi-
tions and as emergence of new relations between the winners and the de-
feated. With the development of the early state, the supreme power begins
to gradually replace some traditions with other ones, as well as counterfeit
them. Its intentions, in many cases, are realized through the system of stat-
utes, and administrators. Certainly, the break-off from tradition is never
complete, and it very often faces resistance and opposition.
– Growing importance of coercion.
A developed and formalized system of coercion is not a necessary at-
tribute for early states, but what they certainly demonstrate is the increasing
importance of coercive methods employed by the supreme power. Many
researchers regard ‘the presence of the coercive apparatus’ as ‘the most im-
portant constitutive characteristic of a state, which makes it different from a
chiefdom’ (Godiner 1991: 68). Coercion was exercised in many ways both
traditional and new, direct and indirect. The increasing importance of
courts, adoption of special laws, spying on the citizens, establishment of the
institution of spies and informers (see Lelioukhine 2000: 272), granting
more authority to governor-generals, making punishment for neglected per-
formance of duties more severe, direct repressions, especially in the con-
quered territories, where the army was inevitably used as an instrument of
compulsion and violence directed towards the conquered.
This is what made early states different from some of their democratic
analogues (like, for example, in Ancient Iceland, where such coercion on
the general political level did not exist or was quite insignificant). The
greater independence of the supreme power with respect to the freedom of
punishment and repression distinguishes the state from its analogues with
tribal-clan structure and a weak center, where punitive actions against the
violators of liabilities to the center could be taken only with the consent of
most clans.
D. REDISTRIBUTION OF POWER
From time to time, in the early state analogues we observe various kinds of
fluctuations and shifts of the power from the common people to the elite
and back, from some groups to other, from the nobility to the chief and vice
versa, etc., due to internal and external reasons. Sometimes, as the result of
these perturbations, the center acquired more power – and large polities
emerged. However, if this centripetal movement turned out to be insuffi-
ciently steady to take root, a grown-up polity was doomed to short life.
Such unstable formations as the Slavic Samon ‘state’ (Lozny 1995: 86–87),
the Germanic tribal unions under the king Maroboduus (Neusyhin 1968),
and other kings (like Ariovistus of the Suebi, Arminius of the Cherusci,
Claudius Civilis of the Batavi [Oosten 1996]) the Huns' ‘empire’ under At-
tila (Korsunsky and Gunter 1984: 105–116), the Geto-Dacian tribal union
under the king Burebista (Fyodorov and Polevoy 1984) etc., broke up, as a
rule, after the death of the chief or even when he was still alive. In some
cases, the supreme power in the analogues became weak – especially in the
presence of strong and self-willed nobility (see, e.g., Le Roux 2000: 124 on
similar situation with Aedui in the Gaul).
In other cases, small polities united to form more stable formations, such
as confederations, poorly centralized theocracies or monarchic polities of
segmentary type (Southall 2000). However, in none of these cases a trend
towards strengthening of the supreme power, or towards developing new
principles of administration or forms of regulation mentioned earlier, is ob-
served.
Instead, the early state shows tendencies towards strengthening the
importance of the supreme power and the center in power allocation,
towards the formation of a sort of a coercive body of the power whose
influence on the society becomes more and more pronounced and, with
time, even dictating rules, in a way. I termed these centripetal processes
redistribution of power (Grinin 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2003c). The power in
this case should be regarded as a system of authority functions, rights, re-
sponsibilities, instructions, actions, as well as human and material resources
and information associated with it.
Power redistribution does not yet mean a complete centralization of the
state, but it is already a process of moving towards centralization, as well as
towards a stricter organization and regularity in the relations between the
authorities of all levels, ranks and lines, as well as between the population
and the power in general. Therefore, power redistribution may be de-
scribed as a process of redistribution of power between the center and
the periphery which makes it possible for the supreme power not only
to control the periphery but also to redirect the streams of power func-
tions and actions towards the center where a considerable proportion
of the power, as well as of material resources, is concentrated.
This may be expressed in absolutely any kind of actions of the supreme
power aimed at enlarging the scope of its functions and the volume of its
authority and stopping the attempts of local officials to avoid control from
above. As examples of such actions the following may be cited:
• changing the procedure of appointing or electing local officials
(Ivan III, the grand prince of Moscow, in conquered Novgorod [Ryba-
kov 1966, II: 122]);
• forced resettlement of population en masse (Assyria, the Aztec
State [Kurtz 1978: 177]) and forced resettlement of nobility (Ivan IV the
Terrible, the first tsar of Russia [Rybakov 1966, II: 183–209]. Such re-
forms also took place in some ancient Chinese states in the 4th century
B.C. [Perelomov 1974: 23]);
• introduction of the system of estates scattered throughout the coun-
try instead of the solid bulk land possessions belonging to grand aristoc-
racy, or rewarding for the services in a similar way (Kamehameha I in
the Hawaii; William the Conqueror in England; oba, the ruler of Benin
[Bondarenko 2001: 221]);
• ‘neutralization of local organizations which provide alternatives for
the citizen's allegiance and loyalty’ (in the Aztec state [Kurtz 1978:
180]);
• monopolization of certain functions, judicial in particular, by the
supreme power (as was done by Wegbaja, the first king of Dahomey
[Kochakova 1986: 256]);
• enhanced significance and splendor of the royal court (Hawaii in
the 19th century after the demise of Kamehameha I, as well as some
states of Ancient China [Pokora 1978: 203]) where the relatives of local
rulers were kept sometimes as hostages or wards (Benin [Bondarenko
2001: 222–223]), etc.
• Quite often it assumes the form of very demonstrative material ac-
tions, such as, for instance, relocation of the capital (as it happened, e.g.,
in Japan in 639 A.D. [Paskov 1978: 34]), or making a previously unim-
portant town a capital (Sargon in Akkad [D'jakonov 2000c: 57], Russian
prince Andrey Bogolyubsky in the Suzdal-Vladimir Principality [Ryba-
kov 1966: 617]), or erection of a temple of national importance (Solo-
mon in Jerusalem [Weinberg 1989: 99]), etc.
• It may also be expressed in concentrating and accumulating the
most important information, such as, for example, legislative materials
or data proving noble descent. Thus, after having been elected the Great
Khan in 1206, Chinggis Khan established a supreme court, a body of
public power that, besides performing its direct legal functions, was to
register, in writing, all administrative and judicial decisions and rulings
(Kradin 1995: 193).
Accordingly, we can frequently observe the formation of such a node of
power in the center that influences the society more and more and whose
urge to accumulate additional power, resources and information becomes
stronger and stronger.
On the one hand, military force is one of the main tools of power redis-
tribution. For example, the successful pursuit of territorial conquest had
both demanded and permitted an increase in the internal complexity of ad-
ministration at Monte Albán, Mexico (Spencer and Redmond 2003: 31).
But on the other, power redistribution in the early state has partially tradi-
tional character since the supreme power often tries to make this process
look as agreements, co-ordination and the like. Many things in the relations
between the center and the periphery have not yet taken a developed shape,
and the government is required to exert much effort to retain the redistrib-
uted power, quite often making concessions and showing the capability to
rely upon various sectors of population and social forces. And, since neither
government institutions nor political and administrative boundaries have yet
stabilized, the histories of such societies demonstrate sharp fluctuations
associated with the rise of a ruler or a dynasty and the abrupt territorial ex-
pansion of a state in some cases, or with their decline or collapse in other
cases. For instance, in the second half of the 15th century the territory of the
Inca State increased hundreds of times (Haviland 1991: 245; Mason 1957).
At one time, the ruler is bound hand and foot by his kin, advisors, aristoc-
racy, and traditions; at another, suddenly becomes a tyrant and a butcher.
As exactly noted by Helmut Berve (1997: 19), ‘The contradiction between
two tendencies – unrestrained and restricting – is, however, a feature com-
mon to the archaic times’.
There is a point now to give an additional explanation of the term that I
have suggested. Certainly, it is not always proper to equate power to mate-
rial wealth, but the analogy between them explains much in the characteris-
tics of early states and their specificity; besides, there are solid reasons for it
to be applied.
First, redistribution of wealth and redistribution of power are closely in-
terconnected since no state power can do without material means and there-
fore puts accumulation of such resources as one of its major targets. Sec-
ond, property power and political power have common features. Third, it is
rightful enough to regard power as a sort of wealth to be regularly repro-
duced and consumed; for if power is not used it tends to decrease. Fourth,
in both cases power and wealth must circulate via the center from which
they return to the point of departure in far less than one hundred percent
cases, sometimes even going to other subjects.
The character and the exact orientation of power redistribution are very
much dependent on specific conditions, such as size, population number
and its ethnic structure, exterior encirclement, natural conditions that facili-
tate or hamper centralization, historical traditions, etc. In small states, for
instance, power redistribution is associated with the struggle for leadership
between centers or bodies of power. In this respect, we may cite as a char-
acteristic example the case of the so-called lugal-‘hegemonics’ of Mesopo-
tamia who, starting from the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C., pushed
aside military and sacral chiefs (lugals, enami and ensi) [D'jakonov 2000b:
51; see also Vitkin 1968: 432].
– Power redistribution and state collapse.
The opinion that ‘any theory of “pristine” state formation must be able
to explain how incipient ruling class manages to overcome the tendencies
toward cyclical collapse associated with chiefdoms’ (Gledhill 1994: 41)
may be subscribed to. The concept of power redistribution makes this ex-
planation somewhat easier.
Strengthening of the positions and the potential of the supreme power
does not exclude fluctuations and temporary weakening of the center, at-
tempts to regain independence and disorder in the system of power redistri-
bution (for such cycles of unification and dissolution in ancient states, see
Marcus 1998). On the contrary, this is quite typical. Redistribution of power
is inseparably linked with military factors (presence or absence of external
threat, victories or defeats) that enhance or lessen it. All this signifies that
not only processes in a single state but the evolution of statehood at macro-
regional and inter-regional levels should be taken into consideration, since
regress in some societies not infrequently secures progress for other socie-
ties (see e.g., Ambrosino 1995; Kochakova 1986: 270; Kowalewski et al.
1995). The search for more successful solutions often took the route of de-
stroying some state to establish another in its place. As a result, the power
redistribution process was renovated.
This factor becomes important when discussing the problem of immu-
nity of early states against decentralization. Cohen (1981: 87–88) views the
tendency towards collapse as qualitatively less characteristic of state struc-
tures while considering the regular dissolution of pre-state formations to
be an important feature of the latter. To large extent it is true though ‘many
centralised polities existed for centuries without ever developing the fea-
tures of the state’ (Chabal, Feinman, and Skalník 2004: 27).
However, the capability not to dissolve (as well as not to be conquered)
is a trait of a sort of an ideal state. Only a few ancient and medieval states
were close to it. That is why it is important to point out that disintegration
processes in many of large states bore characteristics that made them
essentially different from disintegration processes in pre-state and non-
state formations. This was expressed in longer periods of existence of the
states (sometimes for centuries) as compared to those of pre-state forma-
tions and state analogues, as well as in that disintegration of the state quite
often contributed to the development of state structures at local levels (es-
tablishment of local administration, local capitals, etc.).
CONCLUSION
Thus, we know of numerous polities, which are comparable to early states
in size, complexity and a number of other parameters, and, at the same
time, are significantly superior to typical pre-state formations – such as
simple chiefdoms, tribes, independent simple communities. For these rea-
sons, it would be wrong to regard such complex non-state societies as being
at the pre-state level of development. But since many of them preceded the
formation of the early state historically, I have suggested to divide all pre-
state societies in two groups.
The first group are the societies that may be termed as inherently pre-
state because their available size and complexity levels do not allow them
to transform even into a small state (though it doesn't prevent their trans-
forming into a state in future if their scale and complexity increase).
The second group are the polities that, with their available characteris-
tics, may, potentially, transform into a small or a larger state. This second
type of polities may be termed as early state analogues. I also include
complex societies that for various historical and cultural reasons have not
become states into the analogues group. They may be regarded as non-state
alternatives to early states. Bringing such dissimilar societies under the sin-
gle common title ‘early state analogues’ has been done, first of all, with
the aim to contrast other alternatives with the state alternative of the devel-
opment of complex post-primitive societies.
According to their size, all early states may be divided into small, me-
dium and large; respectively, their analogues should be also divided into
small, medium and large state analogues. Naturally, these types of ana-
logues differ noticeably among themselves. To have a more adequate idea
of the state formation process, it is very important to understand that socie-
ties may start the process of transformation into early states both from the
inherently pre-state level and from the levels of small, medium and even
large state analogues. Which means that in different societies the transition
to state started from different levels of socio-cultural and political complex-
ity, and a society, having reached such size and complexity from which
transformation into a state becomes possible in principle, may continue to
develop without acquiring the political form of an early state for a long
time. Such approaches allow to single out, within the politogenesis, some
evolutionary alternatives to the early state, both at any level of its complex-
ity and development and from the point of view of correspondence with its
size.
On the basis of what has been mentioned above, I have suggested that
such criteria of the early state as size, necessary quantity of surplus used to
support administrators and other elites, sufficient level of complexity and
social stratification, etc., should be used exclusively when comparing early
states with inherently pre-state societies – but not when comparing early
states with their analogues, since the latter incorporate all or some of these
features. Major dissimilarities between early states and their analogues are
not in size and complexity level – they are in the peculiarities of political
organization, and in the methods of government – therefore, to distinguish
an early state from its analogues other criteria are required. I have singled
out and analyzed four of such features or criteria:
1. Specific properties (attributes) of supreme power.
2. New principles of government.
3. Non-traditional and new forms of regulating social life.
4. Redistribution of power.
In this way, it follows that the early state was only one of the many
forms of organization of complex societies that became typical only during
a lengthy process of evolutionary selection. However, it is very important
not to miss another point: although comparing perspectives of various lines
of sociopolitical evolution is a subject of a special study (for detail see
Grinin 2001, 2002b), at the end it was the state that became the leading po-
litical form of social organization. All the other forms that for a long time
had been its alternatives finally either got transformed into states, or disap-
peared, or turned into deadlock evolutionary types (Bondarenko, Grinin,
and Korotayev 2002; Grinin 2001, 2002b).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to Dmitri M. Bondarenko and An-
drey V. Korotayev for their invaluable help with the preparation of this arti-
cle. I would like also to express my gratitude to Henri J. M. Claessen for his
valuable comments. I am very thankful to Robert L. Carneiro for his help
with English. Needless to mention that neither they, nor any of the other
colleagues of mine should be held responsible for any defects in this article.
NOTES
* An earlier version of the paper is published in Social Evolution & History
2 (1), March 2003, pp. 131–176 under the title ‘The Early State and its Analogues’.
1
On the problems of classifying societies that have already topped pre-state
level but not yet become states see also Lloyd 1981: 233; Marcus and Feinman
1998: 6.
2
But this only regards early states and not the mature ones, the differences be-
tween them being very considerable (Claessen and Skalník 1978b; Grinin 2002b,
2004). Many researches point out that most of the early states fail to mature (Claes-
sen and van de Velde 1991; Skalník 1996). However, comparing early and mature
states is beyond the subject matter of this paper (for detail see Grinin 2004).
3
Cohen (1978: 2–3) suggested to divide all definitions of the state generally
into two groups, the first of which related the state to social stratification of society
and the second one did to the structure of administration and power. True, Cohen
also mentions the informational approach by Wright and Johnson (1975). Proceed-
ing from such a classification, my own understanding would seem to be closer to
the second group – but with the ideas of Wright and Johnson being taken into ac-
count (as the reader will see in the section ‘New principles of administration’). For
my opinion concerning definitions of the state see Grinin 2004.
4
What I mean are the following functions that are characteristic of both early
states and early state analogues, namely:
– establishment of political and ideological unity and cohesion within enlarged
society (or a group of closely related societies) directed at solving common prob-
lems;
– ensuring security from external threat and providing conditions for expansion;
– ensuring social order and redistribution of surplus product in the conditions of
social stratification and in the context of the growing complexity of problems to be
solved;
– provision of a minimally necessary level of government including legislation
and adjudication, as well as ensuring the discharge of compulsory duties (with re-
spect to military service, property, labor) by the population;
– creation of conditions for economy reproduction (especially where coordina-
tion of common efforts was required).
5
D'jakov et al. 1993: 13.
6
The estimates of the Inca state's population are being within 3,000,000–
37,000,000 people (see Schaedel 1978: 293–294).
7
E.g., it was the level from which the Great Mongol Empire of Chinggis Khan
started (see Kradin 1995: 137).
8
E.g., Hawaii.
9
E.g., the Scythians at the beginning of the 4th century B.C. (see footnote 13).
10
It was suggested to use the term ‘politogenesis’ to denote the formation of a
complex political organization of any type, the term ‘state formation process’ –
for the description of formation of the state proper, which process should be viewed
as a more specific, narrow one (Bondarenko, Grinin, and Korotayev 2002; Grinin
2001, 2002a; see also Bondarenko and Korotayev 2000b).
11
For example, Delphs (see Gluskina 1983: 45, 71. For detail, also see Grinin
2003b: 8–9).
12
States, however, may also be components of analogues of medium and large
states. I presume that in these examples the unions of poleis in Greece (such as the
Delian League, or Athenian navy, the Peloponnesian League, etc.) or ‘multipolities’
that consisted of more or less strong states at the center, strong chiefdoms or tribes
on the periphery and politically autonomous civil or civil-temple communities (Ko-
rotayev 2000b: 266; Korotayev et al. 2000: 23). The union of German cities –
Ganza in 13th–15th centuries can be also considered fairly as an analogue of the me-
dium state. This union during its golden age united about 160 cities and was able to
win wars against Denmark (Podalyak 2000: 125).
13
As to when the Scythian state emerged there is no unanimity of opinions (see,
e.g., Smirnov 1966a: 146–150). For instance Khazanov (1975, 1978) believes that
there already were Scythian kingdoms in the 7th – 5th centuries B.C. But I support
the opinion that it happened exactly during the reign of the King Ateas, and my
reasoning is as follows. From political and social points of view, what happened
was: other kings were eliminated, and royal power was strengthened. Along with
the expansion of the territory of the polity, the ethnic heterogeneity became more
pronounced, the exploitation of the dependent population grew, and the degree of
social stratification increased. From economic point of view, a firmer foundation
for building a state appeared as a result of expanding trade that was controlled by
the elites, as well as of accelerating sedentarization processes (Khazanov 1975;
[Smirnov] 1966: 219–220).
14
It should be pointed out that some authors also refer other society types to
forms alternative to the state. Thus, in the view of Bondarenko (1995, 2000a,
2000b, 2001) Benin in the 13th–19th centuries should be regarded not as an early
state but as a specific type of the complex non-state hierarchical socio-political so-
ciety that may be called ‘megacommunity’ since this society was from top to bot-
tom penetrated with communal and quasicommunal relations and notions and on
the whole represented a sort of a single gigantic ‘megacommunity’. However, I
have not included ‘megacommunity’ into my own classification of analogues be-
cause I consider Benin to be an early state rather than a specific alternative type
of a state analogue. One more example – the confederation called Ashanti (Asante)
in the 18th century. Popov (1995b: 189) defines it as ‘a union of tribes, similar to the
League of Iroquois, Confederation of the Creeks, the Hurons’ Confederation and
other supratribal formations. However, taking into account the characteristics he
gives himself (Popov 1990: 131; 1995b: 189–195), the Ashanti Confederation is
more like a primitive state, than an analogue (the presence of the certain administra-
tive authorities, tendency to substitute the clan and tribe elite for warden elite; be-
ginning of the taxation; carrying out a number of reforms in management, in par-
ticular the reforms of Osey Kodjo and so on). It is not by chance that Popov himself
notes (1995b: 194) that the Ashanti had a kind of ‘a syndrome of the state’, but
there was not any state in Marxist interpretation.
15
Sometimes such a definition as ‘delegation of tasks’ is used (Claessen 1978a:
576), but it is only a part of the principle that I refer to. Similarly, ‘delegated deci-
sion making’ (an expression used by Charles Spencer [2000: 157] to describe ‘the
strategy of dispatching specialized lower-level administrative officials to locations
other than the state capital’) is also only a part of this principle.
16
In China, at the very beginning of the state formation process, ‘a maxim is
born that likens the structure of a state to that of a human body, namely: the king is
the head and the dignitaries and officials are his hands, feet, eyes and ears’
(Bokshchanin 1998: 213). A similar image was also exploited by the Hawaiians –
but only after their state was formed in the 19th century (see Johnson and Earle
2000: 302).
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Part II
Early States
● Dmitri B. Proussakov
Early Dynastic Egypt: A Socio-Environmental/
Anthropological Hypothesis of ‘Unification’
● Vladimir V. Emelianov
The Ruler as Possessor of Power in Sumer
● Richard Baum
Ritual and Rationality: Religious Roots
of the Bureaucratic State in Ancient China
● Charles S. Spencer and Elsa M. Redmond

Conquest Warfare, Strategies of Resistance,
and the Rise of the Zapotec Early State
● Richard P. Schaedel and David G. Robinson

The Pristine Myth of the Pristine State
in America
● Ludomir R. Lozny
The Transition to Statehood in Central Europe
● Eleonora S. L'vova
Formation and Development of States
in the Congo Basin
7
Early Dynastic Egypt:
A Socio-Environmental/Anthropological
Hypothesis of ‘Unification’
Dmitri B. Proussakov
Institute of the Oriental Studies, Moscow
FOREWORD
It is attributed to Ancient Egypt, proceeding in particular from physiogra-
phy of the land, a kind of historically predetermined and non-alternative
algorithm of transition from ‘primitive condition’ to unified state: the so-
called ‘second pathway of evolution of most ancient societies’ (Djakonov
1997b). Natural limitation of people's living space within narrowness of the
Nile valley, gripped by mortal deserts, is believed to have been a guarantee
of impossibility of emergence of self-dependent polities there, similar to
those of Sumer. In other words, it is a question of imminence of territorial
gathering of Egypt successively along the Nile by the strongest ‘nome’
(‘chiefdom’) through warfare already at the incipient stage of politogenesis
(cf. Bard and Carneiro 1989). In general, at present it is considered proved
that the Ancient Egyptian unified state, stretching from the First Cataract of
the Nile to nearly the seaside margins of Lower Egypt (the Lower Land, the
Delta), had arisen by the very outset of the Early Dynastic (‘archaic’) pe-
riod of pharaonic history (Wilkinson 2001: 47–52).
Traditional scholarship (cf. Proussakov 1994, 2001b, 2001c, 2001d) as-
sociates the earliest state formation in Egypt with gradual population
growth (e.g., Wilson 1965: 31) – although, for lack of relevant information,
this idea can hardly be substantiated with true calculations. Moreover, ar-
chaeological data is considered by some scholars to argue rather in favor of
irregular settlement and paucity of inhabitants of protodynastic Upper Egypt
Proussakov / Early Dynastic Egypt: A Socio-Environmental/Anthropological Hypothe-

sis of ‘Unification’, pp. 139–180
(the Upper Land, the Valley), the cradle of Egyptian state organization
(O'Connor 1972; Mortensen 1991)1. As indisputable, a thesis is often cited
that agricultural developing of the Nile floodplain could not have managed
without national-scale irrigation works, the latter thus being among decisive
factors of Egyptian ethnogenesis (e. g., Krzyzaniak 1977: 127–128) – al-
though it follows by no means from either written or material sources that
general irrigation system had actually existed in the Early Dynastic, as well
as in the Old Kingdom Egypt (cf. Schenkel 1974; Hassan 1997).
Various theories of ‘archaic’ politogenesis in Egypt reveal qualitative
differences in views on basic problems of state formation in the Nile valley,
in particular, on the starting and culmination points of this process. Contro-
versy is rather maintained than solved by conjectures that, in case of Egypt,
a number of ‘classic’ preconditions of state emergence were lacking, such
as: competition for resources, since with enormous natural (agricultural,
etc.) potential of the country, its prehistoric population had been compara-
tively small; external military threat, since at that time it could have come
from nowhere; influence of foreign countries (first of all Mesopotamia),
since it could not have been determining owing to all-sufficiency of autoch-
thonous Egyptian protocivilization (Kemp 1991: 31–32).
But the principal problem, to my mind, is that in fact none of archaeo-
logical sources, neither taken separately nor in combination with others, can
witness to existence of the unified state in the Early Dynastic Egypt.
‘ARCHAIC’ ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE:

PRO OR CONTRA UNIFICATION?
Origins of pharaonic Egypt are usually associated with a ‘Thinite Kingdom’
in the Upper Land, a polity named after This, the native ‘town’ of most an-
cient pharaohs (Emery 1939: 81). It has been insisted for a long time that, in
the late Fourth Millennium B.C., a ‘Thinite Kingdom’ had risen abruptly
above the rest of Egyptian ‘chiefdoms’ and subjugated them within the bor-
ders of a centralized state.
The rise of This is pictured eloquently by a number of artifacts. Among
them, the most famous one is the palette of ‘Narmer’ (Quibell 1898b: Taf.
XII–XIII; 1900: pl. XXIX), one of the earliest dynasts, representing him
lifting a mace against a kneeled foe and considered to be a monument to his
triumph over the Delta just conquered by the Upper Land. As an argument
for unification of the whole of Egypt by ‘Narmer’ the fact is adduced, that
on his palette ‘Narmer’ is depicted both in the white crown of Upper Egypt
(recto) and in the red crown of Lower Egypt (verso) (e.g., Gardiner 1966:
403–404).
Proussakov / Early Dynastic Egypt… 141
Doubtless, ‘Narmer’ could have fought the Delta polity successfully and
boasted about his achievements by putting on the red crown. I would not
hasten, however, basing myself just upon evidence of this kind, to draw the
fundamental conclusion of state unification at the very outset of the Dynas-
tic era in Egypt. As far as we know, Horus Khasekhem, king of the late
Second Dynasty, fought the Delta polity in his turn, having smitten tens of
thousands (!) of its natives (Quibell 1900: pl. XXXIX–XLI). Hence, there
had been most likely no final unification of the Upper and Lower Lands
either under ‘Narmer’ or under other dynasts preceding Khasekhem, and
neither red nor double (white-and-red) crown on their heads proves the op-
posite viewpoint.
In comparison, though on some artifacts ‘Narmer’ is pictured as catfish
(n!r) lifting a stick against captives-Êànw (Libyans) (Quibell 1900: pl.
XV, 7; Kaplony 1963: Taf. 5, Abb. 5; Dreyer et al. 1998: Abb. 29; Taf. 5,
c), scholars avoid deducing from this that he had ever conquered Libya and
annexed it to Egypt; they prefer the idea that nothing but a victorious raid of
‘Narmer’ upon his ‘western neighbors’ had taken place (Perepelkin 2000: 71).
Likewise, not quite reliable argument in favor of Thinite absolutism in
‘archaic’ Egypt is the carrying out of distant military expeditions, led by
kings throughout the country and abroad (Emery 1961: 59–60). It is well
known that pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty had marched nearly
through the length and breadth of Syria–Palestine (e. g., Urk. IV: 663–731),
but at the same time it is obvious that they had never been actual conquer-
ors of this region (cf. Steindorff and Seele 1957; Stuchevskij 1967; Prous-
sakov 2004).
Even more disputable are assumptions that Egypt could have been under
one ruler's power already in protodynastic time. For instance, ‘Scorpion’ of
the so-called ‘Dynasty 0’ was declared by some Egyptologists, on the
grounds of a few separate artifacts found scattered between Hierakonpolis
and Tura, to be the possessor of at least the Valley (Postovskaja 1952).
Meanwhile, details of these finds are as follows: ‘Scorpion’'s macehead
from Hierakonpolis, for instance, was discovered more than a century ago
under obscure circumstances in an unordered group of votive objects, and a
potsherd from Tura with a graffito pertaining to ‘Scorpion’'s reign was un-
earthed in a robbed burial. Such evidence is hardly enough to prove the he-
gemony of the earliest ‘kings’ over Egypt. Would someone insist, on the
ground of an artifact with the name of Amenhetep III found in Mycenae
(Pendlebury 1950: 241), that Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs possessed the
Peloponnesus?!
Lack of convincing evidence of political unification of the Early Dynas-
tic Egypt, nevertheless, does not prevent us from being sure that Thinite
rulers, obtaining typical insignia of later pharaohs, bearing partial pharaonic
titulary, included by Manetho in the general pharaohs' list, etc., enjoyed
some prominent social status in comparison with that of a ‘chief’. In case of
‘Thinite Kingdom’ we are probably dealing with a sort of advanced polity,
with the level of self-organization exceeding that of the rest of ‘archaic’
‘ranked communities’ (‘chiefdoms’) in Egypt. In other words, in the course
of political evolution in the prehistoric Nile valley, an abnormal fluctuation
had probably happened, provoked by some unaccounted phenomenon and
still ignored by theories of Egyptian state formation. If so, the process of
unification in ‘archaic’ Egypt, instead of progressing gradually in time and
space, might have been divided into two stages: first, amidst ‘chiefdoms’ of
the Valley, a higher organized community had ‘suddenly’ arisen; next,
through long interaction (both armed and peaceful) between this commu-
nity and more or less autonomous ‘chiefdoms’, a unified state of the Two
Lands was formed.
NATURAL FACTORS
To evolve this hypothesis, paleoenvironmental data should be taken into
account (Proussakov 1999b). In my historical reconstructions, I base myself
on the latest model of the Holocene climate, worked out in the Global En-
ergy Problems Laboratory, Moscow Institute of Energy, Russia (Klimenko
1997; Klimenko and Proussakov 1999; Proussakov 1999a; Proussakov
2002). According to this model, global cooling after Atlantic optimum cul-
minated ca. 3190 B.C. in a climatic anomaly with the lowest temperature in
the Northern Hemisphere during last 9000 years (1ºC lower than today). As
a result, climate of Egypt became much drier and, due to decrease of evapo-
ration, perhaps even somewhat hotter than at present (Klimenko, personal
communication). Thus, at the dawn of Dynastic age the Nile valley, shelter-
ing refugees from desertified savannahs and wadis (cf. Midant-Reynes
2000: 232), might have itself suffered from a series of droughts and crop
failures, probably echoed in a legend of great famine under Horus Djet, king
of the early First Dynasty (Emery 1961: 73).
Ca. 3000 B.C., Northeast Africa enjoyed an increased rainfall, the sub-
pluvial having terminated in 2900 to 2800 B.C. (Klimenko, personal com-
munication). The next peak of desiccation in Egypt possibly fell on the late
Third Dynasty, while in the reign of Sneferu, the founder of the Fourth Dy-
nasty, abundant rainfall recommenced at least in Lower Egypt (Proussakov
1999b: 104–114).
So Egyptian state emerged under rather severe climatic conditions, and
the Early Dynastic period as a whole evidenced considerable variations of
climate in the Nile valley.
Late Fourth Millennium B.C. is marked by another global environ-
mental event, namely, culmination of the Ocean post-Würm transgression
(Kaplin 1973; Pirazzoli 1996)2. Given stabilization of the Delta modern
shoreline by the Sixth Millennium B.C., when both rising level of the Medi-
terranean and isostatically balanced plain of the Delta are estimated to have
been about 10–12 m lower than today (Stanley 1988; Stanley and Warne
1993a, 1993b), it seems likely that at the peak of transgression, irrespective
of the sea-level stand (higher or not) relative to its present position (e. g.,
Fairbridge 1961; Pirazzoli 1987), vast areas of the Delta had been sub-
merged. Mythological tradition believed Osiris, the first king of Egypt, to
have ascended the throne after the Flood that covered the Earth (Naville
1904). Manetho wrote about the Flood that preceded the Dynastic rule in
Egypt (Palmer 1861: 93). In accordance with Egyptian chronicle and eus-
tatic nature of the Ocean post-glacial transgression, Sumerian ‘King List’ of
the Third Dynasty of Ur (Jacobsen 1939) informs us that enthronement of
real, non-legendary Mesopotamian kings (the First Dynasty of Kish, con-
temporary with the Third Dynasty of pharaohs), had taken place after the
Flood as well (Djakonov 1997a: 49).
The Mediterranean transgression alone might have changed drastically
geo- and sociopolitical situation in protodynastic Egypt. Ecological degra-
dation of inundated lands of the Delta was pregnant with their economic
and cultural decline and, finally, with the earliest state emerging in the Val-
ley.
The Valley landscape, in its turn, is argued to have undergone a modifi-
cation in the late Fourth Millennium B.C., following the so-called ‘Neo-
lithic drop’ of the Nile (Heinzelin 1968: fig. 5). This phenomenon, being
part of high-amplitude post-glacial ups and downs of the Nile floodplain, is
not fully understood (Butzer and Hansen 1968: 330–331), but its terminal
phase is possibly registered in an authentic historical document (Proussakov
1996). Nilometer records on the Palermo Stone (Schäfer 1902; Daressy
1916; Helck 1982) reveal a considerable decrease of the Nile floods under
the late First to the early Second Dynasty (Bell 1970), with one abnormally
high inundation in the reign of Horus Den, king of the First Dynasty
(Schäfer 1902: Taf. I, 3, num. 3). This ‘superflood’ of 8 ‘cubits’ and 3 ‘fin-
gers’ has been even called a kind of ‘world-ordering’ magic fiction, offi-
cially timed to the Sed-festival – ‘rejuvenation’ (e. g., Mat'e 1956) of Den
(Helck 1966). In the light of the estimated ‘Neolithic drop’, however, this
flood is more likely not to be fictitious but a real event, an echo of prehis-
toric Niles (Proussakov 1999b: 85–89). After floods of such a scope had
ended, the Valley must have become much more suitable for colonization
and agricultural development.
The natural factors in question, in view of their utmost significance in
molding the environment of Egyptian protocivilization, should be con-
nected directly with archaeological evidence concerning the Early Dynastic
‘unification’ in Egypt.
A SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL RE-INTERPRETATION:
(HORUS) ‘NARMER’ AND HIS ‘CAPTIVES’
On the votive macehead of ‘Narmer’ (Quibell 1900: pl. XXVI B), a hiero-
glyphic numerical inscription is carved, usually interpreted as calculation of
people and cattle captured by this ruler in Lower Egypt. The figures are
enormous: 120 thousand men3 and almost two million (?!) heads of large
and small livestock. Never afterwards had pharaohs boasted of taking such
great loot: with the exception of Amenhetep II (the Eighteenth Dynasty)
who informs us he had once brought to Egypt about 90 thousand Asians,
the highest numbers of their foreign captives varied within the limits of
several hundred to several thousand people (Berlev 1989). Given these data,
figures on the macehead of ‘Narmer’, the ruler of a rudimentary ‘kingdom’
without developed military organization, look at least strange.
The Early Dynastic kings had obviously fought much and cruelly. Their
aggressive temper is probably mirrored in Thinite ‘throne’ names, such as:
‘Scorpion’, ‘Catfish’4, ‘Fighter’, ‘Grasper’ (?), ‘Snake’, etc. ‘Shining-with-
a-sceptre’ Khasekhem of the Second Dynasty alone had slain about 50
thousand inhabitants of the Lower Land (Quibell 1900: pl. XXXIX–XLI).
‘Narmer’'s ‘feat’, however, is a far more curious event, worthy of special
attention.
The idea of armed seizure and holding captive of more than hundred
thousand people at the very onset of Dynastic age in Egypt seem quite in-
credible. It is hard to believe that any of ‘chiefdoms’ of the Nile valley, in-
cluding the newly advanced ‘Thinite Kingdom’, possessed enough man-
power and material resources to do this. Some scholars distrusted ‘Narmer's
trophy account completely, considering it to be an exaggeration: either
some symbol or just an empty boast (Meyer 1913: § 208; Avdiev 1948: 29;
Baumgartel 1960: 115; Millet 1990). Others, trusting it basically, talked of
a mass migration, without explaining reasons for such an outstanding
demographic phenomenon, however (Breasted 1915: 49; Perepelkin 2000:
92). It has also been supposed that figures on ‘Narmer’'s macehead repre-
sent the results of a population census (Petrie 1939: 78) or total calculation
of people ever captured by ‘Narmer’ in warfare, timed to his Sed (Berlev
1989: 89).
In addition to this, let us try to explain the phenomenon of ‘Narmer’'s
‘captives’, bearing in mind the hypothesis of excessive flooding and
swamping of the Delta at the peak of the Mediterranean transgression in the
late Fourth Millennium B.C. (Proussakov 1999b: 67–77; 2001d: 28–32). A
decrease in the area of dry, livable land of Lower Egypt might have driven
its natives up to the Valley. In the reign of ‘Narmer’, i.e., when transgres-
sion in the Delta had presumably reached its apogee, migration turned into
a mass flight. Besides, the idea of an exodus of the populace from ecologi-
cally degraded regions of the ‘archaic’ Delta correlates perfectly with ar-
chaeological evidence of a ‘sudden invasion’ of Egyptians into southern
Canaan about that very time (Yeivin 1960; Oren 1973; Gophna 1976; Go-
phna and Gazit 1985). I would assume the people, calculated by ‘Narmer’,
to have been in fact not prisoners of war but refugees from the inundated
parts of Lower Egypt to the Valley territories under control of This (live-
stock is likely to have belonged to them, on average 15 heads per person).
In this case, figures on ‘Narmer’'s macehead would look quite realistic.
These figures, however, are accompanied by ideogram (Gardiner
1976: A13) used instead of the complete writing of the idiom s8r-!n¬ –
the ‘killed-living’, or ‘captive’ (Faulkner 1991: 250; Wb. IV: 307, 12). Ac-
cording to Berlev's interpretation, based on later Egyptian written sources
(e.g., those of the Middle Kingdom), the ‘killed-living’ was the name of a
seized but, for some reason, not slaughtered foe, who nevertheless was re-
garded by Egyptians to have been killed magically at the very moment of
devising evil against Egypt (Berlev 1989: 87–89). On the other hand, it
seems not quite obvious that direct analogies may always be made between
concepts and terms of ‘archaic’ times and those, for instance, of the Middle
Kingdom, separated from the Early Dynastic protostate by more than a mil-
lennium. In other words, it is not necessary to consider ‘archaic’ s8r(w)-
!n¬(w) to have been foreigners, ‘naturalized’ exactly by means of an
armed raid. In the case of ‘Narmer’'s ‘captives’, this term probably just
pointed to their subordinate position in a ‘chiefdom’ they were constrained
to join under different circumstances, as I guess, being forced to abandon
their native country by catastrophic environmental change. Finally, nothing
prevented ‘Narmer’ and his administration from calling assimilated immi-
grants the ‘killed-living’ – ‘captives’ for reason of pure prestige.
Subjugation of such a multitude of people could not fail to result in un-
precedented growth of personal authority of Thinite rulers and to raise the
military-economic potential of the ‘Thinite Kingdom’. For instance, the
‘captives’ might have been recruited to build Memphis, the future capi-
tal of Egypt, under ‘Narmer’'s successor Horus Aha. Here the large-scale
preparatory works alone demanded numerous working hands: according to
Herodotus, the foundation of Memphis was preceded by the Nile's course
diverted (cf. Jeffreys and Tavares 1994), a large territory drained, and a
lake dug [II, 99]. Archaeological excavations reveal the Memphis region to
be rather densely populated at the earliest Dynastic times (Saad 1969).
Hence, this is possibly just an area to which the bulk of the refugees from
Lower Egypt had been forced to move. Moreover, Memphis' foundation
itself was perhaps the direct consequence of local concentration of a migrat-
ing populace along the Valley's northernmost stretch adjacent to the Delta's
apex: people had to be given shelter and provided with some labor.
Having increased substantially the strength of their subjects, Thinite dy-
nasts obtained a fair chance to suppress rival chiefs of Egypt and become
leaders in the fight for hegemony over the country, up to its final political
unification under the power of the dynastic clan. 120 thousand of the in-
comers with their enormous livestock, if true, must have ‘suddenly’ turned
‘Narmer’'s ‘chiefdom’ into the greatest and richest community in the Nile
valley. In other words, in view of the correlation between population
growth and complexity of social organization (e. g., Carneiro 1967, 1970,
1972; Dumond 1972; Korotayev 1997), the necessity to assimilate lots of
migrants from ecologically degraded lowlands of the Delta had probably
made the ‘Thinite Kingdom’ ‘fluctuate’ into the embryo state in Egypt.
THIS–MEMPHIS:
ENCLAVE PROTOSTATE AND MECHANISM OF ITS GENESIS
So taking into account paleoenvironmental data, I advance a hypothesis that
the Early Dynastic state in Egypt never embraced the whole country, but
emerged locally under the falcon ‘totem’ (Horus of the pharaohs), and acted
towering above the rest of Egyptian ‘chiefdoms’ with their lower levels of
self-organization.
The foundation of Memphis by Horus Aha had hardly shaken the ‘capi-
tal’ status of This, the hearth of dynastic power. Monumental tomb super-
structures (mastabas) of ‘archaic’ kings, queens and higher officials have
been discovered both at Saqqara near Memphis and at Abydos (Umm el-
Qaab) near This. Irrespective of whether cenotaphs (Emery 1949, 1954,
1958; Lauer 1957) or true tombs (Perepelkin 1956; Kemp 1966, 1967; Kai-
ser 1981; Dreyer 1991) the Early Dynastic funeral monuments at Abydos
are, all of them together with those at Saqqara suggest that This and Mem-
phis to have been centers for worshipping the deceased rulers, i.e., major
sites of crystallization of the earliest state in Egypt (cf. Postovskaja 1959).
But how did Thinite dynasts manage to found Memphis and control its
populous5 surroundings, not being sovereigns of the whole of Egypt? In-
deed, This of the Upper Land and Memphis of the Lower Land were sepa-
rated by hundreds kilometers of the Valley. How could territorial posses-
sions of the same state have been so distant from each other and have inter-
spersed among them independent, autonomous communities?
The answer to these questions lies in the organization of large landed
property in Egypt of the ‘Pyramid Age’. It is known that, territorially, es-
tates of the Old Kingdom pharaohs, nomarchs and nobles were not continu-
ous but scattered throughout the country (Savel'eva 1962: 55; Perepelkin
1988: 184). In view of this phenomenon, the idea of a limitation of ‘ar-
chaic’ Egyptian state within just a few enclaves of the Valley and the Delta
does not seem unthinkable at all. Moreover, taking into account the closest
historico-evolutionary kinship of the Early Dynastic and the Old Kingdom
epochs (Proussakov 2001d; cf. Janssen 1978), geographical discontinuity
and dispersion of large pharaohs' and ‘private’ (prw dt) estates of the latter
may be interpreted as nothing but a copy of territorial structure of ‘archaic’
Egypt.
In addition to present views on the Early Dynastic Egypt (e.g., Kemp
1995; Spencer 1996; Perepelkin 2000; Wilkinson 2001), I postulate: territo-
rially, the Egyptian ‘archaic’ state was not integrated but was characterized
by discrete enclaves, arranged in mosaics of self-dependent ‘chiefdoms’.
This protostate had two ‘capital’ hearths: the Thinite ‘nome’, the ancestral
land of pharaohs, and the Memphite ‘nome’, populous and strategically
situated, thus giving the early kings evident advantages in the fight for the
unification of the Two Lands.
Besides This and Memphis, the Early Dynastic protostate is likely to
have included (possessed or controlled) some more territorial units. First,
these are Hierakonpolis, the most ancient center of the Horus cult in Upper
Egypt (Newberry 1904), and neighboring Elkab across the river (Quibell
1898a), devoted to the vulture-goddess Nekhbet whose name, along with
that of Horus, appears in the titles of the Early Dynastic kings (Legge 1908;
Müller 1938). Next, there is probably Koptos (Petrie 1896), the ‘domain’ of
ithyphallic god Min honoured by Thinite kings from time to time with the
ceremony of ‘birth’ (raising of statue?) (Schäfer 1902: Taf. I, 2, № 9; 5,
№ 10); besides, not far from Koptos, at Naqada, a tomb of the ‘archaic’
queen Neithhotep has been discovered (Morgan 1897; Borchardt 1898). In
the Delta, this is doubtless Buto (Pe), the ‘residence’ of the cobra-goddess
Wadjet who, paired with Nekhbet of Upper Egypt, personified one of
the pharaoh's sacred titles. Sais of the Lower Land should be also men-
tioned, the native ‘town’ of some of the Early Dynastic queens named after
the Saite goddess Neith; the latter was probably honored by Thinite kings
themselves: for instance, Horus Aha is believed to have built (Emery 1961:
51) or visited (Wilkinson 2001: 320) a shrine of Neith at Sais (Petrie 1901b:
pl. III A, 5; X, 2).
In the light of my hypothesis, archaeological data on regular communi-
cations between This, Memphis and ‘filial’ settlements of the ‘Thinite
Kingdom’ may be understood as follows: neither the inevitable hostile ac-
tions of ‘aliens’ nor the long dividing spaces (in particular, Middle Egypt in
the course of Bahr Yusef) had been insuperable obstacles to the efficient
functioning of the enclave protostate. But what was the mechanism of its
formation and development? The ‘driving gear’ of this mechanism is quite
obvious. Predynastic Gerzean (Naqada II) pottery is abundantly covered
with drawings of large, many-oared boats (Petrie and Quibell 1896:
pl. XXXIV, 40–47; LXVI, 2–10; LXVII, 11–14; Petrie 1901a: pl. XVI, 40–
42; XX, 1–12; Petrie 1939: pl. XXXV, XXXVI). Judging from the draw-
ings, these were not papyrus flat-boats for fishing or hunting in shallow
thickets, but most likely cargo vessels with deck superstructures, possibly
with wooden equipment and, doubtless, taking aboard numerous oarsmen
(and passengers?) (Petrie 1914: fig. 29)6. The beloved decorative theme of
Gerzean potters reveals large boat to have played a significant part in eve-
ryday life of Egyptians long before emergence of state in the Nile valley,
being perhaps connected particularly with military and ritual activities of
tribal elites (Quibell and Green 1902: pl. LXXV–LXXVIII; Case and Payne
1962: pl. I a, b).
The main point is that such vessels allowed their crews selective coloni-
zation of the Nile banks, sailing safely to occupied territories. In this re-
spect, boat crews avoiding destructive overland battles seem to be far more
potent colonizing detachments in comparison with gangs of men on foot. In
contrast to settled land, the Nile belonged to no one, since no chief is likely
to have controlled enough manpower and material resources to block and
paralyze transport communications along ‘his’ segment of the river-bed. It
is just the possibility of unlimited boat transit through ‘territorial waters’ of
independent ‘chiefdoms’, providing exchange of people, goods and infor-
mation, that I suggest to have been a foundation of sociopolitical and eco-
nomic integrity of the ‘Thinite Kingdom’ notwithstanding the distances
between its enclaves. In other words, the conception of regular boat com-
munications by the Nile possibly reveals the basic mechanism of state for-
mation in Egypt, alternative to those of ‘population pressure on land’,
‘chain reaction of intestine wars’, etc.
The role of large many-oared boat in the establishing of pharaonic civi-
lization looks even more notable in view of natural environments of proto-
dynastic Egypt. The Nile is estimated to have been much higher in prehis-
toric times than after the so-called ‘Neolithic drop’ (see above). This esti-
mation correlates with archaeological evidence of the comparatively sparse
population of prehistoric Upper Egypt (cf. Pérez Largasha 1995), probably
caused by heavy Nile floods, swamping and destroying cultural hearths in
the Nile floodplain and thus making it uncomfortable for settled life (cf.
Vinogradov 1997). Destructive Niles are likely to be among fundamental
preconditions of not continuous but dispersed occupation of the Valley by
prehistoric peoples. Primary boat ‘havens’ on the Nile (‘archaic’ centers of
floodplain colonization?) are depicted, for instance, on the seals of the Sec-
ond Dynasty king Set Peribsen, in the form of oval enclosures with three
boats inside (Kaplony 1963: Taf. 76, Abb. 283, 285; Taf. 77, Abb. 286;
Petrie 1901b: pl. XXII, 178–180) – a kind of royal estate named ‘the ships
of the king’ (Griffith 1901).
Let us remember in this connection the details of Memphis' foundation
expounded to Herodotus by Egyptian priests (II, 99). We are used to the
idea that the civilizational development of Egypt started with the irrigation
of the Nile valley. Meanwhile, it had been explained clearly already to He-
rodotus that building of Memphis was preceded by hard drainage efforts,
and only next was an irrigation project realized by digging a lake and filling
it with the Nile water. In other words, the main problem of ‘archaic’ settle-
ment in Egypt was actually not irrigation of lands but, on the contrary,
their large-scale drainage. We may add to it an observation that ‘Scor-
pion’'s macehead, depicting this king hoeing the bank of a channel (Quibell
1900: pl. XXVI C), is ‘an exception amongst early royal iconography
which generally makes no reference to irrigation works’ (Wilkinson 2001:
46).
Taking all this into account, large many-oared boats may be considered
to be not simply the most important transportation and communication fa-
cilities in the ancient Nile valley, but the main means of colonization of
Egypt. My idea is that the Gerzean and, to some extent, ‘archaic’ settlement
of the Egyptian floodplain was practiced not so much overland by groups
on foot as from the River by crews of large boats, built probably owing to
the vital necessity to transport numerous warriors, hunters and workers.
This deduction seems to be documented. Three boats are carved on a
wooden label of king Horus Aha from Abydos, in the second line from the
bottom (Petrie 1901b: pl. III A, 5; X, 2). The first boat is sailing between
two settlements (fortresses?) encircled by walls, while two others are mov-
ing in tandem, each crowned with similar pictures of a hoe side by side with
an oblong horizontal sign. The meaning of the latter, because of the primi-
tiveness of ‘archaic’ writing, may only be guessed. At the same time, the
combination with the hoe-like sign in mature hieroglyphic writing forms
only the sign § (‘pool’) (Gardiner 1976: N37; Wb. IV: 397). In this combi-
nation (‘pick excavating a pool’) (Gardiner 1976: U17, 18; Wb. V: 188), hi-
eroglyphs under consideration designate the so-called ‘established settle-
ment’ – grgt (Perepelkin 1988: 134–135). It is noteworthy that in the Old
Kingdom this was the special term for settlements emerging from artificially
drained lands (Savel'eva 1962: 42–43; 1967).
This wooden label has a duplicate reproducing the scene with three
boats, except for a single distinction. In this case, the outline of an oblong
sign paired with a hoe above one of the boats in tandem is beyond any
doubt: this is a regular rectangle, of strong resemblance to the ‘pool’ hiero-
glyph § (Petrie 1901b: pl. III A, 6; XI, 2)7. So pictures on both labels are
likely to encode information about the foundation of settlements in the
flooded Nile valley by boat crews. Moreover, it may be supposed that the
two ‘fortresses’ the first boat is sailing between are those very settlements on
the completion of their establishing.
Besides, the top line of these labels is believed to represent the founda-
tion of the sanctuary of Neith in Sais by Horus Aha (Emery 1961: 51).
Above the sanctuary (i.e., side by side with it) boats are pictured, probably
those used by the king and his suite to get to their destination. In general,
nothing prevents us from interpreting these sources as evidence for the
paramount importance of boats as means of ‘archaic’ colonization of Egypt
and communications between enclaves of the Egyptian protostate.
‘HORUS IN A BOAT’: A RELIGIOUS-IDEOLOGICAL FACTOR

OF EARLY DYNASTIC STATE FORMATION
In addition to ‘archaic’ sources, boats appear in great number in the annals
of the Palermo Stone, where they are connected mainly with biennial cere-
monial trips of the Early Dynastic kings-Horuses and their ‘followers’
(§msw Ôr) through the country (e.g., Beckerath 1956; Kaiser 1959, 1960).
These trips had both administrative and ritual reasons, the latter lying,
briefly, in the general belief that the godlike ruler, traveling within his pos-
sessions and marking their limits by his presence, thus established the world
order (e. g., Ardzinba 1982; Veinberg 1986; cf. Assman 1984, 1989, 1990).
Representation of these actions on the Stone as ‘followings of Horus in a
boat’ probably points to implanting in Egyptians' consciousness of direct
association of the divine Pharaoh-‘creator’ with boat sailing on the Nile,
embodied in the hieroglyph ‘falcon in boat’ (Berlev 1969; Gardiner
1976: G7*).
Primordially associated with the king-Horus ‘putting Egypt in order’,
the Nile large boat of the ‘unification’ epoch is likely to be the prototype of
the Egyptian sacred bark by which gods together with deceased pharaohs
voyaged through heaven and the netherworld, securing the universal har-
mony. This cosmological conception is argued to have underlain the state
cult of sun-god Ra in the Old Kingdom (e.g., Korostovtsev 1941; Anthes
1959). On the other hand, at the very outset of the ‘archaic’ period, centu-
ries before turning Ra to the supreme deity of Egypt, boats were buried next
to mastabas, being thus already considered necessary to the earliest kings in
their afterlife. Long before the famous ‘solar bark’ of pharaoh Khufu (Jen-
kins 1980; Lipke 1984) and the Fifth Dynasty pharaohs' giant mud-brick
boats at the ‘solar temples’ (Borchardt, Bissing and Kees 1905–1928; Kai-
ser 1956), a brick boat-like construction almost 20 m long (either imitation
of a boat or sarcophagus for a real vessel) had been erected by the supposed
tomb of Horus Aha (Emery 1939: pl. 3, 8)8. Similar constructions have been
attributed to other ‘archaic’ rulers, such as queen Merneith (Emery 1954:
fig. 203), king Den (Emery 1949: pl. 19, A), and others (cf. O'Connor
1995)9. Moreover, ceremonial (?) wooden boats of the Early Dynastic time
were unearthed far from Thinite kings' and officials' necropolises, for in-
stance, in cemeteries of Helwan (Wilkinson 1996).
Such an aspect of the boat sacralization as its decisive role in resistance
to the ‘universal entropy’ probably correlates with the fact that, for prehis-
toric and ‘archaic’ Egyptians, the boat was the most reliable, if not the only,
instrument of large-scale colonization of the Nile valley, allowing people to
surmount its natural ‘chaos’, settle throughout Egypt and maintain regular
communications between settlements scattered all over the country.
In view of the obvious impossibility of anyone's exercising total armed
control over Egypt by means of ‘archaic’ technics and weapons (Gorelik
1993), deification of kings as guarantors of the universal order seems to
have been the religious-ideological factor used in the attempted national
consolidation of most ancient Egyptians, partly compensating for territorial
discontinuity and military-administrative immaturity of the Early Dynastic
protostate. It is hardly coincidental that activities of kings of the First and
Second Dynasties are represented on the Palermo Stone mainly as carrying
out a series of rituals, such as ‘followings of Horus’, Sed-festivals, founda-
tions of sanctuaries, ‘births’ of gods, etc. This fact reveals an increased at-
tention already of the earliest Thinite administration to ‘propaganda’ of
supernatural qualities of Egyptian dynasts.
HORUS DEN THE ‘GREAT’ AND HIS SED
According to authentic official sources, one of the greatest ‘archaic’ kings
was Horus Den of the First Dynasty (e.g., Godron 1990). On his monu-
ments, he entitles himself the ruler of the Two Lands (Schäfer 1902: Taf. I,
3, № 3), wears the ‘sovereign’ double (white-and-red) crown (Petrie 1900:
pl. XV, 16) and uraeus (Spencer 1980: pl. 53, cat. 460), strikes the East
(ibid.), smites twntjw (tribesmen of Arabian desert and Sinai?) (Schäfer
1902: Taf. I, 3, № 2), crushes a place named wr k (Schäfer 1902: Taf. I,
3, № 10), destroys fortresses (Petrie 1900: pl. XV, 16–17), harpoons hippo-
potami (Kaplony 1963: Taf. 93, Abb. 364; Schäfer 1902: Taf. I, 3, № 8).
This account of a ‘perfect’, powerful reign is supplemented, dissonantly
at first glance, by the Palermo Stone record of the disastrous Nile in the
year of Den's Sed-‘jubilee’10. This anomalously high flood (8 ‘cubits’ and 3
‘fingers’) resulted in ‘inundation (màt) of all the commoners of the West,
North and East’ (Schäfer 1902: Taf. I, 3, № 3, 4)11. Such a catastrophe
looks quite contradictory to the Sed ideology, including pharaoh's magic
rejuvenation and physical reinforcement. In other words, this deluge would
be able to annihilate the ‘world-ordering’ achievements of Horus Den as the
king of the unified Egypt.
It is highly remarkable, however, that in the record of Den's ‘super-
flood’, Egypt appears to be inundated not completely. Indeed, the South is
missing here. At the same time, this part of the world is depicted separately
on a label of Den from Abydos with another scene of Sed12, where the swt-
plant symbolizing the South (the Upper Land) is inscribed in a rectangle of
a ‘temple’ or ‘estate’ àwt (Petrie 1900: pl. XI, 14; XV, 16). This inscription
may be read as ‘estate (of the king?) of the Upper Land’ and interpreted as
an ‘ordered’ complex of Upper Egyptian domains under actual control of
Horus Den, opposed to the rest of Egypt thrown into ‘chaos’ by the deluge,
including the Delta (‘North’). If so, a report about the disastrous flood in
Den's ‘rejuvenation’ year, not tabooed but inserted in official annals, looks
like a kind of victoriously-magic declaration of the king. Celebrating his
‘jubilee’, the ‘divinely reinforced’ Horus Den inundates territories and sinks
‘commoners’ beyond the bounds of his kingdom, in the ‘reversed’, hostile
world. Thus Den demonstrates his supernatural power over populations of
the ‘wrong’ regions of Egypt and creates ‘order from chaos’, clearing these
regions of their resident evil.
It is noteworthy that sinking ‘commoners of the West, North and East’
are depicted on the Palermo Stone in the form of the bird r¬jt (lapwing).
On the macehead of ‘Scorpion’ (Quibell 1900: pl. XXVI C), these very
birds, hung by their necks on the standards of the ‘nomes’, symbolize the
defeated enemies of the king.
So Egyptian sources themselves seem to present arguments for the al-
ienation of a great part of Egypt from the ‘Thinite Kingdom’ and, accord-
ingly, argue against the idea of unification of the whole country as early as
under the ‘archaic’ dynasties. At the same time, Den's resolution to oppose,
plainly and menacingly, the dynastic possessions to those of independent
‘chiefdoms’ of Egypt, may be perceived as one more sign of the out-
standing position of Horus Den among the ‘Founding Fathers’ of pharaonic
civilization.
In addition to this, no ‘following of Horus’ in the reign of Horus Den is
recorded on the Palermo Stone (Schäfer 1902: Taf. I, 3). Rejection (?) of
the ceremony which, per se, is a distinctive feature of immaturity of the
‘archaic’ Egyptian state (cf. Helck 1975: 22, 34), suggests ‘Den's kingdom’
to have enjoyed relatively effective administration saving the king from the
necessity of regular ‘divine appearances’ in his Lands. Indeed, Den's reign
is estimated to have generated a lot of new administrative offices, inter-
preted as evidence of qualitative progress of the state under this king (Pos-
tovskaja 1947). This advanced administration may have been supervised by
the prominent official Hemaka (Emery 1938), whose name in ‘archaic’
documents is written side by side with serekh (the Horus name) of Den
(Petrie 1900: pl. XI, 14; XV, 16).
The estimated ‘administrative boom’ under Den was obviously accom-
panied with (and partly initiated by?) rapid expansion of storage facilities of
the ‘Thinite Kingdom’: Den's reign, as none before, is represented by nu-
merous seals of overseers of granaries, wine-cellars and other storehouses
for royal provisions (Petrie 1900: pl. XXI–XXIII). Development of the
government-owned storage facilities, first of all granaries, must have in-
creased the immunity of Egyptian protostate against destructive impacts,
such as wars and natural disasters (droughts, inundations, etc.).
On the other hand, all this apparent progress in self-organization of the
Egyptian society of the mid-First Dynasty had by no means favored the
further quick evolution of the ‘Thinite Kingdom’ from a number of geo-
graphically dispersed enclaves to a state, unifying the whole country.
Among likely symptoms of political decline of the First Dynasty after Den
is recovery, at least under Horus Semerkhet, of the previous importance of
the ‘followings of Horus’ as the principal events of the year (Petrie 1900:
pl. XII, 1–2; XVII, 26, 29).
ENCLAVE STRUCTURE OF THE EARLY DYNASTIC

PROTOSTATE AS A HINDRANCE TO ‘UNIFICATION’
Claims of the Thinite kings to dominate Egypt, especially as earthly per-
sonifications of one of countless deities worshipped in the Nile valley,
could not fail to have provoked counteractions of other ‘totems’ to the am-
bitious activities of the rulers-‘falcons’. It is known that ‘archaic’ Egypt
witnessed at least two serious dynastic crises.
The first one is often associated with a kind of national religious-
ideological collision, namely, ‘reincarnation’ of some Thinite kings from
Horuses into Seths (e.g., Newberry 1922). The earliest ‘revolutionary’
transformation of Horus Sekhemib, king of the Second Dynasty, into Seth
Peribsen, however, looks rather like an attempt to overcome the crisis,
probably originating in the reign of Horus Adjib. This king of the First Dy-
nasty (the successor of Den) is famous for a pyramid-like step superstruc-
ture ‘hidden’ inside mastaba S3038 at Saqqara (Emery 1949: 82–89; pl.
21–26, 32–35). It is noteworthy that this mortuary architectural ‘innovation’
reveals itself directly after the reign of Horus Den, i.e., at the apogee of the
First Dynasty power. So the ‘protopyramid’ of Adjib (?) probably mirrors
the intention of the dynastic clan, on reaching its temporal political and ad-
ministrative stabilization, to strengthen itself ideologically as well, raising
the Thinite rulers' divine status. This intention seems not to have been
abandoned under Horus Qaa, the last king of the First Dynasty, whose (?)
tomb constructions included an offering-temple inside the same enclosure
(Emery 1958: pl. 2, 24–25), as if anticipating the pyramid complexes (and
the royal mortuary cult practices?) of the Old Kingdom. Taking all this into
account, the political decline of This–Memphis in the late First to the early
Second Dynasties may be associated, in particular, with negative reaction to
the reinforced kings-Horuses of ‘followers’ of other gods, first of all Seth of
Upper Egypt (Velde 1967).
Another large-scale crisis of the Early Dynastic power, that of the mid-
Third Dynasty, had been preceded by far more impressive demonstration of
triumph of the King-Horus in comparison with administrative and building
experiments of the First Dynasty. This is the Step Pyramid of Horus Net-
jerikhet (Djoser), the first colossal tomb superstructure of stone in Egypt
(Firth and Quibell 1935; Lauer 1936–1939). Similar to Horus Adjib with
his ‘protopyramid’ who followed Den the ‘Great’, Djoser succeeded to the
mightiest kings of his epoch (Horus Khasekhem, see below).
Among probable conditions of dynastic crises under consideration, pre-
venting ‘archaic’ Egypt from political unification, territorial discontinuity
of ‘Thinite Kingdom’ may be mentioned, with areas under the rival's con-
trol between its enclaves, such as Ombos, half-way from This to Hierakon-
polis, famous for the worship of Seth the ‘Ombite’ (Nbwtj) (Kees 1980:
194–199). Traces of Seth are found in Middle Egypt as well, for instance, in
the 10th nome downstream from This. It has been argued that the local Seth
was paired with Horus, and depiction of these hostile deities as a couple of
falcons in one or two boats (but cf. Griffith 1959) symbolized their recon-
ciliation (Kees 1924: 12 ff.). According to another, much better grounded
point of view, however, there was no any ‘reconciled’ couple of Horus and
Seth in the 10th nome of the Valley, and the paired local deity in boats was
Seth in his own person (Berlev 1969: 14). At the same time, not far from
here, in the 12th nome, a temple of a specific deity ‘Horus in a boat’ existed
(Kamal 1902), probably reminding us of particular difficulties of ancient
boating (including ‘followings of Horus’) through Middle Egypt; it must be
emphasized that this version of Horus was inseparable from its boat (Berlev
1969: 13, 15–18).
In view of this, any discord between ‘archaic’ dynasts and chiefs of
autonomous territories separating enclaves of the ‘Thinite Kingdom’ is
likely to have been pregnant with a real threat to the political and economic
integrity of the Early Dynastic protostate. Had not Sekhemib-Peribsen re-
placed or supplemented (Garnot 1956) the dynastic falcon ‘totem’ by that
of Seth exactly for the purpose of pacifying the ‘followers’ of the latter in
their rebellion against Horus as the royal deity? If so, what may have been
the price of such a ‘compromise’?
To answer this question, let us pay attention to the fact that ‘followings
of Horus in a boat’ on the Palermo Stone (recto) are often interchangeable,
among others, with ceremonies of king's ‘appearance’ (¬!t) as the ruler
now of the Upper Land (¬!t nswt), now of the Lower Land (¬!t btty),
and now of the Two (Upper and Lower) Lands (¬!t nswt-btty). It is re-
markable that, in the Stone records, the one-Land ‘appearances’ seem to be
geographically connected to corresponding parts of Egypt. For instance,
right under inscription of the ‘uprising’ of the king of the Upper Land a
note is made about ‘birth of Min’, the god of Koptos (Schäfer 1902: Taf. I,
2, № 9), most likely pointing exactly to Upper Egypt as the destination of
the previous year's ‘following’ of the king. Another time, inscription of the
‘appearance’ of the king of the Lower Land is followed, in the same year
compartment, by record of the running of the sacred bull Apis worshipped
in Memphis (Schäfer 1902: Taf. I, 3, № 12), where the ritual of ‘appear-
ance’ had probably taken place. In other words, visiting his up-river and
down-river domains by turns, a Thinite king is likely to have appeared
before local population in a certain ceremonial image, specific to the land,
claiming his rights to the visited region.
Moreover, the ‘Two Lands’ in the Early Dynastic period was probably
the name not of the unified (Upper and Lower) Egypt, but just of southern
and northern groups of enclaves of the ‘Thinite Kingdom’, separated by
Middle Egypt. This idea eliminates contradiction between the statement that
Thinite kings never ruled the whole of Egypt, and the fact that they offi-
cially and unhesitatingly entitled themselves the rulers of both Upper and
Lower Lands.
Turning back to the ‘archaic’ dynastic crises, now it is especially inter-
esting to recall the lack at Abydos of royal tombs of the early Second Dy-
nasty up to the reign of Horus Ninetjer. In addition to this, fifteen-year ex-
tract from Ninetjer's annals on the Palermo Stone reveals a significant de-
tail. Here, Ninetjer ‘appears’ only once as king of the Upper Land (Schäfer
1902: Taf. I, 4, № 2) and once as king of the Two Lands (Schäfer 1902:
Taf. I, 4, № 4), while for the remaining eleven years his ‘followings of Ho-
rus’ alternate with his ‘appearances’ only as king of the Lower Land, as if
Ninetjer's power was limited mainly to this part of Egypt. It is noteworthy
that series of Ninetjer's ‘appearances’ in Lower Egypt becomes stable right
after the year, the most likely principal event of which (according to the
Stone logic) must have been the ‘appearance’ of king of Upper Egypt, but
which is commemorated instead by the destruction of two settlements
(Schäfer 1902: Taf. I, 4, № 8). This military action is probably an episode
of the Second Dynasty kings' struggle for access to their possessions in the
Upper Land.
Proceeding from all this, I argue that political crisis of the late First to
the early Second Dynasties in Egypt was aggravated by the break of regular
communications between Memphis and This with the severance of Thinite
kings from their ‘ancestral domain’ in the Upper Land. It is hardly by acci-
dent that the royal ‘archaic’ necropolis at Abydos was ‘revived’ under
Ninetjer's successor Sekhemib, who was the first to adopt the ‘throne’ name
of Seth. So the price paid by ‘chiefdoms’ of the Valley for such dynastic
‘compromise’ as ‘reincarnation’ of the King-Horus into Seth, one of the
greatest divine authorities of Upper Egypt, may have been the non-
interference of Seth worshippers in communications between northern and
southern enclaves of the ‘Thinite Kingdom’.
TWO CYCLES OF THE EARLY DYNASTIC ‘UNIFICATION’
In the light of the aforesaid, two cycles of the Early Dynastic state forma-
tion in Egypt are visible, each of them including gradual political rein-
forcement and, finally, obstruction of the royal power ‘in response’ to at-
tempts of its ideological substantiation. Stabilization of Horus as the ‘state’
god, however, seems to be in a steady progression from the first to the sec-
ond cycle, since the assumed political collapse of the Third Dynasty after
Horus Netjerikhet (Djoser) is not marked by ‘divine transformations’ of the
Thinite kings into Seths.
This progress was obviously based in part on the state territorial expan-
sion and consolidation, evidenced by small step pyramids of the late Third
Dynasty (?) (cf. Wilkinson 2001: 103–104), such as pyramids of Seila in
the Fayum depression (Borchardt 1900), Zawiyet al-Meitin in Middle Egypt
(Weill 1912), Naqada in the vicinity of Ombos (Petrie and Quibell 1896),
al-Kula near Hierakonpolis (Stiénon 1950). The pyramid of Naqada, for
instance, may be associated with the absorption of the Ombos area by royal
enclaves of This and Hierakonpolis, in other words, with the unification of
southern Upper Egypt by the latest ‘archaic’ kings (cf. Kemp 1991: fig. 8, 13).
This idea squares with the assumption that under Horus-Seth Khasek-
hemwy (late Second Dynasty) a kind of centralized agrarian department
appeared in the Koptos nome, the region of Ombos location (Postovskaja
1947). Thereupon, the following coincidence is notable. Serekh of Khasek-
hemwy has a ‘postscript’ ‘two gods pacified in him’, i.e., the king. These
gods (Horus and Seth) are represented as two falcons sitting on standards
(Kaplony 1963: Taf. 82, Abb. 309, 310; Petrie 1901b: pl. XXIII, 192), and a
quite similar pair of falcons on standards designates the ‘totem’ of Koptos
pictured on some seals of Khasekhemwy beside his serekh (Kaplony 1963:
Taf. 83, Abb. 313; Petrie 1901b: pl. XXIII, 197). There is an impression
that Horus-Seth Khasekhemwy connected his magic ‘pacification of gods’
with real achievement of the dynastic internal policy, namely, military con-
quest or peaceful annexation to the ‘Thinite Kingdom’ of such Seth's ‘lair’
as the so-called Theban bend of the Nile. Here we possibly discover one
more historical detail of the Early Dynastic state formation in Egypt.
In the context of unification, the pyramid at Zawiyet al-Meitin is of es-
pecial interest as well, since it points to the penetration of the power of Ho-
rus to Middle Egypt. On the other hand, in the light of the distribution of
small pyramids along the Valley, late ‘archaic’ Middle Egypt still looks
relatively free from influence of the ‘Thinite Kingdom’ in contrast to the
southern Upper Land, what may have been one of the preconditions of de-
cline of the Third Dynasty.
The Early Dynastic crises were probably caused not only by socio-
political conditions, but to some extent also by ecological factors. Thus, the
‘failure’ of the late First and the early Second Dynasties correlates in his-
torical scale with termination of the estimated ‘Neolithic drop’ of the Nile.
This natural phenomenon, if true, must have entailed a drastic transforma-
tion of the living-space of the ‘archaic’ Egyptians. In view of this, the colli-
sion ‘Seth contra Horus’ may be guessed to have been in a certain relation-
ship with great environmental change, able to awaken in Egypt social forces
eager to substitute another ‘totem’, the creator and guarantor of the univer-
sal order, for the royal deity. Decline of the Third Dynasty, in its turn,
seems to coincide exactly with the dry episode preceding the climatic sub-
optimum of the mid-Third Millennium B.C. (Klimenko, Klimanov, and
Fyodorov 1996).
So the evolution of ‘archaic’ Egypt towards unification, with the initial
stage at the peak of the post-Würm transgression of the Ocean, takes the
form of the socio-environmental rhythms, conflicting with current but quite
artificial subdivision of pharaonic history into Dynasties and Kingdoms.
The last thesis seems to be in accord with the views on the pharaohs'
succession of ancient Egyptians themselves. For example, (Horus) ‘Nar-
mer’, once numbered by scholars with the so-called ‘Dynasty 0’, now is
considered to be the founder of the First Dynasty (e.g., Emery 1961; Wil-
kinson 2001). This displacement is based on ‘archaic’ seals unearthed at
Abydos, representing ‘Narmer’'s serekh among those of the ‘traditional’
First Dynasty. Let us take into account, however, that one of these seals
ranks the ‘dynasty’ from ‘Narmer’ to Den, including the ‘king's mother’
Merneith (Dreyer 1987: Abb. 2, 3; Taf. 4, 5; Kaiser 1987: Abb. 1, 2), while
another one ranks it from ‘Narmer’ to Qaa, without queen Merneith (Dreyer
et al. 1996: Abb. 26; Taf. 14 b, c). This prompts us to think that ‘archaic’
Egyptians never distinguished determinate successions of their rulers, so we
moderns hardly need to do this, moving ‘Narmer’ or somebody else from
one conventional dynasty to another.
The accepted dividing line between the First and the Second Dynasties
(Horus Qaa / Horus Hetepsekhemwy) is artificial and archaeologically un-
ascertainable as well (cf. O'Mara 1979: 201), being lost in the dark of the
socio-ecological crisis (Proussakov 1999b: 40–99). Moreover, even such a
striking symbol of pharaonic civilization as the Step Pyramid of Djoser,
often considered in connection with the onset of the new historical age (the
Old Kingdom) in Egypt, in this respect looks rather like a false landmark.
Since erection of the Step Pyramid was followed by a decline of the ‘Thi-
nite Kingdom’ against the background of the desiccation of Northeast Af-
rica, it is more logical to associate this superstructure not with the onset of
the next, but with the termination of the previous cycle of politogenesis13.
Collapse of the Third Dynasty, so profound that we know neither its later
kings nor duration (Wilkinson 2001: 94–105), does not allow us to talk
about the fully established unified state in the Early Dynastic Egypt.
We have even less reasons to talk about the beginning, from the Third
Dynasty, of the Old Kingdom as an advanced (in comparison with ‘archaic’
time) civilizational stage in Ancient Egypt.
TO THE DISCUSSION: KHASEKHEM (WY) – WHO IS WHO?

Seth Peribsen was not alone in his ‘ideological recreancy’ among the Thinite
kings. As it has been mentioned above, another king of the Second Dynasty,
Khasekhemwy, entitled himself Seth in addition to his title of Horus. Horus-
Seth Khasekhemwy is believed to have been the direct predecessor and father
of Horus Netjerikhet (Djoser), the founder of the Third Dynasty and builder of
the first colossal pyramid of stone in Egypt.
In other words, Khasekhemwy's reign may be associated with the period of
political stabilization of the ‘Thinite Kingdom’ after the decline of the late
First to early Second Dynasties. One more argument in favor of reinforcement
of the dynastic power in the time of Khasekhemwy is that in ‘his’ line of the
Palermo Stone annals king's ‘appearances’ are always those of the king of both
the Upper and Lower Lands (Schäfer 1902: Taf. I, 5). It is also noteworthy that
Khasekhemwy's tomb at Abydos was one of the largest among local tombs of
the Thinite kings, and contained rich implements including a golden scepter
inlayed with cornelian (Petrie 1901b: V). Finally, Khasekhemwy is said to
have built in Hierakonpolis a temple, of which a granite door-post remained
with this king's double (of Horus and Seth) name (Quibell 1900: pl. II).
It is most remarkable, however, that biennial boat trips (‘followings’) of
Horus-Seth Khasekhemwy through Egypt are recorded on the Palermo
Stone as ‘followings’ of Horus alone, without a mention of Seth (Schäfer
1902: Taf. I, 5, № 1, 3, 5). This interesting detail returns us to the problem
of the identification of the latest kings of the Second Dynasty (e.g., Wilkin-
son 2001: 91–94). In particular, it may be considered as a confirmation of
the thesis (Perepelkin 2000: 82, 116) of probable identity of king Khasek-
hemwy (‘Shining-with-two-sceptres’) and his supposed predecessor, who
bore a very similar name, Khasekhem (‘Shining-with-a-sceptre’), and titled
himself exclusively Horus. According to this point of view, the last king of
the Second Dynasty had at first been named Khasekhem, but after subjuga-
tion of his internal rivals acquired another scepter and turned into Khasek-
hemwy. It is generally believed that two scepters in the king's name
symbolized the unity of the Two Lands (Upper and Lower Egypt) under his
power.
According to the opposite point of view, Khasekhem and Khasekhemwy
were different rulers, enthroned one after another in the just-mentioned or-
der. King Horus Khasekhem is famous first of all for a crushing defeat of
the Delta, with annihilation of about 50 thousand indigenes (Quibell 1900:
pl. XXXIX–XLI). Besides, he probably wanted to emphasize that ‘his’ Ho-
rus is the ruler of the Upper Land, the ‘ancestral’ possession of Seth (Velde
1967: 61–62). This desire is surmised from the fact that the falcon-Horus on
Khasekhem's serekh is pictured in the white crown of Upper Egypt (Quibell
1900: pl. XXXVI–XXXVII), contrary to the ‘archaic’ tradition of repre-
senting kings' Horus names without any crowns on the falcon's head. It is
not impossible that this white crown of Horus Khasekhem had to demon-
strate to Egyptians, regardless of whether or not quite yet it was true, that
Horus deprived Seth of the power over the Upper Land.
In view of the suppression of ‘rebellion’ in the Delta and the proclama-
tion of victory over the ‘kingdom of Seth’ in the Valley, not Khasekhemwy
but Khasekhem may seem to have been actually the direct predecessor of
rise of the ‘Thinite Kingdom’ under Djoser. Khasekhemwy left no such
pronounced a trace as the subjugator of Egypt, moreover, he made ‘conces-
sions’ to Seth, and thus is hardly associated with preparation for the tri-
umph of Djoser as the king-Horus. In other words, in the light of available
data, is it not more logical to interchange the two kings' names in the suc-
cession Khasekhem – Khasekhemwy?
This idea is in contradiction to the current Egyptological concept that,
irrespective of the number of kings called ‘shining-with-sceptres’, Khasek-
hemwy is the last name chronologically. This conclusion is based on the
postulate that not one (s¬m) but rather two sceptres (s¬mwj) could have
symbolized the unification of the Upper and Lower Lands. Hence, none
other than Khasekhemwy, despite his ‘compromise’ with Seth, must be re-
garded as the king who brought Egypt under the power of Horus.
The postulated necessity of having two regalia to symbolize the unity of
the Two Lands of Egypt, however, may be prejudiced. Autocracy is repre-
sented not worse by one sceptre or some other single sign of the supreme
power. Did not ancient Egyptians themselves think like this? For instance,
the crown of the king of the whole Egypt (s¬mtj) joined the white crown of
the Upper Land and the red crown of the Lower Land. Otherwise the unity
of Egypt was designated by plants of the Upper and Lower Lands not taken
separately but interlacing with one another. Similarly, should not two scep-
tres of Khasekhemwy not descend from, but evolve into one sceptre of
Khasekhem?
In this case, the sequence of kings – successors of the late First to the
early Second Dynasties crisis looks somehow more ‘harmonious’: 1) Sek-
hemib-Peribsen, who replaced (?) the royal deity Horus with Seth (an at-
tempt to overcome the crisis); 2) an uncertain group of rulers, who left no
memory except obscure king-lists of later times (the post-crisis syndrome);
3) Horus-Seth Khasekhemwy, who ‘pacified’ Horus and Seth (overcoming
of the crisis); 4) Horus Khasekhem, who removed Seth from the king's title
(political stabilization of the ‘Thinite Kingdom’); 5) Djoser, who raised the
divine authority of the king-Horus to unprecedented heights (the apogee of
dynastic power within this cycle of ‘unification’).
A SOCIO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL VIEW: GIFT-EXCHANGE

For all the military activities of the Thinite kings, from ‘Narmer’ to Kha-
sekhem, the armed force could not have been the only means of resolution
of domestic conflicts in the Early Dynastic Egypt. The political, economic
and technological immaturity of ‘archaic’ protostate was redoubled by the
necessity for Egyptians to adapt themselves to varying and, besides, rather
difficult climatic and landscape conditions. There is thus an a priori ground
for an assumption that a military hegemony over Egypt not only of any
chief, but of Thinite dynasts as well, could not be altogether true. Hence, a
peace treaty must have played a significant part in interrelations of ‘Thinite
Kingdom’ and ‘chiefdoms’ of the ‘archaic’ Nile valley.
To ratify such a treaty, ancient rulers might have acted differently, for
instance, presenting opponents with material gifts or celebrating rituals
pleasant to opponents. The Palermo Stone probably records such phenom-
ena, namely, erections of the so-called ‘fortresses of gods’ (Schäfer 1902:
Taf. I, 2, № 7; 3, № 6–8?; 5, № 10), the sanctuaries presumably devoted to
‘making alliances’ between Thinite kings and ‘provincial’ deities, i.e.,
chiefs' and priests' cliques (Savel'eva 1992: 23). These royal gifts look at
the same time like ritual and material ones (honoring local ‘totems’ by the
dynastic clan and sacred constructions as such). The material part of the gift
obviously included regular offerings carried out in the ‘fortresses’, judging
from the name of one of these shrines: kbàw ntrw (‘Libation of Gods’)
(Schäfer 1902: Taf. I, 5, № 10).
On the whole, circulation in ‘primitive’ communities of substantial
valuables (food, land, goods), as well as of ceremonial items, labor and
other services, is embraced by the phenomenon of ‘gift-exchange’ (Moss
1996). Anthropological theory emphasizes its non-economic nature,
placing it far from modern ideas of material profit and rational market. The
gift-exchange, obliging those high-borne and wealthy to give, take, and
compensate, originated in magic outlooks of primeval consciousness. De-
monstrative wastefulness signified close relations or kinship with spirits
and deities – actual possessors of all the earthly and heavenly goods. Hence,
it was an important precondition for reaching and keeping a high social
status or hierarchic rank.
On the contrary, the rejecting of the gift-exchange (i.e., a ‘declaration’
of inability to give and compensate) was pregnant with loss of personal sa-
credness, dethronement and even assassination of a ruler by his own sub-
jects. The killing of chiefs grown feeble and deprived of their supernatural
talent for providing their tribes with ‘divine gifts’, such as good weather
conditions, lots of game, abundant livestock and crops, seems to have been
the usual practice in predynastic Egypt. This is corroborated by Sed, the
great festival of ‘rejuvenation’ and ‘reinforcement’ of the pharaoh in a cer-
tain year of his reign. Ancient ideology of kingship, in particular, consid-
ered the king to be the guarantor of productive forces of the country, an-
swering for the life and prosperity of his subjects in exchange for their loy-
alty. From this point of view, one can envision the pharaoh striking a bar-
gain with gods and enjoying patronage of his ‘celestial relatives’ in ex-
change for propaganda and material providing for their cult (‘do ut des’)
(Posener 1955: 41).
This formula, however, does not explain the gift-exchange phenomenon
completely. The gift was considered to be a part of spiritual and physical
substance of the donor and had a magic power over the recipient, who be-
came a dependent of the ‘benefactor’ from the moment of taking the gift.
The gift must have been compensated in proper time to return it to its native
ground and not to let it pursue a debtor, doing to him harm, threatening him
with devastation and even death. At the same time, it was hastily to reject
the gift promising to recipient so much troubles, since this might have been
understood as inability to compensate, and deprived a debtor of social
rights. The principle of the fusion of a man and his property, underlying
such a ‘Weltanschauung’, seems to have functioned in the Old Kingdom
Egypt (Proussakov 2001d: 82–112), what may be illustrated with the socio-
‘economic’ category (nj) dt, i.e., the property ‘of flesh’ of its owners (as a
rule, high officials) (Perepelkin 1966, 1986, 1988).
The nobility are known for particularly zealous compensation of gifts
received from chiefs and, especially, subordinates. Only the equivalent ex-
change established social parity with ‘creditors’, while excessive compen-
sation secured personal independence from whoever it may be, including
rulers themselves.
From the idea of gift-exchange a ‘paradox’ follows, that the more au-
thority had been delegated to the ‘Thinite Kingdom’ by ‘chiefdoms’ in the
course of ‘unification’ of Egypt, the more respect the kings must have
shown to the chiefs' personal and social status, especially being unable to
eliminate domestic antagonisms by means of warfare. In theory, the closer
to the power over Egypt Thinite kings approached, the higher their duty of
the excessive gift rose local ruling cliques ancestral to nome elites.
Relations of this kind are in no way associated with some total bureau-
cratic hierarchy implicitly submitting to absolute autocracy. Briefly, gift-
exchange based upon the geographically dispersed (enclave) structure of
family, communal or tribal land possessions and their remnants may have
been a serious obstacle to the ‘unification’.
Was the gift-exchange actually inherent to the ancient Egyptian soci-
14
ety , and are there any reasons to reckon it among fundamental factors of
state formation in ancient Egypt?
A SOCIO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL RE-INTERPRETATION:
(HORUS) ‘NARMER’ AND HIS ‘CAPTIVES’
Let us return to the Early Dynastic history. Titles of Thinite kings reveal a
remarkable detail. While serekhs of Horus Aha and his successors are
crowned with figures of falcon, it is far from being the rule with serekhs of
Aha's predecessors. For example, serekhs on both sides of the famous
‘Narmer’'s palette, as well as the king's name written separately on verso,
are not accompanied by falcon-Horus, although the latter appears on the
palette in a symbolic scene of subjugation of the Delta or some of its
‘chiefdoms’ (Horus ropes to ‘Narmer’ the Lower Land planted with papyri
and an indigene's head) (Quibell 1898b: Taf. XII–XIII; 1900: pl. XXIX).
On ‘Scorpion’'s macehead the king is named without reference to Horus
either (Quibell 1900: pl. XXVI C), although significance of this macehead,
as well as of ‘Narmer’'s palette, from the viewpoint of deification of kings
in ancient Egypt is beyond doubt. Moreover, both ‘Scorpion’ and ‘Narmer’
were obviously associated with Horus, since they used not only ‘truncated’
but also complete, ‘falconine’ serekhs represented on ‘Narmer’'s macehead
from Hierakonpolis, on the above-mentioned seals of the First Dynasty and
other monuments (Quibell 1900: pl. XXVI В; Kaiser and Dreyer 1982:
Abb. 14.34). The conclusion is that in the case of predecessors of Aha we
deal with ‘intermediate’ rulers, not bearing the Horus name constantly
but just trying it on in their official titles.
These ‘hesitations’ may seem quite logical, taking into account that ‘ar-
chaic’ (Thinite) kings originated from the Upper Land, while Horus is be-
lieved to have been the native deity of the Lower Land. In view of this, it is
also logical that ‘Narmer’ is represented on recto of his palette in the white
crown of the Valley, receiving power over the Delta from the ‘hand’ of
none other than falcon-Horus. As for ‘non-falconine’ serekhs on ‘Narmer’'s
palette, they probably constitute evidence that, by the events recorded on
the palette, king ‘Narmer’ had not become ‘Horus’ yet. In other words, that
his clan had been just advancing among tribal elites of Egypt and, hence,
manifested immaturity in the ‘ideology of kingship’.
But what finally made the earliest Thinite rulers, in their choice of a dy-
nastic deity, give a falcon of the Delta the preference over all the ‘totems’
of their native Upper Land?
Let us remember the ‘fabulous’ 120 thousand ‘captives’ immortalized
on the votive macehead of ‘Narmer’. When I classified them as migrants
from the Delta territories, damaged by the Mediterranean's transgression
into the Valley lands controlled by ‘Narmer’'s ‘chiefdom’ (see above), the
question nevertheless remained unanswered: but how did ‘Narmer’ manage,
in the absence of state organization and military-technical superiority, to
establish his influence upon such a great number of strangers?
The answer is probably ‘read’ on the macehead itself, above ‘Narmer’'s
suite, in the form of regular serekh with a falcon. Exactly falcon-Horus,
transformed into the dynastic deity and included in the official title of the
ruler, may have guaranteed a kind of ‘archaic’ political compromise,
namely, voluntary submission of migrants from the Delta to Thinite dy-
nasts.
In this connection, ‘Narmer’'s label recently unearthed at Abydos may be
also taken into consideration (Dreyer et al. 1998: Abb. 29). Its top compart-
ment represents a series of pictograms in the following order, from left to
right: a standard with falcon (?) – catfish (i. e. ‘Narmer’) without falcon, lifting
a mace against a man crowned with a plant typical for the Delta (obvious
reminiscence of recto of ‘Narmer’'s palette) – ‘Narmer’'s serekh with falcon.
This composition looks like a stepwise record of events as follows: a ‘totem’
from Lower Egypt ‘migrates’ into the title of a chief from Upper Egypt after
subjugation by this chief of a tribe from Lower Egypt.
So, in case of ‘Narmer’'s ‘captives’, we probably have nothing but a
variant of gift-exchange, when intertribal submission was compensated
‘ritually’, by exaltation of the submitted ‘totem’ up to the status of the su-
preme deity. Morally, such an ‘exchange’ may have satisfied both the ‘win-
ners’, who announced the capture of the whole nation, and the ‘losers’, who
kept worshipping their ancestral god even though henceforth incarnated in
the Thinite kings.
GIFT-EXCHANGE AS A FACTOR OF POLITOGENESIS

IN PHARAONIC EGYPT
Socio-political rise of chiefs above tribesmen and foes was often arranged
so as to give it not just symbolic but also a quite visual sense. During corre-
sponding ceremonies, chiefs ascended ladders or stages wherefrom they
distributed their ‘gifts’ to commoners crowded below (Moss 1996: 137).
The picture of a festival with participation of ‘captives’ on the macehead of
‘Narmer’ answers this ethnographic model perfectly: the ruler is repre-
sented here sitting on a platform with nine steps, which dominates an area
where the festival develops. Powerful Horus Den, judging from his famous
wooden label (Petrie 1900: pl. XI, 14; XV, 16), watched his Sed celebra-
tion(s) from a step pedestal as well.
The conception of a combination of symbolic (magic) and real elements
in ‘archaic’ rituals of Sed suggests an association of chiefs' ‘triumphal’ ped-
estals with pharaohs' skyward tombstones, embodying in pure form the re-
ligious-ideological doctrine of absolute supremacy of divine rulers of
Egypt. The closest parallel may be drawn between Sed step pedestals of
‘archaic’ kings and the Step Pyramid of Djoser towering above architectural
complex with typical Sed symbolics.
Moreover, there was probably a certain connection between the Early
Dynastic and the later social activities of national scale in Egypt, including
erection of cult objects. This connection is likely to have originated first of
all in the naturally seasonal character of public works and ceremonies in the
Nile valley. It is known that socio-economic life of ancient Egyptians had
been divided into three seasons: ¬t – ‘inundation’ (July–November),
time of the Nile flood covering vast areas of the country; prt – ‘emergence’
(of flooded lands or sprouts?), the so-called ‘winter’ (November–March),
time of sowing and ripening; and šmw – ‘shallow water’, the so-called
‘summer’ (March–July), time of harvesting and storage works. Taking into
account such a cycling of ecological conditions in the Nile valley, it may be
argued that the ancient Egyptian social organism had a variable morphol-
ogy. Thus, during ‘inundation’ the living-space and agricultural activities in
Egypt receded abruptly, forcing cultivators and other floodplain workmen
to look for different occupations and gather on the ‘high ground’ inac-
cessible to floodwaters.
According to the Palermo Stone, from the coming of the Nile flood, i.e.,
at the beginning of every year, the dynastic clan was usually plunged into
an atmosphere of ritual festivity (Schäfer 1902), kings' ‘followings’ through
Egypt and their ‘appearances’ as rulers of the Upper or/and Lower Land
being accompanied with calculations of lands, livestock and gold, ‘births’
(erections of statues?) of various local gods and buildings of their shrines.
In other words, there are enough allusions to widespread exchange of cere-
monial services, with redistribution of considerable material resources, be-
tween the ‘Thinite Kingdom’ (pharaohs) and ‘chiefdoms’ (nomes). All this
gift-exchange ‘initiated’ by annual floods of four-months duration, with
participation of chiefs, nobility, priesthood and commoners of Egypt, in-
vites us to connect it directly with the emergence and further functioning of
fundamental social institutions of pharaonic civilization.
AFTERWORD:
‘BOAT CREW’ AND THE EARLY STATE IN EGYPT
Enclave structure of the ‘archaic’ protostate in the Nile Valley and Delta
could not fail to have affected the socio-political and economic relations in
pharaonic Egypt of the following epochs. Indeed, it is currently known that
most labor in the Old Kingdom household, be it farming, craft or building,
enjoyed collective organization, and nothing but the crew of an ‘ideal boat’
(Berlev 1972: 8), with its basic principles of coordination, seems to have
been the archetype of working gangs of the Old Kingdom pattern (Perepel-
kin 1988). The archaeological monuments, mainly reliefs and inscriptions
in nobles' tombs of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, reveal that ‘boat crews’
(jzwt) was the name of working detachments engaged in all the branches of
the Old Kingdom economy.
The hypothesis of ‘unification’ advanced in this paper connects the
‘boat crew’ with predynastic and, partly, ‘archaic’ colonization of Egypt
which, in view of the Nile floodplain ecology, is argued to have succeeded
only owing to large boats with their big teams of warriors and workers. So
the boat is likely to have laid a foundation for the military and economic
power of communities of the most ancient Egypt. For instance, on the pal-
ette of ‘Narmer’ (verso) a boat is pictured with two rows of decapitated foes
beside it (Quibell 1898b: Taf. XII). Nothing prevents us from the interpreta-
tion of this episode as being the destruction of ‘boat crews’, the enemy's
main armed force, two parallel rows of killed ‘sailors’ associating with ‘left
board’ and ‘right board’ – detachments of the Old Kingdom gangs of
workmen (cf. Berlev 1972: 8–9; Eyre 1987: 12). Thinite kings themselves
doubtlessly used boats for military purposes: the Palermo Stone report
about the demolition of two settlements by Horus Ninetjer (Schäfer 1902:
Taf. I, 4, № 8) is preceded by depiction of a boat, allowing us to reckon the
latter among the main means of realization of the campaign.
Performance of peaceful labor functions by ‘boat crews’ of the Early
Dynastic time is testified too, for instance, by numerous pictures of boats on
the unfinished pyramid of Djoser's successor Sekhemkhet, left by the pyra-
mid builders (Goneim 1957: fig. 18–24) who had probably arrived on these
very boats. In short, overland working teams of the Old Kingdom in Egypt
may have been named ‘boat crews’ because population of the Nile flood-
plain had originally associated capable groups of workmen of all specializa-
tions with gangs sailing in boats (Proussakov 2001d: 66–69).
The principles underlying an enclave protostate and gift-exchange seem
to have been relevant in ancient Egypt at least to the Middle Kingdom in-
clusive. I argue, for instance (Proussakov 1999b, 2001d), that the so-called
Middle Kingdom ‘feudalism’ (Schenkel 1964) originated not in the First
Intermediate but in the ‘archaic’ period, when the basis of nomarchs' eco-
nomic and administrative self-dependence had been laid, typical for Egypt
of at least the ‘Pyramid Age’ (from the Third to the Thirteenth Dynasties of
Manetho). Remnants of primitive egalitarian interrelations between nomes
and the royal ‘Residence’ seem to have been abolished only in the course of
the transformation of the early state through the Middle Kingdom to the
New Kingdom ‘empire’ (Proussakov 2001d: 113–140). At the same time,
multifunctional ‘boat crews’ disappeared from the ancient Egyptian house-
hold, having dissolved in the rigidly ranked socio-professional structure of
the mature unified state (Bogoslovskij 1981; Berlev 1984).
NOTES
1
It must be taken into consideration, however, that the ancient archaeological
evidence in Egypt may have been destroyed or made inaccessible by the later allu-
viation, advancing desert dunes, natural and/or anthropogenic changes of the Nile
channel, land use, etc.
2
A summary of different views on this problem (e.g., Mörner 1971; Clark, Far-
rell and Peltier 1978), with detalization for pharaonic Egypt, see in (Proussakov
1999b: 67–77; 2001a: 50–73; 2001d: 28–32).
3
According to Butzer's estimations, more than half of the ‘archaic’ Delta popu-
lation (Butzer 1976: tab. 4).
4
Judging from depictions, this fish is most likely the rather dangerous Malap-
terurus electricus of the Nile.
5
This follows, for instance, from excavations of ancient cemeteries at Hel-
wan, where Saad's expedition alone discovered about ten thousand burials of the
Early Dynastic time (Saad 1947, 1951). It has been argued that ‘archaic’ cemeteries
of Helwan belonged mainly to populations of the newly-built Memphis (Wilkinson
1996, 2001).
6
W. M. Flinders Petrie reckoned up to sixty oars on boats of this kind and sup-
posed their crews to have amounted to several dozen men (Petrie 1901a: 15).
7
This is an argument against reading the hieroglyphs under consideration as
mrw, a kind of coniferous wood (O'Connor 1987).
8
This brick vessel is ‘moored’ to a funeral model of an estate (Emery 1954), the
composition having something in common with my interpretation of scenes with
boats on Aha's labels from Abydos as foundation of settlements on the Nile banks
by boat crews.
9
If great ‘archaic’ tombs at Saqqara are not the royal ones, the earliest known
king's boat burial is that of Khasekhemwy (Wilkinson 2001: 257).
10
During his long reign, Den celebrated probably not one but two Seds (Dreyer
et al. 1990: 80).
11
This inscription is often read as ‘census of all the people of the west, north
and east’ (Emery 1961: 74; Wilkinson 2001: 76). I translate it differently (cf. Kees
1933: 29; 1961: 50) because, first, in the light of my translation, the Stone reports of
the highest Nile and its likely effect on Egypt, taken jointly with each other, in-
crease considerably the historical probability of each other. Nothing but heavy in-
undation, as an outstanding event, is most likely to have been recorded by annalists
in connection with the year of the Nile flood so close in volume to prehistoric de-
structive floods. On the other hand, if this record were just a ‘magic fiction’ (Helck
1966; cf. Proussakov 1996), it would have been hardly followed by something look-
ing so much like information about catastrophic inundation on a national scale.
Next, the controversial term màt is written here in the full and clear form of the
word ‘inundation’, the only distinction from dictionary canon (Faulkner 1991: 114;
Wb. II: 122) being that the ‘water’ determinative in this case is represented not by
three wavy signs n, but by three horizontal rectangles §. But such a rectangle des-
ignates a pool, i.e., the same water and thus hardly transforms the meaning of this
term, especially taking into account the translation of § as ‘flooded land’
(Savel'eva 1992: 37, 70). Besides, this graphical variation may be explained purely
technically. Carving in a small compartment of the Palermo Stone of three closely
situated signs n with numerous sharp teeth – concentrators of mechanical strains
could result in flaking of the Stone surface and spoiling of the whole inscription;
rectangles-‘pools’ lessened this risk.
12
The modern viewpoint that this is not Sed but a ceremony ¬!t nswt-btty –
‘appearance of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt’ (Wilkinson 2001: 210, 212)
seems to me ungrounded.
13
Let us bear in mind an observation that, save Manetho, all ancient chronogra-
phers of Egypt placed Djoser not at the beginning but at the end of a certain histori-
cal period (O'Mara 1980: 93).
14
For more data see (Proussakov 2001d: 70–91, 95–100, 110–112, 139). For in-
stance, food offerings of the royal ‘Residence’ (hnw) to the kings' mortuary temples
in written sources of the Old Kingdom (e.g., Posener-Kriéger 1976) are named ex-
actly ‘gifts’ (wt). Such a terminology by Egyptians themselves is an argument for
the existence of gift-exchange in pharaonic Egypt, the gifts in this case having been
obviously ‘compensated’ by regular temple services in honour of divine pharaohs.
It is also noteworthy how Egyptian priests treated their ceremonial implements,
often made of valuable or rare materials. These objects were entered into special
lists where, in particular, injuries were recorded which were received by the things
during rituals. The injuries were calculated, with priests serving as witnesses
(Savel'eva 1992: 94–95). It is remarkable that damaged things were not replaced by
new ones immediately, but continued to be used as if no substitution could have
been found for them (for instance, because of a lack of the materials they were
made of), or as if injuries had done no harm to their magic qualities. The last idea
agrees with information of deliberate spoilage of ritual implements as the peculiar
gift to gods and spirits of the dead, a kind of sacrificial destruction which proposed
indispensable compensation from the ‘beyond’ and increased the value of things
physically damaged in ceremonial manipulations (Moss 1996: 107, 165). So ritual
objects in ancient Egypt were probably injured not accidentally, because of priests'
negligence, but purposely, within priests' professional duties, first of all those of the
vital gift-exchange with the ‘beyond’.
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8
The Ruler as Possessor
of Power in Sumer
Vladimir V. Emelianov
Saint Petersburg State University
The article deals with the symbolic aspects of power and legacy in city-
states of Sumer. The main idea is that Sumerian ruler was only passive re-
cipient of authority donated to him by supreme gods as a collection of ma-
terial things which had been containers of power forces. The same were
gods whose possibility to create something depended on receiving of divine
powers (me) from elders. On the whole the character of power described
below leads us to conclusion that the Sumerian culture was nature-centred
and Sumerian ruler was influenced by traditions of communal society with
its strong intention to limit every individual initiative and will to separate
life. Remembering E.Fromm's dilemma ‘to have or to be’, we can say that
the Sumerian society was on the way from ‘to have’ towards ‘to be’, but the
limit of its historical life did not allow to recognize the initial Being outside
of prevailing Thing. The psychological role of things as material symbols of
ideas also is considered.
* * *
Sumerologists cannot come to a unified opinion concerning a character
of authority in the most ancient cities of Southern Mesopotamia. Some of
the experts believe that all authority was in governors' and temple priests'
hands (Falkenstein 1954). Other experts think that Sumerian authority's
basic feature was the diarchy of the community and the temple (Djakonov
1959; Kramer 1963: 75–78).
Governors' titles are also a matter of a brisk discussion. There are three
titles of a ruler in the Sumerian language: en, ensi2 and lugal. The meaning
of first title, accepted by a majority of experts, is the Supreme Priest's post
at the main city temple; it is translated as ‘mister, the master’ according to
Emelianov / The Ruler as Possessor of Power in Sumer, pp. 181–195

the Akkadian equivalent bēlum. The second title means ‘the city's
mayor’ and may correspond with the Akkadian iššakku. The third title
should be understood as an imperial or a princely one, according to its Ak-
kadian equivalent šarrum.
However, these titles had various social and historical values in different
epochs. Thus, primarily, the en title was among the priestly ones, and later
it began to designate a priest participating in a sacred marriage and heading
battles. By the end of Sumerian history, it had already ceased to have any
particular content and meant a general reference to any master. As to ensi2
title, it could be somehow connected with the previous one. At the begin-
ning, this title designated a head of the independent city-state. He used to be
elected by a national assembly and responsible for building and ritual ac-
tivities, as well, he used to head an army in all its campaigns. However, by
the end of the Sumerian history, ensi2 had already become imperial officials
subordinated to a capital and periodically reporting the situation in their
cities. The lugal title had originally been conferred on a military leader
elected from ensi2's in order to implement any public actions (such as wars
or temple construction). Later on, it became a title of an ensi2 of the city of
Ur, who had unlimited or almost unlimited powers and was also considered
a god (Jacobsen 1970: 132–157; Selz 1998).
The Sumerian derivation of the words en and ensi2 is not clear; however,
according to their Akkadian equivalents, one may generally understand
them as ‘an owner’ and ‘a governor’ respectively. The derivation of lugal is
quite clear: it means ‘Great lu2’. At the beginning, the Sumerian word lu2
had designated an adult man, married and householding; later on, it became
to mean simply ‘a man’. Thus, lugal means ‘the most powerful adult man’.
(Djakonov 1959: 122f.). Nevertheless, the title of governor itself meant
nothing, for, in order to act efficiently, it had to correspond with a compli-
cated set of the items and categories of religion belonging to their time and
space.
In our point of view, it is relevant to divide all ancient cultures into na-
ture- and human-centered ones. Nature-centered cultures are those where
nature forces correspond to all their phenomena. Accordingly, all people,
from a slave to the governor, are toys in the hands of unknown forces. A
ruler of such a society cannot operate on his own behalf: he necessarily fol-
lows his oracles' instructions (or pretends he follows them). He is under the
influence of a huge set of hardly accountable factors and tries to offend
none of them. Sumer and India are the examples of such kind of a civiliza-
tion. Human-centered cultures esteem individuality and evasion from exter-
nal order. Here a governor is more often than not deified and, consequently,
Emelianov / The Ruler as Possessor of Power in Sumer 183
operates on his own behalf. Egypt and China are the cultures of this kind
(on the comparison between Egypt and Mesopotamia see Baines and Yof-
fee 1998).
Both a ruler's name and his position mean nothing or almost nothing in a
nature-centered society. His status is determined by things used in a special
ritual. These are the following things:
a) signs of the status;
b) signs of authority;
c) physical qualities;
d) intellectual qualities;
e) spouse in sacred marriage.
Initially, all groups of the things are transferred to a governor by su-
preme gods rather than are incident to him. Moreover, many of the very
things being transferred rank as gods. Supreme gods possess these things
according to their respective МЕs. In a general view, the chain looks as fol-
lows: МЕ – supreme gods – gods-items – a governor. First we are to ana-
lyze the groups of the things, and then we are to return to the ME problem.
The position of a governor without any attributes is impossible in
Sumer. He has to have the signs of his status. There are three such signs:
the name, the title and the ruling place. It is these three components that
make a cóntent of the most ancient royal inscriptions from Kish that have
reached us. The following phrase is written there: ME-bara2-si lugal-Kišaki
‘Mebara(ge)si, the lugal of Kish’. (Meb. v. Kiš 2: 1–3; Behrens and Steible
1983: 401). Mebaragesi was the name of a governor, which meant: ‘a
throne filled with МЕs’. This name could be both a primordial and a throne
one, and we are quite well aware of procedures of changing a human name
to a royal one at later times. So, the inscription answers three questions: a)
who is the man? b) what is his position? c) where does he execute it? It is
impossible that any Sumerian ruler would tell about himself: ‘Mebaragesi,
lugal’, or simply ‘Mebaragesi’ (Gavrilova 2002).
The signs of authority were also necessary for Sumerian rulers. These
things were understood not only as attributes of authority but also, mainly,
as its carriers. We would say jokingly: wearing trousers is not enough to be
a man. However, for Sumerians, it was exactly this way: only the man who
holds the item containing his status in his hands may possess the status.
From this point of view, the man is en (the owner) of the trousers1.
Sumerians considered each mark of authority both a force and a deity. It
is as early as in the list of gods from Fara that we see the names of deities
such as: dmenx ‘the deity of a crown’, dhendur-sag ‘the deity of the staff (of)
the leader’, dsaman3 ‘the deity of a nose-rope’, dtemen-ku3 ‘the deity of a
foundation peg’, dšu-nir ‘the deity of a standard’ and dna-ru2 ‘the deity of
a monument’; whereas dgu-za ‘the deity of a throne’ and dTUG2-nun-na ‘the
deity of a royal garment’ were added in the lists from Lagash (Selz 1997:
171–174).
The scepter, the staff and the nose-rope were sources of the ruler's
power as faithful shepherd (sipa-zid) (Selz 2001). The standard and the
monument were the symbols of his power over the communities and the
conquered territories where his monument was installed. The monument of
the ruler also provided for him the possibility to be supplied with food after
his death (Westenholz 1993; Emelianov 1999a: 41). The ruler's white-flax
garment was simultaneously his distinction and the source of protection
against malicious forces. Finally, the foundation peg in the governor's hands
was a sign of his aspiration to creative activities.
Among the signs of power, the god's dais (bara2) and the ruler's throne
giš
( gu-za) stand aside. Initially, the dais was the central part of a temple
where the deity's statue or sacred symbol was placed. However, centuries
later, it became a sacred place occupied by a king (cf. Sumero-Akkadian
equivalence BARA2 = āšib ‘occupying (the dais)’). It means that the king's
authority is inseparable from the god's one, who, having sat on the dais,
entrusted such an authority to the king. The throne is the place in the palace
where the governor is sitting. Unlike the dais, the throne can easily be
moved and can even leave the palace; therefore, it is necessary to apply
some additional efforts on its protection from malicious forces. We also
know deified thrones, which received special offerings. Perhaps, this ritual
is connected with the cult of deceased rulers (PSD b, bara2; Selz 1997: 178–179).
So, the governor receives some itemized sources of power. He sits on
some of them, holds some others in his hands, puts the third ones on his
head and covers all his body with the fourth ones. The signs of authority
provide his protection and functioning within his new status2. However,
being gods, not only may they passively serve their lord but also may give
him some advice. Similar examples are well-known from Sumerian epic
songs about Ninurta, where this god's weapon (dšar2-ur3), which possessed
the divine status itself, dared advising Ninurta how to conduct a war (Annus
2002: 70, 99).
Now we shall proceed from items to the ruler's physical and intellectual
qualities. We know from the oldest royal inscriptions that Sumerian kings
had to have remarkable force, huge energy, external appeal causing peo-
ple’s love, worship and trembling, as well as to be ruthless to their enemies
and to pay their special attention to gods' and elders' advice (which was an
equivalent of wisdom, geštu2, derived from the word ‘an ear’) (Jacobsen
1970: 390–391; Selz 1992).
Kings' military achievements were compared to young god Ninurta's
New-Year victory: he won the enemies on Plateau of Iran. This deity was
very furious in battles, so his destructive military power was especially em-
phasized. Even after his victory, his anger used to damage nearby settle-
ments: Ninurta's coasting continued to destroy them. Along with Ninurta's
ferocity, his male power and his permanent readiness to marry his wife, as
well as his creative intention followed by dozens of cult objects both re-
stored and newly constructed by him, were unceasingly emphasized (Annus
2002: 9–47).
An appreciation of the ruler's intellectual qualities starts only from the
epoch of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Particularly, Shulgi B hymn refers the
following skills to the king's intellectual advantages: writing cleanly and
quickly, with no falling behind a person who dictates; making practical ac-
counting operations (such as calculating results, keeping registration tablets,
adding and subtracting); as well as being a polyglot. (According to Shulgi
himself, he spoke Sumerian, Elamic, Amorean and Subarean languages,
and he was also able to keep a conversation with ‘the people of black
mountains’)3.
The goddess Nisaba herself, who patronized the literacy and the school,
had given Shulgi the qualities owing to which these skills were received:
they are called ‘attention’ (geštu2) and ‘comprehension’ (gizzal). Both
words are written with the use of a sign meaning ‘an ear’. This fact points
out a skill to listen to the elders' timely advice (whether it be a goddess or a
school teacher), as well as a skill to incorporate all information pronounced,
in order to achieve perfection in business later. Both skills are the main fea-
tures of these qualities. In other words, all intellectual abilities of a man
were basically related at that time with memory and attention to the word of
a teacher rather than with skills to reason anything well enough or to be
self-consistent in his actions (i.e. with the logic). Also, Shulgi said of him-
self as about an unsurpassed and universal master of music playing, as well
as about a predictor with ‘a shining heart’ (šag4-zalag2) of intuition and
bright eyes seeing the sphere of gods' secrets4.
In the hymn authors' overview, a ruling governor's cultural achieve-
ments are connected with his upbringing. Shulgi appears here as a man
physically strong and responsible before gods for his people and even for
the property entrusted to him (such as boats, donkeys, etc.). He hallows the
fathers' heritage and never edits any hymns: conversely, he saves them dili-
gently and performs them reverently in his palace. His constant mood is
pleasure and satisfaction with his life, which he spreads out on his peo-
ple. He is fearless, has no contenders and knows no obstacles, but he is not
furious at all. When business does not concern a war, he likes to spend time
dancing, practicing in running or playing oud (a lute's predecessor in the
ancient Middle East). Also, Shulgi has another property, which is abso-
lutely phenomenal: he hates neither other countries' kings nor rulers of the
past; his heart is free from hatred5. Certainly, here still it is far up to the
description of good manners because the behavior of Sumerian king should
correspond to the ritual standard. But in this description we already see
many new features, completely unknown to composers of early royal in-
scriptions. It is the cheerful nature of a man and shine of life, kind heart and
respect for another's glory, which are first steps to the cultural person.
Those are the physical and intellectual qualities of a Sumerian ruler.
However, they are not inherent in him initially, and are given by gods. The
governor is brought up by the sacred milk (ga-zi-ku2-a) of mother goddess
Ninhursag, force and ability to authority (a2) were allocated to him by Enlil,
Enki gave him the reason (geštu2), his throne name (mu-dug3 ‘favourite
name’) he received from Inanna, his instructor in the art of writing was
goddess of bureaucracy and school Nisaba (Jacobsen 1970: 390–391; Selz
1992)6. When there had been this investment – this is a subject of discus-
sion. One experts believe, that at the moment of birth, others – that at the
moment of enthronement. We believe, that on this question there can be
different answers, corresponded to various times of Sumerian history. The
question of investment of the governor is directly connected to a category
nam-lugal ‘kingship’ or ‘destiny of king’. The analysis of royal inscriptions
and royal hymns shows that there are three concepts of kingship in Sumer-
ian ideology. In Old Sumerian time kingship was temporary and depended
on turn: the governor was selected, all the community knew about his origin
and his qualities, therefore, most likely, it would be impossible to attribute
to him nonexistent merits. Besides, a number of the facts speaks that the
governor was put forward not by virtue of the outstanding qualities, but
owing to its being his-turn. Gods of Sumer ruled serially, and to this princi-
ple should correspond all cells of an ancient society from city and quarter
up to rural communities. Accordingly, the governor received signs of au-
thority and qualities only at the moment of election, and up to that point
was an ordinary person7. Later on, when the hereditary principle has pre-
vailed, qualities of the governor were given to him by gods at birth, and
even before birth. At first the future king was planned by gods, and then the
royal family gave birth to him. It was the concept of eternal and immanent
kingship8. At last, at the time of decline of Sumerian civilization King Lists
were made where kingship portrayed as arisen at will of gods and passing
from city to city under the own discretion. Such temporarily – transitive
kingship was understood as a certain abstract principle and not connected
almost to investment of the governor with excellent personal qualities9.
A kingship, a crown, a scepter, a staff, en and lugal titles – all these sub-
jects and categories open the list of МЕ's made by the author of the text
‘Inanna and Enki’ (Farber-Flűgge 1973; Farber 1990; Glassner 1992; Zgoll
1997; Emelianov 2000). Word МЕ can be translated as ‘divine power’,
‘idea’, ‘potentiality’, ‘energy’, ‘internal force’ of all the real world10. МЕ's
are in the Sky under the control of the elder of the gods An and from time
to time they are transferred by him to more younger gods of the earth, air
and water. Without МЕ functioning of a temple, service in it and life in
Sumerian city are impossible. If the city collapses, people speak about de-
struction of its ME's11. Category МЕ is closely connected to authority and
leadership by its sign image. Cuneiform sign МЕ can be read as ma6 and
designate ‘an attire of ruler’12. It also is present at the structure of sign
MEN ‘crown’ which consists of three elements: GA2 ‘the container’, ME
and EN ‘governor’. So, it means: ‘the certain receptacle containing МЕ and
a title of the owner’13. This is the meaning of the king's crown. Besides it is
possible, that me and men are single-root words. But it is rather difficult to
prove this statement because of an ambiguity of Sumerian etymologies.
Sumerian wisdom text ‘Instructions of Shuruppak’ gives precise defini-
tion of that what is МЕ of authority (me-nam-nun-na): these are status of
elected ruler (nir-gal2)14, possession of property (ni3-tuku ‘he who has a
thing’) and good ability to resistance in fight (gaba-gal2 ‘he who has a
breast’). So, there are qualities of the governor, the owner and the soldier
which he possesses as material things15. МЕ of authority are inaccessible to
the governor if he is not deified. Gods can dispose of them only. However,
this is rather strange power: the matter is that gods also execute the func-
tions owing to presence of corresponding МЕ. Without МЕ gods can not be
themselves though they will not cease to be gods. It turns out, that МЕ is a
basis not only for authority of the governor, but also for authority of gods of
Sumer. It is typical, that they determine only authority of ‘our gods’, and
are not inherent in overseas gods and countries. МЕ of authority are capable
of realization only in a certain time and space – namely, in space of a tem-
ple during spring New Year's ritual which major components are an en-
thronement of the king and a sacred marriage.
Mesopotamian New Year's ritual in its Sumerian interpretation consists
of the following basic ceremonies. At first the main city deity goes on his
ship to the father to ask him blessings for the next year and the future reign.
Having arrived in fatherly city, it suits a feast for parents, and in ex-
change receives МЕ without which the life of city during the next year is
impossible. These are МЕ of war and peace, МЕ of vegetation and duplica-
tion of cattle, МЕ of the most different qualities and attributes of the world.
After returning to his city the deity learns about the contender who has ap-
peared near its borders, collects an army and leaves in a campaign which he
wins. The returned god throws trophies to bottom of a temple of the father
and expresses desire to become king. After his enthronement the hero allot-
ted with all marks of authority forward in a temple bedchamber. In some
texts the sacred marriage carried out up to the moment of enthronement.
During the procedure of sacred intercourse the god and his wife determine
destiny of the country for forthcoming year. The event in the world of gods
is repeated by the king. In some texts competition is replaced with sports
tests, for example, a race from city to city. A sacred ritual of the introduc-
tion into authority lasts from two weeks to about one month, and during this
time people are recommended to behave in the opposite way. Marriages in
this period of year are strictly forbidden (Annus 2002: 24–33; Emelianov
1999: 52–67; Ferrara 1973; Sefati 1998).
Introduction in authority opens itself all events of the year and estab-
lishes the correct order of things which refers in Sumerian to billuda. This
word occurs from Akkadian bēlūtu ‘authority, board’, but means something
else. If initial bēlūtu designates domination, prevalence, authority of some-
one above someone, billuda means ‘ritually correct order of things’ and it is
connected to authority of ME and gods16. This is radically abstract repre-
sentation of the world order in which any action and a word would be im-
possible without its МЕ, and also itself is one of МЕ (billuda-nam-lugal).
Summing up our brief travel on the symbolical world of Sumerian rep-
resentations of authority, once more it would be desirable to emphasize
non-personal character of this authority. Here МЕ are real rulers who trans-
fer to the gods signs and qualities of authority which later became the prop-
erty of king. Signs of authority frequently are gods and have the independ-
ent status. In such order of things the person of the governor called to sup-
port bases of the given order and not to recede from norms of piety. Norms
first of all concern duly distribution of sacrifices to gods and priests of their
temples. All these aspects were brilliantly expressed in the enthronization
hymn of king of Isin Ishme-Dagan. Here one can read the following:
Enlil, great in heaven, surpassing on earth, exceptional and wide-
reaching in Sumer, Nunamnir, lord of princes, king of kings! He deter-
mined a good destiny in the holy city for me, Išme-Dagan, son of Dagan.
He named me with a favourable name even when my seed was inserted
into the womb. Nintud stood by at my birth, and she established the of-
fice of en for me ......, even when my umbilical cord was cut. Enlil, my
principal deity, bestowed on me the shepherdship of Sumer, and as-
signed to me a tireless protective goddess, adding also therewith a cor-
rect stature… His splendour ...... the mountains, and his roar reaches be-
yond heaven and earth. He selected me from my people, and announced
me to the Land. Enlil, king of the gods, gave me lordship over the south
and over the uplands. At Nunamnir's instigation, An spoke encourag-
ingly to me, and placed crook and staff in my hands. Uraš nursed me on
her holy knees. In the Ki-ur, the great place, Ninlil in her radiant heart
determined as my destiny that I should sit on an exalted dais until distant
days, to enjoy in favour the reign which is my lot; that I should delight
Enlil, and that I should daily attend to the E-kur.
Enki, the great lord of Eridug, confirmed for me the good and great
crown, ...... everything, and richly conferred on me seven wisdoms.
Suen, the firstborn son of Enlil, ...... for me a royal throne that gath-
ers together the divine powers, established an excellent lordly dais, and
made my crown shine brilliantly until distant days.
Nuska, Enlil's minister, placed the royal sceptre in my hand, revealed
the powers of E-kur to me, established there for me an awe-inspiring po-
dium, and ensured that Enlil's heart was in a joyful mood.
Ninurta, Enlil's mighty warrior, approached Nunamnir in speech on
my behalf and secured (?) the favourable words of Enlil and Ninlil for
me. He has made my reign of kingship excellent, has made me great in
lordship, and is indeed my helper. In E-kur he prays continually on my
behalf, and is indeed the constable of my kingship. He, who with mighty
weapons makes all the foreign countries bow low, has put great power
...... into my right hand.
Utu put justice and reliable words in my mouth. To make judgments,
to reach decisions, to lead the people aright, to excel in rectitude, to keep
the righteous on the track and to destroy the wicked, so that each man
should speak justice to his brother, should make obeisance to his father,
should not speak contrary words to his elder sister, and should respect
his mother; so that the weak should not be handed over to the strong, so
that the feeble should ......; so that the strong should not do just what he
pleases, and so that one man should not be assigned to another; to de-
stroy wickedness and violence, and to make righteousness flourish – all
this Utu, the son born to Ningal, made my apportioned share.
Inana, the lady of heaven and earth ......, chose me as her beloved
spouse. She put attractiveness in my waist-belt (?), looking at me with
her life-giving look, as she lifted her radiant forehead to me, to make me
step onto the flowery bed. She has uttered her unalterable holy word for
me to spend long, long days in the gipar, combining the priestly office
of en with the kingship and caring unceasingly for E-ana, and for my
neck to become thick like a wild bull's in Unug as my splendour covers Ku-
laba.
Enki and Ninki, Enul and Ninul, the Anuna, the lords who determine
destiny there, the spirits of Nibru, and the protective goddesses of the E-
kur, those who among the great gods determine destinies there, have
uttered an unchangeable "So be it!" On his most favourable day, Enlil,
king of the foreign lands, chose me, Išme-Dagan, son of Dagan, by
extispicy. He looked upon me joyfully in E-kur, and spoke well of me to
Sumer. ...... a favourable reign in Nibru. I, Išme-Dagan ...... restored
Urim ....... ...... in splendour. Enlil has commanded the favourable ...... of
my throne, the promotion of concord in Sumer and Akkad in their
power, and restoration (?) of the ...... brick buildings; and that I should
daily tend the E-kur, that I should unceasingly provide for Nibru, and
that I should care after the Ki-ur, the great place (Ishme-Dagan A, 40–
132).
So, authority of the Sumerian governor is possession (possession of
signs of authority, possession of property, possession of his spouse), based
on irreproachable submission to orders and councils of gods. This is the
initial understanding of authority in Sumer, which did not undergo major
changes up to the end of this tradition.
NOTES
1
‘A powerful means of abstraction, I should like to claim, is representation.
Representation is based on a very fundamental and general function of the mind
which is called by Piaget the symbolic function. The symbolic function is the ability
to conceive something as representing something else. Real objects functioning as
symbols can represent abstract ideas and real objects as well, and can thus be used
as external tools for performing mental operations’ (Damerow 1996: 373; Selz,
manuscript).
2
In his manuscript Prof. Selz wrote: ‘To the Mesopotamians, apparently all
these functions and concepts are not only represented but also inherent in these
objects: for instance, the rulership is inherent and substantially connected with the
royal insignia. In other words, these objects are not merely “attributes”, they are
thought to contain those “ideas” materially. Therefore, the concept of rulership is
primarily linked to objects as the sceptre, the crown, to the “office”, to lesser extent
to any given individual. Institutions and offices were important, not the persons
holding them… An outcome of these objectification processes was the sanctifica-
tion of rulership and other similar offices’ (Selz, manuscript: 4).
3
‘I am a king, offspring begotten by a king and borne by a queen. I, Šulgi the
noble, have been blessed with a favorable destiny right from the womb. When I was
small, I was at the academy, where I learned the scribal art from the tablets of
Sumer and Akkad. None of the nobles could write on clay as I could. There where
people regularly went for tutelage in the scribal art, I qualified fully in subtraction,
addition, reckoning and accounting. The fair Nanibgal, Nisaba, provided me amply
with knowledge and comprehension. I am an experienced scribe who does not ne-
glect a thing… When I ...... like a torrent with the roar of a great storm, in the cap-
ture of a citadel in Elam ......, I can understand what their spokesman answers. By
origin I am a son of Sumer; I am a warrior, a warrior of Sumer. Thirdly, I can con-
duct a conversation with a man from the black mountains. Fourthly, I can do service
as a translator with an Amorite, a man of the mountains ....... I myself can correct
his confused words in his own language. Fifthly, when a man of Subir yells ......, I
can even distinguish the words in his language, although I am not a fellow-citizen
of his. When I provide justice in the legal cases of Sumer, I give answers in all five
languages. In my palace no one in conversation switches to another language as
quickly as I do’ (Shulgi B, 11–20, 206–220; all Sumerian literary texts cited from
ETCSL).
4
‘After I have determined a sound omen through extispicy from a white lamb
and a sheep, water and flour are libated at the place of invocation. Then, as I pre-
pare the sheep with words of prayer, my diviner watches in amazement like an id-
iot. The prepared sheep is placed at my disposal, and I never confuse a favorable
sign with an unfavorable one. I myself have a clear intuition, and I judge by my
own eyes. In the insides of just one sheep I, the king, can find the indications for
everything and everywhere. Let me boast of what I have done. The fame of my
power is spread far and wide. My wisdom is full of subtlety. Do not my achieve-
ments surpass all qualifications?’ (ibid: 141–153).
5
‘Since the time when Enlil gave me the direction of his numerous people in
view of my wisdom, my extraordinary power and my justice, in view of my resolute
and unforgettable words, and in view of my expertise, comparable to that of Ictaran,
in verdicts, my heart has never committed violence against even one other king, be
he an Akkadian or a son of Sumer, or even a brute from Gutium. I am no fool as
regards the knowledge acquired since the time that mankind was, from heaven
above, set on its path: when I have discovered tigi and zamzam hymns from past
days, old ones from ancient times, I have never declared them to be false, and have
never contradicted their contents. I have conserved these antiquities, never aban-
doning them to oblivion’ (ibid: 261–278).
6
In the Sumerian language the function of possession can be expressed through
such verbs as gal2 ‘to hold’, tuku ‘to have’. In this case the ruler must be called ‘that
who possess (the status)’. But in more contexts we see verbs expressing the dona-
tion of power from the certain god, such as sum ‘to give’ (Behrens and Steible
1983: 304–306), sag-rig7 ‘to give as present’, šu-gar ‘to hand’. So, from the position
of grammar the ruler is not a possessor of power, but he is ‘that to whom the status
was donated’, i.e. his position is only passive. And the same is god, who also was
the recipient of divine powers (me) from his elders.
7
The Sumerian word bala means ‘term of office’. As nomen actionis of the verb
bal ‘to turn’, its basic meaning would seem to have been ‘turn’. Besides being used
of the royal office, it applies to temple offices: brewer, court sweeper, etc. The
holder of a bala (from four to twelve months) was designated as a lu2-bala ‘man of a
bala’, translated into Akkadian as ‘holder of office’. Akkadian borrowed the Sumer-
ian word as palû and restricted it to ‘term of royal office’. Since in the older
Assyrian inscriptions this term is one year, palû there means ‘regnal year’. In Baby-
lonia, however, the ruler’s term of office was conceived as the total period during
which he served; hence palû has there the meaning ‘reign’ (See Jacobsen 1970: 406, fn.
66).
8
Cf. Shulgi G: ‘He thought up something of great importance and he made pub-
lic what his heart, a mighty river, carried: the hidden secrets (?) of his holy thought.
The matter is a holy and pure one, it concerns the divine powers of the E-kur, the
fated good brick embedded (?) in the bottom of the abzu, it is something most im-
portant: a trustworthy man will rebuild the E-kur, thereby acquiring a lasting name.
The son of this trustworthy man will long hold the sceptre, and their throne will
never be overthrown. To that end, Ašimbabbar appeared shining in the E-kur,
pleaded to his father Enlil and made him bring a childbearing mother (?); in the E-
duga, Nanna, the princely son, asked for the thing to happen. The en priestess gave
birth to the trustworthy man from his semen placed in the womb. Enlil, the power-
ful shepherd, caused a young man to emerge: a royal child, one who is perfectly
fitted for the throne-dais, Šulgi the king. Enlil gave him a good name: “A lion's
seed, who provides the E-kur generously, the beloved one of Ninlil; the one granted
authority in the E-kur; the king of Urim, the one with shining heart, the shepherd,
the protective genius of the Land”. Enlil chose Šulgi in his pure heart and entrusted
the Land to him. As the shepherd of all the countries, Enlil leant the crook and the
staff against his arm, and placed the immutable sceptre of Nanna in his hand; he
made him raise his head high, sitting on an unshakeable royal seat’ (Shulgi G, 9–
27).
9
See the standard formula of transferring of the rulership in Sumerian King
List: ‘After the flood had swept over, and the kingship had descended from heaven,
the kingship was in Kiš. In Kiš, Gušur became king; he ruled for 1200 years…
Then Kiš was defeated and the kingship was taken to E-ana’.
10
There is close connection between such similar forms and ideas as Sumerian
me, Greek menos and Polynesian mana. All three these categories mean ‘might,
will, potentiality, internal force’.
11
Unter den ME… drei Aspekte erkennen, die mit der kriegerischen Natur der
Inana zusammenhängen: a) die, die auf Geburt, Wachstum und Tod sich erstrecken,
wobei hier vornehmlich der lebensvernichtende Aspekt im Vordergrund steht;
b) Die als elementare Naturgewalten bzw. kriegerische Macht zu deuten sind);
c) Diejenigen, die politisch-geschichtliche Macht umschreiben... In Alster, ZA 64
(1975), 33 anm. 33. ME sei 1. ‘Archetypus’ oder ‘kulturelle Norm’, 2. Dessen
Manifestation. 3. Seien unter ME die Prozesse zu verstehen, die diese Aktualis-
ierung herbeiführen (wie Gebet, Ritual), 4. Endlich, Symbole der Fähigkeit zur
Aktualisierung (wie Embleme, Insignien)’ (Zgoll 1997: 66–75).
12
The oldest context concerning ME one can see in ‘Inanna's Descent to the
Nether World’ where ME's were signs of self-defense of this goddess: ‘She took the
seven divine powers. She collected the divine powers and grasped them in her hand.
With the good divine powers, she went on her way. She put a turban, headgear for
the open country, on her head. She took a wig for her forehead. She hung small
lapis-lazuli beads around her neck. She placed twin egg-shaped beads on her breast.
She covered her body with a pala dress, the garment of ladyship. She placed mas-
cara which is called “Let a man come, let him come” on her eyes. She pulled the
pectoral which is called “Come, man, come” over her breast. She placed a golden
ring on her hand. She held the lapis-lazuli measuring rod and measuring line in her
hand’ (Inanna's Descent: 14–25).
13
In archaic texts written GA2xEN. It appears that the inscribed EN is an indica-
tor of meaning (Sinnzeichen), not of pronunciation. The later writing men =
GA2xME+EN; adds me as a phonetic indicator, perhaps influenced by (secondary)
interpretation of the word as ‘Me (=divine powers) and object incorporating this
and En (=priestly functon)’ (See Selz 1997: 190, fn. 67).
14
Nir-gal2 is the title of elected king means ‘he who holds nir’. What is nir, this
is a big question. Perhaps, it might be some kind of standard (cf. šu-nir ‘emblem’,
literally translated as ‘hand (with) nir’).
15
‘To have authority, to have possessions and to be steadfast are princely divine
powers. You should submit to the respected; you should be humble before the pow-
erful. My son, you will then survive (?) against the wicked’ (Instructions of Shu-
ruppak: 204–207).
16
bi3-lu5-da ud-bi-ta e-me-am6 ‘the former order was the following’ (Ukg. 4–5
VII 28); bi3-lu5-da-dBa-ba6 nin-a-na-še3 en3 im-ma-ši-tar ‘he was pious to the ritual
order of his goddess Baba’ (Gud. St. E II 5); lu2 bi3-lu5-da-dingir-re-ne-ke4 si bi2-
sa2-sa2-a ‘he who maintains the rites of gods’ (St. R I 6-7); dingir-me-en3 bi3-lu5-da-
nam-lugal-la2 mu-ga2-ra-a šu hu-mu-ra-ab-du7-du7 ‘You are the goddess! May he
perform perfectly for you the rites which have been established as a duty of king-
ship’ (Šulgi P b 6; see also PSD b, biluda).
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Westenholz, J. G.
1993. Writing for Posterity: Naram-Sin and Enmerkar. In Rainey, A.F. (ed.),
Raphael Kutcher Memorial Volume (pp. 205–218). Tel Aviv.
Zgoll, A.
1997. Der Rechtsfall der En-hedu-Ana im Lied nin-me-shara. Münster: Ugarit-
Verlag.
9
Ritual and Rationality: Religious
Roots of the Bureaucratic State
in Ancient China*
Richard Baum
University of California, Los Angeles**
This article examines the religious origins and evolution of the instruments
of political legitimation in ancient China. In the first section I explore the
relationship between primitive spiritualism and the emergence of the insti-
tution of kingship in the pre-Warring States era (ca. 1100–500 B.C.). Link-
ing the ancient Chinese cult of ancestor worship to two important stratifica-
tional devices that emerged during this epoch – patrilineal kinship and an-
cestral genealogy – I show how archaic religious beliefs and practices
played a key role in legitimizing China's pre-imperial political order. In the
second section I examine the routinization of charismatic political power
that took place in the Warring States and early imperial eras (ca. 550 B.C.–
200 A.D.). It was during this period that a number of primordial Chinese
religious beliefs and practices, e.g., the rituals associated with the ‘Mandate
of Heaven’ and the diviner's art of reading auspicious signs, were stripped
of their archaic spiritual content to become secular instruments of political
legitimation in the hands of self-serving court cosmologists and Confucian
literati. In these ancient, interconnected processes of charismatic routiniza-
tion, ritual secularization, and dynastic legitimation I find important clues to
the essence, emergence, and evolution of China's uniquely enduring bu-
reaucratic political order.
Baum / Ritual and Rationality: Religious Roots of the Bureaucratic State in Ancient
China, pp. 196–219
Baum / Ritual and Rationality… 197
Every single primitive society without exception postulates the exis-

tence of spirit beings and supernatural powers... [which] respond with
favor or disfavor to specific acts of man.
E. Adamson Hoebel (1954)
Rituals obviate disorder as dikes prevent inundation.

Book of Rites (tr. Legge 1885)
INTRODUCTION
Ever since urban centers first emerged as loci of political power in the late
Neolithic era, kings have been distinguished from other types of power-
holders by virtue of their putative possession of a divine mandate, or ‘cha-
risma’, setting them apart from all others (Dawson 1958: 109). In primitive
states, the charismatic potency of kings was most commonly validated with
reference to their presumed ability to receive communication from heavenly
spirits (Beattie 1964: 227). Since the power to communicate with spirits
was the power to direct heavenly attention to human affairs – and thereby to
change (or at least to foresee) the course of the latter – the spiritual potency
of kings comprised the key ingredient in the primordial process of political
legitimation; indeed, such potency constituted the earliest, most pervasive
source of the ‘consent of the governed’ (Cohen and Service 1978: 31).
This article examines the religious origins and evolution of the instru-
ments of political legitimation in ancient China. In the first section we ex-
plore the relationship between primitive spiritualism and the emergence of
the institution of kingship in the pre-Warring States era (ca. 1100–500
B.C.). Linking the ancient Chinese cult of ancestor worship to two impor-
tant stratificational devices that emerged during this epoch – patrilineal kin-
ship and ancestral genealogy – we show in this section how archaic reli-
gious beliefs and practices played a key role in legitimizing China's pre-
imperial political order.
In the second section we examine the routinization of charismatic politi-
cal power that took place in the Warring States and early imperial eras (ca.
550 B.C.–200 A.D.). It was during this period that a number of primordial
Chinese religious beliefs and practices, e.g., the rituals associated with Tian
Ming – the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ – and the diviners art of reading auspi-
cious signs, were stripped of their archaic spiritual content to become secu-
lar instruments of political legitimation in the hands of self-serving court
cosmologists and Confucian literati. In these interrelated processes of char-
ismatic routinization, ritual secularization, and dynastic legitimation we
shall find clear evidence concerning the origins and early development
of China's traditional bureaucratic political order.
OF KINGS, SPIRITS, AND THE PRIMITIVE MUTUALITY

OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
As noted at the outset, the idea that unseen heavenly forces operate to influ-
ence events on earth is virtually universal in primitive and pre-modern so-
cieties. In early China, gods and spirits were believed to be capable of ex-
erting great influence over the course of human and natural events1. The
deities did not speak directly to man, but rather revealed themselves indi-
rectly through what Max Weber called ‘the regimen on earth’. When the
gods were contented, human welfare flourished; when they became restless
or angry, catastrophe ensued. All bad events were believed to be sympto-
matic of disturbance in the ‘providential harmony of heaven and earth’
(Weber 1951: 28).
Heavenly intent was conveyed to earth via a hierarchy of benevolent
spirits (shen) and evil demons (gui). These middle and lower-ranking spirit
messengers, though powerful in their own right, were far from omnipotent;
their impact could be mitigated by the magical powers of shamans and
priests, whom Weber referred to as ‘charismatically qualified brokers’ –
men who specialized in divining the intentions of the spirits and conducting
the appropriate ceremonies and sacrifices needed to propitiate them.
Although tutelary spirits could be mollified or otherwise influenced by
ritualized priestly mediation, they could also on occasion prove quite obsti-
nate, unresponsive, or insufficiently powerful to assist their earthly suppli-
cants. Weber referred to this situation of problematic power relations be-
tween men and spirits as ‘primitive mutuality’:
With these spirits one was on a footing of primitive mutuality: so and
so many ritual acts brought so and so many benefits. If a tutelary spirit
proved insufficiently strong to protect a man, in spite of all sacrifices
and virtues, he had to be substituted, for only the spirit who proved
truly powerful was worthy of worship. Actually, such shifts occurred
frequently. Moreover, the emperor granted recognition to proven dei-
ties as objects of worship; he bestowed title and rank upon them and
occasionally demoted them again. Only proven charisma legitimated a
spirit... (pp. 29–30).
As the principal earthly diviner of heavenly intent, the king himself was
the supreme high priest of ancient China. He was Son of Heaven, Tianzi,
ordained by the God on High, Shang Di; and it was his duty to offer appro-
priate, timely sacrifices to the various deities as well as to accurately read
and react to heavenly portents so as to ensure the well-being of his people.
Though he was ex officio Son of Heaven, the king nevertheless had to
constantly demonstrate, affirm, and renew his own charisma. And if, in
spite of his conscientious attention to duty, the rivers overflowed their dikes
or the rains failed to fall, this was prima facie evidence that the emperor
lacked the charismatic qualities demanded by Heaven. In such cases the
emperor was expected to perform public penitence for his failings.
In extreme cases, if the king displayed callous disregard for the welfare
either of his tutelary spirits (e.g., through failure to perform appropriate
sacrifices) or of his earthly subjects (e.g., through excessive taxation or per-
sistent neglect of irrigation works), resulting in widespread natural calam-
ity, public emiseration or discontent, the Son of Heaven might even forfeit
his claim to the charismatic mantle of Tian Ming, the Mandate of Heaven.
Such forfeiture carried with it the implied ‘legitimate’ right to rebel against
– and overthrow – a reigning monarch2.
In this manner a delicately balanced reciprocity was established between
heavenly spirits above and earthly rulers below. Each had certain specified
powers and perquisites; and each was required to acknowledge and respect
the jurisdictional hegemony of the other.
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN CHINESE SOCIETY

Post-Weberian analysts have generally affirmed the centrality of primitive
mutuality in ancient China's religious customs and practices, and have es-
tablished as well a strong claim for the political symbolism and significance
of such practices. Emily Ahern, for example, has argued that many sacrifi-
cial and divinatory rites encountered in contemporary Chinese society can
be analyzed as if they were forms of political activity – i.e., as attempts by
people to persuade, negotiate with, or otherwise influence non-human be-
ings (gods or ancestral spirits) in precisely the same ways they might seek
to influence governmental officials through political action (Ahern 1981: 4–
5). Noting that many ritualized forms of human/spirit interaction appear to
be modelled on political processes, Ahern asserts that Chinese religion
‘mirror[s] the system of state control’. In both cases, the procedures govern-
ing access to – and decision-making by – higher authorities are essentially
‘bureaucratic’ in nature, i.e., formalized, routinized, and hierarchically or-
ganized (p. 97).
Seeking an explanation for this parallelism, Ahern hypothesizes that
sacred ritual, by directly emulating bureaucratic procedure, served a vital
‘political socialization’ function for the great mass of ordinary people in
Chinese society, helping to familiarize them with the manners and mores of
officialdom and training them in the appropriate techniques of bureaucratic
supplication. Through learning and practicing correct ritual behavior in a
religious context, she conjectures, people could ultimately hope to increase
their chances of successfully appealing for protection and support from
‘higher authorities’ in the political realm (pp. 102–103). In this respect, she
concludes, ‘dealing with the gods could be seen as a rehearsal, or playing
out, of skills important in dealing with the earthly power system’ (p. 97).
Ahern's postulation of a mutually-supportive, syntonic relationship be-
tween religious ritual and bureaucratic procedure echoes in certain key re-
spects a theme raised some years earlier by Joseph Needham, whose multi-
volume opus, Science and Civilization in China, contains an intriguing
speculation about the ostensible bureaucratization of certain traditional
Chinese divination practices.
Though generally an unabashed admirer of pre-modern Chinese thought,
Needham scornfully dismissed the primitive mysticism and superstition
embodied in the ancient Chinese fortune-telling classic, the Yi Jing (Book
of Changes). Treating this immensely influential work as an anomalous
departure from the proto-scientific naturalism of classical Chinese thought,
Needham was led to ponder the longevity and popularity of the Yi Jing.
Why, he asked, didn't early Confucian scholars simply ‘tie a millstone
round the neck of the Yi Jing and cast it into the sea?’ (Ronan and Need-
ham 1978: 184)3. The answer, he believed, lay in the curious structural
symmetry between Chinese fortune-telling and Chinese politics; and he
speculated – anticipating Ahern – that the authority of the Yi Jing may have
endured precisely because its symbolic system of ritualized divinations
closely mirrored the administrative organization of neo-Confucian bureauc-
racy (p. 187).
Needham's basic proposition was that like the Chinese bureaucracy it-
self, the Yi Jing constituted a structural framework for organizing and clas-
sifying diverse phenomena, a ‘giant filing system’ that enabled all ideas and
concepts to be neatly stylised and ‘fitted in to the [bureaucratic] system
without difficulty’ (p. 187). Indeed, argued Needham, the Yi Jing could
best be described
... as an organization for routing ideas through the right channels to the
right departments, almost a heavenly counterpart of bureaucracy on
earth, the reflection in the natural world of the unique social order of
the human civilization that produced it... Not only the tremendous fil-
ing system of the Yi Jing, but also the ‘symbolic correlations’, where
everything had its position connected by ‘the proper channels’ to eve-
rything else, can probably best be described as an administrative ap-
proach to nature (p. 188).
Like Ahern, Needham thus viewed traditional Chinese divinatory rites
as euhemerized projections of human behavioral characteristics onto super-
natural spirits. In this case, however, it was not individual human traits that
were euhemerized and transposed into their ‘heavenly counterparts’, but
rather the entire basic repertoire of administrative arrangements that charac-
terized the Chinese bureaucratic order4.
PROTO-BUREAUCRATIC RITUALS AND

PRIMITIVE RATIONALITY
Primitive cultures display a near-universal tendency to humanize their dei-
ties (Weber 1951; Beattie 1964). John Beattie attributes this anthropomor-
phic inclination to the absence, in primitive society, of an adequate body of
empirical knowledge, which might enable people to cope with the hazards
of everyday life by means of practical, scientifically verifiable techniques.
Lacking such techniques and, more importantly, lacking a suitable episte-
mology for discovering such techniques, ancient man had little recourse but
to humanize his spiritual universe in an attempt to understand – and thereby
exert some measure of control over – the forces of nature. By endowing the
source of a natural event (e. g., an outbreak of smallpox) with quasi-human
attributes (e. g., an act of vengeance by an angry god), primitive peoples
could hope to enter into some kind of social relationship with it. Then,
through invocation and sacrifice, they could attempt to avert or ameliorate it
(Beattie 1964: 227).
In the case of traditional China, the spiritual realm was not merely hu-
manized, but was politically stratified as well. This is clearly revealed in
C.K. Yang's description of the parallel bureaucratic hierarchies of Heaven
and Earth:
The monarch in Heaven was the Jade Emperor... His imperial court
consisted of gods of the stars as well as high deities of Buddhist and
Taoist creation. Subordinate administrators under the heavenly court
were the spirits immanent in the natural elements of the earth, such as
mountains and rivers... The organization of these supernatural authorities
was patterned after the traditional Chinese government, with the em-
peror wielding the highest power, with the six boards of central admini-
stration, with subdivisions into administrative districts... down to the
county and village, and with the multitude of common souls as subject peo-
ple (1967: 144, 150).
To this striking structural isomorphism between the administrative
realms of Heaven and Earth, Frances L. K. Hsu (1981: 240–244) has added
an important psychological dimension. The Chinese, he notes, have tradi-
tionally relied heavily upon the emotional security and social supports pro-
vided by familial and clan relationships to shield them against caprice and
uncertainty in their dealings with remote (and hence impersonal) imperial
authority. The stark contrast between familial intimacy and trust on the one
hand, and bureaucratic aloofness and distrust on the other, and the moral
dualism engendered thereby, is clearly reflected, he argues, in the bifurca-
tion of the Chinese spirit world. On the one side are aligned the proximate
spirits of one's own deceased ancestors – normally protective and benevo-
lent, but occupying relatively low-ranking positions within the overall spiri-
tual hierarchy; on the other side are arrayed the more distant and impersonal
(and inherently more capricious) major deities, who collectively constitute
the spiritual ‘elite’, i.e., the heavenly counterpart of the imperial court.
Just as Chinese traditionally employed familial networks as buffers
against the capricious authority of the emperor and his bureaucratic under-
lings, so too they sought to enlist the aid of friendly ancestral spirits to
shield them from – or, alternatively, to intercede on their behalf with – the
more remote and powerful major gods. Psychologically, then, the relation-
ship of the people to their ancestral spirits closely resembled the contractual
bond of interdependency linking clients to their patrons (Hsu 1981: 250–251).
OF SPIRITS, CONTRACTS, AND BUREAUCRATS

Based on analysis of oracular inscriptions carved on animal scapulae and
turtle shells in the late Shang period (ca. 1000 B.C.), David Keightley has
hypothesized that the functional logic of the earliest documented Chinese
divinatory rituals was inherently proto-contractual and proto-bureaucratic:
Shang religious practice rested upon the do ut des (‘I give in order that
thou shouldst give’) belief that correct ritual procedure... would result
in favors conferred by [Shang Di, who] stood at the apex of the
spiritual hierarchy... So far as we can tell, the relationships between
the members of the [spiritual] hierarchy were, in Weber's terms,
‘ordered systematically’; that is, the right sacrifices ensured the right
responses, and the right responses by the spirits led, in turn, to
appropriate thank-offerings by the kings...
The logic of the sacrificial offerings and divinations was itself fre-
quently bureaucratic: the nature of the offering was inscribed on the
oracular bone or shell...; the success of the offering depended upon the
correct fulfillment of ‘defined duties’, that is, the right number of cat-
tle, [sacrificed] to the right ancestor, on the right day... In the oracle
bones, experience was compartmentalized into a series of discrete and
tentative statements, testing and examining pro and con the approval
of the spirits. This readiness to divide experience into manageable
units... suggests the workings of a bureaucratic mentality (Keightley
1978: 214–216)5.
Keightley's reading of the Shang oracular record strongly supports the
conclusion that ancient Chinese cult practices constituted, in effect, pre-
scientific ‘technologies’, employed in a calculative – albeit primitive –
fashion to exert some modicum of control, through spirit propitiation, over
those powerful forces of nature whose underlying operational principles
and ‘laws’ simply could not be fathomed by primitive man6.
POLITICAL RITUALS AND RATIONALITY

If archaic Chinese ritual practices were in fact examples of primitive
instrumentalism in action, then it can be argued, e.g., that the ancient
doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven, Tian Ming, heavily discounted by
modern observers as a convenient political myth employed by dynastic
propagandists to legitimize the absolute power of emperors (or alternately
to rationalize popular revolts against despotic authority), may usefully be
viewed as a rational (albeit pre-scientific) technique for gauging the will of
deceased spirits7. That the Mandate of Heaven eventually became an
instrument of political rationalization and self-justification in the hands of
ambitious feudal lords and Confucian literati beginning in the late Zhou
period is not to be doubted. But, as numerous observers have pointed out,
the archaic spiritual logic that underlay the original concept of Tian Ming
was taken very seriously – indeed literally – by early Chinese kings and
court officials (Creel 1970: 82–84; Ho 1975: 330–331; Chang 1976: 191–195).
Because they embodied primitive beliefs about how to tap into and
control the power of ancestral spirits, archaic Chinese religious rituals
provide important clues to the origins and emergent properties of China's
bureaucratic political order. Soothill (1951: 73), for example, notes that
certain archaic Chinese cult practices – including sacrifice by earthly rulers
to nature spirits and ancestors, ritual ploughing of land by kings, and
ceremonial sacrifice at the time of the new moon – clearly served political
as well as religious ends. Even such ostensibly secularized, scientific
activities as calendrical calculation and meteorological observation had
profound political implications. Thus the promulgation of China's earliest
lunar calendar – reputedly fixed by Shang dynasty rulers – was aimed
less at responding to the immediate economic needs of farmers (who in any
event continued to regulate their activities primarily by the onset of floods,
the coming of rains, and the helical rising of certain stars) than at satisfying
the ritual requirements of charismatic, sacrally-oriented dynastic elites
(DeWoskin 1983: 7; Wheatley 1971: 385–386)8.
By the 4th century B.C., the Chinese calendar had become a clear
symbol of the charismatic potency of dynastic rulers. Because of this
symbolic association, each new dynasty – embodying a unique pantheon of
supernatural spirits and magical forces – was compelled to devise its own
distinctive calendar (Eberhard 1957: 65). Thus, between 370 B.C. and 1851
A.D. no less than 102 calendars were officially promulgated in China – an
average of one new calendar each 21 years – generally at the
commencement of each new emperor's reign.
In addition to calendrical calculation, various other ‘scientific’ functions
were infused with ritualized political significance in ancient China. By the
time of the Former Han dynasty (208 B.C.–8 A.D.), astronomers were
routinely employed by China's emperors to record and interpret anomalous
natural phenomena (e. g., eclipses and earthquakes), which were believed to
be heavenly omens of impending dynastic misfortune. Because of the
extreme political significance attached to interpretation of such portents
under the doctrine of Tian Ming, astronomers and calendar-makers were
among the most important court officials in early imperial China (Ronan and
Needham 1981: 79)9.
In sum, ancient Chinese ceremonial rituals clearly provided behavioral
protocols for the administration of human affairs. These ritualized
protocols, in turn, contributed indirectly to the charismatic legitimization
(and eventual bureaucratization) of the dynastic Chinese state. In this
respect it is almost certainly the case that ancient China's emergent political
order – at least in the first instance – derived substantial inspiration and
legitimization from the putative world of heavenly spirits10.
RITUALISM AND THE ROUTINIZATION OF CHARISMA

By Shang times, Chinese kings ruled under a conditional grant of divine
authority. They were, in essence, hereditary theocrats, although the
principles governing the line of royal succession were not yet firmly
fixed11. And from Shang times onward, a prime function of all Chinese
kings was that of head priest, or ‘chief prognosticator’, whose task it was
‘to conciliate the forces of nature and so make the sacrifices effective’
(Fitzgerald 1961: 41). It was the king – and only the king – who ‘made
fruitful harvest and victories possible by the sacrifices he offered, the rituals
he performed, and the divinations he made’ (Keightley 1974: 3)12.
Although, as we have seen, ancient ceremonial rituals provided rough
behavioral archetypes for the proto-bureaucratization of the Chinese
dynastic state, the archetypes were themselves subject to a gradual process
of evolutionary adaptation and ‘routinization’. It was Max Weber who first
convincingly argued that the heavenly-endowed charisma attributed to spirit
invocators and other ritual specialists in primitive societies was inevitably
subject to pressures of routinization over time. ‘In its pure form’, he wrote,
‘charismatic authority may be said to exist only in the process of
originating. It cannot remain stable, but becomes either traditionalized or
rationalized, or a combination of both’ (1947: 364).
Routinization made it possible to retain the archaic ritual forms of
primitive religious expression while emptying them of their original
spiritual content. This is precisely what Weber meant when he wrote that by
the latter stages of the Chinese imperial era, official sacrifices and public
cults had become largely matters of ‘social convention... emptied of all
emotional elements’ (1951: 173)13.
Although the theory of routinized charisma suggests that over time
archaic religious symbols tend to lose their sacred meanings, this does not
necessarily imply that they become devoid of all social function or utility.
As Weber noted, routinized charisma is a powerful force that can be used to
legitimize not just the activities of priests and other ‘professional’ spiritual
communicants, but also political institutions and elites, ideologies, and
economic property relations as well14.
The Weberian notion of routinized charisma provides one means of
reconciling the widely-noted contradiction between the religious roots of
the dynastic Chinese state and the ostensibly secularized political culture of
the imperial era. By the same token, it also helps to explain the evolution of
the concept of Tian Ming from its archaic signification of heavenly-
endowed, divinely-revocable charisma to a highly agnostic, instrumental
doctrine of moral legitimacy employed by dynastic elites (or would-be
elites) to justify the exercise (or overthrow) of imperial power15.
Inevitably, the moralization of Tian Ming was accompanied by its
increasing secularization. In the hands of Confucian scholars from the
Warring States period (403–221 B.C.) onward, the doctrine was stripped of
much of its original spiritual premise of divine intervention in human
affairs. Mencius (b. 372 B.C.), for example, argued that the will of heaven
was manifested on earth only indirectly, through the will of the people; and
he claimed that divine control over temporal affairs began and ended with
heaven's act of investing the dynastic founder with political authority
(Eberhard 1957: 36–38). Thereafter, he argued, it was up to the Son of
Heaven himself to renew his charisma through wise and benevolent
governance – a secular goal whose successful attainment Confucian
scholars deemed themselves uniquely qualified to promote through their
special ability to render sagacious advice to the emperor.
Although Mencius thus promoted the moral secularization of Tian
Ming, the process was not completed until some 1,500 years later, when the
Sung dynasty neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (b. 1130 A.D.) blatantly
altered the ancient spiritual concept of jing tian (‘reverence toward
heaven’), which had constituted the original theistic core of Tian Ming. In
place of heavenly piety, Zhu Xi substituted his own agnostic conception of
reverence, rooted in such this-worldly values as propriety (li) and filialty
(xiao). In this manner, the ultimate secularization of dynastic authority was
achieved16.
By stripping Tian Ming of its archaic spiritual content, and by adapting
it to suit the secular, ‘humanistic’ ends of imperial governance, neo-
Confucian literati ultimately fashioned a powerful doctrine of political
legitimacy – a doctrine whose primal religiosity became ever more highly
routinized, formalized, and ritually sterilized with the passage of time. As a
result, the emperor became increasingly dependent upon the faithful,
periodic performance of elaborate and highly-stylized ritual sacrifices to
maintain his carefully-cultivated political image as Son of Heaven17.
The increasingly pompous, sterilized pageantry of Tian Ming provides a
cogent illustration of the type of ‘secular ritualism’ anticipated by the We-
berian theory of routinized charisma. Yet Weber's theory cannot take us
very far in our effort to resolve a fundamental conundrum noted earlier: for
if increasingly formalized religious rituals served the increasingly secular-
ized function of dynastic legitimization, then how are we to explain the
continuing, extraordinary popularity of archaic ancestral cults and primitive
divinatory rituals in modern China, among the masses of common people?
No concept of routinized charisma, no theory of ‘vestigial cultural formal-
ism’ can satisfactorily explain the survival and continued active ceremonial
use of hundreds of thousands of ancestral temples, housing myriad family
shrines, in China's countryside in the modern era18.
Nor does the theory of routinized charisma go very far toward explain-
ing the particular political and administrative forms and structures exhibited
by the Chinese state in its transition from patrimonial theocracy to imperial
bureaucracy. In order to help account for the emergence of these forms we
turn next to a discussion of the linkage between religion and socio-political
stratification in pre-imperial China.
SPIRITUAL HIERARCHY
AND THE CULT OF ANCESTOR WORSHIP
The key transitory structure linking ancient Chinese theology with later
Confucian social stratification was the ritualized cult of ancestor worship.
As we have seen, the spirits of the deceased founders of the Shang dynasty
were believed by their latter-day descendents to be able to intercede with
powerful deities (up to and including Shang Di himself) to secure heavenly
assistance, inter alia, in bringing bountiful harvests and in winning victory
on the battlefield. Through ritual prayer and offerings of grain, millet-wine
and animal flesh, successive generations of Shang kings sought both to
propitiate the spirits of their departed royal ancestors and, through the ‘good
offices’ of the latter, to divine the higher deities’ earthly intentions. In this
way, the kings could demonstrate their ‘power’ over nature and the spirit
world, and thereby legitimize their charismatic claim to the exercise of
temporal authority (Keightley 1978: 213).
Not all ancestral spirits were considered equally powerful, benevolent,
or amenable to propitiation, however. The longer a particular ancestor had
been dead, and the closer his direct consanguinity with the earliest Shang
rulers, the higher was the heavenly status he enjoyed – and the greater was
the sacrificial ‘booty’ he commanded at ceremonial offerings. Somewhat
paradoxically, however, the higher the ‘seniority’ – i.e., generational age
and rank – of the deceased ancestor, the more impersonally and impartially
his power would be exercised (Keightley 1978: 218; Hsu 1981: 240–244)19.
Although the frequency and material value of sacrifices offered by
Shang kings to their deceased forebears varied in direct pro-portion to the
generational age and bloodline of the ancestor, only rarely did living kings
appeal directly to the God on High, Shang Di. Shang Di was not, as far as is
known, regarded as a lineal ancestor of the Shang royal house20. Due to this
apparent lack of consanguinity, royal diviners seemingly preferred to lavish
their ritual offerings upon lesser deities (primarily direct family fore-bears),
who were presumed to be more benevolently disposed toward their own
kinsmen (Keightley 1978: 218–219). It has even been suggested that since
Shang Di very likely did not share Shang royal blood, he could not be
presumed to be favorably disposed, a priori, toward the perpetuation of
Shang rule; that as a non-consanguine ‘outsider’, he might be effectively
immune to sacrifical inducements or bribes offered by Shang kings; and
that he might thus be capable of bringing harm to the dynasty (e.g., by
supporting an attack by enemy tribes) – something no self-respecting,
properly-propitiated Shang royal ancestor would ever dream of doing21.
Regardless of the precise degree of ancestral favoritism and ‘reliability’
that could be expected by Shang kings in particular cases, the generational
ranking of deceased ancestors represented a systematic schema for
differentiating the presumed potency of various deities; at the same time, it
provided a convenient index for assessing differential degrees of spiritual
proximity and familiarity. But to keep such rankings in order, and to ensure
that the appropriate sacrifices would be offered to the right ancestors, some
formal system of classification – or genealogy – was needed.
Because the propitiation of royal ancestors was directly related to the
well-being of their living descendants, and because the interests of
generations living and dead were thus inextricably intertwined, China's
ancient rulers urgently required a system for reliably identifying sanguinary
relationships. Such a system was provided by the institution of surnames,
which made their earliest known appearance in China during the late
Neolithic era (Wu 1982: 21).
Surnames are instruments designed to separate and distinguish people
from one another in accordance with their parentage. With the invention
and recording of surnames, gradations in attributed spiritual affinity and
potency could be more-or-less precisely correlated with differences in
ancestral lineage. Genealogy thus became an important method for affixing
the relative ritual statuses and sacrificial entitlements of the various
branches (and individual members) of one's ancestral tree22.
Genealogy also served symbolic social/ceremonial functions. For
example, calendrical calculations in the Shang period were geared to a ten-
day ritual cycle which governed the conduct of ancestral sacrifices. Since
proper regulation of these sacrifices was deemed vital to the well-being of
the dynasty, each deceased Shang king was posthumously given a new
name which correlated his paternal lineage with a relevant phase in the
ritual cycle of the dynastic calendar (Chang 1976: 79–89).
Finally, since the king's position in the socio-political order was in large
measure a reflection of the ritual statuses and entitlements of his deceased
ancestors, genealogical analysis of the dead carried with it profound politi-
cal implications for the living23. With dynastic authority a contingent func-
tion of ancestral lineage, political power in ancient China could fairly be
said to have grown not out of the barrel of a gun (or the shaft of a spear),
but out of the trunk of the family tree. And it is undoubtedly for this reason
that the compilation and recording of dynastic genealogies became such a
preoccupation – indeed a virtual obsession – with countless generations of
early Chinese emperors, scholars, scribes, and court officials24.
KINSHIP AND POLITICAL STRATIFICATION

In societies possessing well-developed ancestral cults – including ancient
Greece and Rome, as well as China and much of contemporary Africa and
Asia – genealogy provides a vital sense of continuity between past and pre-
sent, between heaven and earth. In such societies, ancestral cults help to
sustain the existing social order by defining the distinct lineage subdivisions
into which the community is organized (Beattie 1964: 225–226).
Just as the departed ancestors of living Chinese kings were classified
and ranked for purposes of ritual worship according to criteria of
generational seniority and purity of bloodline, so too were living members
of ruling lineages ranked according to age, generation, and degree of royal
consanguinity (Ho 1975: 292–295; Chang 1980: 175–189). When relatives
of the ancient kings (usually sons, uncles or male cousins) were sent out
from the royal capital to settle new towns (to relieve population pressure,
open up new agricultural land, or shore up military defenses), they were
given distinctive surnames (xing) to signify their clan affiliation along with
territorial names (shi) to designate their new settlements. At the same time,
ritual paraphernalia and ceremonial regalia (including carriages, drums,
bells, flags and colored silks) symbolizing their political status within the
ruling lineage were also bestowed upon them by the king (Chang 1983: 16).
In his new settlement, the royal benefice holder would erect an ancestral
temple, in which his own lineage tablet would eventually be placed as
founder of a branch clan. In time, new segments would hive off from this
branch, forming secondary (and then tertiary) territorial sublineages which
were ranked in a sequential hierarchy of descending political and ritual
statuses. In this manner, the system of Shang patrimonial benefices – the
earliest known form of institutionalized territorial governance in China –
reflected gradations of kinship status within a segmented royal lineage,
gradations which had themselves been patterned in the first instance after
the patriarchy of ancestral spirits25.
By the end of the second millennium B.C. there were well over one
hundred agnatic clans in China, each with its own surname26 as well as its
own myth of ancestral origin, its own ancestral temple, shrine and tablet, its
own symbolic paraphernalia of political legitimacy, and its own ethos of
clan solidarity.
Through a combination of agricultural settlement (and concomitant
lineage segmentation), military conquest and political alliance, the
territorial scope of the central state expanded rapidly beginning in the late
Shang. But this expansion proved a mixed blessing to dynastic rulers,
whose patrimonial/ritual authority inevitably suffered geopolitical dilution
as it was projected farther and farther outward from the royal capital toward
an ever expanding, ever more distant dynastic frontier27.
Increasingly, the king was unable personally to conduct all the manifold
ceremonial rituals that, as Son of Heaven, he was called upon to perform in
each of the central state's territorial domains; increasingly, the powers of
territorial administration had to be delegated, de facto, to local benefice
holders; increasingly, too, the ruler was forced to share the spoils of
dynastic expansion with – and accommodate the diverse regional/special
interests of – his benefice-holding relatives28; and increasingly, new
benefices were granted – on a hereditary basis – to heads of allied tribes or
peripheral states who were unrelated by blood to the royal family, in
exchange for military services rendered or for pledges of future fealty (Ho
1975: 301–305).
The ironic end result of the process of dynastic expansion, then, was a
serious weakening of ancient China's centralized patrimonial-theocratic
state. Paradoxically, the vitality of the late Shang/early Zhou state was
progressively sapped by its very political/military successes. In
consequence, a new form of governance gradually emerged in China –
feudalism – marked by the institution of hereditary enfeoffment (feng jian)
and by a pronounced shift in the balance of dynastic power from the royal
center to the enfeoffed periphery29.
With the feudalization of the Chinese state during the Western Zhou
were sown the seeds of eventual dynastic disintegration. For feudalism, by
its very nature, has seldom proved successful as a means of imposing
central governance over extensive territories for long periods of time (Creel
1970: 420)30. And by the time of the Spring and Autumn period, centrifugal
forces had increased to the point where newly-engendered
political/territorial rivalries began to erupt into open conflict.
This disintegrative process reached its peak during the Warring States
era, when contending feudal lords, often representing different sublineage
branches of a common royal ancestry, vied openly for the protective mantle
of Tian Ming31. In this struggle for imperial supremacy, the legitimizing
principle of ancestral lineage became so significant as to provide full-time
employment for a bevy of itinerant scholar-genealogists. Eberhard thus
writes:
Whether or not the lords believed in the Mandate [of Heaven], rulers
and pretenders [alike] always... tried to establish their legitimacy.
Accordingly, if one of the feudal lords thought of putting forward a
claim to the imperial throne, he felt compelled to demonstrate that his
family was just as much of divine origin as the emperor's, and perhaps
of more remote origin. In this matter travelling scholars rendered
valuable service as manufacturers of genealogical trees. Each of the
old noble families already had its family tree, as an indispensable
requisite for the sacrifices to ancestors. But in some cases this tree
began as a branch of that of the imperial family... [while in] others the
first ancestor [was] a local deity worshipped in the family's home
country... Here the scholars stepped in, turning the local deities into
human beings and ‘emperors’. This suddenly gave the noble family
concerned an imperial origin... (Eberhard 1977: 48)32.
Although the politicization of ancestral lineage was thus carried to ex-
tremes during the Warring States period, the phenomenon itself was by no
means unique to China.
With so much attention being focused in ancient China on ancestral
lineage as a key to the legitimization of power, it was but a short and logical
step from a political ethos which stressed the seniority-based rank ordering
of forebears to one which stressed the moral obligation of the young to ven-
erate the old, sons to venerate fathers, wives to venerate husbands, and the
living to venerate the dead – i.e., the ethos of filial piety (xiao). And it was
this ethos, in turn, which provided the focal point, or moral pivot, around
which Confucian ideologists subsequently sought to knit the three worlds of
ancestral spirits, kinship groups, and the imperial bureaucracy into a single,
integrated system of hierarchical social and political authority33.
CONCLUSION
To summarize our argument, evidence drawn from the historical record of
pre-unification China suggests the following general propositions:
FIRST, there was an intimate and powerful connection in ancient China
between ritual leadership and the emergence of the institution of kingship;
SECOND, ancient theocrats initially derived charismatic authority from
their imputed ability to invoke and propitiate high-ranking ancestral spirits;
THIRD, through an analogical process of celestial modelling, Chinese
social and political institutions initially came to mirror the proto-rational
spiritual logic of archaic religious practices;
FOURTH, the key structural ingredient in this modelling process was
the generational ranking of ancestral spirits, which provided a paradigm for
the proto-bureaucratic stratification of Chinese society;
FIFTH, the archaic concept of Tian Ming provided a basis for the heav-
enly legitimization of royal authority that was wholly consistent with the
emergent principles of patrilineal kinship and ancestral genealogy;
SIXTH, through a combination of charismatic routinization and Confu-
cian cooptation, Tian Ming eventually became politically moralized and
ritually formalized;
SEVENTH, the Confucian moralization of power, rooted in the twin
secular imperatives of propriety and filial piety, extended the paradigmatic
legitimizing principle of generational-based hierarchy downward from
heaven through the imperial bureaucracy to the individual clan and family; and
EIGHTH, the impact of ancient religion upon the formation and articu-
lation of the dynastic Chinese state has been generally underestimated be-
cause primordial Chinese religious sentiments and rituals were, from the
late pre-unification period onward, routinely cloaked in the profane garb of
this-worldly Confucian propriety and piety.
In almost none of these respects – save perhaps for the last two – was
China particularly unique in the ancient world. On the contrary, we have
sought to demonstrate how very similar pre-unification China was to other
patrimonial theocracies. Taken individually and in isolation, moreover, few
of the propositions advanced above are wholly new or original. Viewed
configuratively and in developmental perspective, however, they provide a
series of valuable interlocking clues to the emergence and evolution of the
pre-imperial Chinese state, and thus to the origins of China's unique – and
uniquely enduring – bureaucratic political order.
NOTES
* First published in Social Evolution & Histoty 3 (1), March 2004, pp. 41–68.
** This article is dedicated to the memory of my friend and mentor, Arthur
S. Iberall (1918–2002), whose extraordinary insight into the origins and dynamics
of complex systems, both physical and social, profoundly shaped my understanding
of ‘the way things work’.
1
The phenomenon of charisma (lit: ‘gift of grace’) was first systematically ex-
plored by Max Weber, who used the term to connote ‘...a certain quality of person-
ality by virtue of which an individual is set apart from ordinary men and treated as
endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least ... exceptional powers or quali-
ties’. Insofar as such powers were believed to be divinely inspired, they were
deemed ‘inaccessible to the ordinary person’ (Weber 1947: 358–359).
2
Conveniently for historiographers, heavenly sanction for such rebellion could
only be demonstrated with any certainty by retrodiction, i.e., after the fact of a suc-
cessful dynastic change.
3
For a cogent analysis of Needham's views on traditional Chinese science, see
Restivo (1979).
4
Unlike Ahern, Needham did not attribute to divinatory rituals the latent func-
tion of political socialization, limiting himself to the mere observation of structural
symmetry between the ways of imperial bureaucrats and the ways of heavenly spirits.
5
Sarah Allan concurs with Keightley's assessment of Shang ritual proto-
bureaucratism, but disputes the contractual nature of the divinatory process, arguing
that the process was more magical than contractual: ‘The King did not divine in
order to reach agreement with his ancestors, but to determine by magical means
which combination of categories would be ‘auspicious’ and likely to produce the
desired results’ (Allan 1981: 312).
6
In this respect, Keightley may have somewhat overstated the ‘scientific’ at-
tributes of Shang ritual. For as Beattie (1970) has argued, ‘Belief in the efficacy of
ritual is not, like belief in science, based on testing (hypotheses) against experience,
but on the imputation of causal efficacy to symbolic expression itself’.
7
Most historians trace the Tian Ming doctrine back to the Zhou conquest of the
Shang. Keightley, however, claims that the doctrine had its roots even earlier, in the
proto-bureaucratic spiritualism of Shang times (1978: 220). Allan (1984: 529–531)
concurs in this dating, though for different reasons. In her view, the original prece-
dent for the idea of a conditional Mandate was set when the first Shang king (Tang)
successfully rebelled against the Xia dynasty in 1766 B.C. and thereupon offered to
sacrifice his own life to Shang Di to atone for his act of lese majeste. The God on
High refused to accept Tang's sacrifice, however, and instead sent down a sudden
rainstorm to end a severe drought that had plagued the country – thus implicitly
giving Heaven's stamp of approval to Tang's rebellion.
8
This notion of a ritualistic ‘charismatic validation’ function served by dynastic
calendar regulation partially contradicts the more straightforward economic hy-
pothesis advanced by Joseph Needham, who argued that ‘For an agricultural econ-
omy... regulat[ion] of the calendar was of prime importance. He who could give a
calendar to the people would become their leader’ (Ronan and Needham 1981: 75–
76). Needham's conjecture may help explain the initial fixing of the lunar calendar,
but it can hardly account for the frequency with which the calendar was subse-
quently revised and re-issued – to the inevitable accompaniment of elaborate cere-
monial pomp – by successive imperial regimes.
9
In the Former Han, one of the highest-paid and most influential officials in the
imperial court was the Grand Master of Ceremonies who, together with his various
underlings, was responsible, inter alia, for fixing royal sacrificial rituals, for re-
cording omens and portents, for supervising the royal observatory, and for annually
promulgating the royal calendar (Bielenstein 1980: 17–19).
10
Nor was ancient China particularly unique in this respect. E. A. Hoebel,
for example, has described the religious ethos of tribal politics in 20th century
Ashanti (Gold Coast) in terms strikingly reminiscent of the type of ritualized spirit
mediation and charismatic validation that flourished in ancient China (Hoebel 1954:
264–265). And Christopher Dawson has noted a clear parallel between China's an-
cient dynastic legitimizing principle of Tian Ming and the Polynesian concept of
heavenly ‘mana’, or spiritual grace (Dawson 1958: 112–113, 121).
11
K. C. Chang (1976: 79ff) describes a complex system of Shang political suc-
cession based on generational alternation between two principal royal sublineages.
12
A substantial proportion of all Shang oracular prognoses were personally ren-
dered by the king himself, assisted by a retinue of lesser priests, including diviners,
invocators and sorcerers (Keightley 1974; Chang 1983: 45ff). Arguably, these royal
spiritual attendants were China's first true proto-bureaucrats.
13
Hu Shi had essentially the same notion in mind when, early in the 20th cen-
tury, he noted that Chinese religious rituals had become vestigial cultural remnants,
‘mere formalistic ceremonies without serious realistic significance’ (Yang 1967: 178).
14
‘One of the decisive motives underlying all cases of the routinization of cha-
risma’, wrote Weber, ‘is naturally the striving for security. This means legitimiza-
tion, on the one hand, of positions of authority and social prestige, (and) on the
other hand, of the economic advantages enjoyed by the followers and sympathizers
of the leader... To a very large extent the transition to hereditary charisma or cha-
risma of office serves... as a means of legitimizing existing or recently acquired
powers of control over economic goods. Along with the ideology of loyalty, which
is certainly by no means unimportant, allegiance to hereditary monarchy in particu-
lar is strongly influenced by the consideration that all inherited property and all that
which is legitimately acquired would be endangered if subjective recognition of the
sanctity of succession to the throne were eliminated’ (Weber 1947: 372–373).
15
C. K. Yang has referred to this evolutionary shift in the Chinese concept of
Tian Ming as the ‘moralization of power’, i.e., the process of establishing an ethical
basis for dynastic domination through ‘inculcation of moral meaning into political
power’ (Yang 1967: 137–138).
16
A noted 17th century Japanese critic of Zhu Xi later wrote of this secular
transformation: ‘Reverence’ (jing) ...takes respecting heaven and respecting ghosts
and spirits as its foundation. There can be no reverence without an object of rever-
ence. Zhu Xi originated codes for cultivating reverence, but his was a reverence without
an object to be revered (Quoted in Yamashita 1979: 311–312; emphasis added).
17
Ray Huang thus notes that by the time of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644
A.D.), maintenance of the divine imperial mandate ‘required ritualistic exercises
involving the sovereign and his chief ministers to be enacted with vigor and regu-
larity, completely in a public spirit, and accompanied by aesthetic and moral over-
tones. Pageantry or not, the many rounds of kowtowing reaffirmed imperial su-
premacy; yet merely the fact that the emperor attended the ceremonies indicated
that he was subjecting himself to the cosmic order and moral law... Obviously a
degree of make-believe was involved; but make-believe is not necessarily unreal.
One must realize how powerful an instrument of government it was when all par-
ticipants shared a belief in it’ (Huang 1981: 46–47).
18
In this connection C. K. Yang argues that the longstanding practice of peri-
odically offering sacrifices of money and other valuable worldly goods to ancestral
spirits could not have been a mere vestigial formality, since it constituted a substan-
tial drain upon the economic resources of a marginally-subsistant peasantry (Yang
1967: 178–179).
19
Keightely notes that ‘recently-dead ancestors might plague (or protect) living
individuals (who would perhaps have known them when they were alive), but the
dead of more distant generations affected the state as a whole by influencing har-
vests, droughts and enemy invasions’ (1978: 218).
20
The Chinese characters representing the two ‘Shangs’ are wholly dissimilar.
The dynastic ‘Shang’ is represented by a logograph whose modern meaning is
‘commerce’; while the supreme deity ‘Shang’ is depicted by the locational charac-
ter meaning ‘above’.
21
Keightley speculates, somewhat ingeniously, that the Shang royal house's
concern over Shang Di's apparent impartiality, stemming from the supreme deity's
lack of direct family ties to dynastic founders, may help explain the emergence of
the conditional ‘meritocratic’ theory of Tian Ming.
22
In this connection it may be hypothesized that the widely-noted absence of an
institutionalized church and professional clergy in traditional China stems from the
inherent pluralism of China's archaic, ancestral-based system of religious beliefs.
With Shang Di and other ‘supreme’ deities being inaccessible to the common peo-
ple, and with ancestral spirits being the key guardians and guarantors of individual
and family welfare, organized supra-familial (or supra-clan) worship was simply
beside the point, and an organized priesthood was therefore unnecessary – the more
so since the emperor himself officially monopolized those ceremonial rituals used
to invoke the highest deities on behalf of the commonweal. For a somewhat more
abstract and metaphorical interpretation based on the archaic myth of a ‘severance
of communication between heaven and earth’, see Wu (1982: 7–20). By way of
contrast, Hsu (1981: 107, 243–248, 270–276) stresses the eclectic, polytheistic,
utilitarian, and non-dogmatic aspects of traditional Chinese spiritual values as ex-
planations for the weakness of institutionalized religion in the Middle Kingdom.
23
The existence of genealogical constraints on political power was clearly not
unique to ancient China. In discussing the relationship between genealogy and
chieftaincy among the Trobriand islanders, for example, Hoebel notes that ‘The
entire clan and subclan system with its attendant differences in rank, land rights...
and chiefly prerogatives is based on supernatural postulates... specifically (involv-
ing) deceased ancestors’ (1954: 264). A similar observation concerning the stratifi-
cational function of ancestral cults has been made by John Middleton in his study of
primitive religion among the Lugbara of Uganda (Middleton 1960). Cf. also
Beattie (1964: 226).
24
The celebrated Han dynasty historian Sima Qian (b. 135 B.C.) reportedly had
at his disposal large numbers of such dynastic genealogies - in the form of hand-
carved ‘lineage tablets’ (pudie) – when he compiled his monumental Historical
Records of antiquity. Indeed, as late as the Ming-Qing period (1368–1911 A.D.)
local genealogies provided one of the richest and best-documented sources of microsocie-
tal data to be found in all of the Chinese historical record (Dardess 1983: 75–76).
25
For analysis of the relationship between genealogy and political stratification
in late Shang/early Zhou China, see Chang (1976), esp. chapters 3–5 and pp. 189–195.
26
Hence the term ‘old hundred surnames’ (lao bai xing), used since ancient
times to collectively designate the Chinese people. In its original late Shang/early
Zhou usage, the term referred exclusively to elite sublineages of the ruling family.
Later its meaning shifted to connote the masses of ordinary people.
27
Ho Ping-ti (1975: 301) notes that ‘rapid geographic expansion made it neces-
sary for Shang rulers to amplify existing institutional devices, or establish new
ones, by which to administer extrapatrimonial territories’.
28
Creel (1970: 345) asserts that if the dynastic rulers of the period had not
shared the fruits of military victory with their regionally-entrenched kinsmen, ‘they
might well have been unable to hold the conquered territories altogether’.
29
There remains considerable controversy over the nature, origins, timing and
extent of feudalism in late Shang/early Zhou China. For a representative sampling
of contending views, see, inter alia, Bodde (1956: 85ff); Creel (1970: 317ff);
Wheatley (1971: 118ff); and Eberhard (1977: 13ff).
30
Carl Stephenson (1942: 76) thus argues that ‘the feudal state...had be be
small’. By contrast, the Chinese state continued to grow ever larger during the
Western Zhou.
31
The best analytic account of the dynamics of interstate relations in the War-
ring States period is Walker (1953).
32
Because of the manifest politicization of genealogical scholarship in this pe-
riod, Eberhard and others are highly skeptical of the authenticity of all pre-
unification accounts of dynastic lineage in China.
33
Dawson thus notes: ‘The canonization of filial piety as the great Confucian
virtue provided a perfect psychological basis for the paternal authority of the Con-
fucian state and the ceremonial piety of the state religion’ (1958: 166).
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10
Conquest Warfare, Strategies of Resistance,
and the Rise of the Zapotec Early State*
Charles S. Spencer and Elsa M. Redmond

American Museum of Natural History, New York
Recent research in Oaxaca, Mexico has revealed that the early Monte Albán
state did not expand in a gradual, concentric fashion, but instead exhibited a
non-uniform, mosaic pattern of territorial growth. Certain small regions
outside the Valley of Oaxaca proper appear to have been subjugated by
Monte Albán before all areas within the Valley were incorporated into the
early state polity. In this paper we consider some of the strategies of re-
sistance that were pursued by certain polities that managed to withstand, for
a time, the expansionist actions of the early Monte Albán state. These re-
sistance strategies included the shifting of settlement to a more defensible
location, the construction of fortifications, greater nucleation of population,
and the development of a more hierarchical political organization. We then
suggest how such resistance by non-compliant, or rival, polities may have
helped to shape the developmental trajectory of the Monte Albán state itself.
INTRODUCTION
One of the first state-level polities to appear in Mesoamerica was the early
Zapotec state, whose capital was the site of Monte Albán in the Oaxaca
Valley (Blanton 1978; Marcus and Flannery 1996) (see Figures 1, 2). Alt-
hough Monte Albán was founded as a regional center at the beginning of
the Early Monte Albán I (Early MA I) phase (500–300 B.C.), it is the Late
Monte Albán I (Late MA I) phase (300–100 B.C.) for which we have the
earliest convincing evidence of state organization, including a regional set-
tlement hierarchy of four levels and the appearance of key institutional
building types, such as the palace and multiroom temple (Kowalewski et al.
Spencer and Redmond / Conquest Warfare, Strategies of Resistance, and the Rise of the
Zapotec Early State, pp. 220–261
Spencer and Redmond / Conquest Warfare, Strategies of Resistance… 221
1989: 125–138; Marcus and Flannery 1996: 162–164; Spencer and Red-
mond 2001a). By the Monte Albán II (MA II) phase (100 B.C.–A.D. 200),
Monte Albán was the capital of a fully-developed state (Flannery and Mar-
cus 1983a, 1990).
A number of scholars have argued that the Monte Albán polity was
highly militarized, an interpretation that finds support in a diverse and
growing body of data, from the many stone inscriptions at the capital that
depict mutilated captives and subjugated territories, to the empirical record
of conquest that archaeologists have recovered in places that were the tar-
gets of Monte Albán's policies of militaristic expansion (Caso 1947; Marcus
1976; Marcus and Flannery 1996; Balkansky 1997; Spencer and Redmond
1997, 2001b). At the same time, recent research suggests that the Monte
Albán state did not expand its domain in an incremental, concentric fashion,
but instead exhibited a non-uniform, strikingly mosaic pattern of territorial
growth. Certain small regions outside the Oaxaca Valley were evidently
subjugated by Monte Albán before all areas within the Valley were incor-
porated into the state polity (Marcus 1992a; Spencer 1982: 256; Spencer
and Redmond 2001a, 2001b). In this paper we consider the strategies of
resistance that were pursued by one of these polities, the one focused on
San Martín Tilcajete, which managed to withstand, for a considerable time,
Monte Albán's militaristic actions. Because we agree with Brown (1996)
that the concept of ‘resistance’ has been used too widely (and too loosely)
in recent anthropology, we endeavor to show that its applicability in the
Oaxaca case is both appropriate and non-trivial. We conclude the paper by
suggesting that such resistance had consequences that went far beyond mere
reaction to Monte Albán's expansionistic designs; the resistance in this case
was also a dynamic force that helped shaped the developmental trajectory
of the Monte Albán state itself.
MONTE ALBÁN: A MILITARIZED POLITY

Few contemporary Oaxaca scholars would deny that violence and warfare
are major themes on the roughly 350 inscribed stones at Monte Albán that
date to Monte Albán I (MA I) and MA II. The famous danzantes inscrip-
tions comprise approximately 310 of these stones. Flannery and Marcus
(1983b) have argued that the danzantes stones were all originally set into
the east face of Building L, an Early MA I construction on the southwest
corner of Monte Albán's Main Plaza. Although the danzantes have been
variously interpreted as dancers, priests, swimmers, and medical anomalies,
the most widely accepted interpretation is that they represent slain and mu-
tilated captives. Some four decades ago, Coe (1962: 95) argued that: ‘The
distorted pose of the limbs, the open mouth and closed eyes indicate that
these are corpses, undoubtedly chiefs or kings slain by the earliest rulers of
Monte Albán’.
Marcus has concurred with Coe's interpretation, though she has suggest-
ed that not all the danzantes depict high-ranking people: ‘The majority of
the danzantes probably portray lesser villagemen taken in raids and skir-
mishes’ (Marcus 1976: 126–127). She has also drawn attention to the po-
tential propaganda value of the danzantes, attributing special significance to
the fact that they were probably all carved very early in Monte Albán's his-
tory.
It is noteworthy that the 310 or more danzantes which appear during
Monte Albán I constitute 80% of the total monument record from that
site. In other words, it was during the initial occupation of Monte Albán
that the effort devoted to carving monumental figures was the greatest.
This early effort probably coincides with the time when the rulers of
Monte Albán would have felt the greatest need to legitimize their power
and sanctify their position. Perhaps by creating a large gallery of prison-
ers, they were able to convince both their enemies and their own popula-
tion of their power, although it was not yet institutionalized or complete-
ly effective (Marcus 1974: 90).
Marcus's interpretation of the danzantes is consistent with an emerging
view of MA I political organization in the Oaxaca Valley that we have
termed the ‘Rival Polity Model’ (Spencer and Redmond 2001a). According
to this model, Monte Albán's political domain throughout MA I included
the Etla/Central subregion but not the Ocotlán/Zimatlán and Tlacolula sub-
regions (see also Feinman 1998: 128–129; Marcus and Flannery 1996:
163). The boundaries we have proposed for the three subregions are shown
in Figure 3 (Early MA I sites) and also in Figure 4 (Late MA I sites). Ar-
chaeological settlement pattern data from the three major subregions were
subjected to an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), which provided support
for the Rival Polity Model for both Early MA I and Late MA I political or-
ganization, and indicated that it was not until MA II that all three subre-
gions were unified under the control of Monte Albán (Spencer and Red-
mond 2001a). Excavation and survey at San Martín Tilcajete, the first-order
center of the Ocotlán/Zimatlán subregion (Figure 2), has revealed that the
inhabitants defended themselves successfully against attacks throughout
Early MA I and Late MA I, until they were finally vanquished at the begin-
ning of MA II (Spencer and Redmond 2001a).
Although the danzantes inscriptions of MA I are interpreted as depicting

captives taken in ‘raids and skirmishes’, the ‘conquest slab’ inscriptions on
Building J (dated to MA II) are thought to refer not to raiding but to a more
complex form of warfare: the taking and holding of territory (Marcus
1980). Marcus (1976: 128) notes that the roughly 40 conquest slabs were
first identified by Alfonso Caso (1947), who pointed out that they typically
include the following elements: (1) an upside-down human head; (2) above
the upside-down head, a ‘hill’ sign that signifies ‘place’; (3) a glyph or
combination of glyphs that probably represents the specific name of the
place, usually situated above the ‘hill’ glyph; and (4) sometimes an accom-
panying hieroglyphic text. Although Caso (1947) referred generally to
‘conquered places’, he did not attempt to identify any specific places that
might have been conquered. More recently, Marcus (1976, 1980) sought to
carry the analysis further by proposing several places to which the conquest
inscriptions might actually be referring. One of her proposed places is the
Cañada de Cuicatlán, a canyon traditionally inhabited by Cuicatec-speakers,
situated about 80 km north of Monte Albán (Figure 1). In making this read-
ing, she noted the close resemblance between the toponym on a particular
inscribed conquest slab and the glyph that refers to Cuicatlán as the ‘Place
of Song’ in the Codex Mendoza, a 16th-century Aztec document recording
places that were paying tribute to the Aztec (Marcus 1980: 59; 1992b:
396–400; Spencer and Redmond 1997: Figures 1.5, 1.6). She was careful to
point out, however, that ‘such a correlation between a 16th-century Aztec
codex and Zapotec glyphs of Period II implies some 1,500 years of place-
name continuity. Hence, my suggestion is no more than a hypothesis, sub-
ject to proof or disproof by future analysis’ (Marcus 1980: 56). Marcus
(1992b: 441) has proposed that the MA I danzantes and the MA II conquest
slabs, by themselves, indicate a shift in the predominant warfare strategy
pursued by Monte Albán, from a raiding pattern in the early part of MA I to
outright territorial conquest by MA II. Obviously, such a proposition should
be evaluated with reference to the archaeological record.
In 1977–1978, we carried out a program of archaeological survey and
excavations in the Cañada de Cuicatlán, a central goal of which was to test
Marcus's interpretation of the Building J conquest slabs (Spencer and Red-
mond 1997). We recovered substantial evidence that the Cañada was, in
fact, conquered by Monte Albán at the onset of the Lomas phase (300 B.C.)
and remained in a subordinate, probably tributary, relationship until the end
of that phase (A.D. 200), a time span that corresponds to the Late MA I and
MA II phases combined (Spencer and Redmond 2001b).
Prior to the Lomas phase, the Cañada was occupied by 12 Perdido phase
(750–300 B.C.) villages, all located on high alluvial terraces or low pied-
mont spurs directly overlooking pockets of fertile low alluvium (Redmond
1983: 62–63). The proximity to low alluvium, combined with the lack of
evidence of irrigation facilities associated with Perdido phase sites, suggest
that farmers at this time used simple techniques of diversionary dam and
floodwater farming, both of which have been practiced in parts of the low
alluvium in recent times.
At the beginning of the Lomas phase, a major settlement pattern disrup-
tion occurred in the Cañada; all the Perdido phase sites were abandoned and
new sites were founded nearby. In the Quiotepec area at the northern end of
the Cañada, the single small Perdido phase site was replaced by a 45-ha
complex of seven sites that sprawled across both sides of the natural pass
into the Cañada from Tehuacán to the north as well as occupying the strate-
gic mountain ridges. Heavily fortified, the Quiotepec sites were undoubted-
ly a military frontier installation, designed to control movement through the
northern frontier of the Cañada (Redmond 1983: 91–120). The Quiotepec
installation also marks the northern limit of Lomas phase pottery, some of
which is virtually identical to the pottery of the Late MA I and MA II phas-
es.
Our excavations at the site of Llano Perdido found that this Perdido
phase village was burned to the ground, and upon the floor of a residence
was the body of a woman who evidently perished when the community was
destroyed (Spencer 1982: 212–220). At the onset of the Lomas phase,
around 300 B.C., settlement in the locality was shifted to an adjacent ridge
(Loma de La Coyotera), where we excavated evidence of major changes in
local economic, social, and politico-religious organization that persisted
throughout the Lomas phase (Spencer 1982: 215–242). Economic activities
became more narrowly focused on agricultural production, which was
greatly intensified through the introduction of canal irrigation (Spencer
1982: 221–231). Residential patterns changed from the multifamily com-
pounds of the Perdido phase to a single-family form that was not only more
like the Zapotec pattern at that time but may also reflect a Zapotec policy of
rupturing the traditional Cañada kin ties (Spencer 1982: 231–234). The rich
ceremonial life of the Perdido phase disappeared in the Lomas phase, re-
placed by the fearsome presence of the Zapotec state, as attested by the
skull rack that we excavated in front of the main Lomas phase mound
(Spencer 1982: 234–242).
Radiocarbon samples recovered from Perdido and Lomas phase deposits
indicate that the Zapotec conquest of the Cañada began around 300 B.C.
(Spencer and Redmond 2001b). This date corresponds to the onset of Late
MA I in the Oaxaca Valley, an alignment that takes on considerable signifi-
cance in view of the fact that Late MA I is also when we observe the earli-
est convincing evidence of state formation in the Oaxaca Valley. For exam-
ple, Late MA I is the phase that exhibits the first unequivocal signs of a
four-level settlement hierarchy in the Oaxaca Valley (Marcus and Flannery
1996: 162–164). Such four-level settlement hierarchies are generally asso-
ciated with state systems (Wright 1977, 1986). Also, the earliest known
examples of a royal palace and specialized multiroom temple in the Oaxaca
Valley have been dated to Late MA I (Spencer 1999; Spencer and Redmond
2001a). Along with other specialized public buildings, such palaces and
temples are known to represent key institutions of the Zapotec state (Flan-
nery and Marcus 1976).
We have argued elsewhere that the data from the Cañada and the Oaxa-
ca Valley support the view that territorial expansion played an important
role very early in the process of Zapotec primary state formation (Spencer
and Redmond 2001b). We contend that the successful pursuit of territorial
conquest would have both demanded and permitted an increase in the inter-
nal complexity of administration at Monte Albán. The implementation of
militaristic, tributary, and other administrative actions at a distance of 80
km from the Zapotec capital would have called for the dispatching of spe-
cialized components of administration to manage the mobilization and
transfer of tribute, as well as to ensure the continued control of the subju-
gated territories. A more elaborate control hierarchy would have had to de-
velop to coordinate the activities of the specialized, far-flung administra-
tors. At the same time, the success of the conquest strategy would have
made new resources available to defray the costs of the administrative
transformation. In short, while the state made conquests, conquests made
the state.
The discovery that Monte Albán conquered the Cañada at the onset of
Late MA I is also significant in view of the aforementioned Rival Polity
Model of political organization in the Oaxaca Valley during Early and Late
MA I (Spencer and Redmond 2001a). If we acknowledge that Monte Albán
had conquered the Cañada de Cuicatlán by the onset of Late MA I, and yet
did not incorporate the much nearer Ocotlán/Zimatlán and Tlacolula subre-
gions (within the Oaxaca Valley) into its domain until MA II, then we are
faced with a salient question: how were the polities in Ocotlán/Zimatlán
and Tlacolula able to resist domination by Monte Albán throughout Late
MA I? Recent research at San Martín Tilcajete, the first-order center of the
Ocotlán/Zimatlán subregion, has yielded information on the changing strat-
egies of resistance pursued by that subregional polity over the course of
Early and Late MA I.
SAN MARTÍN TILCAJETE:

STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE
Between 1993 and 2000 the authors conducted 8 seasons of excavation and
survey at San Martín Tilcajete, in the Ocotlán-Zimatlán subregion of the
Oaxaca Valley (Figure 2). Our fieldwork has focused on three different, but
closely related, archaeological sites: El Mogote (SMT–11a), El Palenque
(SMT–11b), and Los Mogotes (SMT–23) (Figure 5). The sites were located
in 1978 by the Oaxaca Settlement Pattern Project (Blanton et al. 1982).
During 1993–1994, members of our Tilcajete Project conducted mapping
and controlled, intensive surface collecting at all three sites. At El Mogote
(SMT–11a) and El Palenque (SMT–11b), we used a plane table and alidade
to produce maps at 1:1000 scale and with a contour interval of 1 m. Our
surface collections usually consisted of 10 m by 10 m units, within which
we collected all the artifacts by hand. Schematic renderings of the site maps
with the surface collections and major architectural features are shown in
Figures 6 and 7. Between 1995 and 2000, we conducted three excavation
seasons at El Mogote and four excavation seasons at El Palenque. At Los
Mogotes (SMT–23), three seasons of excavation (1999–2001) have been
directed by Christina Elson (Elson 1999; Elson and Marcus 2000). The
analysis phase of our research at San Martín Tilcajete is still in progress,
but we can offer some preliminary results that are germane to the present
discussion.
ROSARIO PHASE (700–500 B.C.)
During the Rosario phase, Monte Albán had not yet been founded and
researchers generally agree that the entire Oaxaca Valley was not politically
unified; it appears that three independent chiefly polities existed in the Val-
ley, one situated in each of the three major subregions of the Valley: Etla,
Tlacolula, and Ocotlán/Zimatlán (Blanton et al. 1993: 66–69; Marcus and
Flannery 1996: 123–126; Spencer and Redmond 2001a). Marcus and Flan-
nery (1996: 123–124) have argued that the relationships among these poli-
ties were often hostile. The relatively uninhabited central zone of the Val-
ley, they have suggested, was a ‘no-man's-land’ or buffer zone between
these warring chiefdoms (Marcus and Flannery 1996: 124). Regional sur-
vey data show that Rosario phase village sites tend to have relatively high
frequencies of burnt clay daub, probably resulting from the burning of wat-
tle-and-daub structures during raids (Kowalewski et al. 1989: 70). Excava-
tion data pointing to warfare include a burned wattle-and-daub temple on

Structure 28 at San José Mogote and Monument 3 at the same site, the carv-
ing on which depicts a sacrificed captive (Marcus and Flannery 1996: 128–
129).
At the El Mogote site (SMT–11a) in the San Martín Tilcajete locality,
our surface collections enabled us to define a 25-ha occupation dating to the
Rosario phase, which represents a 285% increase over an earlier 6.5-ha Ear-
ly Formative occupation, evidenced largely by ceramics of the San José
phase (1150–850 B.C.) (Marcus and Flannery 1996: Table 3). Our survey
results mean that El Mogote was larger than any other Rosario phase site in
the Ocotlán/Zimatlán subregion (Kowalewski 1989: 69–83), which supports
the widely-held view that Tilcajete served as the political center for the sub-
region at that time (Blanton et al. 1999: 42; Kowalewski et al. 1989: 80;
Marcus and Flannery 1996: 126). However, it is notable that El Mogote in
Rosario times was not quite half the size of San José Mogote, which cov-
ered 60–65 ha and had an estimated population of 1,000 (Marcus and Flan-
nery 1996: 125). Marcus and Flannery (1996: 125–126) have suggested that
the total Rosario phase population of the Etla subregion was about 2,000,
while the Tlacolula and Ocotlán/Zimatlán subregions each had about half
that number. In spite of this size difference, we have recovered no evidence
of abandonment, violence, or burning at El Mogote that could indicate a
major defeat by the San José Mogote chiefdom during Rosario phase. To
the contrary, not only is there occupational continuity at El Mogote but
there is also, as we shall see, substantial growth and development from the
Rosario phase through Early MA I. We suggest that the defensive capabili-
ties of El Mogote were enhanced by the increasing nucleation of population
in the Rosario phase. In addition, the El Mogote polity may have engaged
in hostile actions against the Etla subregion polity, as evidenced by the un-
occupied buffer zone in the Valley center, and the evidence of raiding at
San José Mogote itself.
EARLY MONTE ALBÁN I PHASE (500–300 B.C.)
Marcus and Flannery (1996: 139–140) have proposed that the founders
of Monte Albán came from San José Mogote and other Etla subregion
towns and villages, because most of the sites that were abandoned at the
end of the Rosario phase are in the central and southern Etla areas. In their
excavations at San José Mogote, Marcus and Flannery found evidence of
Rosario phase public buildings and some 60 hectares of Rosario phase oc-
cupation representing both elite and nonelite inhabitants; however, there is
very little evidence of Early Monte Albán I architecture here, and no evi-
dence at all of Late Monte Albán I construction (Flannery and Marcus
1990).
We have previously argued, in line with the Rival Polity Model, that
Monte Albán served during Early MA I as the first-order center for a chief-
ly (i.e., a centralized, but non-state) polity that occupied the Etla/Central
subregion (Spencer and Redmond 2001a) (see Figure 3). What lines of evi-
dence support our suggestion that the Early MA I polity was a chiefdom
and not a state? Unfortunately, the public architecture evidence at Monte
Albán itself ‘is so fragmentary as to be ambiguous’ (Flannery and Marcus
1983a: 80). While pottery and other artifacts of MA I have been found in
abundance, the buildings from that period are largely covered (or obliterat-
ed) by later constructions (Marcus and Flannery 1996: 165). Flannery and
Marcus (1983b: 87–91) have identified only three buildings on the Monte
Albán's Main Plaza that may date to Early MA I.
In fact, it is not until MA II that we have solid evidence at Monte Albán
itself of ‘a whole series of clearly recognizable and functionally distinct
public buildings’ (Flannery and Marcus 1976: 221), including the multi-
room temple, the royal palace, the ballcourt, buildings with a special mili-
tary purpose, and others. Flannery and Marcus (1976: 221) point out that
‘the activities carried on in these buildings must have been very different,
presumably reflecting different sociopolitical institutions and different sets
of personnel’. Such institutional diversity is a hallmark of the state as de-
fined by Wright (1977: 383):
a cultural development with a centralized decision-making process
which is both externally specialized with regard to the local processes
which it regulates, and internally specialized in that the central process is
divisible into separate activities which can be performed at different
places at different times.
By contrast, a chiefdom is a cultural development with an administrative
organization that is externally specialized (or centralized) but at the same
time is not internally specialized (Wright 1977: 381).
Another manifestation of state organization is a four-level site-size hier-
archy (Wright 1977, 1986). Drawing upon the regional survey data present-
ed in Kowalewski et al. (1989), we have constructed a histogram and a fre-
quency polygon of Early MA I site size in the Etla/Central subregion, the
area that was probably part of the Monte Albán polity at this time (see end-
note 1 for an explanation of our methodology). Two modes are clearly visi-
ble in each of these Early MA I graphs (Figure 8). By contrast, the histo-
gram and frequency polygon for the Etla/Central subregion in Late MA I
(Figure 9) show four modes; this pattern suggests a four-level site-size hier-
archy, which would be consistent with the existence of a state form of or-
ganization during that phase.
Meanwhile, at the El Mogote site (SMT–11a), our intensive surface col-
lections have found evidence of a 52.8-ha settlement for Early MA I, repre-
senting more than a doubling of the occupation area over the Rosario phase.
The excavations we carried out at Mound A, Mound K, and elsewhere in
the plaza area of El Mogote revealed that the plaza was most likely laid out
at the beginning of Early MA I; it appears that the entirety of this 2.2-ha
plaza was in use throughout that phase. Oriented 17 degrees east of magnet-
ic north (or 25 degrees east of true north), the plaza contained two mounds
in its center and other mounds arranged around all four sides (Figure 6). In
view of the substantial occupation and large plaza, it seems clear that El
Mogote continued to be the first-order center of the Ocotlán/Zimatlán sub-
region throughout Early MA I (Marcus and Flannery 1996: 163; Spencer
and Redmond 2001a). The increase in population nucleation at El Mogote
between Rosario phase and Early MA I undoubtedly contributed to the Til-
cajete polity's ability to withstand any raids emanating from Monte Albán.
And, a substantial degree of centralization of authority is certainly implied
by the construction of the 2.2-ha plaza, which was fully one-third the size
of the Main Plaza at Monte Albán itself during MA II and later periods. In
agreement with the Rival Polity Model (Spencer and Redmond 2001a) is
our observation that neither the orientation nor the configuration of the Ear-
ly Monte Albán I mounds at El Mogote is similar to what is known of Mon-
te Albán's Main Plaza at this time (Flannery and Marcus 1983b), a differ-
ence in architectural style and site layout that probably underscored the po-
litical distance between El Mogote and Monte Albán. On the level of sub-
regional settlement patterns, both the histogram and frequency polygon of
Early MA I site size in the Ocotlán/Zimatlán subregion show three clear
modes, a pattern consistent with a chiefly – but not a state – form of politi-
cal organization (Figure 10).
Given the large Early MA I occupation at the El Mogote site and its siz-
able plaza, it is notable that we found relatively few examples of the most
elaborate Early MA I ceramics known for Monte Albán itself (Caso et al.
1967; Kowalewski et al. 1978), a paucity that was also reported by Blanton
et al. (1982: 57). In particular, we found relatively few of the common Ear-
ly Monte Albán I cremas, such as Types C. 2 and C. 4, which Feinman
(1982: 188–191) concluded were produced close to Monte Albán itself (in
contrast to café and gris wares, which were produced throughout much of
the Valley). Most of the Early MA I ceramic assemblage at Tilcajete ap-
pears to consist of locally-made wares, generically similar but not identical
to contemporaneous ceramics at Monte Albán. These ceramic differences,
we suggest, are consistent with the proposition that the Tilcajete polity
maintained a definite social, political, and economic distance and autonomy
from Monte Albán throughout Early MA I.
There is much excavated evidence that the El Mogote plaza area was
abandoned in a conflagration at the interface between Early MA I and Late
MA I. Throughout our excavations on the northern and eastern sides of the
plaza we observed that the uppermost floors of the plaza and adjacent build-
ings were littered with charcoal as well as burned earth, adobe, and stone.
Within this layer of charcoal and burned stone we found a few sherds of
Type G. 12, a grayware bowl with combed designs on the interior of its
base. The occurrence of Type G. 12 (combed bottom) in the-se contexts of
abandonment is chronologically significant. Caso et al. (1967: 25–26) re-
ported that they first found G. 12 sherds in their Monte Albán Ib deposits,
although they were much more frequent in Monte Albán Ic. Marcus and
Flannery (1996: 144) suggest that Monte Albán Ia and Monte Albán Ic
should be considered discrete phases (corresponding to our Early Monte
Albán I and Late Monte Albán I phases, respectively), with Monte Albán Ib
‘serving as the transition between them’. The first appearance of Type G.
12 (combed bottom), therefore, probably dates to what we would call the
Early MA I/Late MA I interface. Lending support to the proposition that the
El Mogote plaza area was burned at the end of Early MA I is a radiocarbon
sample (Beta–147541) taken from a charcoal-laden, burned deposit on the
ancient plaza surface at the southeastern base of Mound A. This sample
yielded a conventional radiocarbon age of 2280 40 BP (conventional ra-
diocarbon date of 330 B.C. 40), which falls near the end of Early MA I.
In Table 1, we have summarized the strategies that we suggest the Til-
cajete polity pursued in order to resist the aggressive actions of Monte
Albán during Early MA I. These strategies of resistance include: population
growth and nucleation, a more centralized community organization with a
sizable public plaza, a three-level settlement-size hierarchy in the
Ocotlán/Zimatlán subregion, and restricted interaction with Monte Albán as
shown in low frequency of ‘fancy’ Early MA I ceramics. We suggest that
these strategies helped Tilcajete resist Monte Albán's aggressions through-
out Early MA I, including the major attack that came at the interface be-
tween Early MA I and Late MA I.
LATE MONTE ALBÁN I PHASE (300–100 B.C.)

During the succeeding Late Monte Albán I phase, the El Mogote plaza
does not appear to have been in use. A new plaza was built at El Palenque
(SMT–11b), which lies across a barranca and about 800 m west and
upslope from the El Mogote site (Figure 7). The absolute vertical difference
between the two plazas is 30 m. Our intensive collections and excavations
here have produced primary deposits of ceramics as well as several radio-
carbon samples. Taken together, the ceramic and radiocarbon data indicate
that El Palenque was first inhabited at the onset of Late MA I and was
abandoned by the very early years of MA II.
The Late MA I plaza at El Palenque has precisely the same orientation,
and is strikingly similar in configuration to, the Early MA I plaza at El
Mogote (Figures 6 and 7). Like the earlier plaza, the El Palenque plaza is
oriented 17 degrees east of magnetic north and has two mounds in the mid-
dle and other mounds around all four sides. We suggest that the slightly
smaller area of the El Palenque plaza (1.6 ha vs. 2.2 ha at El Mogote) is
best understood as a practical response to the challenge of building on a
narrower piedmont ridge in the higher location.
We contend that the architectural continuity from El Mogote to El Pa-
lenque reflects the persistence of a local tradition of plaza construction from
Early MA I to Late MA I. It is likely that the El Mogote plaza was aban-
doned after being attacked and burned in a raid, at which point a decision
was made to rebuild the plaza in a higher, more defensible location. Nota-
bly, the El Palenque site is protected by stone walls that traverse the site
along its gradual southern flank (Figure 7). An excavated cross-section of
one of these walls has confirmed that it dates to Late MA I. The continua-
tion of the traditional plaza layout in a new, more defensible location prob-
ably indicates that the inhabitants of Tilcajete withstood the raid, although
they apparently considered it serious enough to justify moving the ceremo-
nial plaza of their center to the new uphill location. The fortifications plus
the more defensible location made a critical contribution to the Tilcajete
polity's ability to resist Monte Albán (Table 1).
The human occupation at Tilcajete appears to have grown substantially
between Early MA I and Late MA I. Although the El Mogote plaza was
apparently no longer in use in Late MA I, we found evidence of Late MA I
residential occupation over 43.5 ha of the El Mogote site. Because we also
recorded 28 hectares of Late MA I occupation at the El Palenque site, the
total habitation area at San Martín Tilcajete during Late MA I would add up
to 71.5 ha, a 35.4 % increase over the Early MA I occupation area. Thus,
the occupation of Tilcajete, the center of the Ocotlán/Zimatlán subregion,
grew from 25 ha in the Rosario phase, to 52.8 ha in Early MA I, and then to
71.5 ha in Late MA I, a process of progressive demographic increase and
nucleation that surely enhanced the subregional center's defensive capabili-
ties (Table 1).
The Late MA I occupation centered at El Palenque continued to show
signs of independence from Monte Albán. Although G.12 (combed bottom)
bowls and other Late MA I diagnostic types on gris paste are common at El
Palenque, our excavations there have found only trace amounts of the thin-
walled, well-burnished cremas (such as Types C.6, C.7, and C.20) that
begin during Late MA I at Monte Albán itself (Caso et al. 1967: 46–47). In
view of the aforementioned likelihood that this crema ware was produced
only in the vicinity of Monte Albán (in contrast to the gris ware), the lack
of Late MA I cremas at Tilcajete probably means that ceramic exchanges
between Monte Albán and the Etla/Central subregion, on the one hand, and
Tilcajete and the Ocotlán/Zimatlán subregion, on the other, were substan-
tially restricted at this time. Consistent with this interpretation of limited
exchange between these subregions is the fact that we have recovered much
locally-available chert but remarkably little obsidian in our El Palenque
excavations, in spite of the fact that we have excavated extensively in cer-
emonial contexts as well as in elite and non-elite residential contexts. Be-
cause the center of Monte Albán lay between Tilcajete and the important
obsidian sources of Central Mexico, we suspect that Monte Albán's leader-
ship was preventing the flow of imported obsidian from reaching El Palen-
que. We suggest that the barriers that prevented Late MA I cremas and ob-
sidian from reaching El Palenque were primarily political in nature.
Our excavations at El Palenque have recovered evidence indicating that
hostilities were even more intense in Late MA I phase than in Early MA I.
Although El Palenque was in a defensible location and fortified with stone
walls, the site appears to have been the target of an attack that resulted in a
major conflagration and the complete abandonment of the community. In
our excavation Area I – on the north side of El Palenque's plaza – we exca-
vated a palatial residence (Structure 7) that was completely burned upon
abandonment. Carbonized roof beams rested where they had fallen in
rooms and corridors. Whole vessels lay upon floors, smashed by fallen de-
bris. Moreover, in contrast to the partial site abandonment (mainly of the
plaza area) that occurred at El Mogote at the end of Early MA I, when the
El Palenque plaza was burned and abandoned, the entire Late MA I residen-
tial zone was abandoned as well. The abandonment of the residential zone
is documented not only by our surface collections, but also by our excava-
tions of a residential structure in Area P, located 50 m west of the south-

western corner of the El Palenque plaza (Figure 7). During MA II, occupa-
tion in the Tilcajete area had shifted to the hilltop site of Los Mogotes
(SMT–23). Christina Elson is conducting excavations that are designed, in
part, to assess the hypothesis that Los Mogotes functioned as a secondary
center of the Monte Albán state during MA II (Elson 1999; Elson and Mar-
cus 2000).
We have proposed that by Late MA I the political organization centered
at Monte Albán was beginning to engage in the kinds of regulatory inter-
ventions on the local level in the Etla/Central subregion, and perhaps else-
where, that required the delegation of authority to specialized administra-
tors (Spencer and Redmond 2001a). Such delegation of authority is compat-
ible with an administration that is both centralized and also internally spe-
cialized, i.e., one organized along the lines of a state (Spencer 1990, 1998,
2000; Wright 1977). In line with this proposition, we should expect to find
evidence of key Zapotec state institutions appearing by Late MA I. Flan-
nery and Marcus have argued that among the most important of these insti-
tutions were the palace and the multiroom temple (Flannery 1983, 1998;
Flannery and Marcus 1976, 1990; Marcus and Flannery 1996: 180–182).
Although we would expect these new institutions to be most evident at the
Monte Albán site itself, construction activities dating to MA II and the
Classic Period (Monte Albán III) have made it impossible to determine
whether the palace or the multiroom temple existed at Monte Albán during
Late MA I (Flannery and Marcus 1990: 60; Marcus and Flannery 1996:
165). We can, however, examine the Late MA I occupation at Tilcajete, the
first-order center of what we believe to be an autonomous, rival polity. If
the polity centered at Monte Albán was, in fact, beginning to develop state
institutions by Late MA I phase, the leaders of a rival polity such as Til-
cajete might well have responded to Monte Albán's institutional develop-
ment by developing their own state institutions, in order to help them resist
Monte Albán's aggressions more effectively.
This line of reasoning would lead us to expect evidence of at least some
state institutions in the Late MA I occupation at Tilcajete. In this light, let
us consider Structure 7, the aforementioned palatial residence in Area I
(Mound I), on the north side of the El Palenque plaza (Figure 7). Its stone
foundations measured 16 m by 16 m and comprised eight rooms arranged
around an interior patio; on the western side of the patio was a two-
chambered hearth. The stone foundations of the structure originally sup-
ported walls made of adobe bricks, some of which were preserved by the
fire that coincided with the site's abandonment. Structure 7 is actually part
of a larger construction, the Area I palace complex, which comprised nine
structures and associated features, including two paved courtyard areas
(Figure 11). Using the associated ceramics as well as a series of associated
radiocarbon dates, Structure 7 and the entire Area I palace complex can be
firmly dated to Late MA I, possibly persisting into the early years of MA II.
The earliest radiocarbon date came from a chunk of charcoal that was found
in mud mortar between the second and the third courses of foundation
stones on the east wall of Room 3 of Structure 7. While the radiocarbon
analysis obviously dates the death of the tree or bush from which the sam-
ple derived, we think it is likely that the charcoal resulted from the clearing
activities (including brush burning) on the previously unoccupied hillslope
that must have just preceded the construction of Structure 7. The chunk of
charcoal in question was presumably added to the mud mortar during the
building process. This sample (Beta–147540) yielded a conventional radio-
carbon age of 2300 80 BP (conventional radiocarbon date of 350 B.C.
80). We would therefore propose that Structure 7 was built at approximate-
ly the interface of Early MA I and Late MA I, an interpretation that is con-
sistent with our observation of abundant Late MA I diagnostic ceramics
(but not those of Early MA I) at El Palenque.
In addition to the sample that probably dates the initial construction of
Structure 7, we recovered several more samples of charcoal from Structure
7 that date to later points in its occupation, three of which have been sub-
mitted for radiocarbon analysis. Beta–143354 was a piece of charcoal lying
on the floor of Room 6 of Structure 7; it yielded a conventional radiocarbon
age of 2110 60 BP (conventional radiocarbon date of 160 B.C. 60). Be-
ta-143351 was a chunk of charcoal on the corridor surface between Struc-
ture 7 and Structure 8; it produced a conventional radiocarbon age of 2080
60 BP (conventional radiocarbon date of 130 B.C. 60). Beta–143355
was a piece of charcoal in the patio of Structure 7; it yielded a conventional
radiocarbon age of 1970 60 BP (conventional radiocarbon date of 20 B.C.
60). This latest radiocarbon sample was charcoal from a large deposit of
charcoal, ash, and burned adobes and earth in the patio of Structure 7; this
deposit is similar to several other areas of charcoal and burned earth and
adobe in the Area I palace. The abundant evidence of burning is evidence of
a major conflagration that accompanied the abandonment of the Area I pal-
ace, which, according to the latest radiocarbon date, occurred in the first
century B.C. Although Structure 7 is very similar in size and complexity to
later Classic period Zapotec palaces at Monte Albán (Flannery 1983, 1998;
Marcus and Flannery 1996: 208–211), the associated Late MA I ceramics
and the series of radiocarbon dates with midpoints ranging from 350–20
B.C. make Structure 7 the earliest example of a palatial residence thus far
excavated in Oaxaca.
In Area G (Mound G) – on the eastern side of the El Palenque plaza –
we excavated Structure 16, which consisted of two large contiguous rooms
(one measuring 12.8 m by 2.35 m, and the other 9.8 m by 2.2 m), and two
smaller rooms (measuring 3.4 m by 2.2 m and 2.75 m by 2.2 m), one at ei-
ther end of the major rooms (Figure 12). All four rooms of Structure 16
(like those of Structure 7) had well-preserved stone foundations. Although
Structure 16 is somewhat similar to the multiroom temples that have been
excavated in MA II (and later) contexts at San José Mogote and Monte
Albán (Flannery and Marcus 1976; Marcus and Flannery 1996: 182), Struc-
ture 16 is associated with Late MA I ceramics. Thus far, we have run one
radiocarbon sample (Beta–143353) from Structure 16; it came from an ashy
deposit that was probably created when the structure was abandoned in the
conflagration that marked the end of occupation at the El Palenque site.
Beta–143353 yielded a conventional radiocarbon age of 1980 70 BP
(conventional radiocarbon date of 30 B.C. 70), almost identical to the
latest date from Structure 7. Thus, Structure 16 was undoubtedly in use dur-
ing the Late MA I occupation of El Palenque and, like the Area I palace
complex, was burned and abandoned in the first century B.C., in the very
early years of MA II. The associated ceramics and the radiocarbon date
show Structure 16 to be one of the oldest excavated examples of a multi-
room temple in the Oaxaca Valley.
Despite the overall similarity between the plaza layouts at El Palenque
and El Mogote, it is notable that only El Palenque contained examples of a
multiroom temple and a palace. At El Mogote, our excavations exposed a
three-room high-status residence at Mound A (Excavation Area A), on the
plaza's northern side, and a one-room temple structure at Mound K (Exca-
vation Area B), on the plaza's eastern side. Both structures date to Early
MA I, and neither corresponds to the architectural forms that have been
linked to the key institutions of the later Zapotec state (Flannery 1983,
1998; Flannery and Marcus 1976). The Tilcajete data therefore provide evi-
dence of the appearance of state institutions during the Late MA I phase,
but not earlier.
To sum up, our results indicate that the Tilcajete polity used various
strategies to withstand the expansionist actions of Monte Albán during Late
MA I (see Table 1). These strategies of resistance included a shifting of
settlement to a more defensible location, the construction of defensive
walls, and greater nucleation of population. Also, the Tilcajete polity shows
signs of becoming organizationally more complex during Late MA I; our
discoveries of a royal palace and multiroom temple at the Late MA I occu-
pation indicate that the Tilcajete polity was adopting state-level institutions
at this time. It is significant, we think, that these new institutional buildings
were incorporated into a plaza that continued to conform to the traditional
layout for the locality, which suggests that the Tilcajete polity adopted
state-level institutions and continued to maintain its political autonomy. We
also see evidence of a more hierarchical organization for the Tilcajete polity
as a whole in the settlement pattern data for the Ocotlán-Zimatlán subre-
gion. The histogram and frequency polygon of site sizes provide evidence
of a shift from a three-level settlement hierarchy in Early MA I (Figure 10)
to a four-level settlement hierarchy in Late MA I (Figure 13). We conclude
that the Tilcajete polity developed a state organization during Late MA I as
a way of reorganizing its resistance to the predatory actions of the Monte
Albán state.
Looking eastward to the Tlacolula subregion, we find it intriguing that
the settlement pattern data from that subregion also appear to show an in-
crease in hierarchical structure between Early MA I (Figure 14) and Late
MA I (Figure 15). We suggest that the Tlacolula subregion, and the Yegüih
site in particular, would be an ideal setting for further research on the topic
of resistance and early state development in Oaxaca.
Although Tilcajete is closer to Monte Albán than the Cañada de
Cuicatlán (Figures 1 and 2), the Cañada shows much evidence of having
been subjugated by Monte Albán by the onset of Late MA I, while Tilcajete
appears to have maintained its political autonomy until the early years of
MA II. We have suggested elsewhere that the Cañada was an easier target
for Monte Albán than the Tilcajete polity, primarily because the former
region was far less populous (Spencer and Redmond 2001a). We have re-
cently conducted a comparative analysis of imported crema ceramics in
Late MA I deposits from the Cañada and Tilcajete that reinforces our con-
tention that the two areas had different relationships with Monte Albán dur-
ing that phase. In Table 2 and Figure 16 we present data on the distribution
of various kinds of thin-walled cremas in Feature 14 at El Palenque (SMT–
11b), drawn from our Tilcajete project database, and Feature 4 at the Ca-
ñada site of La Coyotera (Cs 25), with data taken from Spencer and Red-
mond (1997: Table 9.4). The features are contemporaneous and functional-
ly similar in that they both represent midden deposits adjacent to domestic
structures. As Table 2 indicates, Feature 4 from La Coyotera has more ex-
amples of crema types (including C.2, C.5, C.6, C.7, and C.20) than does
Feature 14 at El Palenque (only C.2, C.5, and C.20 are present, and the
overall frequency of crema wares is much lower than at La Coyotera). This
contrast (see Figure 16) takes on particular significance in view of the fact
that La Coyotera is more than twice as distant from Monte Albán as El Pa-
lenque. Our data support the proposition that the Cañada was more tightly
linked (socially, politically, and/or economically) to Monte Albán during
Late MA I than was the Tilcajete polity.
CONCLUSION
Although the concept of ‘resistance’ has been used by a number of archae-
ologists and anthropologists, it is fair to say that these researchers have
tended to emphasize the reactive aspects of resistance, that is, the range of
responses made by target polities to the expansionist designs of aggressor
states (e.g., Gailey 1987; Gunawardana 1992; Morrison 2001; Patterson
1986, 1987; Skalník 1989). By contrast, we interpret the resistance shown
by the Tilcajete polity in Ocotlán/Zimatlán (and perhaps also by the Yegüih
polity in Tlacolula) not only as a reaction to Monte Albán's aggression, but
also as a dynamic force that had profound consequences for the evolution-
ary trajectory of the Monte Albán state itself. Faced with stiff resistance in
both Early MA I and Late MA I from such close-at-hand Oaxaca Valley
polities, Monte Albán (not surprisingly) looked toward other, less formida-
ble, regions as potential targets for its expansionist activities. Although fu-
ture field projects will be required to establish the full spatial extent and
timing of Monte Albán's conquest campaign, it seems reasonably certain
that the Cañada de Cuicatlán (Spencer and Redmond 1997) was one of
these target regions, and Balkansky's (1997, 1998) recent research indicates
that the Sola Valley, some 75 km southwest of Monte Albán, was another
region that fell under Monte Albán's control by Late MA I. These regions
both had relatively low populations at the onset of Late MA I and would
have been less capable of resisting an attacking force than the Tilcajete or
Yegüih polities. Nevertheless, the conversion of the Cañada and the Sola
Valley into tributary provinces would still have posed significant organiza-
tional challenges for Monte Albán. Most importantly, the Monte Albán
leadership would have had to carry out sustained military and administra-
tive actions at 75–80 km (minimally a two-day trip by foot) from the capi-
tal, which in turn would have required Monte Albán to develop internal
administrative specialization and the concomitant capacity to delegate au-
thority effectively (Spencer 1998, 2000); these features are highly diagnos-
tic of state societies (Wright 1977). Monte Albán clearly responded to the
challenge and developed a more complex political and military organization
– an administrative transformation that was undoubtedly financed, in part,
by tribute exacted from the conquered provinces. It is important to recog-
nize, moreover, that the Cañada and Sola were probably not the only re-
gions subjugated by Monte Albán in Late MA I; some 40 conquest inscrip-
tions are known to be associated with Structure J (built at Monte Albán in
MA II), although additional field research will be required to determine
which regions are being referred to by the inscriptions and just when they
fell under Monte Albán's control. For the present, it seems undeniable that
Monte Albán became a dramatically more powerful polity over the course
of Late MA I. Monte Albán then aimed its expansionist designs at the
Ocotlán-Zimatlán and Tlacolula subregions, which were finally incorpo-
rated into the Monte Albán state by the early years of MA II. Ironically, by
initially withstanding Monte Albán's advances, the Tilcajete and Yegüih
polities may well have contributed – however unwittingly – to the eventual
loss of their own political autonomy. Their stubborn resistance compelled
Monte Albán to go much farther afield in the pursuit of its military cam-
paigns. Significant changes in Monte Albán's administration were necessary
for these campaigns to be successful, and the result was the development of
a powerful, interregional conquest state during Late MA I.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The following organizations provided generous financial support for the
Tilcajete project: the National Science Foundation (SBR–9303129), the
Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., the Heinz
Family Foundation (Latin American Archaeology Program), the National
Geographic Society (Committee for Research and Exploration), the Univer-
sity of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, and the American Museum of
Natural History. Permission to conduct the Tilcajete fieldwork was granted
by the Consejo de Arqueología, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Histo-
ria (INAH); Dr. Mari Carmen Serra Puche and Ing. Joaquín García-Bárcena
served sequentially as president of the Consejo during the years of our Til-
cajete fieldwork. We are also grateful to Antrop. Eduardo López Calzada,
Director of the Centro INAH Oaxaca, for his support of our work. In the
field, we have been assisted by Christina Elson, Luca Casparis, Jason
Sherman, Christopher Glew, Laura Villamil, Andrew Balkansky, Michelle
López, Alan Covey, and Scott Hutson. Bridget Thomas prepared the illus-
trations.
NOTES
* First published in Social Evolution & History 2 (1), March 2003, pp. 25–70
under the title ‘Militarism, Resistance and Early State Development in Oaxaca,
Mexico’.
1
We followed the same procedure in generating all the site-size histograms and
frequency polygons in this paper. First, we recorded the data on site size (in hec-
tares) for Early MA I and Late MA I in Kowalewski et al. (1989: Appendix I). We
followed their guidelines for combining Late MA I sites (Kowalewski et al. 1989:
Appendix IV), and we also sorted the sites into three groups according to the three
subregions that we defined in Spencer and Redmond (2001a): Etla/Central, Tlacolu-
la, and Ocotlán/Zimatlán. We then corrected the Early MA I and Late MA I occupa-
tion areas of two sites, San Martín Tilcajete and San José Mogote, using the results
of intensive survey and excavation projects carried out by Spencer and Redmond
(2001a) and Marcus and Flannery (1996), respectively. We used SYSTAT 8.0
(SPSS 1998) to produce histograms and frequency polygons of the natural loga-
rithm of site size; the same logarithmic transformation was used in every case. We
also used the same number of bars (N=13) in all histograms and polygons to ensure
comparability of results.
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TABLE 1
A SUMMARY OF RESISTANCE STRATEGIES
AT SAN MARTÍN TILCAJETE
Early Monte Albán I phase:

1. Nucleation – population growth from Rosario-Early I at the El Mogote cen-
ter, from 25 to 52.8 ha.
2. More centralized organization – plaza construction, dates to the beginning of
Early MA I, but follows a design distinct from that at Monte Albán.
3. Three-level settlement hierarchy for Early MA I in the Ocotlán/Zimatlán sub-
region.
4. Tilcajete's independence reinforced by restricted interaction between Monte
Albán and El Mogote during Early MA I, as shown in the ceramics.
5. These strategies were successful throughout Early MA I, and helped Tilcajete
resist a major attack at the end of Early MA I.
Late Monte Albán I phase:

1. Even more nucleation – population growth at the El Palenque center from
52.8 ha to 71.5 ha.
2. Shift of plaza to a more defensible location.
3. Construction of fortifications.
4. Continuation of traditional plaza layout.
5. Development of state institutions – palace, multiroom temple – but built in
the context of the traditional plaza layout for the Tilcajete locality.
6. More hierarchical settlement pattern on the subregional level – a shift from
three to four levels. Although the population size of the subregional center was not
keeping pace with Monte Albán, the Ocotlán/Zimatlán subregion was matching the
Etla/Central subregion in terms of levels in the subregional settlement hierarchy.
7. Ceramic data from Tilcajete show less interaction between El Palenque and
Monte Albán during Late MA I than is seen in contemporary deposits at the more
distant site of La Coyotera in the Cañada de Cuicatlán.
TABLE 2
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FEATURE 4,
LA COYOTERA, AND FEATURE 14, EL PALENQUE
Feature # Proveniences Diagnostics C.2 C.5 C.6 C.7 C.20 All cremas Percent
F. 4 11 424 2 1 6 3 14 26 6.1
F. 14 13 649 1 1 0 0 3 5 0.8
Notes:
1. The total number of diagnostics provides an approximation of the overall
amount of midden debris contained in each sample.
2. The percentage of cremas is computed by dividing all cremas by the number
of diagnostics and then multiplying by 100.
3. Descriptions of the crema types can be found in La Cerámica de Monte
Albán by Caso, A., Bernal, I., and Acosta, J. (1967), Memorias of the Instituto
Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 13 (Mexico).
4. Radiocarbon dates for Feature 4, La Coyotera:
Beta–143349 (Level 9):
2-Sigma calibrated date of 390–40 B.C.
2-Sigma calibrated date of A.D. 10–250
2-Sigma calibrated date of 100 B.C.–A.D. 250
5. Radiocarbon date for Feature 14, El Palenque:
2-Sigma calibrated date of 420–170 B.C.
6. Feature 4, La Coyotera data from: Spencer and Redmond (1997: Table 9.4).
FIGURES
Figure 1. The Oaxaca Valley, its subregions, and surrounding regions.

Figure 2. The Valley of Oaxaca, showing key archaeological sites (inset
adapted from Flannery 1986: Fig. 3.1).
Figure 3. Early Monte Albán I (500–300 B.C.) sites in the Oaxaca Valley,
showing boundaries of proposed subregions (redrawn from Blanton et al. 1993: Fig. 3.9).
Figure 4. Late Monte Albán I (300–100 B.C.) sites in the Oaxaca Valley, show-
ing boundaries of proposed subregions (redrawn from Blanton et al. 1993: Fig. 3.12).
Figure 5. The archaeological sites of El Mogote (SMT–11a), El Palenque
(SMT–11b), and Los Mogotes (SMT–23), situated about 2 km north of the modern
town of San Martín Tilcajete, Ocotlán, Oaxaca.
Figure 6. El Mogote (SMT–11a), showing the plaza, the major mounds, and the
shaded surface collection units (schematic map, based on a detailed alidade and
plane table map made by the authors in 1993).
Figure 7. El Palenque (SMT–11b), showing the plaza, the major mounds, the
stone walls, and the shaded surface collection units (schematic map, based on a
detailed alidade and plane table map made by the authors in 1994).
Figure 8. Histogram (a) and frequency polygon (b) of Early MA I site size in
the Etla/Central subregion (LOGSIZE is the natural logarithm of site size in hec-
tares); original data from Kowalewski et al. (1989: Appendix I).
Figure 9. Histogram (a) and frequency polygon (b) of Late MA I site size in the
Etla/Central subregion (LOGSIZE is the natural logarithm of site size in hectares);
original data from Kowalewski et al. (1989: Appendix I).
the Ocotlán/Zimatlán subregion (LOGSIZE is the natural logarithm of site size in
hectares); original data from Kowalewski et al. (1989: Appendix I).
Figure 11. Schematic drawing of the Area I palace complex, El Palenque
(SMT–11b), which dates to the Late Monte Albán I phase.
Figure 12. Schematic drawing of Structure 16, Area G, El Palenque (SMT–
11b), a multiroom temple which dates to the Late Monte Albán I phase.
Figure 13. Histogram (a) and frequency polygon (b) of Late MA I site size in
the Ocotlán/Zimatlán subregion (LOGSIZE is the natural logarithm of site size in
hectares); original data from Kowalewski et al. (1989: Appendix I).
the Tlacolula subregion (LOGSIZE is the natural logarithm of site size in hectares);
Figure 15. Histogram (a) and frequency polygon (b) of Late MA I site size in
the Tlacolula subregion (LOGSIZE is the natural logarithm of site size in hectares);
Figure 16. Bar graph comparing the relative frequency of crema wares in two
Late MA I midden deposits: Feature 4 at Loma de La Coyotera (Cs25) in the Ca-
ñada de Cuicatlán (Spencer and Redmond 1997: Table 9.4); and Feature 14 at the
El Palenque site (SMT–11b), at San Martín Tilcajete in the Valley of Oaxaca (un-
published data, Tilcajete Project archives). Percentages were computed by dividing
the total number of crema sherds by the total number of diagnostic sherds and mul-
tiplying by 100.
Figure 1
Figure 2
VALLEY OF OAXACA SETTLEMENTS

IN EARLY MONTE ALBÁN I
Figure 3
VALLEY OF OAXACA SETTLEMENTS

IN LATE MONTE ALBÁN I
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Early Monte Albán I Phase

Etla/Central Subregion
Figure 8
Late Monte Albán I Phase

Etla/Central Subregion
Figure 9

Ocotlán/Zimatlán Subregion
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12

Ocotlán/Zimatlán Subregion
Figure 13

Tlacolula Subregion
Figure 14

Tlacolula Subregion
Figure 15
Figure 16
11
The Pristine Myth
of the Pristine State in America*
Richard P. Schaedel and David G. Robinson

University of Texas, Austin
PROLEGOMENON
We should like to: (1) formulate a few general concepts on the theory of
societal evolution and critiques thereof; (2) refer to illustrative case histo-
ries of the New World, (Mesoamerica, the Andes, Southwestern USA) from
c. 2,000 B.C. to the A.D. 16th century, including the many discrepancies in
interpretation of the data; and (3) make generalizations resulting from a
comparison of the various case histories of proto early states and the rele-
vance of these findings to the origin of complex societies in the Old World
and their relationship to universal themes and variation of hierarchization
and inequality in societies that crossed the threshold of sedentarism and
food production between 3,000 and 10,000 years ago.
As the earliest (presumably autarchic) sedentaristic communities aggre-
gated over time, the basic functions that linked the constituent communities
were first discharged in spatially disparate settlements. A ‘primate’ settle-
ment might perform one of three basic functions more effectively (ceremo-
nial – because it had within its territory a site with a spectacular configura-
tion suggesting cosmic force; economic – because it is adjacent to scarce
raw material sources; or political – because of a strategic defensive posi-
tion). In most cases of earliest sedentarism, such ‘primacy’ is purely conjec-
tural as the supra-community linkage systems can only be hypothesized
from minute evidence indicating sporadic cultural exchange over macro-
time.
Thus the earliest sedentaristic microsocieties were linked to one another
in a sporadic interaction network but not unified. The appearance of multi-
community ‘hegemonies’ (e.g., Real Alto in the Chavin and Olmec regions)
Schaedel and Robinson / The Pristine Myth of the Pristine State in America,
pp. 262–277
Schaedel and Robinson / The Pristine Myth of the Pristine State in America 263
in the second millennium B.C. was probably created through voluntary
participation in a shared belief system elaborated over time by priest groups
in the several shrine communities, which had to be supported by outlying
communities' contribution of goods and services to a cult center, which re-
distributed the surplus product in the form of performance and relics. Ex-
cept for ‘encapsulated shrine villages’ (e.g., Real Alto in another less well-
documented interaction sphere covering the Ecuadorean-West Colombian
tropical littoral), all shrine settlements lack evidence of an immediate sup-
porting population of sufficient magnitude to have built the shrine, and the
shrine is usually quite modest.
In Southwestern North America, the three major cultural groups, Ana-
sazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon reflect a pattern of fluctuating ‘peaks’ of
centrality and population maxima. Central villages grew around the archi-
tecture of the great kiva religious and ceremonial complex, even in its most
monumental stages, as at Chaco Canyon and Casas Grandes. These centers
achieved regional integration, coordinating microsocieties on a large scale
(Cordell 1984; Robinson 1992).
The only ‘organizing’ principle (bonding the communities) that can be
extrapolated would be the one of regulating scheduling and seasonality of
resource management, which in addition to the ritual performance service
was the other main service that the cult center elite should have rendered its
constituents, and would provide the quid for the quo of voluntary man-
power contribution between the participant communities and the shrine
community that emerges as center. Participants in the belief system pre-
sumably benefited from the knowledge on the best time to plant, collect and
harvest, and how to avoid or compensate for calamities, but most of all on
how to guarantee the the annual climatic cycle would repeat itself (essen-
tially developed by a system of mutually agreed upon constraints known as
‘tabus’ and in industrial societies as ‘insurance’).
Only with the gradual filling up of niches by demographic growth
(known as the carrying capacity argument or circumscription) did the mi-
crosociety experience a need for ‘integration’ or supplanting linking by
binding. When this ‘relative circumscription’ was perceived – the ‘need’ for
a new organizing principle, the defense of the territoriality through coordi-
nation, became manifest and took priority over concern for renewability of
resources. Control (instead of regulation) assumes top priority and centrali-
zation becomes a meaningful dynamic in explaining societal complexity as
carrying capacity is perceived as reaching its limit. Reformulating this
change in R. N. Adams (1981) paradigm, the control group (in protostates)
is formed as the successor to the regulatory group (in chiefdoms).
THE EARLIEST ‘CIVILIZATIONS’
(MONUMENTALITY AND QUASI-SEDENTARISM)
In this basically autarchic model, the constant of demographic growth (sig-
nificantly more rapid than the infinitely slow rate of nomadic societies)
characteristic of most sedentary societies represented a crescive challenge
to the societies' productive capacity, which in most pristine sedentaristic
microsocieties was met; (1) by extending the territoriality of the basic sed-
entary unit by sheer contiguous expansion, by ‘niche leapfrogging’ or fis-
sioning (daughter) colonies and: (2) technological innovation, rendering
more productive the ratio of food yield per hectare or per biomass. A posi-
tive feedback situation could be inferred in the latter case, reinforcing a
trend to specialization, potentially implicit since the attainment of sedenta-
rism. The earliest ‘civilizations’ represent ‘peaks’ in the microsociety in
which it is possible to ascribe virtually all of the excess of archaeologically
detectable corporate labor and of product in goods and services of the pri-
mary specialists to ceremonial activities. These activities were understood
as basically guaranteeing the renewability of the society's resources.
These microsocieties consisted of temporary concentrations of great
masses of people from widely scattered regions around massive shrines
erected by seasonal allocations of voluntary unskilled labor under the or-
ganization of a small cadre of resident shrine specialists, who also super-
vised a widely dispersed network of trading for or direct procurement of
scarce ritual raw materials, which were transformed into ritual objects
which were either ‘consumed’ or redistributed at the shrine. Dillehay
(1992) gives one a glimpse of the microsocieties after perhaps a millennium
of adaptation to sedentarism in the Andes. Similar earliest peaks of sedenta-
rism or quasi-sedentarism in comparative world case history occur at Le-
penski Vir at the Iron Gate in Eastern Europe, Poverty Point in the South-
eastern United States, and Çatal Hüyük in Anatolia. And such well-
developed multi-community hegemonies as Chavin in Peru and the Olmec
(floruit 1500–500 B.C.) of Mexico are well-documented cases of these
early microsocietal ‘peaks’. None of these sites reflects a permanent con-
centration of even a thousand people: there is no evidence of a hegemony
by coercive force even though such hegemony as did exist could have been
sustained by dogma, and there is some evidence for a cadre of permanent
religious elites, but no evidence of a permanent secular elite. Viewed from
the cumulative interpretation of artifacts and architecture, the mechanism of
aggregation of the human communities that supported these ‘proto-
civilizations’ as well as the later, icon-rich, more elaborated and denser
civilizations was basically a shared system of beliefs. From the settlement
pattern evidence, the artifact-poor outlying hamlets and the artifact and/or
building-rich shrines, one can derive further support for the interpretation
that these earliest proto-civilizations were theocratic and pilgrimage-
oriented (see Dillehay [1992] for the late sequence and Benfer [1986] for
the earlier sequence).
Basically all the linked communities had the same range of procurement
activities and subsistence system. To characterize a cluster of communities
sharing a basic macroniche but with no apparent formal supracommunity
structure and with no archaeologically detectable specific linkage system
(except sporadic cultural interchange) the term interaction sphere has been
used by archaeologists. We suggest geosphere. A well-documented area
where the transition from incipient sedentarism to the consolidation of food
production practices can be shown is the Central Andean littoral between
4,500 and 1,000 B.C. To designate the total array of c. 40 documented post-
sedentaristic settlements in Peru from Las Salinas (Chao Valley to La
Paloma [Chilca Valley], between 4500–2000 B.C., we would have to use
the term Peruvian Maritime geosphere (however sausage-shaped the elon-
gated ‘sphere’ would be). This sphere is ecologically homogeneous. This
would be a distinct empirical application of MacNeish's (MacNeish et al.
1972) term, which in his pioneer usage is apt and provocative but too ab-
stract to be theoretically helpful.
THE MATURE CIVILIZATIONS

(CULMINATIONS OF MICROSOCIETAL GROWTH)
The ceremonial center, which these early building concentrations represent
when viewed in the light of subsequent developments, can be an appropri-
ate prototype to account for the phenomenon of nucleation (both cyclical
and residential) that becomes one of the diagnostic processes in urbaniza-
tion. In tracing the sequence of microsocietal growth (and here nothing
more than demographic growth need necessarily be implied) after the first
‘peaks’ in certain regions (most regions did not ‘peak’ one millennium after
sedentarism), one can describe the replication of the phenomenon of social
aggregation reflected in the architectural nucleation of the ceremonial cen-
ter, in which the basic settlement pattern does not change. The ceremonial
center does undergo quantitative and qualititative changes, reflecting on the
one hand greater numbers of aggregated supportive communities and on the
other, greater specialization in category and quantity of goods and services
being manipulated by the expanding Tempelwirtschaft (priestly societal
management).
A good base-line for catching our archeological glimpse of these
later peaks in microsocietal growth would be A.D. 1 in the valley of Mex-
ico, and A.D. 500 in coastal Peru and the Maya area. Clearly the scale of
the society has broadened (even though its territoriality may be less) over
the early civilizations. Person/square kilometer ratios have increased sig-
nificantly. Evidence of conflict (population pressure?) and stratification are
two key phenomena that are reflected in the iconography (shown in repre-
sentational art) but not necessarily in the architecture. What does this repre-
sent in terms of the autarchic model? Inferentially it represents the intrusion
of what Carneiro has called the principle of circumscription, what archae-
ology-generalists have called the ‘filling up of the niches’, what Braidwood
once called ‘settling in’, and what we prefer to call the perception of the
minimal (prehispanic) carrying capacity limit of the land in terms of
man/land ratio. The two previously mentioned strategies available to the
microsociety to cope with demographic growth should have been utilized
with variant degrees of success until previously distant territorialities im-
pinged on one another. The impingement situation then represents a second
major challenge to the maintenance of equilibrium and the reproductive
capacities of the demographically increasing microsocieties.
To grasp the type of dynamics that microsocieties represent at that point
after sedentarism when the niches were relatively filled, it is instructive to
review the non-central Andean societies in South America, but at the time
of contact. The most complex and nearest to the prehispanic Andean mac-
rosociety was the Chibcha, which could be favorably compared to the larger
chiefdoms described in the recent ethnographic record for Polynesia (Tonga
in Gailey [1987]) or Africa [Dahomey] in Diamond [1951]); while at the
simpler end of the sedentaristic food-producing spectrum one could place
microsocieties of the northwest Argentine or lowland Venezuela and Co-
lombia. As Bateson's (1967: 189ff) paradigm on schismogenesis predicts,
any two or more societies placed in a situation of reduced territoriality face
a limited set of choices: (1) the complete fusion of the originally different
groups; (2) the elimination of one or both groups; or (3) the persistence of
both groups in dynamic equilibrium within one major community (and here
Bateson is using the term community in a relative sense, ranging from a
nation-state to a village encompassing two moieties). The fusional process
is conditioned by Bateson's yardsticks of shared ideational and structural
traits, and corresponds to the aggregative process in chiefdom formation.
The Chibcha would represent a case of fusion, or a case in which microso-
cieties, exploiting contiguous portions of a major macroniche opted for an
integrative solution, although the degree of ‘complete’ fusion was not ob-
tained (and within a chiefdom model would not be integrated through a
mechanism of coercive control which implies acceptance of the principle of
statehood), as their rapid disaggregation after Spanish contact demon-
strated.
Although it is difficult to demonstrate archaeologically, there seem to
have been no cases of alternative 2, i.e. genocide in the prehistoric South
American record. Nonetheless, the kind of cyclical ‘billiard ball displace-
ment’ form based on competition for most desired ecological niches (allu-
vial river banks) that Lathrap (1970) describes for the Amazon peoples
could be viewed as a kind of ‘periodical elimination’ of one group. Bateson
further subdivided alternative 3 into two gross parts; those in which the dy-
namic equilibrium was based upon symmetrical differentiation and those in
which it depended upon complementary differentiation. Groups with sym-
metrical differentiation are well-exemplified by peoples to the northeast and
southeast of the Andes, most of which Steward and Faron (1959) character-
ized as ‘militaristic chiefdoms’ in which specialized cults of ritualized war-
fare and slaughter of war captives were practiced by neighboring groups.
These colorful mechanisms, if somewhat terrifying, represent a kind of ritu-
alization of the ‘demographic arms race’ in which killing the enemy has as
its goal more the maintenance of ‘parity’ than the acquisition or exploita-
tion of the neighbor's territory.
Cases of complementary differentiation, which may also be termed
‘economic symbioses’ are well-illustrated by the relatively un-aggregated
village societies of the Northwest Argentine in relationship to the oasis vil-
lages of the Atacaman desert and the fishing hamlets of the Chilean littoral.
Some idea of this hypothesized inter-societal vertical archipelago can be
gleaned from Nunez and Dillehay (1979) and Cigliano (1973).
Although we have given examples only of relationships between seden-
tary societies (because this is an implicit assumption of Bateson's paradigm)
one more type of response to impingement which can be designated as the
‘predatory’ case (on territoriality) should be mentioned where an originally
nomadic hunting-gathering society exercises a kind of custodial hegemony
and exploitation over one or more sedentary societies in return for ‘protec-
tion’. The Mbaya in the Plata delta and the Carib and Caracas of Venezuela
appear to best exemplify this rather bizarre type of dynamic equilibrium
(Metraux 1946; Kirchoff 1948; Hernandez de Alba 1948; Oberg 1955).
We may visualize the prehistoric microsocieties in the first millennium
(whether we concentrate on the Central Andes, the Maya Lowlands, or the
Mexican plateau) as exploring one or another of these types of accommoda-
tion, documented at the time of the Iberian conquest among the non-Andean
societies of South America. All but the first would lead to a continuing
system of equilibrium, however, fluctuating over time in degrees of mutual
complementarity. The first or integrative pattern, however, could and pre-
sumably did generate a contradiction (crisis) between the organizing princi-
ples of the original microsocieties and defense of territoriality. The mecha-
nism in microsociety that provides for the crystallization of a functional
social group (which is distinct from the priests who regulate) which special-
izes in control, and can assume the primary stewardship functions of the
society, is specialization (allocation of rights and privileges, accommoda-
tion and provisioning by the food producers and attribution of special status
to the specialists). One can only speculate how such a specialized group of
administrative warriors emerged from repeated sporadic calls for ad hoc
war-leaders. With the restriction of domains, another aspect of the contra-
dictory position of the priests was becoming acute: the urgent and unpre-
dictable redistribution of surplus and the construction of public buildings
(now needed for defensive purposes) did not lend themselves to the old
egalitarian format of voluntary or at least consensual recruitment of either
goods or services.
These are some of the suggested bases for the scenes of inferred stress,
conflict, and stratification that the iconography in artistic productions of
these climactic prehistoric microsocieties may be representing. The seeds
for the transformation to a macrosociety are clearly in evidence both in the
A.D. 500 Mochica and Maya overall settlement patterns, yet in neither case
do we have the settlement pattern evidence to indicate that the radical trans-
formation took place (until in the case of the Moche between A.D. 750 and
1,000) or that the society disaggregated (as in the case of the Maya after
A.D. 800).
As a response to the myth of the pristine state, we should like to formu-
late what seems to be a much more defensible pattern of Native American
cultural development as it faced successive challenges presented by eco-
logical fluctuations and growing demography after the shift to food produc-
tion. This formulation recognizes the appearance of the macrosociety after
considerable trial and error, and that the macrosociety encompasses and
‘exploits’ its own and other microsoceties; these subordinated units con-
tinue under the loose nature of the hegemony, a condition which allows
them to reproduce themselves. This situation Marx analyzed in economic
terms as co-existent modes of production, in which the macrosociety repre-
sents the dominant form, but by no means the one including the most peo-
ple. Unlike the microsocieties, which are ecologically regionally rooted, the
macrosociety operates on the principle of coordinating and centralizing
control of resources from the cluster of microsocieties upon which it de-
pends. Put another way, the macrosociety energizes most of the accumu-
lated surpluses of the microsocieties that were heretofore ‘self-consumed’
through the redistribution process.
The broad outlines of the earliest appearances of the macrosociety on
the Peruvian coast (the earliest appearance of the state) are marked in the
revolutionary change in the settlement pattern that characterizes major sites
in Peru during the Early Intermediate and well into the Middle Horizon.
Large population centers (permanent residences for elites and retainers)
replace one or more of the ceremonial centers, and their strategic location
leaves little doubt that the predominant elites who directed their construc-
tion, are no longer exclusively priests but aggressive administrators with
defense and intensification of resource management their goal rather than
resource renewability, as before. The new goal could often be achieved by
tribute from subordinated peoples. The transition to the state is well under
way.
Whether this initial breakthrough to state/macrosociety was generated in
the south highland capital of Huari, (for which revolutionary settlement
pattern change evidence is now available (Lumbreras 1981) or emerged out
of a crisis situation analogous to what Price (1977) calls a cluster-
interaction model on the coast, is an issue that is hotly debated among An-
deanists and not yet resolved. The Andean case history does show that
about A.D. 800 the macrosociety first took shape. The highland state of
Huari arose by A.D. 750 and collapsed within a century, as did most of its
highland nodes before A.D. 1000. In the Cuzco region and on the coast,
Huari nodes lasted longer, and some upper middle valleys of the central
coast endured for 400 years (Stumer 1956). As Shimada has partly docu-
mented for the Leche valley of the North Coast, Sican culture, which be-
came the pole of North Coast development in the Middle Horizon, rose out
of the ashes of the last capital of the Moche culture at Pampa Grande in the
next northern valley at an ancient ceremonial center dating back to 1000 B.C.
The degree of incipient statehood that can be attributed to the Tiahua-
naco ceremonial center and nodes remains to be confirmed, although cur-
rent research being conducted under Kolata's direction (1993) has yet to
demonstrate that the flourishing ceremonial center at A.D. 600 developed
into an urban conglomerate approximating Huari in subsequent centuries as
some have proposed (e.g., Parsons 1968). Thus the state survived with dif-
ferential success on the coast but almost became eclipsed on the highlands
in the succeeding 600 years until the Incas in the early fifteenth century
engendered a workable highland model which bested the more commonly
found contiguous territorial state of the Chimu by 1480. How and where
the stream (thread) of continuity of the macrosocietal principles of human
engineering were kept alive in the south highlands for better than half a mil-
lennium (if indeed that was the case and not that the Inca recapitulated the
Huari process of state formation), remains a major mystery in Andean ar-
chaeology and ethnohistory unless one accepts the highly improbable con-
jecture that Inka Yupangui adopted governance and spatial control princi-
ples from the largest pre-existent Andean state: Chimor.
The evidence in Mesoamerica for successive trial and error in achieving
the macrosociety has been accumulating in recent decades. The obvious
case of the lowland Maya is well-documented in Tikal by Haviland (1970)
and Dzibalchaltun by Andrews (1968), where the culmination of microso-
cietal growth results in a settlement configuration much like the late Mo-
chica capital of Pampa Grande. It exemplifies the same abortive attempt at
autogenous state formation as the Mochica. Similarly, recent work at Monte
Alban represents yet another example of microsocietal florescence and col-
lapse, however much the reigning interpretations pretend that all three cases
represent autogenous state formation (Andrews 1968; Blanton 1976, 1978;
Haviland 1970).
THE CASE HISTORIES

One must move to an overview of the cartography and site seriation of the
several documented case histories of this transformation in Peru and Mex-
ico The leap was not made in Southwestern North America. The culmina-
tion of microsocietal growth in the three major culture areas there resulted
in population increase, its concentration, and monumentality; but, much like
the example of Monte Alban above, no transformation to secularization and
the state.
In the case history of the North Coast of Peru, the ground plans of the
Mochica ceremonial centers (Panamarca [Schaedel 1951], Huaca del
Sol/Luna or Moche [Uhle 1913]) may be contrasted with the quasi-urban
ground plan of Pampa Grande (A.D. 500–750; Shimada 1978) to show the
positioning of the area for the marshalling of the manpower surplus and the
centrally located positioning of the unprotected ‘storage’ (redistribution)
area as occupying the plaza area between the main ceremonial structures. A
certain kind of channelizing of the flow of people and products is implicit
in the bounding of the plaza area, more restricted in Pampa Grande than in
Moche, but generally speaking roads and corridors are formally absent.
Compare this ground plan to Keatinge and Day's (1973) plan of a major
compound of Chan Chan where the channeling features assume a crucial
role in the overall plan, and one has a graphic illustration of the kind of sys-
temic reordering that has been effected over the 500–600 years that separate
them as examples of settlement capitals for centralizing the elites and fun-
neling selected economic surpluses of large, complex hegemonies.
Admittedly we have jumped over approximately half a millenium of ac-
commodation for which a hypothetical multi-valley seriation of carto-
graphic models has been elaborated. The purpose here is to focus on the
diagnostic systemic features in the cartography which reflect the systemic
change in social relationships that the urban ‘revolution’ represents. The
case of the Mochica-Chimu transition to urbanism is used as an example of
the most frequent case of our few pristine examples in universal history, i.e.
where the transformation did not take place in situ.
To further explicate the nature of the transformation as we detect it in
the cartography, the case history of Teotihuacan is appropriate, since here
the transformation from theocratic center of paramount chiefdom to capital
of state did take place in situ. The plans of Teotihuacan prior to and after
what Millon (1970, 1981) called at first his ‘urban renewal’ phase may be
contrasted. In this case, the focus of interest is on the functional transforma-
tion of the plaza area again, which prior to the renewal seems to have had a
general assemblage or marshalling function along with being the locus for
the transformational activities of at least the obsidian workers. In the post
‘remodeling’ phase, the plaza has been converted into the first ‘tianquis’ or
market area, which was to become the Mesoamerican node for the channel-
ing of surplus in future urban layouts. Again the case history cartography
does not yet lend itself to more than the grossest comparisons. Teotihuacan
represents our first illustration of urban transformation in situ, but its heri-
tage of half a millenium as a growing ceremonial center made it an un-
wieldy mechanism for the coordination of the four urban functions and it
declines to collapse around A.D. 700. Again, as in the Andes, we are faced
with a gap of more than 500 years between the demise of spaced-out Teoti-
huacan and the rise of a full-blown, dense Mexican city (Tenochtitlan) to be
filled in by future research, cartographic seriation, and correlation with
Mexico's rich codices.
This brief allusion to the two case histories of the ‘systemic’ transforma-
tion illustrates two points that need to be made in order to bring our discus-
sion of urbanization in the New World into comparative focus with the Old
World developments, and to relate the origin of cities to Sjoberg's concept
of the ‘achieved’ preindustrial city. One is the 500 year gap between the
original systemic transformation and the attainment of a uniform high den-
sity city type for a major American region. The second is that the magni-
tude of the systemic transformation was such that it generated successive
reaccommodations and relocations until a viable and functional balance
between urb and hinterland could be attained. In a review of the Old World
literature on the growth of cities, the late third and early second millenium
B.C. cities of Nineveh and Babylon represent the attainment of a uniform
Middle Eastern city type (Lampl 1968).
Despite (and indeed because of) his encompassing definition, Sjoberg's
(1960) preindustrial city as a societal type which represents a high degree of
stability cannot be invoked as a model for precolonial New World urbaniza-
tion except in its (New World's) final stages; it has its earliest New World
applicability to the Near East sequence only after A.D. 100. With this dis-
tinction in mind, one can equate Schaedel's use of the term functional ur-
banism to Sjoberg's (1960) ‘preindustrial city’. It was only when all the
dysfunctions concomitant with the ‘systemic transformation’ had been
phased out that the macrosocietal form represented by the preindustrial city
becomes a meaningful conceptual tool to explain the dynamics of complex
society.
GENERALIZATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

Although the archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence necessary to fully
document the case histories for the growth of cities and complex societies
in America is at best sketchy, we should recognize that forty-five years ago
it was all but absent. Comparisons of developments of early New World
cities with those of the Old World largely grew as a result of Childe's chal-
lenging conceptualization of the process as an ‘urban revolution’ at that
time.
Not only has the American record been documented in at least some of
its broader outlines in the last three decades, but renewed emphasis on ex-
plicating the urban ‘revolution’ has been spurring research in the Middle
East, India, and China and produced an early state of the art summary in
Braidwood and Willey (1962). Robert Adams' (1966) benchmark study of
comparative urban developments in the Middle East and Mesoamerica re-
mains so far the only systematic attempt at comparisons between the two
worlds as does Katz's (1972) book, comparing diachronically the two high
civilizations of the Americas. Let us review in the mid-Nineties how Adams
and Katz's findings have fared.
While Adams' conclusions tend to indicate that state and city formation
in both Mesoamerica and Mesopotamia antedated the hydraulic develop-
ments that Wittfogel hypothesized to have caused the former, it can proba-
bly now be stated that for the consolidation phase of the early state (not its
emergence) hydraulic intensification seems to have been the indispensable
technological breakthrough, supporting and guaranteeing stability of the
administrative elite (Schaedel 1987).
Comparing Katz' generalizations on contrasts in the Andes and Meso-
america with new findings, one can perceive a structural division in what he
saw as the parallel paths toward state formation between the Aztecs and
Incas. This can be seen in the contrasting Huari state formation with Teoti-
huacan, where a mononuclear state develops presumably dominated by a
mercantile elite. In Huari a multi-nodal pattern of widely scattered regions
presided over by a military-administrative elite (but wearing the icono-
graphic trappings of a church militant) best fits the presently reconstructed
image of the Andean pristine state. This prehistorical bifurcation of what
until then had been parallel routes of development (and which may hearken
back to even earlier structural differences) could explain the contrast in the
marked role of commerce and mercantilization in Aztec society vs. the pat-
rimonial (state-dominated yet flexible and economically durable) Inca pol-
ity.
The issues of inequality in tribal, chiefdom-type and state societies are
implicitly intertwined with the emergence of cities and the origin of com-
plex societies in the New World and indeed everywhere the state first
emerged (Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, and Southeast Asia). As a
rule, the generalization of transition from ranked to stratified to class socie-
ties as marking a growth in the spread of the principle of socio-economic
inequality in the worldwide development of complex societies is substanti-
ated, but a review of the evidence, for the nature of pre-state societies and
non-state societies over time tended to substantiate the position that con-
straints (which still characterize peasant society and mode of production) on
permanent differentiation of the society into classes have probably been the
single most important factor impeding the autogenous growth of a complex
macrosociety.
Clastres' (1971) model of the archaeology of violence which was used as
a modular counterpoint to the Schaedel thesis was shown to be derived
more from ethnographic data than archaeological case histories. A review
of the world archaeological record shows violence (by which Clastres
means predatory warfare) as opposed to internecine raiding to be largely a
phenomenon of the period of early state formation. In short the archaeo-
logical evidence tends to confirm the view that egalitarian society preceded
non-egalitarian society, and the latter came about as an accommodation to
demographic pressures on cultivable land. The kind of transitional inegali-
tarian society that is characterized by the chiefdom societal type is marked
by differences in rank with certain lineages enjoying privileges and
rights over others over one or several generations, but not reflecting long-
term hierarchical stability. The basis for the permanent legitimization for
inequality is developed with the creation of cities and the new societal type
known as the pristine state first through the emergence of estates and later
classes, which marked the rise of alienable real property.
NOTE
* First published in Kradin, N. N., Korotayev, A. V., Bondarenko, D. M., de
Munck, V., and Wason, P. K. (eds.), Alternatives of Social Evolution, Vladivostok:
FEB RAS, 2000, pp. 166–176.
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12
The Transition to Statehood
in Central Europe*
Ludomir R. Lozny
University Center of the City University of New York
The traditional European approach to the origin of states involves questions

relating to the appearance of nation states during the Middle Ages. Histori-
ans and archaeologists alike support this approach by quoting dates of his-
torical events to emphasize the ‘birth’ of a state.
I undertake a different approach. The main focus is on the state forma-
tion process as a universally linked sequence of socio-economic and politi-
cal events. This process should be identifiable by a distinctive pattern of
episodes displayed in archaeological data through a certain set of features.
INTRODUCTION
Following Wright's (1984: 41) remark that specialized and hierarchically
organized agencies of control did not arise abruptly from a context of small
independent egalitarian communities, I will try to point out to some key
elements of the state formation process in Central Europe that could be ob-
served in archaeological records. The empirical basis for this presentation is
supported by the information published in Poland (cf. Leciejewicz 1989;
Gassowski 1985, 1993; Kurnatowska and Kurnatowski 1983). I am fully
aware of the epistemological limitations of my database, that I have assem-
bled relaying on records collected and published by different scholars.
However, my presentation neither aims to fully elaborate on the state for-
mation process in Central Europe, nor its chronological context (some diffi-
culties in chronological assessments of the Middle Ages in European Plains
have been recently reported by Gassowski 1994 and by Dulinicz 1994). A
detailed study on the subject is still under preparation (Lozny forthcoming).
Lozny / The Transition to Statehood in Central Europe, pp. 278–287

Lozny / The Transition to Statehood in Central Europe 279
My intention is to emphasize the unique role of archaeology in studying the
origin of states. I consider a state as a dynamic formation regulated by a set
of specific laws and rules. Its structure includes definable elements interact-
ing with each other through time and space. Elements of such a structure
should be identifiable through the archaeological record. Therefore, archae-
ologists may supply significant data to study the origin of states.
As usual, though, it is all in what questions we ask and how can we an-
swer them. In my presentation I shall focus on a settlement hierarchy and its
pattern as the prime indicators of the state formation process. The assump-
tion is that a settlement pattern of an area resembles social complexity of
the time.
Therefore, different settlement patterns will be managed by populations
of socially and economically diverse complexity. Less complex settlement
structures comprise one category of sites or a small group of sites most dis-
tinguishable from the others because of their size. More complex settlement
patterns will be represented by three or more groups of sites of different
size. As demonstrated by Gregory A. Johnson (cf. 1980, 1981, 1987), when
plotted on graphs, these patterns show different rank-size distributions:
(1) bimodal for prestate (chiefdom) stage, and (2) trimodal (or more com-
plex) for state structures. The approach I am presenting was deeply influ-
enced by Gregory A. Johnson's concept of hierarchization in the decision-
making process and the rank-size rule method he applied to study the Susi-
ana complexity (Johnson 1980, 1981, 1987).
Two groups of questions concerning the state formation process in the
Western Slavia have recently been presented by Leciejewicz (1989: 124):
(1) the premises and conditions of transformation, and (2) the extent to
which the state formation process was based on local tradition and what
elements were adapted from the other European states of the time. I shall
focus on the first group of questions, and discuss the possible conditions
and their archaeological manifestations, under which the state formative
process occurred in Central Europe between the 8th – 10th centuries A.D.
THE PRIMARY ELEMENTS

OF THE STATE FORMATIVE PROCESS
My perspective concerns the structural characteristics of the state formation
process that remain within archaeological insight. If states always occur
under certain circumstances, the state formation process should be identifi-
able by a distinctive pattern of archaeological records. A set of features
such as economic structure, social status, occupational specialization, dif-
ferences in health and mortality, mortuary practices, and changes in a
settlement pattern should be archaeologically recognizable when compared
to the previous status quo. No single feature indicates a change of such
magnitude (Patterson and Gailey 1987: 12). The aim is to simply recognize
structural parts of the process of changes through time, which means those
remaining within archaeological penetration. A state could also be defined
by other, non structural features (Jones and Kautz 1981: 14–15). The more
speculative questions, however, cannot be answered without in – depth
analysis, which I do not plan to undertake now. Among them are questions
such as: (1) Do states have to emerge? (2) To what extent is the appearance
of a state the random outcome of historical process? (cf. Cohen 1981). The
recognition of archaeological examples of such socio-political entities relies
on the material consequences of the emergence of the upper class or nobil-
ity, members of which control generalized, polity-wide decision-making
processes. The following three features of spatial organization are useful in
identifying past complex social structures: (1) settlement hierarchy,
(2) residential segregation, (3) mortuary segregation. The last category is
not always clearly identified in some societies, nor does it necessarily sug-
gest the existence of social stratification (Hodder 1986: 2–3; Patterson and
Gailey 1987: 13).
Earle (1978: 12) recognizes the following features of a complex chief-
dom: (1) discontinuity in rank between chiefs and commoners, (2) speciali-
zation in leadership roles, (3) increased centrality in the regional hierarchy.
A complex chiefdom, is characterized by one or two levels of control hier-
archy above the level of the local community (Wright 1977: 381; Feinman
and Neitzel 1984: 640), while a state consists of three or more levels of
control (Johnson 1982; 1987). The basic distinction between a complex
chiefdom and a more advanced entity (state) is, therefore, characterized by
a span of control within its decision-making hierarchy.
Johnson (1987: 107) points out to a specific set of features that charac-
terize a state level structure:
...the Susiana settlement system consisted of a four-tier settlement size
hierarchy with direct evidence of resident administrative activity at its
top and bottom levels. The presence of administrative function at the in-
tervening levels of hierarchy, and of an overall four-level administrative
organization seemed likely. In combination with evidence for the cen-
tralization of craft production as part of an administered labor system,
these features suggest the operation of the Middle Uruk state.
Archaeological recognition of such a complex structure should be possi-
ble by analysis of the changes in a regional settlement pattern (Johnson
1980: 250), primarily the appearance of central places surrounded by clus-
ters of smaller villages. The largest and most centrally located sites must
have functioned as primary control centers for subsidiary settlements pe-
ripheral to them. These central places would be located in regular intervals.
The presence of this specific spatial arrangement gives an assumption to
show another characteristic feature of state formative level, newly formed
(or forming through aggregated class conflict – see Jones and Kautz 1981:
4), social stratification (Patterson and Gailey 1987: 12–13). In the following
discussion I shall present a Central European complex chiefdom in contrast
with the Slavic state that emerged during the 9th – 10th centuries A.D. in
Wielkopolska Province in modern day Poland. Although there are probably
better archaeologically recognized early Medieval chiefdoms of Central
Europe, I chose the so called Samon's state as it is commonly identified as
the first Slavic state. The second example, however, represents one of the
best archaeologically known early Slavic state of the area.
A COMPLEX CHIEFDOM OF CENTRAL EUROPE

In the first half of the 7th century A.D. (probably in 623 – Gassowski 1964),
the Slavic tribes of Bohemia and Moravia united. Samon, an outsider to the
Slavic world, was commissioned the highest post, a function new to the
Slavic world, the chief of the supratribal alliance. How this first Slavic
‘state’, as it is commonly known, came into existence has not yet been fully
explained. Relying on archaeological data, we may speculate that there
were two major factors behind the success: (1) economic growth, and (2)
internal political stability. However, the alliance remains more as scientific
hypothesis than a historical phenomenon.
The emergence of this political alliance requires further research. The
idea of a supratribal structure of this ‘state’ was actually new in Central
Europe. Its social structure could be characterized as a clan territorial alli-
ance with autonomous local chiefs (known as dukes from later written
sources) and one paramount chief (grand duke). It seems that the popular
gathering of all free tribesmen was the highest form in executive and judi-
cial decision-making hierarchy, and had controlling power over the para-
mount chief's legislation. This internal structure of the alliance resembles a
description of a ‘complex chiefdom’ structure, and entirely fits within the
classical definition of chiefdom: ‘a chiefdom is an autonomous political
unit comprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent
control of a paramount chief’ (Carneiro 1981: 45), which, as Earle (1987)
points out: ‘was rather loosely defined as a polity that organizes centrally a
regional population in the thousands’.
There are two characteristic features of a chiefdom: 1) permanent
control of power by a chieftain, and 2) centrally organized administration
and decision-making hierarchy. Both elements may be noticed among 7th –
8th centuries petty chiefdoms of Central Europe. Therefore, I presume that
the idea of a centralized form of decision-making hierarchy, has been intro-
duced in Central Europe by that time. But despite the evidence for an alien-
ated rank status, the power balance in decision-making within the alliance
does not yet resemble a state structure. The lack of institutionalized deci-
sion-making centers and unstable leadership possibly caused failures in a
redistribution system, which is considered one of the fundamental elements
of a chiefdom (Renfrew 1976: 172; for further discussion see Carneiro
1981; Earle 1991; Tolstoy 1989). After Samon's death the ‘state’ had fallen
into pieces. The internal economic ties were not developed. The alliance
was a fragile supratribal structure that disappeared with the lack of a strong
leadership, hierarchic administrative institutions, and, based on local
sources, economic network.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE STATE FORMATIVE

PROCESS IN WESTERN SLAVIA
From the 8th to 10th centuries A.D., there had been enormous growth in the
number of fortified habitations on all lands occupied by the Slavs (Lecie-
jewicz 1983: 49). Possibly all of them represented the local seats of emerg-
ing class of nobility. Some large forts played an important role as tribal cen-
ters that later turned into protourban places. As Leciejewicz (1989: 143)
points out, some of those centers lost their tribal character and turned into a
unique type of settlement – so called ‘urban republics’. These centers could
have played major roles in the production – distribution network.
The characteristic spatial feature of these newly emerging towns was
their internal division into: (1) a heavily fortified seat of a local ruler, and,
(2) often also fortified, part where minor knights, merchants, and craftspeo-
ple, were accommodated. This kind of space organization confirms the ap-
pearance of a ranked social structure: (1) alienated groups of no-
bles/consumers, and (2) groups of commoners/producers. It also supports
the suggestion (Kurnatowska and Kurnatowski 1983: 92–93) that the first
function of a newly emerging town was to consolidate the power of the
consumers and strengthen their control over expanding groups of producers.
All those changes occurred possibly due to the economic growth and
technological modifications. Archaeological records confirm that agricul-
ture and husbandry increased during the 9th and 10th centuries. Also, new
agrarian techniques played an important role in those changes. Extensive
progress in local metallurgy, pottery-making, jewelry, and specialized tech-
nical achievement can be noticed. Two innovative features of that period
(Leciejewicz 1989:127–129, 131, 138) must be stressed: (1) new technol-
ogy applied to built fortifications, bridges, and houses linked with tremen-
dous need for man power, and (2) the origins of a monetary system. Long
distance trade highly intensified economic progress of the area. These
newly emerging urban centers, however, appeared independently from the
state formative process and their existence does not indicate the necessary
occurrence of state societies (Crumley 1976; Kohl and Write 1977; Lecie-
jewicz 1989).
THE POLANIE STATE

During the 9th – 10th centuries A.D. paramount chiefs of the Polanie tribe
managed to direct the state formation process to the point where one of
them, Mieszko, concluded forming the state by the second half of the 10th
century A.D. The state was formed in the area where more than 400 forti-
fied habitation places were recorded by the so called ‘Bavarian Geogra-
pher’, Carolingian source of the 9th century A.D. The central place of the
state was at the Goplo Lake in Wielkopolska Province. It is thought to be
the first capital of Poland.
Fortified habitation sites began to appear in this area as early as the 8th
century A.D. Both, geographic and economic factors played a very impor-
tant role in this initial stage of the state formation process.
The first, and most significant phenomenon that can be archaeologically
recorded was an increase in density and rank size distribution of the settle-
ment pattern in Wielkopolska during the second half of the 9th and into the
10th century A.D. The number of open and fortified habitation sites in-
creased ca. 50% as compared to the 7th – 8th centuries pattern. Demographic
growth could be assumed too. The rise in number of specially fortified set-
tlements confirms an enormous labor investment undertaken by the newly
emerging state. This could not have been possible without a strong local
leadership and a sufficient supply of labor. A new pattern of settlement has
been created. Old local centers were abandoned and new ones emerged at
quite regular intervals, with the average distance being ca. 14 km. Structur-
ally unified and heavily fortified strongholds (2/3 – 4/5 of the entire area
was covered by giant ramparts – see Kurnatowska and Kurnatowski 1983:
94), were associated with several surrounding villages.
Other types of central places, new in that region, were multicomponent
forts with monumental architecture, surrounded by a number of open habi-
tation sites. Those places appeared in the 10th century, and were named
by the Medieval chronicles as sedes regni principales – the seats of royal
representatives. These were the provincial capitals, located ca. 25–30 km
distances from each other, usually on the long distance trade trails.
The spatial arrangement of the Wielkopolska Province in the second half
of the 10th century consisted of six fortified capital centers, probably ten
fortified local centers, and numerous open habitation sites. Some of them
were exclusively inhabited by highly specialized artisans. Those villages, so
characteristic of the Slavic area, were the crucial links in the economic
chain of an emerging state (Leciejewicz 1989: 165–166).
This type of settlement pattern, which included equally in rank and
regularly located from each other administrative centers, was necessary for
controlling a flow of information and processing and executing legislative
decisions. Besides their economic functions, larger forts were, primarily,
the centers of decision-making administrative hierarchies (Johnson 1980:
239). Usually, the forts were divided into two parts: (1) the ruler's seat, and
(2) fortified adjacent habitation area. In Wielkopolska's case, it is not clear
which of the capital forts was a permanent seat of the ruler. The likeliest
scenario was that all six of them were in the same rank in accommodating
both the function of a capital and the contribution of taxes. The new spatial
arrangements of the second half of the 10th century represent the final stage
of the state formation process in this part of Europe. This somewhat re-
gional, spatial integration has been considered a feature of a primary state
formation process (Johnson 1980: 250). At this point secondary features of
state developing can be noticed, namely intermarriage between the local
ruler's families, incorporating new ideologies, gaining political recognition,
etc. (cf. Gassowski 1994: 9).
CONCLUSIONS
Archaeological evidence suggests that probably in the 9th century A.D.,
there were very strong economic and social foundations for a state to
emerge. First we can notice a shift from bimodal (tribal chiefdoms) to more
complex settlement size-rank patterns. The newly emerged pattern included
three categories of sites: (1) capital centers, (2) local centers, and (3) other
settlements. Most of the forts from that period show a dual internal struc-
ture with a separate part for the ruler and nobility, and the other section for
merchants, craftspeople, minor knights, and probably skilled captives. The
economic power of the state has been built during the 9th century and the
first half of the 10th century A.D. The ruler of the Polanie tribe incorporated
into his domain, and controlled, all the territories of defeated chiefs. Skilled
craftspeople were settled in close proximity to the centers. This policy
caused the appearance of highly specialized and productive centers. The
profit gain had been used to finance his own military retainers. Old tribal
chiefs were forced to pay tribute, and if they refused, probably killed. For
the first time in the history of that region, the personal interests of the ruling
family were identified with the state's interests and the beginning of a dy-
nasty has been created. However, to keep the high economic level, it was
necessary to provide a constant growth of labor and keep the positive bal-
ance between the growth of population and food production. Both goals
could have been accomplished by invading neighboring and well-developed
regions (Leciejewicz 1989: 125–126). It is interesting to notice that al-
though similar processes can be archaeologically recorded in the other
provinces of today Poland (Silesia, Malopolska, Pomerania, and Mazovia)
neither one became a separate state.
Based on limited archaeological data at hand, I could distinguished the
following elements of the state formation process in Western Slavia: (1)
hierarchical spatial settlement arrangements representing three or more lev-
els of rank-size distribution, and centralized ruling system – legislative,
executive, and judicial, (2) internal arrangements of space within a site,
suggesting social complexity in form of class alienation, and (3) centralized
ideological system with monumental architecture. This process probably
started in the 9th century A.D., and ended with the appearance of the first
monarchies of the 11th century A.D. Central Europe.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am delighted to have this opportunity to thank Professor Dr. hab. Lech
Leciejewicz for sending me his book on the western Slavs that inspired me
to pay more attention toward the state formation processes in Western
Slavia. I am especially thankful to Professor Dr. hab. Jerzy Gassowski who,
despite the late hours, kindly discussed certain issues pointed out in this
paper during my short visit to Poland in 1995. Dr. Jim Fenton provided, as
always, valuable comments and suggestion, and Gerard P. Scharfenberger
kindly read and edited the final draft.
NOTE

ways to Early State, Vladivostok: Dal'nauka, 1995, pp. 84–92.
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13
Formation and Development of States
in the Congo Basin*
Eleonora S. L'vova
Institute of Asian and African Studies
of the Moscow State University
In the inner areas of the Congo basin there live the Bakuba, Baluba, and
Balunda. As an opposed to the peoples of the Western Sudan, North-
Eastern and Eastern Africa influenced by the Mediterranean and the Near-
East civilizations, these had no close relations with civilized societies. They
entered the first direct contacts to European merchants in the West and to
Arabian-Swahili ones in the East only in the 19th century.
While these peoples have no writing systems, we study exploitative sys-
tems and state formation through ethnographic and oral traditional data.
The data show the Bakuba, Baluba, and Balunda to be at the beginning of
this process. As well, the data show that there exist various ways of early
exploitation, and they alternated with each other in temporal sequence.
The first temporal sequential form was robbery and then a tribute from
conquered neighbors closely connected with the former. This was an exter-
nal exploitative system, and there was not any internal exploitation in this
society. The names of the ethnic groups are extremely significant. The
name Baluba means ‘conquerors’, ‘destroyers’ (Verhulpen 1936: 64). The
name Bakuba derives from the word kuba that means ‘lightning’ in Kiliba,
i.e. Bakuba means ‘the men of lightning’. The name was connected with
using special projectile knives with several double-edged blades named
shongo in Kikuba which were quick as lightning. The main ethnic group of
Bakuba name themselves as Bushongo (Torday and Joice 1963: 9).
The first rulers of these states mentioned in oral tradition (Mboong at
the Bakuba, Myaang Luseeng, Kinguri, and Chieyama at the Balunda,
Kongolo at the Baluba) were war chiefs. Luba, Lunda and Kuba states were
based on territorial conquests and their aims were war robbery and a tribute.
L'vova / Formation and Development of States in the Congo Basin, pp. 288–297
L'vova / Formation and Development of States… 289
The list of tribes and villages obliged to pay a tribute occupied an im-
portant place in the oral tradition of all these three peoples. The tribute sys-
tem based on a formal principle of the inalienability of lands existed till the
middle of the 20th century. According to the customary law, conquerors had
no property in new lands. Thus, D. Livingstone (1968: 251) wrote that even
the residence of Kazembe, while he was the governor of the eastern region
of Lunda, was situated on the land of some Perembe who was the descen-
dant of the pioneers in this country conquered by the Balunda. It happened
almost 200 years after the conquest. The data obtained by J. Cunnison in
the 1950s show that in many Zambia villages which were constituent parts
of Lunda state in former times there persists the custom to have two chiefs:
one is ‘a master of land’ (‘chef de terre’) from the Aushi or another autoch-
thons and the other (political chief) is from the Mulunda (1951: V, VII).
During the whole period of state existence there was persisting was es-
tablished the order when a governor himself traveled all over the country to
gather a tribute. It was especially typical of the Balunda and the Baluba (see
e. g., Cameron 1877: 55). In many cases, a people or an ethnic group was a
collective exploiter: the Balunda over the Chokwe, the Aushi and others in
Lunda state; the Bushongo over Bteng, the Pyang, the Bangongo and other
14 groups within Bakuba; the Baluba over the various tribes of modern
Shaba province in Northern Zambia. An unequal status of ethnic groups had
ideological substantiation in mythology (Colle 1913: 936; de Jonghe 1947:
39; Verhulpen 1936: 194). Thus, they considered this order to have super-
natural origin and to be eternal.
The other form was the internal exploitative system formation within its
own society. An external tribute system, perhaps, allowed upper strata to
consolidate in a ruling class and to start exploiting common villagers within
their own society. In the Congo basin, each separate village community
gradually turned into a collective serf. This process manifested itself in the
unequal relations to land of common villagers and upper strata, villagers
fulfilling definite duties in favor of upper strata for using land.
One duty was a corvée labor: constructing fortifications and dwellings
for officials, participating in big hunting expeditions; escorting noble per-
sons as body-guards or carriers (Verhulpen 1936: 194). Village communi-
ties were obliged to maintain roads (Burton 1927: 328). Corvée labour did
not include agricultural works yet. Labor duties were obligatory but irregu-
lar unlike in the traditional states of the Western Sudan (Kochakova 1965;
Kubbel' 1974; Sledzevsky 1974).
Tribute was another villagers' duty. This duty became regular and ap-
proximated to rent in kind. The last one called ‘milambo’ at the Baluba and
‘ilaam’ at the Bakuba included mainly agricultural products. It included the
products of gathering, fishing, and hunting as well. All the ivory, leop-
ard skins, and eagle feather were obligatory gifts to chiefs (Vansina 1956:
945). At the same time the tribute rate was irregular, it depended on family
scale, nearness to chief residence, and so on (Brau 1942: 197–198). An ex-
actly fixed scale of a tribute did not exist, yet this process was under the
run. So, while a fisher caught ten baskets of fish, he reserved for himself
only four baskets. The rest of it was distributed the way as follows: one
basket was for the old men of his village, three baskets were for the village
chief and his clan, and two baskets were a tribute in favor of supreme
power (Nennen 1923: 71).
The Baluba had also clientage (de Jonghe 1947: 48; Colle 1913: 338).
The duties of clients (babanzi) resembled rather the duties of body-guards
than anything else. Yet babanzi formed a diversified group. While many of
Babanzi were their patrons' close assistants, other clients were used in farm-
ing and constructing (Colle 1913: 338). Mutual obligations of patrons and
clients step by step took a hereditary form, and, thus, turned into the initial
form of personal dependence.
The chiefs of conquered ethnic groups were also included into the top
governmental strata of Kuba, Luba, and Lunda states. But they were forced
to recognize the rulers of Luba (titled as ‘mulohwe’), of Kuba (titled as ‘ny-
imi’), and of Lunda (titled as ‘mwata yamvo’) as supreme chiefs. Some-
times, these new relations were registered through real of symbolic matri-
monial rituals between the supreme chief and chiefs of conquered peoples.
At this level of exploitative development conquerors were amalgamated
with the former upper strata. This happened 100 years ago, when the
Bayeke under the leadership of Msiri conquered Luba state.
Besides clientage there existed other forms of personal dependence. I
would rather conventionally name them ‘slavery’ or ‘servile’ ones. Ethno-
graphical and linguistic data show that the development of servile exploita-
tion was very poor. The most frequent name used by Baluba for this servile
stratum is ‘mupika’. The word ‘mupika’ derives from the verb ‘kupika’ (to
buy) (de Jonghe 1947: 61; Colle 1913: 834). This stratum was recruited
through different ways. These were war captives, criminals or their rela-
tives, and their children (Colle 1913: 800–805; Torday and Joice 1963: 90;
Brau 1942: 162). While their positions in society were rather different, all
the bapika (pl. ‘mupika’) were ‘patriarchal’ dependent serfs or slaves, their
duties being comparatively easy. Most of them were occupied in service as
domestic serfs, carriers, bodyguards and so on. The rest of bapika worked
together with villagers and paid their part of a tribute. Their agricultural
labor was only additional, and such an exploitative system was of secon-
dary importance.
The exploitative systems formed for a long period. According to the oral
tradition it lasted for 300 years. Europeans (from the West) and Arabian-
Swahili merchants (from the East) brought the idea of slave-trade. One can
agree with S. Abramova who asserts that this influence was only external
and did not lead to intensive development of slavery within African socie-
ties (1978: 252). Obviously, the drawing of the Congo basin peoples into
European and Arabian-Swahili slave-trade influenced the expansion of
slavery and the status of slavers in Luba and Lunda states. The number of
slaves increased. The seizure of captives (not a tribute) became the main
aim of war expeditions. Criminals became slaves more often than in former
times. Yet, all these changes were connected with external influences, and
they did not touch an agricultural production within Baluba, Bakuba, and
Balunda societies. Their slaves mainly were the objects of trade and not for
exploitation.
More over, it seems to me that, on the contrary, the participation of the
upper strata of these societies in external slave-trade led them to the stagna-
tion of exploitative forms and then resulted in weakening the early states
and their decline. The more the upper strata were drawn into slave-trade,
the less internal exploitative relations were developed, the less firm was the
basis of their domination, the less governmental apparatus was organized,
the weaker was the state itself. We can make these conclusions comparing
the level of social relations at the Baluba, Balunda, and Bakuba. So, the
Balunda began to collaborate with European slave-traders much earlier than
other peoples of the Congo basin (from the beginning of the 17th century)
and much wider. As the data show the level of exploitation within Lunda
society was the lowest. The territorial unity of various regions was formal,
the centralization of authority was low, and many provinces were practi-
cally independent (such as Shinde and Kazembe). Lunda state had disinte-
grated much earlier than Luba and Kuba states.
The Baluba took part in an external slave-trade much later, and their in-
ternal exploitation, centralization, and governmental formation were higher
in comparison with the Balunda.
At last, the Bakuba did not practically take part in European and Ara-
bian-Swahili slave-trade. Probably, it happened because of the trade ways
being aside. The first European (L. Wolf from the expedition of G. Von
Wissman) stepped on the land of the Bakuba only in 1884. And the Bakuba
had the deepest social stratification, the highest centralization, and more
developed governmental apparatus among these three peoples. Only the
Bakuba had estate courts. It was Kuba that persisted as a separate inde-
pendent state till 1910. And much later, the Bakuba persisted as a unique
society (within Mweka area in Belgian Congo and Zaire, now Democ-
ratic Republic of Congo).
The developmental process of exploitative systems and state apparatus
was slow. The immature contradictory social relations influenced the state
formation itself. The apparatus of coercion was not formed completely yet.
And its different constituents have not been studied equally. The supreme
authority and the court of governors especially often attracted the attention
of observers. So, they were described rather scrupulously. We have much
less data of the law and the army. And our knowledge of secret masculine
fraternities as the constituents of state authority is very poor.
Conservatism and unusually slow development are the very characteris-
tic features of state formation in Lunda, Luba, and Kuba. The main insti-
tutes of state authority were forming during several centuries, and some of
them persist in our times (Cunnison 1951).
It is very important that these three political formations give us an inter-
esting example of sequential development of the features, which are com-
mon for early states not only in this region but within the whole continent.
While comparing their administrative systems with each other we can dis-
tinguish their levels of development. The most stable state was Kuba.
Though the Kuba state was formed within its limits in the 17th century, the
limits persisted almost unchangeable up to the present. Luba state was less
stable. A number of provinces being members of the state changed, and
some of them became independent sometimes. By the end of 19th century
Luba state had failed in persisting as an entity. Its old provinces persisting
as separate units paid a tribute to Msiri who conquered them. The European
travelers of the second part of the 19th century met a lot of chiefdoms which
did not recognize the authority of Kasongo Nyembo who was the last ‘mu-
lohwe’ of Luba. At last, Lunda state was still more ephemeral. The author-
ity of the supreme chief titled ‘mwata-yamvo’ was nominal. This was espe-
cially the case in the last years of Luba state existence. Such provinces as
Shinde, Kazembe, Kanongesha, and Kazembe-Mutanda were under central
authority de jure, but they were de facto independent. Kazembe was the
most mighty among them (Livingston 1968: 185–186).
The central authority was obliged to maintain domination of conquerors
over conquered tribes, and to keep up a privileged status of the nobles based
on the exploitation of internal (on their own lands) and external conquered
peasants communities. After the slave-trade had begun, the administrative
apparatus was also obliged to protect freedom and profits of traders and
keep slaves under obedience. The main constituents of this apparatus are
the authority of paramount ruler, the council of the nobles, the judiciary,
and the army.
The supreme authority was in hands of the paramount ruler. He was ti-
tled by the Bakuba as ‘nyimi’, by the Baluba as ‘mulohwe’, and by the
Balunda as ‘mwata yamvo’. European observers often call them ‘king’ or
‘emperor’. Certainly, the usage of these terms is incorrect. This is an artifi-
cial transference of medieval terms from Europe to African distinctive real-
ity. In European traveler's eyes, paramount chiefs seemed to be absolute
rulers (Cameron 1887: 70, 108; Huysman 1904: 383; von Wissmann et al.
1888: 245; Livingston 1968: 212). As all the Africans of the precolonial
period, the Congo basin peoples believed the paramount and their dead an-
cestors to have special magic power. While taking the main position in the
world of spirits the souls of dead paramount helped the alive to rule the
country. Alive paramount rulers often addressed the spirits of dead ances-
tors by means of special rituals and asked their advice. While the tombs of
the paramounts were the objects of special reverence, the priests-keepers of
‘king's tombs’ were among the most important courtiers (Gamitto 1965: 141).
A living paramount ruler was regarded as a ‘king-priest’. A ‘king-priest’
was believed to be closely connected with the forces of nature and to influ-
ence the good things of life. His mode of life was controlled by means of a
number of special taboos. Such a sacred ruler must be also physically per-
fect. There were special trials for his health. When he was found unhealthy
during the trial, ritual killing was used. Ritual suicides used by the Yoruba
are the most vivid example. This custom was very ancient and it disap-
peared in most African societies many years ago. However, the cases of
chiefs' removals or exiles after such trials are well known in Lunda and
Kuba.
The Baluba believed the mulohwe to become a sacred spirit after his
death and to rule over the life of the alive. Thus, Kongolo, the founder of
Luba state, became a divine creature. The snake and the rainbow (a ‘sky
snake’) were considered as his embodiments. From the faith in sacral con-
nection between the paramount and nature there derived another belief in
his immortality. The Bakuba supposed the spirit of a dead nyimi to be em-
bodied in the ‘ndop’, a special wooden sculpture (Vansina 1964: 100). In
the beginning of the 20th century, the ruler of the Bakuba Kot a Pe told E.
Torday that he always begged the ndop of Shyaam (the paramount of the
end of the 16th century) for advice before making an important decision
(Torday and Joice 1963: 53).
The paramount ruler was both an embodiment of a divine spirit and a
priest. When being in Lunad, a capital city, German traveler P. Pogge ob-
served the mwata-yamvo exercising special rituals intended to influence the
good things of life (1880: 162–163).
To the paramount ruler the sacred animals symbolizing authority,
wisdom, force mind, longevity, and so on were dedicated. The python and
the tortoise were the most important among them. The plan of Musumba
(the capital of Lunda), for example, symbolized the sacred tortoise. The
residence of a ruler copied the contours of the tortoise body. In the center
there was a palace of the paramount ruler. It symbolized the heart of a tortoise.
Other dwellings symbolized its head, paws, tail, and sides (Margarido 1970:
857).
One of the characteristic features of the Congo basin early states was the
institute of women-corulers. The Balunda called them ‘lukokesha’, and the
Bakuba called them ‘mana-nyimi’. True, they had lost their influence rather
considerably by the end of the 19th century. But their reverence persisted,
and women-corulers had their own courts and guards. As for the Balunda,
the lukokesha had even her own villages, which were not under the rule of
the mwata-yamvo. Her word was crucial in nominating a new paramount
ruler and in many other cases (Buchner 1887: 11). Mana nyimi had her own
court as well. During ceremonies, she was seated in the most honorary
place and had the first word (Torday and Joice 1963: 53).
Paramount rulers were surrounded by a large number of courtiers. The
ruler's court and the administrative apparatus of Kuba, Luba, and Lunda
were described by many observers much better than other aspects of social
life (Orlova and L'vova 1978). While describing various officials and their
titles European travelers understood not always exactly the particularities of
the official's hierarchy. While some officials took crucial part in the state
apparatus, the other ones were only the formal bearers of honor titles (Bie-
buck 1957; Bucher 1887; Duysters 1958; Gamitto 1907 etc.).
Upper officials formed the council of noble men that played a great role
in political life. The council (‘ishyaaml’) was headed by ‘kikaam’ in Kuba.
The relations between the council and the nyimi were ambiguous. Members
of the council outwardly showed obedience but they were very powerful in
reality (Vansina 1964: 114). Having meetings not less than once a week the
council decided practically all the important questions. The nyimi was al-
lowed only to submit proposals for consideration. He was not allowed even
to be present at the sittings of the council. A kikaam could make a decision
opposed to the will of a nyimi. This was the case in 1904. Contrary to the
will of paramount ruler Kot a Pe, the council of the nobles made a decision
of rising in revolt against Belgain war expeditions (Torday and Joice 1963: 110).
Kuba state had the more thorough system of law courts than Luba and
Lunda states. Multi-stepped structure was its characteristic feature. There
were law courts in villages, in provinces, and in the capital. The highest
judges were the kikaam and nyimi himself. There were different judges for
making decisions on definite crimes and cases: on sorcery, on killings, on
fights and mutilations, on stealing, on heritage, on trade and so on (Vansina
1964: 143–147). A very important role was played by secrete fraternities
executing the sentence. This institute played a definite role in supporting
supreme authority (Burton 1939; Turner 1958 etc.). The data shows the in-
terlacing of traditional tribal and new state institutions in justice system.
The last one retained old pre-state features. So, judges in villages were
community chiefs, all the communals had equal rights. Legal proceedings
were very simple and democratic. Proving and ordalia were very popular
there. The customary law and secrete fraternities were extremely important.
Thus, the legal practice was a mirror of social stratification and inequality
that are expressed in unequal punishments for equal offences for different
social strata: the nobles, villagers-communals, and slaves. Usually, the de-
cision of judges depended on gifts. As for the Bakuba, they had some initial
forms of estate or guild courts.
While judicial system and mythology with its characteristic faith in sac-
ral king-priest were the legal and ideological base of state, the war forces,
an army, guaranteed its stability. The army showed its ambiguous nature as
an element of state power. These early states had no regular army (Colle
1913: 740–741; Torday and Joice 1963: 104–105). All the adults were war-
riors. Such an army had no arsenals, centralized forage system and so on.
This army was home guard, ‘an independent war organization of popula-
tion’ (Engels 1961 [1884]). The Bakuba used the age group system for call-
ing up for military service. This practice was very typical for pre-state and
early state societies. As opposed to Luba and Lunda, in Kuba there was a
number of war leaders that conserved their posts in peacetime. While the
armies of Lunda, Luba, and Kuba resembled home guard, these de facto
were on service of upper strata. This conclusion is confirmed by cases of
application of military forces. Armies were used for territorial usurpation,
war robbery expeditions, suppressions of revolted vassals, and so on (Van-
sina 1964: 169).
CONCLUSIONS
Our data permit us to suppose that Lunda, Luba and Kuba were the least
developed and organized early states in precolonial Africa. Obviously,
Lunda and Luba had no clear separation of handicrafts from agriculture. We
can not see completely formed state apparatus of violence. The army and
customary law preserved the features of traditional relations but already
served upper strata. Kuba had more complete state organization. The au-
thority was concentrated in the hands of noble families. The army and judi-
ciary system guaranteed property and privileges of upper strata. We can
suppose that Lunda, Luba and Kuba demonstrate sequential stages of the
formation of early class and state relations in Central Africa.
NOTE
ways to Early State, Vladivostok: Dal'nauka, 1995, pp. 109–117 under the title ‘The
Formation and the development of states (the peoples of Congo basin)’.
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1923. La Question des Terres chez les Baluba Shakadi du District de la Lulua,
Territoire du Bas-Lubugi. Bulletin des juridictions indigenes et du droit coutumier
congolais 1.
Orlova, A. S., and L'vova, E. S.
1978. Stranitsy istorii velikoj savanny [The History of Great Savanna]. Mos-
cow: Nauka.
Pogge, P.
1880. Im Reiche des Muata-Yamvo. Berlin.
Sledzevsky, I. V.
1974. Hausanskie emiraty Severnoj Nigerii [The Hausa Emirats of Northern
Nigeria]. Moscow: Nauka.
Torday, D., and Joice T.
1910. Notes Ethnographiques sur les Peuples Communement Appel les Bakuba
et les Peuplades Apparentees. Les Bushongo. Annales du Musee du Congo Belge.
Ser. Vol. II. Fasc. I. Bruxelles.
Turner, A.
1958. Lunda Rites and Ceremonies. Livingstone.
Vansina, J.
1956. Le Regime Foncier dans la Societe Kuba. Zaire X (9)
1964. Le Royaume Kuba. Tervuren.
Verhulpen, E.
1936. Baluba et Balubaises du Katanga. Anvers.
von Wissmann, H. et al.
1888. Im innern Afrikas, die Erforschung der Kasai während den Jahren 1883,
1884 und 1885. Leipzig.
Part III
Sedentary Alternatives
and Analogues
● Andrey V. Korotayev
The Chiefdom: Precursor of the Tribe?
(Some Trends of Political Evolution in North-East
Yemeni Highlands)
● Dmitri M. Bondarenko
From Local Communities to Megacommunity: Biniland
in the 1st Millennium B.C.– 19th Century A.D.
● Moshe Berent
Greece: The Stateless Polis
(11th– 4th Centuries B.C.)
● Dmitri V. Dozhdev
Rome: Socio-political Evolution
in the 8th– 2nd Centuries B.C.
● Leonid E. Grinin
Early State and Democracy
14
The Chiefdom: Precursor of the Tribe?
(Some Trends of Political Evolution
in North-East Yemeni Highlands)*
Andrey V. Korotayev
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow
In the 1st millennium A.D. the North-East Yemen political system consist-
ing of a weak state in its centre and strong chiefdoms on its periphery1 ap-
pears to have been transformed into a system consisting of a bit stronger
state in its centre and true tribes (but not chiefdoms)2 (see e.g., Robin
1982b; Piotrovskiy 1985; Dresch 1989: 191)3. Within this system the tribes
and state constituted one well integrated whole (Golubovskaya 1971: 59–
62; 1984: 11; Stookey 1978: 79–95, 171–173; Obermeyer 1982; Piotrov-
skiy 1985: 70, 97–100; Gerasimov 1987: 45–55; Udalova 1988: 18–19;
Dresch 1984b, 1989, 1991; Abu Ghanim 1985: 98–138; 1990; vom Bruck
1993 etc.). There does not seem to be any adequate term to denote systems
of this kind.
It might be reasonable to apply here some term like a ‘multipolity’, de-
fining it as a highly integrated system consisting of heterogenous polities
(e.g., of state and chiefdoms, or state and tribes)4. The following reservation
seems to be necessary here: the medieval political system of North-East
Yemen (as well as the Middle Sabaean political system [the 2nd and 3rd cen-
turies A.D.]) included in addition to state and tribes (of course, not chief-
doms as it was in the Middle Sabaean case) some other important elements.
It seems sufficient to mention here the ‘religious aristocracy’ (say-
yid/sadah), tracing their descent to Muhammad, and performing in the tribal
areas e.g., important mediating political roles, as usual without occupying
there any formal political functions and remaining mainly outside the
Korotayev / The Chiefdom: Precursor of the Tribe? (Some Trends of Political Evolu-
tion in North-East Yemeni Highlands), pp. 300–324
Korotayev / The Chiefdom: Precursor of the Tribe? 301
tribal (and in most cases state) hierarchy (Serjeant 1977: 237–239; Chelhod
1970: 80–81; 1975: 70–71; 1979: 58f.; Gerholm 1977: 123; Stookey
1978: 95; Obermeyer 1982: 36–37; Dresch 1984: 159f.; 1989: 140–145;
Abu Ghanim 1985: 212–227; 1990). Within the medieval North-East
Yemen political system the sayyids appear to have taken some functions of
the pre-Islamic (or, to be more correct, pre-monotheistic) system of temple
centres, on the one hand, and ones of the qayls, on the other (though, unlike
the qayls, the political leaders of the pre-Islamic sha'b, the sayyids in most
cases did not act as formal political leaders of the North Yemen qabilah).
‘The true source of political power lies with the tribal leaders who will ac-
cept no control from their peers. The solution to this impasse was worked
out even prior to Islam by the evolution of the organization centred upon
the sacred enclave, managed by an hereditary religious aristocracy re-
spected and protected by the tribes’ (Serjeant 1977: 244).
There does not seem to be any grounds to consider this transformation
as ‘degeneration’, ‘regress’ or ‘decline’, as there was no significant loss of
the general system complexity and elaboration, one complex political sys-
tem was transformed into another one, structurally different, but not less
complex, highly organized and sophisticated.
The political organization of the Yemeni qaba'il is relatively5 egalitar-
ian. However, the North-East Yemen tribal system as a whole in no way
can be considered as egalitarian. The point is that in addition to the mem-
bers of the tribes (constituting in the tribal areas the majority of the popula-
tion and the main mass of the plough agriculturalists) the tribal communi-
ties include numerous ‘quasi-casts’6 of unarmed7 ‘weak’ population, placed
outside the tribal organization, but ‘under protection’ of the tribes (du'afa',
‘the weak’)8: butchers and barbers (mazayinah), the tribal ‘heralds’ (dawa-
shin), merchants (bayya'in), horticulturalists (ghashshamin), craftsman, first
of all weavers (sani'in), servants (akhdam), placed at the very bottom of the
hierarchy etc.; traditionally the Jewish population of the area also belonged
to ‘the weak’ (Serjeant 1977: 230–235; Chelhod 1970: 63, 73–80, 83–84;
1975: 76–82; 1979: 48, 54–57; 1985: 15–37; Golubovskaya 1981; 1984:
11; Obermeyer 1982: 36; Piotrovskiy 1985: 64, 87; Udalova 1988: 19–20;
Dresch 1984b: 159; 1989: 117–123; Stevenson 1985: 42–47, 63f.; Abu
Ghanim 1985: 234–249 etc.)9.
The general picture of the social stratification of the tribal areas is fur-
ther complicated by the presence of the above-mentioned sayyids and (not
yet mentioned) qadis (the learnt families, not tracing their descent to Mu-
hammad), who were also under the protection of the tribes10, playing quite
important roles in the functioning of the tribal systems11 (Serjeant 1977:
236–237; Chelhod 1970: 81f.; 1975: 70–71; 1979: 58f.; Obermeyer
1982: 36–37; Golubovskaya 1984: 11; Piotrovskiy 1985: 65, 87, 101; Uda-
lova 1988: 20; Dresch 1984b: 159f.; 1989: 136–157; Abu Ghanim 1985:
212–227; 1990 etc.)12.
In many respects the tribe of the North Yemeni type could be regarded
as a rather developed form of the political organization, whose complexity
could quite be compared with that of the chiefdom (and it is by no means
more primitive than the chiefdom), implying first of all a very high level of
the development of the political culture and the existence of an elaborated
system of the political institutions and the traditions of arbitration, media-
tion, search for consensus etc., a wide developed network of intensive inter-
communal links on enormous territories populated by tens and hundreds
thousand people. Such tribal system can to a certain extent organize (with-
out the application of any centralized coercion) all these masses of popula-
tion which often exceed the population of an average chiefdom by 1–2 or-
ders of magnitude.
E. g., Earle defines the chiefdom as ‘a polity that organizes centrally a
regional population in thousands’ (Earle 1991: 1); whereas an average
North Yemen tribe includes 20–30 thousand members (Dresch 1984a: 33),
and such a relatively highly integrated North Yemen tribal confederation as
Hashid consists of seven tribes (ibid.; Dresch 1991: 256; Chelhod even lists
14 tribes belonging to this confederation – Chelhod 1970: 84–85; 1985: 57–
58; see also Stevenson 1985: 48). Of course, one should not also forget
dozens of thousands of the members of the ‘weak quasi-casts’ (as well as
quite considerable numbers of sayyids and qadis) who are not formally
members of the tribes, but who are also to a certain extent organized by the
tribal structures (which e.g., guarantee the security of towns, markets, reli-
gious centres etc. within the tribal area). As a result the mass of the popula-
tion organized to a certain extent by the tribal confederation Hashid appears
to exceed substantially (by 1–2 orders of magnitude!) the respective figures
for an average chiefdom. One should not also forget the ability of the tribal
organization of this type to form in conjunction with other polities (not nec-
essarily states – see e. g., Gellner 1969) political systems, multipolities,
with complexity of even a higher order.
The notion of ‘tribe’, as it is used by the social anthropologists for the
description of the socio-political organization of the Northern Yemenis (or,
say, the population of many areas of Afghanistan, Cyrenaica, Atlas etc.) in
the 19th and 20th centuries appears rather useful, as it denotes quite a distinct
form of supra-communal political organization, which does not seem to be
adequately denoted by any other current terms, like ‘chiefdom’ (let alone
‘state’, or ‘community’). We can observe here such a type of political or-
ganization, when the functioning of quite stable forms of intercommunal
integration takes place without the monopolization by the tribal leaders of
the legitimate application of violence, without their acquisition of any for-
mal power over the communities and the commoners, when e.g., the con-
flicts are solved (or the collective ‘tribal’ actions are undertaken) not
through the decisions of authoritative officials, but through the search by
the tribal leaders (lacking any formal, absolute, independent from their per-
sonal qualities, power) for the consensus among all the interested members
of the tribe (or the tribes) etc.
A shaykh cannot ... make undertakings on his men's behalf simply on
the basis of his formal position; each undertaking which affects them
must be specifically agreed to...’ (Dresch 1984a: 39). ‘The power which
a shaykh may have over groups of tribesmen is not conferred on him by
his position. He must constantly intervene in their affairs, and intervene
successfully [in order to preserve his power] (ibid.: 41; see also Chelhod
1970; 1979; 1985: 39–54; Dostal 1974; 1990: 47–58, 175–223; Ober-
meyer 1982; Dresch 1984a; 1984b; 1989; Abu Ghanim 1985; 1990:
229–251; vom Bruck 1993: 94–95 etc.).
It transpires that political structures of the Yemeni qaba'il type13 can be
most appropriately denoted as ‘tribes’, whereas the Middle Sabaean (the
1st– 4th centuries A.D.) supra-communal entities, the sha'bs of the second
order (cf. Korotayev 1991, 1993a, 1993b, 1995b, 1996, Chapter II), could
be with complete justification denoted as ‘chiefdoms’ (cf., e.g., the classical
definitions of the chiefdom and tribe by Service [1971: 103, 142, 145–
146]). In the meantime within such an approach one would have to admit
the absence of the tribal organization proper in the Sabaean Cultural Area
of the pre-Islamic age14. That is why there are certain grounds to speak
about the transformation of the chiefdoms into tribes in the ‘Sabaean’ High-
lands in the Early Islamic Period (and to regard e.g., the transmutation of
the pre-Islamic Sabaean15 s2'bn HS2DM into qabilat Hashid of the Islamic
age precisely as an evolution from chiefdom to tribal confederation).
The approach considering the tribe as a relatively late, non-primitive
form of political organization can in no way be regarded as new. In fact, as
is well known, quite a similar conclusion was arrived at by Fried already in
the 60s (Fried 1967; 1975). Indeed, Fried maintains that the tribe16 is a non-
primitive form of political organization which arose in relatively recent
time under the structurizing impact of already formed state systems on un-
structured (or extremely loosely structured) agglomerates of independent
primitive communities.
While agreeing completely with Fried's approach to the tribe as a
non-primitive late form of political organization, I am inclined to suppose
(basing myself mainly on the South Arabian data) that there were some
other ways in which the tribal organization could arise, e.g., through the
transformation of the chiefdoms. Generally speaking, I would state that
Fried seems to have a bit overestimated the role of the structurizing influ-
ence of the state, almost completely refraining from the study of the internal
dynamics of the evolution of the non-state political systems leading to the
formation of the tribal organization.
I do not see any grounds to consider the formation of the North Yemen
tribal organization as a result of the structurizing influence of the states on
the unstructurized primitive population. Some significant influence was
rather exerted on the part of the North Arab tribes, who were in close con-
tact with South Arabia during all its late pre-Islamic and Early Islamic his-
tory (i.e. precisely in the period of the formation of the tribal organization
in this area – Piotrovskiy 1985: 8, 64, 69–70; Chelhod 1970: 69–72; 1979;
1985: 45–46; al-Hadithi 1978: 68, 81–96; Hoefner 1959; Robin 1982b: 29;
1984: 213, 221; 1991; Wilson 1989: 16; von Wissmann 1964a: 181–183,
195–196, 403–406; 1964b: 493 etc.).
However, though significant impact of the North Arabian tribes on the
formation of the ‘tribal ethos’ in the area appears very plausible (this will
be discussed in more detail below), some of the above-mentioned scholars
(Chelhod, Piotrovskiy, Robin) seem to underestimate the significance of the
internal ‘logic’ of the evolution of the area in this process17. To my mind,
the genesis of the North Yemen tribal organization can be considered to a
considerable extent as a realization of some long-term internal trends to-
wards ‘egalitarization’ which could be observed in the area since the end of
the 1st millennium B.C. It could be considered as a result of the prolonged
search by the main agricultural population of the Northern Highlands for
the optimum (for this area) forms of the socio-political organization.
It seems possible to detect some trends towards ‘egalitarization’ already
for the pre-Islamic age. For example, in the Ancient Period (the 1st millen-
nium B.C.) of the Sabaean history immovable property was considered to
belong to the heads of the extended families (thus, a head of such a family
would denote this property as ‘his’ /–hw/ [Bauer 1964: 19–20; 1965: 209–
217; Lundin 1962; 1965b; 1971: 233–245; Korotayev 1990: 16–19; 1993c:
51–53; 1995b Chapter III]), whereas in the Middle Period (the 1st– 4th cen-
turies A.D.) such property would be considered as belonging to the whole
clan nucleus of the clan communities (and consequently in the Middle Sa-
baean inscriptions [even installed by single authors] we get across only the
mentions of ‘their’ [–hmw] immovable property, but almost never ‘his’ [–
hw] lands, fields, vineyards etc. – Korotayev 1990, 1993c, 1993d; 1995b:
Chapter III). To my mind, this may be regarded as a result of certain ‘de-
mocratization’ of the internal organization of the Sabaean lineages.
The formation of the tribal organization in the Northern Highlands in the
Islamic age seems to have been accompanied by the further ‘democratiza-
tion’ of the land relations, though in a very remarkable way, through the
achievement of a very high level of their individualization (Dresch 1989).
In this area the land relations appear to have passed the way from the pos-
session of the extended family lands by their heads in the Ancient Sabaean
Period (the 1st millennium B.C.) to the emphatically collective possession
of the arable lands by whole lineages in the Middle Period (the 1st–4th cen-
turies A.D.) and further (it seems not without some influence of the
shari'ah) towards the individual possession of the arable lands by all the
adult members of the tribes (the women's land property rights need special
consideration for which I have no space here [cf. Mundy 1979; Dresch
1989: 276–291]). The last transformation seems to correlate rather well
with the genesis of the tribal organization and the general egalitarization of
the socio-political structures, as such a system of land relations effectively
prevented the formation of anything like powerful qaylite clans of the pre-
Islamic age with their huge consolidated and indivisible land possessions. It
is also rather remarkable that the genesis of the tribal organization in the
Northern Highlands appears to have been accompanied by the weakening of
the ‘economic communalism’: the Middle Sabaean inscriptions, whose au-
thors constantly mention the assistance of their communities in their eco-
nomic activities (C 224, 4; 339, 4; 416, 4; 585, 2; Ga 6, 3; R 3971, 4; 3975
+ Ga 32, 3-4; 4033, 2a; Robin/ al-Hajari 1, 6; /Khamir 1, 4; /Kanit 13 + 14,
2; Ry 540, 1–2 etc.), stand in the sharpest contrast with the descriptions of
the economic relations in the tribal Yemeni North characterized by an ex-
tremely low level of the communal economic co-operation: ‘The lack of co-
operation in practice is perhaps not as marked as in stories told of the past,
but it is still marked enough. Neighbors occupying adjoining houses or
working adjoining plots may help one another gratuitously in time of trou-
ble, usually, as Doughty put it, “betwixt free will and their private advan-
tage”; one would work to repair someone else's terrace if one's own terrace
might be placed in some danger, for example, but hardly for long other-
wise’ (Dresch 1989: 301).
It is also very remarkable that a similar transformation occurred with re-
spect to the title qayl: in the Ancient Period it was mainly an individual ti-
tle, belonging to individual persons, whereas in the Middle Period in the
Sabaean cultural-political area (but not in the Himyarite South!) it
started to be considered as mainly an attribute of whole qaylite clans, but
not their individual members (Korotayev 1990: 8–12; 1993c: 50–51; 1995a,
Chapter I; see also Robin 1982a, I: 79 and Avanzini 1985: 86–87). Not-
withstanding the remaining great social distance between the qaylite clans
and the main mass of the members of the Middle Sabaean sha'bs, this trans-
formation may well be considered as a step towards the North Yemeni
tribal model (cf. Dresch 1984a).
It seems appropriate to mention here a rather democratic internal organi-
zation of the Middle Sabaean (the 1st– 4th centuries A.D.) local communi-
ties, the sha'bs of the third order, demonstrating some evident similarities
with the communal organization of the population of the Yemeni Uplands
of the current millennium (see e.g., Korotayev 1994b). The genesis of the
North-East Yemen tribal organization can well be considered as the process
of the extension of quite democratic principles of the Middle Sabaean
communal organization to the supra-communal level (corresponding to the
level of the Middle Sabaean sha'b of the second order).
The genesis of the North-East Yemen tribal organization can be also
considered as a result of the protracted struggle of the main agricultural
population of the Northern Highlands in order to raise their social status.
This struggle seems to have been mainly rather ‘quite’, and that is why it
was noticed by the historical sources rather rarely (see, however, e.g., al-
Hamdani 1980: 328). In any case there are certain grounds to suppose that
the main mass of the North Highlands agricultural population used the po-
litical upheavals of the end of the 1st millennium A.D. in order to raise sig-
nificantly their social status18.
No doubt, a certain role in the formation of the high-status tribal agricul-
tural population was played by the above-mentioned influence of the politi-
cal culture of the North Arabian tribes. One of their most important contri-
bution here appears to have been the transmission to the Arabian South of
the ‘genealogical culture’. The pre-Islamic South Arabian communities
were sha'bs, emphatically territorial entities.
In strong contrast to the North Arabian practice of recording long
lists of ancestors (attested also for the pre-Islamic period in the Safaitic
inscriptions), E[pigraphic] S[outh] A[rabian] nomenclature consisted
simply of given-name plus name of the social grouping (usually the
bayt), with optional insertion of the father's given-name, but never any
mention of an ancestor in any higher degree. One is irresistibly reminded
of the remark attributed to the caliph 'Umar, ‘Learn your genealogies,
and be not like the Nabataeans of Mesopotamia who, when asked who
they are, say “I am from such-and-such a village”’, which Ibn Khaldun
quotes with the very significant comment that it is true also of the popu-
lations of the fertile tracts of Arabia... [The] qabila... [is] fundamentally
kinship-based and totally different in nature from the sha'b...In the
Qur'an (49: 13) ja'alnakum shu'uban wa-qaba'ila clearly refers to two
different types of social organization, and Ibn Khaldun when speaking of
the settled populations of Arabia is careful to use the word shu'ub and
not qaba'il, reserving the latter for the nomads (Beeston 1972a: 257–
258; see also Id. 1972b: 543; Ryckmans 1974: 500; Robin 1982a v. I;
1982b; Piotrovskiy 1985: 53, 69; Korotayev 1991 etc.).
In the Early Islamic age under the influence of the North Arabian tribal
culture which acquired the highest prestige in the Muslim World many
South Arabian sha'bs, while remaining essentially territorial (Dresch 1989;
Serjeant 1989: XI), were transformed into qaba'il, tribes structured formally
according to genealogical principles19. In its turn this transformation was
the result of the intense work by the South Arabians aimed at the working
out of their own genealogies, as well as their passionate (and quite success-
ful) struggle for the recognition of their genealogies by the Arab World
(and for integration in this way into the Arab ethnos dominant within the
Early Islamic state [the 7th – the middle of the 8th centuries A.D.] in quite
high positions – Piotrovskiy 1977; 1985). One should not of course forget
that the Yemenis managed to achieve very successfully something which
almost nobody else did:
With the conquests, the Arabs found themselves in charge of a huge
non-Arab population. Given that it was non-Muslim, this population
could be awarded a status similar to that of clients in Arabia, retaining
its own organization under Arab control in return for the payment of
taxes... But converts posed a novel problem in that, on the one hand they
had to be incorporated, not merely accomodated, within Arab society;
and on the other hand, they had ‘forgotten their genealogies’20, suffered
defeat and frequently also enslavement, so that they did not make ac-
ceptable halifs; the only non-Arabs to be affiliated as such were the
Hamrâ' and Asâwira, Persian soldiers who deserted to the Arabs during
the wars of conquest in return for privileged status... It was in response
to this novel problem that Islamic wala' [i.e. the system of integration of
the non-Arab Muslims into the Islamic society in capacity of the depend-
ent mawali – A. K.] was evolved (Crone 1991: 875).
In any case it is a bit amazing that such a highly-qualified specialist in
early Islamic history as Crone has managed to overlook another (and much
more important!) exception – the Yemenis (most of whom do not seem to
have belonged to the Arab proto-ethnos by the beginning of the 7th century
A.D.). The possible explanation here might be that the Yemeni efforts
aimed at persuading the Arabs that the South Arabians were as Arab as the
Arabs themselves21, or even more Arab than the Arabs (al-'arab al-'aribah
as distinct from al-'arab al-musta'ribah [e.g., Piotrovskiy 1985: 67; Shahid
1989: 340–341; Robin 1991c: 64 etc.]), and that they had always been Ar-
abs, turned out to be so successful that they managed to persuade in this not
only themselves, not only the Arabs, but also the Arabists as well.
Notwithstanding all the difference between the Yemenis and the above-
mentioned groups of the Persian soldiers (it seems sufficient to mention that
the Yemen population was quite comparable by the 7th century with the
number of all the Arabs taken together), some similarity between these two
cases also appears to have existed. As in the case of the Persian soldiers the
Yemenis seem to have managed to enter early Islamic society as full mem-
bers very much because early Islamic society badly needed the military
manpower, whereas the Yemenis constituted a substantial part (and some-
times even majority) of most Islamic armies.
One reads that the warriors of [the early Islamic conquests] were
northerners... It now seems very doubtful that they were predominantly
northerners, let alone exclusively so, for the manpower required for such
speedy and vigorous military campaigns was to be found only in the
Yemen. The Yemen of the 1st/7th century, like the Yemen of today, was
the only area of the Arabian Peninsula of sufficient population density to
provide large numbers of troops. What is more, we are not simply talk-
ing of the other ranks. The presence of vast numbers, often in the major-
ity, of Yemenis participating in the great Islamic conquests of the 1st/7th
century in predominantly tribal companies from the highest to the lowest
rank is amply attested and, what is more, they were seasoned fighters,
not in any way raw recruits. It follows also that great numbers of those
Yemenis participating in the conquests settled in the territories which
they helped to conquer (Smith 1990, 134; a detailed factological sub-
stantiation for this statement can be found in al-Mad'aj 1988: 69–70, 86–
88, 123–125, 127, 132, 140–143).
While remaining a realist, one naturally has to suppose that the Yemenis
managed to enter the Islamic society (and the Arab ethnos) so smoothly as
its full members (and not like dependent mawali) not because the genealo-
gies which they worked out looked so convincing, but mainly because of
the very important role of the Yemenis in the Islamic conquests22. It rather
seems that because of the very important role of the Yemeni manpower the
Arabs allowed themselves to be persuaded that their fellows in the jihad
were as Arab as they were (and, consequently, that the Yemenis' genealo-
gies were as authentic as their own). To insist on the non-Arab identity of
the Yemenis, on the invalidity of their genealogies would have led to the
alienation of a very strong military power, whereas none of the fiercely
confronting each other Arab factions of early Islamic society could afford
such a ‘luxury’.
As a result, the main mass of the agricultural population of the Northern
Highlands found themselves in possession of deep, ancient (and quite veri-
table even from the point of view of the Northern Arabs) genealogies,
which provided quite a strong ‘ideological’ basis for the struggle by this
population for the preservation of their high social status. The ‘genealogical
ideology’ (the representation of the tribes and their confederations as de-
scendants of certain eponym ancestors tied by kinship relations) turned out
to provide also a suitable basis for the development of the tribal political
culture, assisting in the working out of the mechanisms of flexible interac-
tion of the tribal entities of various levels.
On the other hand, as a result of the considerable decline of the state
structures23 in the Northern Highlands after a relatively short period of their
consolidation at the beginning of the Islamic age, the population of the area
confronted the necessity to defend themselves by themselves. To a certain
extent the genesis of the tribal organization (for which there were already
certain pre-conditions in the area) can be considered as the Highlanders'
response to this challenge. The tribal organization, having been formed,
turned out to be so effective in many respects, that until the most recent
time it resisted quite successfully all the attempts by the state systems
(which periodically strengthened in South Arabia) to eradicate (or signifi-
cantly weaken) it.
In the Islamic age the main result of the interaction of the tribal and state
organization in the Northern Highlands turned out to be not the undermin-
ing or liquidation of the tribal structures, but the emergence of the North
Yemen multipolity. Within this multipolity, though the relations between its
state centre (headed most of this millennium by Zaydi imams)24 and its
tribal periphery were far from being without conflicts, certain equilibrium
was achieved, the functions of the system elements were (quite informally)
delimited, reciprocally (to a certain extent) acceptable ‘rules of game’ were
worked out.
A significant role in the preservation of the North Yemeni tribal organi-
zation was, no doubt, played by the geographical environment of the North-
ern Highlands. On the one hand, the very rugged terrain of the area helped
significantly the tribes in their struggle for the preservation of their auton-
omy (cf. Korotayev 1995d). On the other hand, the limited economic poten-
tial of the meagre and arid North-East Highlands25 did not create sufficient
stimuli which would push the state centres to struggle with an adequate
vigour for the complete subjugation of the area to the full state control. The
same factors also hindered the processes of the internal stratification of the
Northern tribes (e.g., Dresch 1984b: 156; 1989: 8–15). The transformation
of the warlike, armed and independent tribesmen into the mass of obedient
peasants, submissive tax-payers demanded tremendous effort and expenses
on the part of the states, whereas promising very limited economic yields.
The much more humid and fertile Southern Highlands (with a significantly
less rugged terrain) were much more attractive in this respect26.
Thus, the tribal organization seems to have matched rather well the
Northern Highland ecological milieu, as it objectively protected a very frag-
ile and vulnerable economic-ecological environment of the area from over-
exploitation through the procurement of a very ‘economical’ production of
surplus by preventing the excessive taxation (and exploitation in general) of
the agriculturalists27, precluding any exorbitant growth of the parasitic or
prestige elite consumption, while permitting the existence of quite a devel-
oped and complex society. It is even difficult to avoid an impression that
the tribal organization was almost the only political form which in the pre-
industrial world could secure the sustainable reproduction of complex
highly-organized social systems in the extremely meagre and vulnerable
economic-ecological environment of the North-East Yemeni Highlands. As
Dresch notices, ‘the land of Hashid and Bakil would provide a poor eco-
nomic basis for any elaborate exploitative class’ (Dresch 1984b: 156; see
also 1989: 8–15). I would even say that in the pre-industrial age the socio-
economic system of the area was to be freed from ‘any elaborate exploita-
tive class’ (which would have made the North Highland agriculturalists
produce excessive surplus undermining the vulnerable environment) in or-
der to become sustainable.
It seems reasonable to consider the tribe as the chiefdom alternative28
rather than a ‘pre-chiefdom’29 form of political organization (whereas in
some respects the tribe of the North Yemeni type appears to be an even
more developed form of political organization than the chiefdom). And in
any case there does not seem to be any ground to consider as ‘primitive’ the
tribal organization of the Islamic Middle East, which (like the Middle East-
ern states) formed as a result of long ‘post-primitive’ evolution as a specific
(and quite effective) version of socio-political adaptation of some quite
highly developed regional populations to certain natural and socio-historical
environment.
As for tribalism, every educated person should be aware that large-
scale societies have organised themselves for centuries without the com-
plex apparatus of government and administration we usually take for
granted. Our usual theories of society and the state, whether drawn from
Hobbes or Rousseau or whomever, are therefore partial, and on this
score there is something tribalism of the kind found in Yemen might
teach nearly all of us – lessons in political philosophy (Dresch 1994: 65–66).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
My deepest gratitude goes to Professor G. Rex Smith (Manchester
University) for his help with the preparation of the English version of this text.
SIGLA OF THE INSCRIPTIONS CITED

The system of epigraphic sigla used in the present paper is based on the
ones proposed by Avanzini (1977) and Beeston et al. (1982).
C = CIH – Corpus 1889–1908, 1911, 1929.
Fa = Inscriptions discovered by A. Fakhry – Fakhry [, Ryckmans] 1952;
Mueller 1976.
Ga = Garbini 1970; 1973 a; b.
R = RES – Repertoire 1929; 1935; 1950.
Robin = 1982a, vol. 2.
Ry = G. Ryckmans 1953; 1956; 1957.
NOTES
FEB RAS, 2000, pp. 242–257 under the title ‘The Chiefdom: Precursor of the Tribe?
(Some Trends of the Evolution of the Political Systems of the North-East Yemen in
the 1st and 2nd Millennia A.D.)’.
Due to the technical reasons the diacritic signs are not reproduced in the text of
this publication.
1
This system seems to have existed in the Sabaean cultural-political area in the
Middle Period (the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. – see Korotayev 1991, 1993a, 1993b,
1993c, 1993d, 1994a, 1994c, 1995b, 1995c, 1995d, 1996 etc.).
2
Thus, according to Dresch in al-Hamdani's time (the 10th century A.D.) ‘Upper
Yemen may well have been in a state of transition from a quasi-feudal system to the
tribal one’ (Dresch 1989: 191); according to Dresch similar conclusions have been
produced by Gochenour (Dresch [1989: 191] refers to Gochenour's PhD thesis
[Gochenour 1984a: 36 ff.] which remains unavailable to me.
3
In the meantime in the Southern Highlands (in the former Himyarite area) there
persisted more regular state structures (see e.g., Burrowes 1987: 9; Dresch 1989: 8–
15, 192; Obermeyer 1982: 31–32; Stookey 1978: 50, 124; Weir 1991: 87–88;
Wenner 1967: 38 etc.). I would emphasize that the state organization in the Southern
Highlands was already significantly stronger and more regular than in the North in the
2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. (see e.g., C 448 + Ga 16 [Hakir 1]; R 4230; Bafaqih, Robin
1980: 15; 1981b: 338; Bafaqih 1994; Korotayev 1990, 1995a, 1997 etc.), whereas in
that period in the North we find a much stronger clan organization (Korotayev 1990:
10, 17–18, 22; 1993c: 51–53, 56; 1995a: Chapters I, III).
4
There does not seem to be any ground to consider the multipolity as a local
South Arabian phenomenon. Extra-South-Arabian examples of multipolities of the
North Yemeni Zayd type (‘state + tribes’) could be easily found e.g., in the Middle
East of the last two centuries (see e.g., Evans-Pritchard 1949; Eickelman 1981: 85–
104; Tapper 1983; Al-Rasheed 1994 etc.); the extra-Yemen examples of the
multipolities of the Middle Sabaean type (‘state + chiefdoms [+ `independent'
communities]’) could be easily found again in the Middle East (where a considerable
number of the so-called tribes are rather chiefdoms in Service's terminology [Service
1971 /1962/: 144; Johnson, Earle 1987: 238–243 etc.]). Outside the Middle East this
type of the multipolity can be found e.g., in Western Africa (the Benin Kingdom in
some periods of its history – Bondarenko 1994, 1995, and perhaps some other West
African ‘kingdoms’ (Service 1971 /1962/: 144)). Of course, two above-mentioned
types of multipolities do not exhaust all their possible types. E.g., none of them seems
to be appropriate with respect to the ‘State of the Saints’ of the Central Atlas, whose
periphery consisted of tribes, but whose centre can be characterized neither as a state,
nor as a chiefdom, nor as a tribe (Gellner 1969).
5
First of all with respect to the Middle Sabaean sha'b. Robin has already pointed
out to the qualitative difference between the position of the shaykhs of the modern
Yemeni tribes and the one of the qayls of the Middle Sabaean sha`bs (Robin 1982a, I:
83–85). Indeed, the North Yemeni shaykh is primus inter pares (Obermeyer 1982: 36;
Dresch 1984a; 1984b: 156–157; 1989: 38–116; Abu Ghanim 1985: 115–133, 209–
212, 259–266; vom Bruck 1993: 94–95), whereas the Middle Sabaean qayls were
separated from the ordinary members of the sha'bs by an enormous social distance.
E.g., the relations between the qayls and their sha'b are normally expressed in the
'dm - 'mr', ‘the subjects – the lords’, categories; these very categories were also
applied to the relations between clients and patrons, subjects and the King, people and
deities (in R 3910 the singular absolute form for 'dm ['bdm] is even used to denote the
slaves sold in the Marib market – for detail see e.g., Korotayev 1995b). In most
Middle Sabaean inscriptions authored by the ordinary members of the Middle
Sabaean sha'bs they beg the deities to grant them the benevolence (hzy w-rdw) of their
lords, the qayls (and sometimes even ask them to protect the dedicants against their
lords' wrath [glyt]). Of course, such a style of relations between leaders and
commoners appears to be almost inconceivable for the modern (and medieval) North
Yemeni tribes. It seems rather remarkable that the term sayyid, ‘lord’, which even in
the Early Islamic period was used to denote heads of the tribes (Piotrovskiy 1985: 77;
Dresch 1989: 169, 191–192), later was completely forced out in the North Yemen by
a much more neutral shaykh, ‘old man’, whereas the use of the term sayyid was
restricted to denote only the members of the ‘religious aristocracy’ placed in the tribal
zone of the North Yemeni multipolity mainly outside the tribal organization, under
the tribal protection, but not above the tribes.
6
A certain similarity between the South Arabian and Indian traditional systems of
the socio-cultural stratification has already attracted the scholars' attention (e.g.,
Chelhod 1970: 83; 1979: 59). However, they also stress some essential differences
between these two systems (Chelhod 1970: 83; 1979: 59; 1985: 33; Dresch 1989: 153;
Rodionov 1994: 42).
7
Excluding the traditional Yemeni dagger (janbiyyah): practically all the
Northern Yemenis (including the du'afa') have it, but the weak must place it firmly to
the left, unlike the members of tribes (qab_liyyin), wearing their daggers straight at
the front of their belts (Chelhod 1970: 75; 1979: 55; Stevenson 1985: 44; Dresch
1989: 38, 120; vom Bruck 1993: 92–93). The only exception here is a rather special
‘weak’ quasi-cast, dawashin (the tribal ‘heralds’), who wear their janbiyyahs like the
tribesmen (Dresch 1989: 120; and in addition to that dawashin traditionally carried
lances – ibid.: 406). The sayyids and qadis wear their janbiyyahs on the right – (which
seems to signify quite correctly their special position in the tribal world – Chelhod
1970: 75; 1979: 55; Dresch 1989: 136; vom Bruck 1993: 92; in addition to that, ‘le
poignard porte par le descendant du Prophete ... est generalement plus decoratif’ (vom
Bruck 1993: 92)).
8
It seems reasonable to stress that the ‘protection’ provided to the ‘weak’
population by the tribes is in no way an empty word. The failure of the tribe to defend
a ‘weak’ person under their protection (e.g., to secure the payment of fine for an
offense committed against him) constitutes a very strong blow upon the reputation
(sharaf, ‘honour’) of the tribe, whereas the amount of such a compensation often
exceeds four-fold (and sometimes [though very rarely] eleven-fold) the fine for a
similar offense committed against a tribesman (Goitein 1941: 39; Dresch 1989: 118,
407). In addition to that, ‘the call to right wrongs committed against them will
generally be answered by large numbers of men from the tribe in question, whereas
the call to support a fellow tribesman may be far less compelling’ (Dresch 1984: 159;
see also e.g., Obermeyer 1982: 36). Also ‘it's forbidden for a person of superior rank
to tease the 'anadil (one of the designations of the ‘weak’ – A. K.) or to wrong them.
If such a thing happened then the whole society would take their side to obtain justice
from their oppressor’ (Chelhod 1979: 55; 1970: 75; see also e.g., Stevenson 1985: 44).
9
The formation of this system of the ‘quasi-casts’ might be dated to the 12th–14th
centuries (Piotrovskiy 1985: 87; Udalova 1988: 19). For description of a rather similar
system of ‘quasi-casts’ in Hadramawt see e.g., Naumkin 1980: 23; Serebrov 1990; bin
'Aqil 1992: 7–8; Rodionov 1993; 1994: 21–29; Serjeant 1957 (only sayyids and
mashayikh); Bujra 1971: 13–53 etc.
10
There appears to be a certain similarity in the tribal zone in the position of the
‘weak quasi-casts’, on the one hand, and that of the sayyids and qadis, on the other:
both are under the protection of the tribes, which virtually have the monopoly of the
legitimate use of violence. However, the Yemenis themselves make such a
comparison extremely rarely: ‘Dawashin in both Dhu Muhammad and Dhu Husayn
claim ... to be hijrah [under the special protection by the tribes – A. K.], “because we are
all bi-l-muhaddash (protected by an eleven-fold fine) like the qadis and sayyids”... On
the plateau I have not heard either tribesmen or dawashin suggest such equivalence
between “heralds” and men of religion...’ (Dresch 1989: 407).
11
‘Non-tribal quasi-casts’ of the North Yemen tribal zone constituted the minority
of its population (‘Outside the few towns ... the weak people are not numerous, two or
three families in a village of thirty tribal families is not unusual’ (Dresch 1989: 123)).
However, it is completely necessary to take them here into account, as they were one
of the most important factors making the North Yemen tribal world what it was – a
very complex and highly organized (and by no means ‘primitive’) system, quite
comparable according to its complexity with most pre-industrial state systems with a
similar size of population (e.g., with the state systems of the Yemen South Highlands
and Lowlands).
12
The sayyids and qadis themselves considered their status to be higher than that
of the tribesmen, though there do not seem to be sufficient grounds to regard them as
the dominant strata of the North Yemeni tribes (e.g., Dresch 1984b: 159; 1989: 136–
157). In the tribal zone the monopoly to apply violence actually belonged to the
tribesmen and not sayyids. Notwithstanding the sayyids' very high reputation, these
were the shaykhs and not sayyids who acted as real political leaders of the tribe (the
latter became shaykhs rather rarely, whereas most sayyids do not seem to have really
sought this; according to Dresch's observations, ‘there is no reason why someone who
happens to be a sayyid should not also be a shaykh, although this is unusual’ (Dresch
1989: 156)). In these respects the relations between the sayyids and the tribesmen
resemble to a certain extent the ones between the brahmans and kshatriyas in ancient
India (cf., e.g., Bongard-Levin and Ilyin 1985: 301–304). At the meantime it is rather
evident that the presence of the sayyid families (having a high reputation among the
tribes, but not dominant over them) in the tribal zone must have been a power
integrating power within the North Yemeni multipolity whose state centre was headed
for most of this millennia by the representatives of the ‘religious aristocracy’
(sayyids), the Zaydi imams (e.g., Stookey 1978: 95, 149–155; Chelhod 1985: 26–29).
13
And not amorphous agglomerates of primitive communities, or such socio-
political entities which can be adequately denoted as ‘communities’ or ‘chiefdoms’
(for a critical survey of cases of such a use of the term ‘tribe’ see Fried 1975).
14
At least in its highland part, as the semi-nomad population of al-Jawf (e.g.,
some part of the Amirites [s2`bn/'s2`bn 'MRM]) might have already had tribal
organization in the Middle Period (see e.g., Ghul 1959: 432; von Wissmann 1964a:
81–159; Bafaqih 1990: 282–283; Robin 1991; Korotayev 1995e).
15
It is necessary to mention that the Sabaeans (SB') were only one of the sha'bs
belonging to the Sabaean cultural-political area. The members of all the other sha'bs
(like Hashid, Bakil, Ghayman, Sirwah etc.) of this area are never denoted as
‘Sabaeans’ ('SB'N) in the original texts. So to distinguish the ‘Sabaeans’, the
inhabitants of the area most of whom were not Sabaeans and who would have been
never denoted as such in the inscriptions, and the Sabaeans proper (the members of
the sha'b Saba' who would be denoted as Sabaeans, SB', 'SB'N in the inscriptions) it
might be reasonable to designate the former as ‘Sabaeans’ (in inverted commas) and
the latter as Sabaeans (without inverted commas). Hence, for example ‘the Sabaean
clans’ would mean “clans affiliated to sha'b Saba”’, like HZFRM, GDNM, 'TKLN,
MQRM etc.; whereas ‘the “Sabaean” clans’ will denote all the clans of this area
including non-Sabaean clans of Humlan, Hashid, Sirwah, Ghayman etc. ‘The Sabaean
Lowlands’ (with respect to the Middle Period) would mean the part of the interior
Yemeni Lowlands mainly populated by the Sabaeans, the areas of Marib, Nashq and
Nashan, whereas ‘the “Sabaean” Highlands’ denote the region of the Yemeni
Highlands mainly populated by non-Sabaeans, but constituting an integral part of the
Sabaean cultural-political area. Yet as such a convention does not exist at present I
have to continue the current tradition of denoting all the inhabitants of the Sabaean
cultural-political area as Sabaeans.
16
Of course, if one understands ‘the tribe’ as a distinct form of the supra-
communal political integration, and does not use it as a synonym of ‘chiefdom’, or
‘community’.
17
Cf., e.g., here much more cautious position of Dresch (1989).
18
Whereas the political instability characteristic for South Arabia during most of
the 2nd millennium helped them to preserve this high status. On the other hand, the
Northern tribal population seems to have contributed significantly to the perpetuation
of this political instability.
19
It should be mentioned that the ‘qabilization’ of some Sabaean sha'bs seems to
have begun already before the Islamic Age. Here the most remarkable is the
inscription Fa 74, dated (lines 6–12) to the month dhu-Madhra'an of year 614 of the
Himyarite era, which corresponds to July A.D. 499, or 504 (depending on the solution
of the problem of the beginning of the Himyarite era – for the current state of this
question see de Blois 1990; Shahid 1994). On its line 6 SB' KHLN is denoted as 's2rt.
It should be mentioned that SB' KHLN was the ‘central’ sha'b of the Sabaean
cultural-political area (the temple-civil community of its capital, Marib), which
already in the Middle Period (the 1st– 4th centuries A.D.) had a very special socio-
political organization, quite different from the one of the other Sabaean sha'bs
(Loundine 1973a; b; Lundin 1969; 1984; Korotayev 1994d etc.), but consistently
denoted during this Period only as s2'b, and never 's2rt (Ja 653, 1; 735, 1; Sh 7/1; 8/1
etc.); whereas the term 's2rt (corresponding to the Arabic denomination of clan-tribal
groups [of a certain level], 'ashirah) was used in the Sabaic inscriptions to denote the
Arabic ‘genealogical’ qaba'il as distinct from the South Arabian territorial sha'bs
(Beeston 1972a: 257–258; 1972b: 543; Ryckmans 1974: 500; Piotrovskiy 1985: 53,
69 etc.). It should be mentioned, that the sha'bs of the internal Lowlands might have
been not so absolutely ‘anti-genealogical’ as the Highland sha'bs long before Islam
(Robin 1979; 1982b). In addition to that the fact the sha'b Saba' Kahlan was one of the
first to be affected by the process of ‘qabilization’, might be also explained by the
point that Marib is situated on the edge of the internal desert, i.e. in one of the
South Arabian zones subjected in the 1st millennium A.D. to the most intensive
infiltration of the Arabs. It should be also stressed that there is some direct evidence
for the integration of a certain number of the Arabs into the sha'b Saba' in the 6th
century A.D. E.g., Ry 507 (July A.D. 518 or 523 – line 10) mentions certain TMMM
bn M'DN d-QSMLT SB'YN, ‘Tamim, the son of Ma'dan, of Qasmalat, the Sabaean’
(line 12). As has been convincingly shown by Piotrovskiy (1985: 54–57), this Tamim
is of Arab origins from the bedouin tribe Qasmalah (=al-Qasamil) known in the area
of Najran; whereas SB'YN is nothing else but a very clear denomination of one's
affiliation to the sha'b Saba' (Beeston 1978: 14).
20
The emphasis is mine. This is simply to draw attention again to the important
role of the possession of valid genealogies for one's integration in the Early Islamic
society as its full-right member – A. K.
21
And these efforts were by no means senseless, as some Arabs for some time
refused to recognize the Arab identity of the Yemenis (e.g., Piotrovskiy 1985: 67).
22
Of course, one should not also forget here such important factors as the basic
cultural (including linguistic) proximity of the Arabs and Yemenis, the intensive
contacts between the South Arabian civilization and the Northern Arabs during all the
time of its existence, a significant degree of the arabization of Yemen prior to Islam
(due to infiltration to the area of considerable groups of Arabs) etc.
23
As well as the political systems of the chiefdoms.
24
It should be mentioned that this state centre originated with the direct support of
the Northern tribes (e.g., Obermeyer 1982; Gochenour 1984b; Dresch 1989: 167–173;
Abu Ghanim 1990).
25
The main exception here, the San'a' Plain, seems to belong firmly to those very
exceptions which only confirm the rule, as this was precisely San'a' which served as
the main stronghold of the state organization in the Northern Highlands for most of
the last two millennia (e.g., Serjeant, Lewcock 1983; Lundin 1988).
26
E.g., Stookey explains the absence of any serious attempts to subjugate the
Northern tribes on the part of the Rasulid state (the 12th–15th centuries) in the
following way: ‘The Rasulids were not militant proselytizers by temperament, and
chose to maximize their secular satisfactions within the productive areas they could
handily govern, rather than to dissipate their energies in an apocalyptic struggle for
control of territory which had little to offer in the way of potential revenue’ (Stookey
1978: 124).
27
According to Zaydi doctrine the harvest taxation must not have exceeded rather
modest 5–10% (depending on the type of the land – e.g., Stookey 1978: 88), and the
Northern tribes managed to secure the level of taxation not exceeding these figures for
most of this millennium. The almost complete absence of any significant exploitation
within the tribe (e.g., Dresch 1984b: 156; 1989: 276–319; 1991: 254) seems to be here
of no less importance.
28
Whereas in certain respects (as this has already been mentioned above) the tribe
seems to be an even more developed political form than the chiefdom.
29
Or even ‘pre-state’ one. Quite agreeing with Fried I would rather consider it as a
‘para-state’ form of political organization.
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15
From Local Communities to
Megacommunity: Biniland in
the 1 Millennium B.C.–19th Century A.D.*
st
Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies, Moscow
The task of this article is to trace in general outline the process of maybe
the most impressive precolonial Tropical African polity formation in terms
of the 13–19th centuries Benin Kingdom character and socio-political struc-
ture.
The ancestors of the Bini came to their final place of inhabitance in the
depth of tropical forest to the west from the river Niger in its lower current
and the delta region from the savanna belt, most probable, the Niger-Benue
confluence area. After about three thousand years of life in the savanna,
they started penetrating into the forest in the 3rd–2nd millennia B.C. and fi-
nally migrated there in the 1st millennium B.C. (Bondarenko and Roese
1999). It seems reasonable to suppose that the proto-Bini were inclined to
leaving their historical pro-motherland due to climatic changes in North and
West Africa from the 7th millennium B.C. on. They resulted in the cutting
down of the savanna grassland territory both from the north (because of the
progressive aridity that led to the extension of the Sahara desert) and from
the south where the tropical forest advanced (Omokhodion 1986: 3–4). The
savanna then became unable to provide support to the same quantity of
people as before, and made these or those groups to migrate.
But the peoples of the Kwa ethno-linguistic group, including ancestors
of the Bini were not the first peoples to settle in the forest belt of the Upper
Guinea coast. In the territory of medieval Benin the human being first ap-
peared not later than five thousand years ago, if not earlier (Connah 1975:
247–248). The Bini recall the country aborigines as the ‘Efa’.
Bondarenko / From Local Communities to Megacommunity: Biniland in the 1st Mil-

lennium B.C.–19th Century A.D., pp. 325–363
Very little can be said about the latter up to our present-day knowledge
and hardly there is a hope for its radical increase without additional ar-
chaeological surveys. But what is evident, is that the autochthonous peoples
of the forest, being already hoe agriculturalists by the Bini's advent (Esan
1960: 75; Agiri 1975: 166), of which their settlements' stable, permanent
character is an important indicator, had the local community level as the
utmost for the socio-political organization (Bondarenko and Roese 1998a).
It is reasonable to suppose that at first, from the arrival and sedentariza-
tion of the Kwa in the forest, two blocks of ethnic groups co-existed there
living open-fieldly. But eventually the Bini, evidently by force imposed
themselves above the Efa having transformed ethnocultural differences into
socio-political either. Then, partially due to intermarriages, partially and
predominantly culturally because of the prestigious character of the elite
culture, the Bini assimilated the Efa though their descendants hold some
quite important priestly posts within the Benin system of religious and
tightly connected with them political institutions practically up till now (see
Eweka 1992: 74; Bondarenko and Roese 1998a: 24–25).
The first Bini-speakers in the forest were still foragers and it no doubt
took them time for all-sided adaptation under new ecological conditions to
undergo not merely economic but also sociocultural and political changes.
The transition to agriculture took place later, in the end of the 1st millen-
nium B. C. – the 1st half of the 1st millennium A. D. (Shaw 1978: 68; Ryder
1985: 371; Connah 1987: 140–141) though hunting and gathering stayed
rather important means of subsistence for a thousand years more (Morgan
1959: 52; Roese and Rees 1994). In the social sphere, the formation of the
extended family community and its institutions of government marked this
radical change and characterized that period of the Bini history from the
socio-political viewpoint (Bondarenko and Roese 1998b).
The rise of independent communities turned out the earliest stage of the
process that finally resulted in the appearance of the Benin Kingdom. Since
then the extended family community was the primordial, substratum socio-
political institution of the Bini. It stayed the basic one – socio-politically,
culturally, economically – later, during and after the formation of supra-
communal levels of the Benin society. And just its norms in the socio-
political sphere, its mentality and picture of the Universe not only perme-
ated and fastened together all the levels of the later complex Benin society.
The extended family community also formed the background and pattern
for the evolution of the Bini society though changes at the transition from
lower levels to higher were of not only quantitative but of qualitative char-
acter as well (see: Bondarenko 1995a: 134, 227–230, 257–264, 276–284).
Bondarenko / From Local Communities to Megacommunity… 327
Hoe agriculturalism was among the factors that promoted such a course
of events. The woody natural environment of the region prevented the in-
troduction of the plough and individualization of agricultural production
promoting the formation of the community just of that type and conserving
the extended family community as the basic social unit for hardly not an
immense prospect (Bondarenko 1995a: 101–117). It still exists generally
the same in Biniland today. And just this stability of the basic socio-
political unit lets us extrapolate ethnographic data on earlier periods of the
Bini socio-political history with quite a considerable degree of plausibility
(Bradbury 1964).
The principle of seniority, so characteristic in a greater or lesser degree
of all the levels of the Bini social being in the time of the kingdom, was
rooted in the communal three-grade system of male age-sets (for details,
see: Thomas 1910: 11–12; Talbot 1926: III, 545–549; Bradbury 1957: 15,
32, 34, 49–50; 1969; 1973a: 170–175; Igbafe 1979: 13–15; Bondarenko
1995a: 144–149). Each age-grade carried out definite tasks, its members
shared common duties, distinctive from those of the other two grades. The
obligation of the eldest age-grade members, just called the edion, the ‘eld-
ers’ (sing. odion) was to rule on the family (egbe) as well as on the commu-
nal levels. The ancestors' cult fixed the position of every person in the Uni-
verse and in the Benin society as its the most important part. And just elder
people naturally were considered the closest to the ancestors thus being able
to play the role of mediators between them and the living better than any-
body else.
The edion age-grade members, including heads and representatives
without fail of all the extended families which the given community com-
prised (Egharevba 1949: 13–14; Bradbury 1957: 29; 1973a: 156), formed
the community council. That well-organized council of elders appointed
and invested the oldest person of the community, the head of the senior age-
grade to be the council and the whole community leader as well. He bore
the title of odionwere (pl. edionwere). So, the head of the whole community
could easily represent not the family of his predecessor: there was not one
privileged family in the initial Bini community. (In the case when there was
only one extended family forming the community, the heads and represen-
tatives of its nuclear families became the family and the community council
members at one time. And the heads of the community and the extended
family, the odionmwan also coincided in one person. But such communities
were exceptions to the rule [Egharevba 1949: 11]).
The community council gathered on the initiative of the head of the
community or of an extended family council (Sidahome: 114). It took a real
and active part in the management, discussing and solving (at the head's
right of the decisive voice) the whole range of the communal problems:
those connected with land use, legal proceedings and so on and so forth
(Egharevba 1949: 11; Bradbury 1957: 33–34; 1973a: 172, 179–180; 1973b:
243; Sidahome: 127; Uwechue: 145).
The most archaic form of government, the public assembly probably
was of some significance that distant time, too for we find reminiscences of
it in the council members' right to apply to wide circles of communalists for
consultations and maybe in rare ‘deaf’ hints of the oral tradition (Egharevba
1965: 15). The existence of the public assembly is ethnographically fixed
among socio-politically less developed ethnic groups of Southern Nigeria
including some Bini and kindred to them (Talbot: III, 565), what also can
be considered an indirect proof of its presence in early Benin.
The major reason for the very existence of the institution of edionwere
in people's minds reflected in the principles of their appointment, defined
the ritual function as the most important among edionwere's duties. Besides
this, the worship of the deities and the ancestors on behalf of the people by
the odionwere further strengthened the position of this dignitary. But in the
initial Bini community its head, the odionwere was not merely the ritual
leader. He was responsible for the division of the communal land, was the
judge on the communal level, the keeper and guard of traditions, etc.
(Bradbury 1957: 32–33; 1973a: 176–179). Edionwere received gifts from
those governed by him, but they were practically entirely of the prestigious
and ritual character (Talbot: III, 914): economically they depended on their
families.
However, in the middle of the 1st millennium A. D. (Obayemi 1976:
256) the conditions for further political centralization and concentration of
power grew ripe.
The division of authorities in the community into ritual, left for the
odionwere, and profane was the next step of the Bini socio-political organi-
zation evolution. That step was connected with the process of overcoming
the communal level as the utmost with the formation of the first major su-
pra-communal level of the societal organization. This level appeared in the
hierarchical form of the chiefdom.
It is remarkable that prior to that time communities also could form un-
ions (Egharevba 1952: 26, 1965: 12). Joint meetings of councils of such
unions members' communities were presided over by the senior odionwere,
chosen according to age or in conformity with the precedence of certain
villages over others (Bradbury 1957: 34). But such a union of communities
was not a chiefdom, ‘an autonomous political unit comprising a number of
villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief’
(Carneiro: 45) for such unions voluntarily comprised basically still inde-
pendent and politically equal to each other communities. The head of a un-
ion was the oldest man of all the union's edion, not obligatory a representa-
tive of a concrete community (hence not a ‘paramount chief’) for, due to the
fact of independence and equality of communities-members of the union,
there was not a privileged, politically dominating one among them though a
prominent odionwere taking over political responsibility and caring for the
people might acquire great power.
But the chiefdom as a form of socio-political organization quickly su-
perseded the union of independent and equal communities in the degree of
spread over Biniland and its role in further socio-political and historical
fortunes of the people. At the same time, both independent communities
and unions of independent equal communities went on existing alongside
with chiefdoms. And later, within the kingdom such formerly independent
local communities enjoyed autonomy and their edionwere were comparable
by their status to heads of also autonomous chiefdoms (Bradbury 1957: 34;
Bondarenko 1995a: 164–173, 184–185). Thus two types of communities
appeared: without a privileged family in which the only ruler, the odion-
were could represent any kin group, and with such a family in cases when
the onogie existed in a community alongside with the odionwere (Thomas
1910: 12; Egharevba 1956: 6; Bradbury 1957: 33; 1973a: 177–179). And
just communities of the second type formed cores of chiefdoms.
It was not basically obligatory for the division of authorities in the proc-
ess of chiefdoms formation to happen. Some scholars even postulate the
sacrality of the paramount authority as one of the chiefdom's characteristic
features (see Kradin: 16–17). There are some indications that powerful per-
sonalities among the edionwere might go a step further and undertake the
venture to bring under their rule neighbouring communities with less fortu-
nate leaders. Igbafe describes such a situation as follows: an odionwere
‘...would justify his claim to rule other rulers of small communities by sur-
rounding himself with supernatural airs and attributes and would plead
divine mission as an explanation for his leadership role’ (Igbafe 1974: 2).
And even in this century there are some communities in Biniland in which
the hereditary, not elect of the edion members ruler is the priest (ohe) of a
communal deity, though these cases may be of the later, the Kingdom pe-
riod origin (Bradbury 1957: 33).
But under concrete Bini conditions edionwere generally proved to be
unable to ensure the success of military activities via which the road to the
chiefdom passes. Then, the odionwere still was too tightly connected with
his local community, was associated with it only and was considered only
its legitimate ruler as the descendant of just its inhabitants' ancestors. His
profane endeavorings were restrained by his sacral, ritual duties that were
the main for him, irrespective of whether he was the only head of the given
community or shared power with the onogie (see Bondarenko and Roese
1998: 369–371). Due to these reasons, the Bini chiefdoms formed exclu-
sively round communities with the division of authorities into the odion-
were's ritual and the onogie's (pl. enigie) profane, including military, of-
fices. (Though the odionwere exists in every Benin community up till now).
So only the bearer of the profane office could become the head of the chief-
dom (Bradbury 1957: 33; Egharevba 1960: 4). The onogie's community
was as privileged in the chiefdom as the family of the community head in
the latter. And the ancestors' cult of the chiefdom head was similar to those
of the family and community heads on the higher level and to the royal an-
cestors' cult on the lower one (Bradbury 1973b: 232).
The definition of the odionwere and the onogie's offices as correspond-
ingly ritual and profane is to some extent conditional for the former might
preserve some duties of the latter kind. But they could never be the most
important, essential for him, on the contrary to the onogie who was concen-
trated practically on profane responsibilities only. Not by chance ‘in vil-
lages without enigie meetings of the village council take place either at the
house of the odionwere or in a special meeting-house, ogwedio, which con-
tains the shrine of the collective dead (edio) of the village’. But ‘in villages
with a hereditary headman meetings are convened at his house’ (Bradbury
1957: 34). Thus sometimes the odionwere and the onogie's spheres of ac-
tivities could overlap and the actual division of authority in a concrete vil-
lage partially depended on the relative strength of its two rulers (Bradbury
1957: 33, 65, 73–74). But that was possible only on the communal level, for
the odionwere of the onogie's village most often had not enough influence
on the supra-communal level, that of the chiefdom with his community as
the privileged one.
So, the transition of the Bini sociopolitical organization from the com-
munal to the first supra-communal level, the process which started in the
Western African forest belt in the middle of the 1st millennium A.D. was
connected with the appearance of the institution of the profane ruler
(onogie) in a part of local communities alongside with the older office of
the odionwere. The appearance of the onogie, first made the communal sys-
tem of government more complicated and, then the complexity of the so-
ciopolitical organization of the Bini increased either.
There also was the chiefdom council that was similar to corresponding
familial and communal institutions. Besides the heads of the whole chief-
dom and communities, the chiefdom composed of, the chiefdom edio
formed that council (Egharevba 1949: 11; Sidahome 1964: 100, 158, 164).
Thus the senior age-grade played the leading part in governing the chief-
dom, as it played it on the family and community levels (Bradbury 1957: 16).
The chiefdoms formation represented an important step in the process of
both ethnic and sociopolitical unification of the Bini, for the quantity of
their independent societies (previously always equal to local communities)
decreased while their size, territorial and by population enlarged. But why
and how did chiefdoms appear among the Bini? What their rulers, the
enigie were? And what is the link between the processes of the rise of
chiefdoms and proto-cities in Biniland?
The very possibility of the increasing of the sociopolitical integration
level by means of the neighboring communities' unification was determined
by the development of agriculture, the growth of its productivity on the ba-
sis of new technologies that appeared due to the introduction of iron and, as
the result, the increase of population quantity and density just from the
middle of the 1st millennium A.D. (Connah 1975: 242; 1987: 141–145;
Oliver and Fagan 1975: 65; Obayemi 1976: 257–258; Atmore and Stacey:
1979: 39; Darling 1981: 114–118; 1984: II, 302; Shaw 1984: 155–157).
This, in its turn simultaneously led to a violent competition for environ-
mental resources, the land for cultivation first of all. The impetus given by
the introduction of iron and thus the development of agriculture was so
great that it has even been suggested, though it really looks‘mysterious’
‘that the density of rural population in the area five hundred years ago was
ten times what it is today...’ (Isichei 1983: 266; also see Connah 1975: 242;
Darling 1981: 107, 111), and in the middle of the 20th century the popula-
tion density in then Benin Division was about 73 per sq mile (Bradbury
1957: 19). In particular, a survey of an ancient linear earthworks in Umwan
north of Benin City revealed that the wall enclosed a territory of about 17
sq miles with the population of about 6,000 (Connah 1975: 242; Maliphant
et al. 1976: 128).
But the chiefdom is not a mere union of communities. It is a hierarchi-
cally organized society in which one of the communities is privileged for
only its head becomes the chief of the whole society and not always the
factors mentioned above lead to a hierarchical form of a supra-communal
society (Berezkin 1995a, 1995b; Korotayev 1995a, 1995b; Bondarenko
1997c: 11–15; 1998b, 1998c). Thus there must be some additional factors push-
ing a group of communities on this way of unification. Up to our present-
day knowledge, it is reasonable to postulate two factors of such a kind.
The choice of an evolutionary pathway which a given society will fol-
low during the next period of its history is in the decisive measure a result
of the all-round adaptation of the society to outer conditions of its exis-
tence, the environment, not only natural but also socio-historical. Both of
them promoted the hierarchical, towards and via chiefdoms evolution of the
Bini. The natural environment dictated the type of subsistence economy
that demanded regular land clearings and extenuation of agricultural territo-
ries. ‘Even before the first contacts with Europe West African cultivators
cut down vast areas of forest and replaced it by cropland and fallow’
(Morgan 1959: 48). Thus besides conserving the hierarchically organized
extended family community this way of production led to conflicts with
neighbors for the land. And the sociopolitical situation, the life alternate
with the first, pre-Bini settlers, the Efa with their natural claims for superi-
ority over newcomers also was an obvious cause for the military way of
unification and chiefdom organization of neighboring groups of the Bini
communities. The introduction of iron played an extremely important role
in the intensification of military activities in the area, not less important
than in the demographic sphere (Bondarenko 1999: 25–26).
But the matter is that, as it seems the unification of the Bini communi-
ties was peaceful (Igbafe 1974: 2–3; Obayemi 1976: 242; Connah 1987:
136; Eweka 1989: 11). At the same time, it is reasonable to conclude that
the unification of a few communities, though it was peaceful was a union
for the sake of more effective military struggle against another group of
communities, a separate community or foreign invaders. It is obvious that
the Efa might be such an ‘irritator’ for the Bini. Where a few Bini commu-
nities lived side by side they could unite; communities separated from other
Bini had none to unite with and stayed independent beyond the chiefdom
system.
The hereditary leader appeared in a group of communities naturally,
spontaneously in the course of the struggle against enemies having demon-
strated exceptional bravery, strength, finesse, talent to rise people for heroic
deeds. For the most valuable for people under such circumstances dignity is
connected with the war, just that heroic leader becomes the most popular
figure in that group of communities. First he became the recognized by all
the communities military chief and then transcended his authority into the
inner-group of communities sphere settling disputes between members of
different villages under his control, convoking and presiding over chiefdom
meetings, stationing title-holders in all the villages it comprised (Bradbury
1957: 34). Eventually, he made his post hereditarily attributed to his native
community thus transforming it into privileged (as well as his own family
in the latter), on the one hand, and into a community with the division of
authorities, on the other hand. And that was the moment of the hierarchy
among the communities, the moment of the chiefdom appearance.
So we may conclude that the Bini chiefdoms were born out of peaceful
unification of communities in finally victorious struggle against the Efa for
the land, as a result of which the latter were gradually assimilated (Bon-
darenko 1999: 27). But of course later or even parallelly the Bini chiefdoms
could also start opposing each other (Darling 1988: 129).
There were not less than 130 chiefdoms all over Biniland (not only in-
side but also within the Ogiso's possessions) in the beginning of the 2nd mil-
lennium (Obayemi 1976: 242). The Biniland linear earthworks – walls and
ditches (iya) are signs of their existence in the past (Connah 1975: 237–242;
Obayemi 1976: 242; Isichei 1983: 135–136, 265–266; Darling 1984: I,
119–124, 130–142; 1988: 127). At the present state of the Bini studies, we
may regard the Idogbo (Iyeware) (Darling 1984: I, 119–124) and Ok-
hunmwun (Iyek'Uselu) (Darling 1984: I, 130–142) chiefdoms, thoroughly
examined by Darling classical patterns or examples of that type of society
in the country.
He estimates the first case as illustrative for the phase of ‘the rise of a
petty chiefdom’. Idogbo comprised six villages on the territory of 6 sq km
surrounded by primary iya. Darling especially stresses that the iya pro-
moted the pacification and unification of neighboring villages in the chief-
dom in the struggle for the land. And at the same moment, the iya were
helpful at wartime defending the chiefdom from invaders (also see: Darling
1984: II, 303–307). All the settlements within the chiefdom unanimously
recognized the Idogbo village's seniority. Traditions of both Idogbo itself
and all her neighbors agree that the former originated within the primary iya
in the pre-dynastic period when it was known as ‘Edogbo’ meaning ‘neighbor’.
The further evolution of the Idogbo chiefdom in pre-dynastic times was
evidently connected with the subsequent growth of population pressure
within the iya for it is likely that most of the separate village wards which
constructed the primary iya later moved out and became nuclei of new set-
tlements correspondingly erecting new iya enclosures. As the result, the
chiefdom embraced several settlements over a territory of at least 2,400 ha.
Okhunmwun is considered by Darling ‘a powerful petty chiefdom’.
Seven villages with the total population of 1,120–1,750 comprised it on
about 17 sq km. By Darling, 1,500 people is just a sufficient size of a so-
ciopolitical organism for the erecting the original iya, i.e. in the majority of
cases for its constituting as a chiefdom. The Okhunmwun chiefdom came
into being as a result of the increase of population density engendered by
double population pressure: due to migrations and natural growth of the
local population.
Now it is also easy to explain why the enigie came to power being as a
rule younger than edionwere and why the very division of authority in
chiefdom-forming communities happened. The elders (the edionwere) were
not able to demonstrate bravery and strength in the battlefield. Furthermore,
it was not a senior's duty to fight. That was an obligation of the second age-
grade, the ighele members. Just from the ighele the military leader, the fu-
ture head of the chiefdom naturally singled out. And that is why ‘when an
onogie dies, the eldest son automatically succeeds him’ (Sidahome 1964:
49; also see Bradbury 1957: 33), regularly just an ighele member. Not by
chance the ighele meeting place was the center of the whole chiefdom's
public life (Obayemi 1976: 243). All this was a blow to the monopoly of
the gerontocratic principle of management among the Bini.
The city formation among the Bini was directly connected with the rise
of chiefdoms. The process of city formation started practically simultane-
ously with the period of rapid growth of chiefdoms. As a matter of fact,
early proto-city centers were not simple amalgamations of communities but
actually chiefdoms (Jungwirth 1968a: 140, 166; Ryder 1969: 3; Onoker-
horaye 1975: 296–298; Darling 1988: 127–129; Bondarenko 1995a: 190–
192; 1995d: 145–147; 1999). The heads of the proto-city communities
formed the chiefdom council. It looks plausible that in Benin City these
heads were the later Uzama Nihinron chiefs (Ikime 1980: 110; Isichei 1983:
136), members of the first category of title-holders established by the first
ruler of the 2nd (Oba) dynasty, Eweka I. The Uzama Nihinron leader, the
Oliha, on whose initiative the most important decisions of these chiefs in
the pre-Oba time are also attributed, could well be the onogie of the then
Benin City chiefdom and the head of the council which consisted of com-
munal edionwere and other edio including three other later Uzama Nihinron
members. So, the rise of chiefdoms was both a precondition and an aspect
of the city formation process being an outcome partially of the same fac-
tors; for example, the demographic growth of communities.
Someone getting acquainted with the Benin history may be misled by an
outstanding role of Benin City in it and think that the Bini society was be-
ing built up round her from the very beginning. In reality, the process of
growth and unification of chiefdoms and communities was on in different
parts of Biniland and not less than ten proto-city settlements had appeared
at the time of chiefdoms' rapid growth, by the brink of the millennia (Dar-
ling 1988: 127). They struggled with each other for the role of the sole
place of attraction for the overwhelming majority if not all the Bini, of the
focal point of their culture in the broadest meaning of the word, their politi-
cal and in connection with it sacro-ritual center. The 130 Bini chiefdoms
and a great many of independent communities drew towards different
proto-cities. At last, Benin City gained victory (Talbot 1926: I, 153, 156–
157; Egharevba 1949: 90; 1960: 11–12, 85; Ryder 1969: 3; Onokerhoraye
1975: 97; Bondarenko 1995a: 93–96; 1995c: 216–217; 1995d: 145–146).
Due to the obtaining of the exclusive political function and position, she
grew and became a true traditional city while the rest proto-cities went
down to the level of big villages (Darling 1988: 133).
That was also the eventual fortune of Udo, the most violent rival of Be-
nin City (Talbot 1926: I, 160; Macrae Simpson 1936: 10; Egharevba 1964:
9), though oral historical traditions prompt that probably just she was the
original settlement of the Ogiso (‘rulers from the sky’), the Benin supreme
rulers of the mysterious so-called ‘1st dynasty’ of the late 1st – the early 2nd
millennia A. D. With its coming to power the period of the Bini chiefdoms'
flourishing is associated, and its reign gave an additional impetus to their
further appearance and growth. And at the same moment, that was the time
of the first attempt of establishing not only supra-communal but also supra-
chiefdom authority in the country; to be distinct, in the part of Biniland
round Benin City, the appearance of which predated the 1st dynasty time
(Roese 1990: 8; Aisien 1995: 58, 65).
The Ogiso rule is supposed to last for a few centuries. In the very begin-
ning of the period the country's name was Igodomigodo (‘Town of Towns’
or ‘Land of Igodo’) (Egharevba 1965: 18). It is considered that altogether
31 ‘kings’ ruled, but this figure, of course may be conditional, hardly it is
not so. Above all, the Ogiso lists made by different native historians are not
completely identical in terms of the length of the Ogiso period, the rulers
names and the order of their appearance on the throne (Egharevba 1960: 3;
Eweka 1989: 12, 1992: 4).
There is very little material available about the coming to power and
reign of the first Ogiso, Igodo. Maybe he is a purely mythological figure.
The version of the oral tradition offered by politically engaged local histori-
ans tells that he lived long and had a great number of descendants. He was
Bini but resided not in Benin City but a few kilometers east of her, at the
settlement of Ugbekun, and died there (Egharevba 1965: 13; Ebohon 1972:
80–83). Ugbekun is, even today, the residence of the Ohenso (Ohen Iso),
the priest of the shrine of the Ogiso (‘aro-iso’ means ‘altar of the sky’)
which each Oba is obliged to visit before the coronation ceremony (see
Jungwirth 1968b: 68; Ebohon 1972: 80–81; Roese 1993: 455). It is reason-
able to conclude that just due to its reputation of the cradle of the Benin
polity this village became an important religious and ritual center: Ebohon
describes eight other shrines besides aro-iso at Ugbekun, devoted to various
‘juju’ – local deities, not straightly connected with the sociopolitical history
of the country (Ebohon 1972: 82–83).
Darling writes: ‘...Benin's territorial and political rights have been
transposed back in time to legitimize later conquests – new termed “rebel-
lions” within its subsequent kingdom area. ...Udo – an independent rival
kingdom until its early 16th century conquest by Benin – is regarded as hav-
ing been rebellious since Ogiso... times...’ (Darling 1988: 131). In the light
of this we may suppose that the first Ogiso's coming to power and the estab-
lishment of the very institution of the Ogiso was far from being peaceful;
Igodo was not ‘made’ the Ogiso, as Egharevba, as well as another Benin
court historian, Eweka wishes to represent the event (Eweka 1989: 11), but
‘became’ him.
A completely different traditional version of the founding of the 1st dy-
nasty was put down by indifferent to local ‘political games’ Europeans –
Macrae Simpson, Talbot, Page, and Jungwirth (Macrae Simpson 1936: 10;
Talbot 1926: I, 153; Page 1944: 166; Jungwirth 1968b: 68). According to it,
the first Ogiso was a warrior of Yoruba origin. It argued that Yoruba
‘…raiders, entering Benin from the North-west, in the neighbourhood of
present day Siluku, gradually penetrated Benin where they eventually es-
tablished themselves in complete mastery. The first raid was led by
Ogodo... He made little headway, but his son Ogiso appears to have had
more success’ (Macrae Simpson 1936: 10).
Talbot's relation of the version heard by him holds that the first Yoruba
chief's name was Igudu. Then came Erhe, a son of the ruler of Ife with
some of his followers. However, they were not able to gain any influence.
The Erhe's son Ogiso finally went back to Ife (Talbot 1926: I, 153).
With Ere, also Yoruba, the son (or grandson) and successor of Igodo, as
it seems, the first real figure appears on the Benin historical stage. He actu-
ally was the most prominent among all the Ogiso while we now know noth-
ing or only names about many of his successors.
Ere changed the name of the country from Igodomigodo to Ile meaning
‘House’; this name was in use till the very end of the Ogiso period
(Egharevba 1956: 3). Under the rule of Ere the permanent establishment of
the monarchy and administration of the supra-communal level were intro-
duced (in particular, four of the later Uzama members' offices: the Oliha,
Edohen, Ero, and Eholo N'Ire). Not by chance even in 1979, as the final act
of the present Oba coronation ceremony, ‘near the palace at a site crowded
with visitors, the new king announced the name by which he would be
known: Erediauwa: “Ere... has come to set things right”’ (Nevadomsky
1993: 73).
The oral tradition unanimously attributes to Ere numerous improve-
ments; the first symbols of royalty and objects of the ancestors cult as, in
modern terms, the official ideology of the society among them. These were
a simple crown (ede), collars or necklaces made of pearls (edigba), anklets
made of pearls (eguen), the round lather fan (ezuzu), the round royal throne
(ekete), the rectangular throne or stool (agba), the state sword (ada), the
ceremonial sword (eben), the round box made of bark and leather (ekpokin),
the wooden ancestors ceremonial heads (uhunmwun-elao), the big royal
drum (agba), etc. (Egharevba 1956: 39; 1960: 1; 1969: preface).
The time of Ere's reign is the crucial point, the culmination of the whole
Ogiso era in the sense that events and innovations attributed just to his pe-
riod determined the very aspect of Benin City and the society on the whole,
her economy and politics right up to the fall of the Ogiso dynasty. As it was
enthusiastically expressed by Egharevba, ‘Ere was the greatest of all the
Ogiso, for he played a splendid part in the prosperity and solidarity of the
Benin kingdom of the first period’ (Egharevba 1965: 14). Though hardly
there can be any doubt that a lot of deeds and innovations (including some
of the symbols of royalty enumerated above [Ben-Amos 1980: 14 {Fig.
10}]) are only attributed to Ere and his time being in reality outcomes of
other, mainly less distant epochs. But in the overwhelming majority of
cases we have no opportunities to date them otherwise than accepting their
oral tradition's relation to Ere.
As well as we are not able to answer why did he chose just Benin City,
one of many Bini proto-cities of that time as the place of residence. But
what can and must be argued, is that this act was the turning point of the
Benin City and the Bini in general history. Just Ere made extremely signifi-
cant steps towards the former's transformation into a true city. His deeds
also played a considerable part in the further economic growth of Benin
City and the increase of her influence in the region, her ability to compete
with other chiefdoms and proto-cities.
The first unions of craftsmen that throughout the pre-colonial Benin his-
tory coincided with primary social units – communities (see Bondarenko
1991b, 1995a: 117–124), are also said by the tradition to appear in Benin
City during the reign of Ere. These unions became privileged; their leaders,
heads of corresponding communities were later incorporated into govern-
mental institutions. Among these, according to the tradition forty initial
craft unions there were unions of carpenters (Owinna, Onwina), wood and
ivory carvers (Igbesanmwan), leather workers (Esohian), weavers (Owin-
nanido, Onwina n'Ido), pottery makers (Emakhe), iron smiths (Uleme) and
brass smiths (Igun-eronmwon) (Egharevba 1956: 39; 1960: 1; 1965: 13–14;
Eweka 1989: 11).
It is of course not self evident that the oral tradition relates the pure truth
in this case either. For example Ryder does not believe it (Ryder 1985:
385). But the crafts Egharevba enumerates in his records of the oral tradi-
tion are no doubt among the most ancient and important for the authority in
the general context of the Bini culture, including political culture as its in-
tegral part. Bearing this in mind, as well as the whole block of Ere's reputed
innovations, we can conclude that there is nothing unreal in the admitting of
these court kindred craft unions' creation by Ere.
Ere initiated the building of the Ogiso palace in Benin City. Egharevba
relates that the palace had the size of 0.5 to 0.25 miles. It consisted of
‘...many gateways, chambers, council halls and a big harem divided into
sections’ (Egharevba 1960: 4). The figures seem too large; maybe that was
the size of the whole palace complex. The moving of the palace alongside
with the seat of the government from Ugbekun to Benin City is credited to
Ere as well. In front of the palace Ere opened the central ‘Ogiso’ market
(Egharevba 1956: 2; Ebohon 1972: 60). The erection of wall-and-ditch sys-
tems may have already taken place during the reign of Ere. Egharevba men-
tions a certain Erinmwin who constructed such earthen ramparts for his
sovereign (Egharevba 1965: 14). Parallel to it, the name of the country,
Igodomigodo, was changed to Ile (‘Land’) (Egharevba 1956: 3). This name
was retained until the end of the Ogiso dynasty.
Ere is also credited with the renaming or founding of quite a number of
settlements, for instance Ego (Egor), Erua, and Idumwowina (Egharevba
1965: 12). Three of Ere's younger brothers were appointed heads of settle-
ments: Ighile became the Ovie of Ughele, another one the Ogie Oboro (or
Obi) of Uboro-Uko (Uburuku), and the third one the Enogie (Onoje) of
Evboikhinmwin (Egharevba 1956: 2; 1965: 13). In the middle of the 20th
century more than a hundred Bini villages' enigie claim their origin from
different Ogiso's sons (Egharevba 1960: 4). These relations may be inter-
preted as a sign of some widening of Benin boundaries, embracing of pre-
viously independent or founding new, initially dependent communities by
them.
Ere, if we believe Egharevba was followed by Orire (Egharevba 1965:
14) who obviously was a worthy successor. And with him the Igodo's line
ended. The next about twenty Ogiso are reputed to be representatives of
different local, Bini chiefdoms despite attempts of each Ogiso to establish
his own true dynasty. Naturally, the level of political stability decreased
(Igbafe 1974: 6). We must also not ignore Talbot's relation that Ere was
followed by his son whose personal name was just Ogiso. This ruler, by
Talbot ‘...made little headway and later returned to Ife’ (Talbot 1926: I,
153). We will further discuss the possible important common meaning of
the both versions in an appropriate place without fail.
The rule of the last Ogiso, Owodo, is traditionally assessed extremely
negative. Traditions say, he ruled very autocratically, without consulting his
advisors. He was eventually banished from the throne and went to the set-
tlement of Ihimwirin near Benin City where ‘...died very miserably’
(Egharevba 1960: 3–4; Eweka 1989: 14).
The first attempt to establish a supra-chiefdom authority resulted, in par-
ticular in the appearance of some titles, holders of which were later incorpo
rated into the administrative mechanism of the 13–19th centuries Benin
Kingdom (for details, see Eweka 1992; Roese 1993). But they did not form
an integral governmental system in the Ogiso time. Originally, the majority
of these titles, like those of the future Uzama Nihinron members mentioned
above were attributed to communities edionwere and enigie of chiefdoms
within then Benin. Of course, this fact reflected general weakness of the
supra-chiefdom authority under the Ogiso regime. These title-holders
treated the Ogiso ‘almost as primus inter pares’ (Eweka 1992: 7). The
situation with the earliest title-holders also demonstrates that strictly speak-
ing there was not the ‘center’ as such that time, but at different moments
various ‘parts of the whole’ played the role of the center: chiefdoms
changed each other on the top of the 1st dynasty Benin political hierarchy.
Besides, there were titles that did not survive the end of the Ogiso period.
The most important among dignitaries were the Esagho, the ‘premier’
and commander-in-chief of the army and the group of ‘king-makers’ collec-
tively recalled as the Edionevbo (Egharevba 1960: 4; 1965: 18; Eweka
1989: IV). Native historians remark that the king-makers of the Ogiso were
identical with four of the future Uzama Nihinron, king-makers of the 2nd,
the 13th century on, dynasty (Egharevba 1960: 4; Eweka 1992: 9, 27, 35).
In the Bini's perception, the Ogiso (‘kings from the sky’) period was the
time of social creation of the world, of regulating social chaos (Bondarenko
1995a: 46–47, 204–205). From the ‘objective’, anthropological point of
view, the Ogiso period really was that of the first immediate steps towards
the creation of glorious ‘Great Benin’ as a united supra-communal society
too, though Ryder was of course right arguing that the Benin Kingdom had
never included all the Bini, on the one hand, or consisted of the Bini only,
on the other hand (Ryder 1969: 2). That was the period of flourishing of the
Bini chiefdoms, the first supra-local form of their sociopolitical organiza-
tion, and also of the first attempt to establish not only supra-communal but
already supra-chiefdom, kingly authority and office at one and the same
time.
This became possible because the first rulers of the Ogiso dynasty were
foreigners from Ife who brought the very institution of kingship to the Bini.
But the chiefdom level had been the objective limit of the sociopolitical
organization for the Bini by the time of the Ogiso's establishing, they were
not ready to accept adequately political innovations brought from Ife, where
the kingdom had been existing for a few centuries by that moment, yet.
Thus initially the kingship institution and authority were simply imposed on
the Bini multiple independent communities and chiefdoms without any ge-
netic, organic connection with them, their social structures and political
institutions, well elaborated and acceptable enough for the existence just on
these levels of social being.
Benin of the Ogiso time may be characterized as a complex chiefdom –
a group of chiefdoms under the leadership of the strongest among them –
with a ‘touch’ of ‘autonomous’ communities which being within Benin did
not belong to any Bini chiefdom. But the ambivalence of the initial situa-
tion crucially influenced the immanent instability of the supra-chiefdom
institutions and the course of further historical events. The ‘1st dynasty’ is
just a conditional, not completely correct (though widely used) general
name for the Ogiso rulers. In reality, they did not form a united dynasty in
the proper sense of the word. The third Ogiso became the last in their
Yoruba, Ife line. He returned to Ife but by that time the very institution of
the supreme supra-chiefdom ruler had already been established firmly
enough in Benin, never mind its outside origin and correspondence to the
level of sociopolitical organization, not achieved by the Bini yet. It is re-
flected in the fact that, according to a version of the tradition just the last
ruler from Ife had the personal name Ogiso (see above).
The next about twenty Ogiso, as has already been pointed out, were not
relatives to each other. And they, as well as all the later the 1st dynasty rul-
ers were the Bini, heads of chiefdoms within then Benin, the strongest at
the very moments of emptiness of the throne. And none of those rulers
managed to found his line of the Ogiso, to make his chiefdom the strongest
in Benin for a considerable time span, not in straight connection with his
personal abilities: the society still was not ready to accept the stable supra-
chiefdom authority.
Under such conditions, the rulers of the Benin City chiefdom, the
Edionev-bo later the Uzama Nihinron members enjoyed the most preferable
position. They went on governing Benin City as their chiefdom while at the
same time since Ere's reign she was not a usual Bini chiefdom any longer.
Despite her real strength, Benin City became the outstanding symbol of the
supra-chiefdom authority for all those included into the Ogiso government's
orbit, their capital. The future Uzama had to bear the Ogiso above them-
selves as supreme rulers of the whole country. But they were autonomous
in their governing Benin City simultaneously being influential enough out-
side their own chiefdom and evidently generally being considered higher
than rulers of any other chiefdom in Benin of what without the Ogiso they
could not even dream. They had a great measure of freedom of action in
attempts to spread their influence outside Benin City. The Ogiso, people
from not the Benin City chiefdom were greatly dependent on their support.
We can admit that the Benin City chiefs influenced greatly the course of the
struggle between other chiefdoms, by their support, applying to the princi-
ple divide et impere, promoting the strengthening of the most favorable for
them at a given moment, the becoming of its head the next Ogiso. The fu-
ture Uzama were true king-makers at those times. The Ogiso could be more
a screen than an obstacle for their activities.
For the last eight or so reigns the truly dynastic way of transmission of
the Ogiso office was restored. We have no evidence capable to help us to
reconstruct that historical situation and to learn exactly why and when it
happened or what a chiefdom's head was at last a success in establishing the
dynasty. We may only suppose that could be Udo and some stories of the
Udo-Benin rivalry reflect just this historical episode. But what is obvious, is
that this event reflected and then promoted further consolidation of the Be-
nin society on the supra-chiefdom level and that mainly just during that
dynasty's being at power the conditions for stable kingly office's existence
in Benin grew ripe once and for all. It happened due to first quantitative and
only then qualitative changes in revealing of the same factors that led to the
complication of the sociopolitical organization before. Thus in the anthro-
pological sense the process of the establishing of the really hereditary king-
ship was evolutionary, not revolutionary (see: Igbafe 1974: 7). ‘...in Benin
there was no sudden transformation of the political structure coinciding
with the advent of the dynasty’ of the Oba (Oliver 1967: 31).
Correspondingly, by the end of the Ogiso period the further prolonga-
tion of the situation when chiefdoms (and autonomous communities) bore
the supra-chiefdom authority while the Ogiso governed by practically the
chiefdom, enigie's methods became impossible. Eventually the 1st dynasty
was not a success in establishing an effective central – supra-chiefdom (and
supra-autonomous communities) authority though just this is the most im-
portant condition of any complex chiefdom's existence (Vassiliev 1983: 36–
37). The society entered the time of the political system crisis.
The first attempt to overcome it was the step backwards – the abolition
of the monarchy in the 12th century. The oral historical tradition holds that
‘Owodo was banished for misrule by the angry people, who then appointed
Evian as administrator of the government of the country because of his past
services to the people’ (Egharevba 1960: 6). The latter was well-known as
one of the most ‘important’ people in the Owodo's time. He was ‘…called
the good citizen, because he was generally good and kind, helpful, merciful,
sympathetic and generous… As a patriot, Evian was always ready to tackle
any emergency in Benin, just to make the land remain peaceful without fear
and harm’ (Egharevba 1970: 2). But it was impossible neither to govern
Benin as a chiefdom any longer nor as a simple community further more.
The ‘republic’ as Egharevba calls it, was not a non-hierarchical, democratic
alternative to the complex chiefdom. It was the outcome of the communal-
ists' reaction that had no chances to survive for a long time though common
communalists in their starvation to restore the odionwere system still pre-
vented the first of only two post-Ogiso ‘republican’ rulers, Evian from es-
tablishing his own dynasty what he desired to do (Egharevba 1960: 6; 1970:
5–6; Eweka 1989: 15). Already during the rule of the second ‘republican’
ruler, Ogiamwen Benin was put on the brink of breaking into fragments
(Ebohon 1972: 3) – separate communities and their unions, possibly includ-
ing chiefdoms.
And soon another, the decisive step forward, the most crucial for the
whole history of Benin was made on the Benin City chiefdom leaders, first
of all the Oliha's, initiative. It is natural that the Edionevbo chiefs so nega-
tively apprehended the overthrow of the last Ogiso and eventually initiated
the restoration of the supreme all-Benin authority. They meant to continue
controlling in a considerable degree the whole Benin, not only Benin City
in the new dynasty's shade. And they were a success in it for about half a
century, till the military victory over them, a ‘coup d'etat’ (Ryder 1969: 5)
of the fourth Oba Ewedo after which their real power gradually but inevita-
bly decreased.
Being interested in the unity of the former Ogiso's possessions but under
their, not another Bini chiefdom heads' heal, they invited Oranmiyan, a
prince from Ife ‘to settle peace and concord’ in the country by ascending
the throne. He came and though later preferred to return to his native city,
still founded the new dynasty: his son from a noble Bini woman was
crowned Oba under the name Eweka I by the Uzama in about 1200 A.D.
(by the oral tradition in interpretation of native historians [see, e.g.,
Egharevba 1960: 8, 75; Ebohon 1972: 3; Eweka 1989: 15–16, 18]). But for
the Bini that was a continuation of the Ogiso line for it is evident that an Ife
prince was chosen by the Benin City leaders not by chance. As a compatriot
of the first rulers of the Ogiso line, Oranmiyan was to symbolize the resto-
ration of the pre-‘republican’ order, the transition of the supreme authority
from the Ogiso. This fact could ensure him the recognition by the people,
decrease the feeling of serious changes in their minds and hearts and all in
all pacify the society. In reality, under the Benin City chiefdom heads for
they of course hoped to control the foreigner not in a lesser degree than the
Ogiso before the last eight or so reigns.
The very fact of a true dynasty formation by a few last Ogiso witnesses
of, as it turned out not final but nevertheless painful, weakening of the Be-
nin City chiefdom's positions in the country at that time what the leaders of
the former were absolutely not going to bear. A foreigner in the Ogiso pal-
ace undoubtedly seemed them less dangerous for their power than a repre-
sentative of a stable local, Benin House of supreme rulers. They could re-
gard him practically an ideal figure for the restoration of their might.
But the Oba eventually managed to establish effective supra-chiefdom
authority. In the result, Benin City transformed from the strongest segment
(chiefdom) of the country into the center that was not a segment of the
whole but stood above all the segments including Benin City as a chiefdom.
That was a kind of power and authority of another, higher than that of the
chiefdom ‘quality’. The Oba achieved this result in a severe, sometimes
bloody struggle against local rulers and the Uzama chiefs as heads of the
Benin City chiefdom first of all. It ended only more than half a century after
the establishment of the 2nd dynasty (see Bondarenko 1995a: 234–236). The
fourth Oba, Ewedo built a new palace on another spot and left forever the
one that had been erected as far back as for the first Oba in the Uzama
chiefs native part of the city. He created a new category of title-holders as a
counterbalance to the Uzama Nihinron. Then he ordered that the Uzama
members should not really select the ruler among the royal family mem-
bers; the head of Uzama Nihinron, the Oliha should only crown the Oba.
Ewedo also prohibited the Uzama members to have symbols of power iden-
tical to royal. Last, but not least, he was a success in depriving them from
the privilege of conferring titles (Egharevba 1960: 10–11).
With the establishment of really effective supra-communal and supra-
chiefdom authority by the first rulers of the 2nd (the Oba) dynasty in the 13th
century, the historical search of the most appropriate for the Bini forms of
social and political organization on all the levels of their being was finally
over. Benin found the sociopolitical ‘frames’ in which all the changes of the
subsequent centuries prior to the violent interruption of her independent
existence took place.
I have argued elsewhere that the Benin Kingdom of the 13–19th centu-
ries represented a specific kind of complex non-state hierarchically organ-
ized society, generally not less developed than the majority of early states.
(Not by chance the ‘early state’ concept founders and supporters unreserv-
edly attribute the polity under consideration as an early state [e.g., Ko-
chakova 1986, 1996; Shifferd 1987; Claessen 1994], even of its the most
developed – the ‘transitional’ type [Kochakova 1994]). A society of this
type of the socio-political organization may be called a ‘megacommunity’
(Bondarenko 1994; 1995a: 276–284; 1995b, 1996, 1997a, 1998a). Its struc-
ture may be depicted in the shape of four concentric circles forming an up-
set cone. The ‘circles’ were as follows: the extended family (the smallest
self-sufficing unit [Bondarenko 1995a: 134–144]), the extended family
community, the chiefdom, and finally, the broadest circle that included all
the three narrower ones, i.e. the megacommunity as such. The Benin King-
dom as a whole in which megacommunal structures and institutions were
not alien at all.
The very existence and prosperity of the megacommunity inhabitants
were ‘guaranteed’ by the presence of the sacralized supreme ruler, the Oba.
And just in his sacral duties both the megacommunal nature and character
of the society and the Oba's essence as of the megachief were reflected es-
pecially clearly (Palau Marti 1964; Kochakova 1986: 197–224; 1996; Bon-
darenko 1991c; 1995a: 203–231). In particular, the supreme ruler's family
(as well as those of titled chiefs – members of central administrative bodies)
not only preserved its traditional structure but generally existed in accor-
dance with norms determined by that very structure (see Bondarenko 1995
a: 194–203; 1997d).
The importance of belonging to the family of the community (and/or the
chiefdom) founder as a factor of assuming the office of its head, the pres-
ence of the element of sacrality, duties of the community (and/or the chief-
dom) ancestors' cult chief performer, the communal (and/or the chiefdom)
land manager, of the judge, etc., etc. and sharing the power with the coun-
cil, control by family heads at one moment – all this and much else can be
attributed to the supreme ruler. But again, all this was characteristic of the
Oba on the highest level, at which, for example the cult of the Oba's ances-
tors became an all-Benin one, and the Oba himself was the supreme priest
of the whole country. The Oba was considered the master of all Benin
lands, though in reality he had not more rights on them than the odionwere
on his community fields, and so on.
Of course, these and other changes of the kind were not merely quantita-
tive. Not occasionally among the Oba's titles and praise names there was
obasogie: ‘the Oba is greater than the chief’ (Omoruyi 1981: 14). The Oba
was not only the supreme priest but an object of worship himself (and the
tribute paid to him was to some extend regarded as a kind of sacrifice). He
was considered all-mighty and the only legal law-giver. In the course of
time the supreme ruler received the right to appoint lineages from which the
majority of the central government chiefs were recruited. If in the commu-
nity the property was inherited alongside with the title, on the megacom-
munal level material values and the prestigious position, that of the Oba
first of all were distinctively separated from each other (Bondarenko 1993:
151–158; 1995a: 203–229).
However, it is important to point out that the Oba did not desert the Be-
nin communal organization. The ‘communal spirit’ revealed itself in his
support (including material) by the people, and his subjects not at all per-
ceived the supreme ruler as a strange for the community power. And the
fact that his power was considered like a continuation and strengthening of
the legitimate community heads' authority on the new level (and really was
so genetically and to a significant extend essentially), imparted the socio-
political stability to the society, while the community also communicated it
the socioeconomic firmness. Objectively, the most important role the Oba
played, was that of the symbol of the all-Benin unity. Through his image
people realized their belonging to a much broader unit than their native
communities or chiefdoms, i.e. to the megacommunity as a whole. It stayed
and even became more so when in the time of decline of Benin, from the
17th century on the Oba lost his ‘profane’ power in favor of megacommunal
chiefs but concentrated in his hands immense sacral power, not less real
within the context of the Benin culture in general and political culture in
particular (Bondarenko 1991a, 1992b, 1995a: 222–228, 229–230).
It is remarkable that such a four-circles socio-political system corre-
sponded to the Bini's picture of the Universe (agbo) in which there also was
the hierarchy of four concentric circles: the man (with four soles of differ-
ent orders) – the terrestrial space, including the Benin megacommunity –
the world of ancestors' spirits and senior deities – the Universe as such, as a
whole (Bondarenko 1995a; 1997b).
The picture of the Universe turned out ‘Beninocentric’. The second cir-
cle of the Universe, i.e. the terrestrial part of the society was considered the
central, basic for the whole Universe. And Benin seemed the focal point of
it and of the whole Universe; myths told how the Earth and the life had ap-
peared just there (see, e.g., Ebohon 1972: 5; Eweka 1992: 2–4; Isaacs and
Isaacs 1994: 7–9; Ugowe 1997: 1). The community was the center of that
society; in the Bini minds, it hence turned out the very heart of the Uni-
verse's heart, the core of its core. And in reality the community as the basic
institution fastened together all the levels of the hierarchical structure of the
Benin society. All of them were penetrated by, at all of them, reflecting and
expressing the essence of that society, communal by character ties and rela-
tions dominated (Bondarenko 1995a: 90–181).
And the fact that the community was of the extended polygamous fam-
ily type was of fundamental importance because of its essentially hierarchi-
cal social structure and antidemocratic value system. This way the geronto-
cratic principles and forms of communal management, on the one hand, and
the evidently hierarchical (conic) type of the Benin megacommunity since
its appearance with the establishing of the Oba dynasty, on the other hand,
were determined (see Bondarenko 1997c: 13–14; 1998b: 98; 1998c: 198–
199; Bondarenko and Korotayev 1998: 135; 1999).
From the Ogiso time the megacommunity inherited and even strength-
ened such traits, characteristic of the complex chiefdom (see Kradin 1991:
277–278; 1995: 24–25) as, e.g., ethnic heterogeneity (Ryder 1969: 2) and
non-involvement of the supra-chiefdom level managing elite into the sub-
sistence production (Bondarenko 1993: 156–157; 1995a: 229, 253). The
degree of social stratification in the society also increased (Bondarenko 1993,
1995a: 90–275).
But while the simple and the complex chiefdoms represent basically the
same, chiefdom pattern of the socio-political organization, the same ‘qual-
ity’ of the authority and power (‘The general rights and obligations of
chiefs at each level of the hierarchy are similar…’ [Earle 1978: 3]), the dif-
ference between both of these types on the one hand, and the megacommu-
nity on the other hand, is really principal and considerable. In particular, the
Ogiso, in straight accordance with the anthropological theory (Vassiliev
1980: 182) had no formalized and legalized apparatus of coercion at their
disposal. While the formation of effective central authority is vitally impor-
tant for the complex chiefdom (see above), it usually proves unable to es-
tablish political mechanisms preventing the disintegration (Claessen and
Skalník 1981: 491). Hence the breakdown into simple chiefdoms and inde-
pendent communities is the typical fortune of the (complex) chiefdom
(Earle 1991: 13). Thus, the megacommunity is a possible way of transfor-
mation of the complex chiefdom, an alternative to its disintegration. So,
evidently, the break-down was the fortune of the majority of the 130 early
Bini chiefdoms, and about ten proto-city settlements mentioned above, po-
tential centers of complex chiefdoms, like the Ogiso Benin one did not con-
solidate their power over neighbors and degraded to the level of big vil-
lages. Sooner or later they were absorbed by Benin.
Only the Benin megacommunity of the 13–19th centuries (for correct-
ness, in this case it should be said ‘the megacommunal political institu-
tions’) formed the real ‘center’ that was ‘above’ all the sociopolitical com-
ponents of the country and was able to establish really effective supra-
chiefdom authorities. And just this became the decisive ‘argument’ in the
competition of Benin with other ‘proto-cities’ for the role of the all-Bini
center. Not occasionally Benin started dominating over them right after the
submission of the Uzama by Ewedo, from the second half of the 13th cen-
tury (see Bondarenko 1995a: 94–95). And that is why the megacommunal
institutions, including the monarchy of the Oba dynasty and different cate-
gories and associations of titled (megacommunal) chiefs (see Eweka 1992;
Roese 1993) were stable. And just because of this we may argue that with
the advent of Oranmiyan and the establishment of his dynasty the Benin
sociopolitical organization changed radically from ‘the extended family –
the extended family community – the chiefdom – the complex chiefdom’
pattern to the megacommunity ‘formula’ determined above.
The judicial system, the system of imposing and collecting tribute, etc.
became logical in terms of the hierarchical character of the society. For ex-
ample, now there appeared the ‘staircase’ of courts from those presided by
community leaders to the highest, with the Oba as its official chairman. The
two criteria for the examination of a case in the court of this or that level
were the weight of the crime and if people from the same or different social
units were involved into it (see, e.g., Dapper 1671: 492; Egharevba 1949:
11; 1960: 35; Bradbury 1957: 32–33, 41–42; Sidahome: 127; Talbot: III,
table 19).
The Ogiso's might extended over the territory of approximately 4,500–
5,000 sq km. Egharevba writes that the Ogiso's possessions comprised
about a hundred settlements (Egharevba 1960: 4). Roese and Rose have
been able to put on the map 68 of ‘villages and towns’ enumerated by the
native historian (Roese and Rose 1988: 306 [map]). Evidently, ‘villages’
mean autonomous communities and ‘towns’ mean chiefdoms, like those
described by Darling (see above). For rather a long time – till the middle of
the 15th century the square of the country stayed practically the same though
its territory not once changed its configuration (calculated by: Darling
1984: I, 44 [map]; Roese and Rose 1988: 306, 308, 309 [maps]).
It seems also possible to suppose the approximate number of inhabitants
and population density of the Ogiso Benin. The typical Benin chiefdom, as
we already know from Darling had the population of about 1,500 people. If
we then divide the supposed by the archaeologist population of that chief-
dom into the quantity of villages (communities) it consisted of, we will find
out that the average community size was about 200 people. We do not
know the proportion between chiefdoms and autonomous communities. We
may only speculate that the distribution could be approximately equal. If we
accept the Egharevba's relation with its of course conditional yet not sense-
less, as Roese and Rose have15 thousand people in the middle of the 17th
century (Dapper 1671: 487) and even from 80 to 100 thousand inhabitants
on the brink of the 17th and 18th centuries (see in Pacheco Pereira 1937
[1505–1508]: 64). In the 16–18th centuries, delighted Europeans ranked
Benin not lower than the largest and most impressive cities of their conti-
nent (see Bondarenko 1992a: 54).
Though the initially local, communal nature of the society came into
contradiction with the empireous political and cultural discourse, the prin-
ciples and system of the formation and managing the empire (the preserva-
tion of local rulers in subjugated lands, migrations of the Oba's relatives
with followers to weakly populated territories, the Bini administrators of
the dependencies' residence in Benin City, not in ‘colonies’, the reproduc-
tion of the same ideological ‘pillars’ which support the Oba's authority in
Benin, etc., etc.) witness that by the moment of Benin's occupation by the
British in 1897 the megacommunity still was the true form of the Benin
society proper to which socio-politically varying ‘provinces’ were joined.
So, it still managed to absorb and ‘reinterpret’ those elements of the empir-
eous discourse which could seem insurmountable for an essentially local,
ethno- and socio-centric form of sociopolitical organization thus avoiding
the reformation of itself and the interrelated transformation of people's men-
tality and picture of the Universe.
Both the Ogiso and the Oba Benin were ‘multipolities’, i.e. societies
within which structural elements of different socio-political types and levels
of development coexisted and interacted (Korotayev 1995a: 72–73; 1998:
125–127). Under the Oba's regime one multipolity (autonomous extended
family communities + chiefdoms ≈ the complex chiefdom) was changed by
another: autonomous extended family communities + chiefdoms = the
megacommunity. (In both cases the autonomous community was equal to
the chiefdom in terms of rights and obligations towards the highest authori-
ties of the time [Egharevba 1949: 79; Bradbury 1973a: 177]). But the
megacommunity differed not only from the complex chiefdom but from the
state as well.
It is hardly possible to count how many theories of the state there are.
But Godiner is right pointing out (though a bit too toughly) that any, even
the most sophisticated theory reduces the notion of the state to the ‘special-
ized institution of managing the society’ (Godiner 1991: 51; also see Belkov
1995: 171–175); at least, theories center round such an institution. In par-
ticular, Claessen in such a ‘summarizing’ different viewpoints and reflect-
ing the modern level of Cultural Anthropological theorizing recent edition
as ‘Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology’, in fact spreads (with some
insignificant changes and additions) his and Skalník's definition of the
‘early state’ (Claessen and Skalník 1978: 640) on the state as such and ar-
gues the following:
…the state is an independent centralized socio-political organization
for the regulation of social relations in a complex, stratified society
(bolded by me. – D. B.) living in a specific territory, and consisting of
two basic strata, the rulers and the ruled, whose rela tions are character-
ized by political dominance of the former and tax obligations of the lat-
ter, legitimized by an at least partly shared ideology, of which reciproc-
ity is the basic principle’ (Claessen 1996: 1255).
And the natural criterion of its existence is the presence of the bureauc-
racy – the category of professional managers, officials who fill these ‘spe-
cialized institution’. Actually, the latter is specialized just because of the
professional status of those involved into the process of its functioning.
These, now looking quite simple postulates are broadly accepted in Cultural
Anthropology and practically go without saying.
As it is well-known, Weber is just the person to whom generations of
scholars in different fields are indebted for the most elaborated notion of the
bureaucracy (Weber 1947 [1922]: 329–341 et al.). Just his vision of this
phenomenon, either explicitly or implicitly formed the background of the
majority of modern theories of the state. So, let us look through the list of
the bureaucrats' characteristic features Weber singled out (Weber 1947
[1922]: 333–334). Do they fit titled (supreme, the megacommunal level)
chiefs – administrators of the 13–19th century Benin Kingdom?
‘(1) They are personally free and subject to authority only with respect
to their impersonal official obligations; (2) They are organized in a clearly
defined hierarchy of offices; (3) Each office has a clearly defined sphere of
competence in the legal sense; (4) The office is filled by a free contractual
relationship. Thus, in principle, there is free selection; (5) Candidates…
are appointed, not elected; (6) They are remunerated by fixed salaries… (7)
The office is treated as a sole, or at least the primary, occupation of the
incumbent; (8) It constitutes a career... (9) The official works entirely sepa-
rated from ownership of the means of administration and without appro-
priation of his position; (10)He is subject to strict and systematic discipline
and control in the conduct of the office’.
The establishment of a really effective supra-chiefdom (and supra-
autono-mous communities) authority permitted the Oba to put an end to
separatist moods within the former Ogiso possessions. This let the Oba do
what their predecessors turned out incapable to do: to create a complicated
and very well elaborated system of political institutions of the supra-
chiefdom (the megacommunal) level and titles for chiefs united into several
associations. The formation process of the megacommunal political institu-
tions system was in the fundamental outline finished by Oba Ewuare the
Great in the mid 15th century simultaneously with the first ‘conscious’ (and
very successful) attempts of pursuing the ‘imperial’ policy (see Bondarenko
1995a: 231–257).
So, are there any grounds to regard Benin titled chiefs bureaucrats, i.e.
professional officials? (For general descriptions and detailed analyses of the
evolution of the Benin chieftaincy system from which a considerable share
of the evidence analyzed and some conclusions made below are extracted,
see [Read 1904; Egharevba 1956; 1960: 78–80; Bradbury 1957: 35–44;
Eweka 1992; Bondarenko 1993: 158–165; 1995a: 231–257; Roese 1993].)
Any Benin chief belonged to one of two broad categories: his title was
either hereditary (what is impossible if he is really a bureaucrat – see We-
ber's point 9) or not. There were rather few hereditary titles in the Benin
Kingdom: those of the highest ranked among all the chiefs the Uzama Ni-
hinron members (from the middle of the 15th century there were seven of
them) and of several other, less important dignitaries. The Uzama Nihinron
was established in the 13th century by the first ruler of the 2nd dynasty –
Eweka I, and the majority of other hereditary titles appeared in the time of
Oba Ewuare, in the mid 15th century.
Non-hereditary title-holders were considered ‘appointed by the Oba’
and fell into two major groups, besides some other, secondary by their sig-
nificance is the administrative mechanism. The first of those two categories
was called the Eghaevbo N'Ogbe (the ‘palace chiefs’). This institution was
established by the fourth supreme ruler, Ewedo within the framework of his
anti-Uzama actions in the mid 13th century. The Eghaevbo N'Ogbe were
divided into three ‘palace societies’. Each of these ‘societies’, in its turn,
was also divided into three groups like traditional age-sets of the Bini.
The significance of the Eghaevbo N'Ogbe was great. This association
members received their might due not only to their official tiles and rights
but also, maybe even first of all owe to their closeness to the supreme ruler.
One of their main tasks was to serve mediators between the Oba and the
people (Agbontaen 1995), for the prohibition to communicate with his sub-
jects freely seems to be among the supreme ruler's taboos already in the
beginning of the 17th century. Hence, the palace chiefs could rather easily
‘regulate’ the information flows to and from the palace in their own inter-
ests. From the narrative European sources of the 17th – 19th centuries one
can see that these chiefs really did it, and also to see, what a considerable
might the Eghaevbo N'Ogbe under the leadership of Uwangue concentrated
in their hands that time (see Da Híjar 1972 [1654]: 248–249; Anonymous
1969 [1652]: 309; Dapper 1975 [1668]: 503; Van Nyendael 1705: 435;
Smith 1744: 228–230; Dantzig 1978 [1674–1742]: 334; Roth 1968 [1903]:
92; Ryder 1969: 103). Eventually, in the 17th century the palace chiefs, and
not the supreme ruler's lineage or the Uzama members furthermore, played
the decisive role in the selection of the descendent to the throne (Ryder
1969: 16–18).
Another major category of non-hereditary title-holders, the Eghaevbo
N'Ore (the ‘town chiefs’) was established later, in the mid 15th century by
Ewuare, already as a counterbalance to the palace chiefs though basically
they were ranked lower than the Eghaevbo N'Ogbe. They struggled actively
with the latter for the influence on the Oba. They also fought for power
with the supreme ruler himself. And all in all, the town chiefs were a suc-
cess (see, e.g., Smith 1744: 234–236).
The Eghaevbo N'Ore's struggle for power was led by the head of this
category of title-holders, the Iyase. In the course of time, he became the
most powerful and influential figure in the Benin administrative system and
society. The antagonism of the Iyase to the Oba, as Kochakova remarks,
‘runs all through the whole space of the Benin history’ (Kochakova 1986:
244; see: Egharevba 1947).
So, the Eghaevbo N'Ogbe and Eghaevbo N'Ore, whose behavior was
very far from that ‘ordered’ to them by Weber (in point 10) were the princi-
pal associations of non-hereditary chiefs in the Benin Kingdom. But the
Oba appointed chiefs just formally, for, first, to be distinct, the supreme
ruler appointed only the lineage out of which its members (officially not
involved into the administrative system) selected a concrete person for re-
ceiving the title. Second, due to the strength of the tradition and the real
might of the palace and town chiefs, titles were held within the same ex-
tended families for hundreds years though officially every lawful Bini could
claim for a non-hereditary title.
Thus in reality there was no free choice of administrators and their ap-
pointment by higher authorities. In practice, administrators were not ap-
pointed at all as well as there was no free selection of them on the societal
level; they were elected within definite lineages, extended families (com-
pare with Weber's points 5 and 4). It is reasonable to suppose (especially if
one trusts evidence of the folk-lore [Sidahome 1964: 163 et al.]) that during
the last centuries of the Benin Kingdom existence the Oba only blindly con-
firmed the candidatures proposed to him and this procedure in its essence
transformed into a mere pro forma, the performing of an ancient ritual
(‘anti-point 9’ of Weber).
The chiefs were not simple officials at the supreme ruler's service. On
the one hand, the Oba regularly established ties of relationship with them
(what contradicts Weber's point 1) marrying the titled chiefs' daughters
(Bradbury 1957: 41) and then giving their own daughters in marriage to the
chiefs (Egharevba 1956: 31; 1962). On the other hand, they constantly pre-
served close connections with the communal organization. They partici-
pated in the central bodies' activities as representatives of their communities
and titled lineages, not as individuals (hence, the Benin realities did not fit
point 7 of Weber). It was unreal to dig titled chiefs up from their native so-
cial units and to send them to govern ‘strange’ communities. Under the
conditions when all the circles of the megacommunity were penetrated by,
at all of them communal in their essence ties and relations dominated, the
division of the country into merely administrative units (including by means
of transforming into administrative units communities and chiefdoms) was
impossible.
The supreme chiefs always were first and foremost title-holders. All the
privileges they received in accordance with titles and were not rewarded
just for posts they held. The post was an unavoidable enclosure to the title.
For example, in reality the post could demand from the holder of the ‘Oba's
wardrobe keeper’ title not cleaning and airing of his robes at all, but attend-
ing to certain duties by no means connected with such a kind of activities.
These duties were not clearly defined and separated from those of other
chiefs as well as all the categories of titled chiefs comprised officials of all
kinds – priests, war leaders, etc. (compare with what Weber wrote in point
3). Furthermore, a chief could be deprived from his post by the Oba's com-
mand, but the title, once given rested with the chief till the end of his life.
Egharevba openly writes as regards this that the supreme ruler: ‘…could…
suspend any titled chief from his post, but the chief must still hold his title
for life’ (Egharevba 1949: 24; also see: 1956: 6; Igbafe 1979: 4).
There was a general notion of higher and lower titles and more or less
main duties but there was no fixed hierarchy neither within categories of
supreme chiefs (most often, only their heads were definitely known) nor
within these or those spheres of activities – administrative, priestly and so
on (compare with point 2 of Weber).
The material well-being of the supreme chiefs (at least prior to the pe-
riod of active trade with Europeans [Bondarenko 1995a: 153–157]) was
based on the receiving of a share of what had been produced in their com-
munities. It was not founded either on the tribute once or twice a year col-
lected from the whole population of the country or on ‘presents’ of the Oba
chiefs used to get from time to time. And fixed salaries have never been due
to them at all (nothing in common with Weber's point 6).
As titles belonged to the same extended families for centuries, there was
no free competition for titles in the society. Then, there were no opportuni-
ties for making the career, for chiefs held first and foremost titles. And ti-
tles, besides their lack of a well-defined hierarchy, were not subjected to
their changing by a person. Having once received a title, he was not able
not only to lose it by the Oba's command, but to receive another one, too
(see Weber's point 8).
So, none of all the Weber's ten features characteristic of bureaucracy
and bureaucrats fits the Benin Kingdom supreme (titled) chiefs. Megacom-
munal institutions became really central, not those of a chiefdom claiming
for governing the supra-chiefdom society. But under the conditions of the
essentially communal Benin society, even those who governed it on the
highest level were not officials, i.e. ‘bureaucrats’. Thus, in accordance with
the practically generally accepted idea of intimate connection between the
state and the bureaucracy, the Benin megacommunity was not a state.
And summing up all the aforesaid in this chapter, it seems reasonable
and grounded to classify the megacommunity as a specific type of the com-
plex hierarchical socio-political organization. This type of organization was
alternative to the statehood, for it is also clear that from all points of view
Benin was not less developed than the majority of early states.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Peter M. Roese (Lautertal, Ger-
many) with whom we have together made several attempts to reconstruct
various aspects of early history of the Bini. At the same time, the reader
ought to bear in mind that only I am responsible for all the shortcomings of
the text below.
It is also my great pleasure to thank Prof. Henri J. M. Claessen (Was-
senaar, the Netherlands) for his kind attitude and for regular sending me his
publications, some of which are cited in this chapter.
And I am glad to acknowledge all the staff members of the Melville J.
Herskovits Library of African Studies of Northwestern University (Evan-
ston, IL, U.S.A.) and first of all its Curator, Mr. David L. Easterbrook for in-
estimable assistance and friendly attitude.
NOTE
* An earlier version of the chapter is published in Bondarenko, D. M., and Ko-
rotayev, A. V. (eds.), Civilizational Models of Politogenesis, Moscow: Institute for
African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2000, pp. 87–127 under the
title ‘Benin (1st Millennium B.C. –19th Century A.D.)’.
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ford University Press.
16
Greece: The Stateless Polis
(11th – 4th Centuries B.C.)*
Moshe Berent
Social and Political Science Department,
The Open University of Israel1
In his discussion of the monarchical form of constitution Aristotle poses the

following problem for kings:
The ... question, which also raises difficulties, is that of the king's
bodyguard. Should the man who is to be king have a force about his per-
son which will enable him to coerce those who are unwilling to obey? If
not, how can he possibly manage to govern? Even if he were a sovereign
who ruled according to law, and who never acted at his own discretion
and went outside the law, he must necessarily have a bodyguard in order
to guard the law’ (Aristotle Politics III. 15, 1286b 27–30. Tr. Barker
1946).
This passage would seem very strange to the modern reader, who would
take it for granted that such a bodyguard should exist. And that it should
exist not only in connection with a special kind of constitution, kingship,
but rather with every form of constitution. Yet the question of a ‘body-
guard’ as an enforcement apparatus does not arise at all in Aristotle's dis-
cussions of the other two forms of government, that is aristocracy (or oli-
garchy) and democracy (or polity). The reason for this is that unlike what
has been traditionally assumed the polis was not a State but rather what the
anthropologists call a ‘stateless society’. The latter is a relatively egalitarian
unstratified community characterized by the absence of coercive appara-
tuses, that is by the fact that the application of violence is not monopolized
by an agency or a ruling class, and the ability to use force is more or less
evenly distributed among an armed or potentially armed population. As the
polis was stateless, there was not a ready made state-apparatus, one over
Berent / Greece: The Stateless Polis (11th – 4th Centuries B.C.), pp. 364–387
Berent / Greece: The Stateless Polis… 365
which anyone who wished to, or was urged to, rule could preside. Thus a
bodyguard had to be especially created for him. The same problem did not
exist for aristocracy and democracy, because in these forms of constitution
there was actually no ruler and both kinds of constitution were expected to
derive the force needed for their defense directly from their ‘natural’ fol-
lowers: aristocracy from the body of ‘best men’, and democracy from the
demos. This observation could be demonstrated by occasions in which such
constitutions had collapsed. At Athens, for example, in 462 the absence of
4000 hoplites, who had been taken by Cimon to help Sparta subdue the
Helot revolt in Messenia, facilitated the democratic advances initiated by
Ephialtes, while the absence of thousands of thetes, when the fleet was sta-
tioned at Samos, was vital for the oligarchic coup of 411 (Finley 1981: 29).
While it is agreed today that the early State played a significant role ‘in
the direct exploitation of the producers through taxation, compulsory labor
and other obligations’ (Khazanov 1978: 87), the statelessness of the Greek
polis means exactly that it was not an instrument for the appropriation of
surplus production, and those modes of early agrarian State exploitation did
not exist in ancient Greek world (at least before the Hellenistic Empires).
The statelessness of the Greek polis makes social anthropology a proper
discipline for its analysis. However, such an analysis could not be carried
out without qualifications. The main obstacle to the application of social
anthropology to the Greek arena seems to be that anthropologists tend to
identify the stateless community with the tribe (Gellner 1981: 24–25;
1988a: 152; 1991: 64), while it is agreed that the classical polis was not
tribal and it is strongly doubted today whether tribal forms existed in an-
cient Greece even in archaic times. Being both, stateless and non-tribal, the
Greek polis posses a serious problem for many basic assumptions of mod-
ern social anthropology. Thus, for instance, the assumption that the State is
a necessary condition for civilization, or that stateless communities are
‘primitive’, while Greek society was both civilized and stateless. Conse-
quently modern social anthropology not only ignored the statelessness of
the ancient polis but on the contrary its evolutionary school reinforced the
myth of the classical ‘Greek State’ while adding to it another myth, that of
the archaic ‘Greek Tribe’.
POLIS AND STATE2

A. D E F I N I T I O N S
Broadly speaking, the traditional definitions of State could be classified into
those based on (a) stratification and (b) authority or the structure of the
government itself (Cohen 1978a: 2–5; 1978b: 32–34; I have modified
Cohen's position slightly limiting myself to traditional definitions of the
State).
Definitions based on stratification stress the correlation between States
and the existence of permanent social classes. In those definitions the State
is either identified with the ruling class or viewed as dominated by the rul-
ing class, and is used as an instrument for the appropriation of surplus pro-
duction. Though those definitions have been usually associated with Marx-
ism, and especially with Engels's ‘Origins of the Family, Private Property
and the State’ (1884 [1972]), stratification is considered today as a univer-
sal correlate of the early (and pre-modern agrarian) State (Claessen and
Skalník 1978: 20–21). Thus Gellner observes that
In the characteristic agro-literate polity, the ruling class forms a
small minority of the population, rigidly separated from the great major-
ity of direct agricultural producers, or peasants. Generally speaking, its
ideology exaggerates rather than underplays the inequality of classes and
the degree of separation of the ruling stratum. This can turn into a num-
ber of more specialized layers: warriors, priests, clerics, administrators,
burghers. The whole system favours horizontal lines of cultural cleav-
age, and it may invent and reinforce them when they are absent (1983:
9–10)3.
Gellner himself does not think that his model of the agrarian State ap-
plies to the classical Greek world, pointing out that the Greek world lacked
horizontal cultural differentiation and a military-clerical domination (1983:
14; 1988a: 22). The citizens of the polis were not professional soldiers or
administrators. Further, the cultural horizontal cleavages which Gellner sees
as characteristic of stratified agrarian communities were absent in the Greek
case; the Greeks emerged from the Dark Age as the ‘nation’ of Homer, that
is, no class had a monopoly on literacy and culture. Indeed Gellner calls
Greek society a ‘domination-free society’ (1988a: 22).
Yet, the existence of exploitation (notably slavery) or of privileged
groups (notably the citizens) in the polis could not be denied. In the same
manner one could not deny that in a certain sense the citizens did have a
monopoly on the application of physical force. These have led to attempts
to modify Gellner's model of the agrarian State in order to make it applica-
ble to the ancient Greek arena. I will return to these attempts later on.
A second set of definitions of State focuses on the structure of the gov-
ernmental system itself, looking for institutional hierarchy and centraliza-
tion, territorial sovereignty, the monopoly of the application of physical
coercion (Cohen 1978b: 34). Here the best starting point would probably be
Max Weber's celebrated definition of the state as that agency within society
which possesses the monopoly of legitimate violence (Weber 1978: 54).
Thus as Gellner observes ‘The “state” is that institution or set of institu-
tions specifically concerned with the enforcement of order (whatever else
they may be concerned with). The state exists where specialized order-
enforcing agencies, such as police forces and courts, have separated out
from the rest of social life. They are the state’ (1983: 4).
This definition is far from being true for the polis. The rudimentary
character of State-coercive apparatus in the polis has been noted by Sir
Moses Finley among others. With the partial exceptions of Sparta, the
Athenian navy, and tyrannies, the polis had no standing army. Only in the
case of tyrannies were militias used for internal policing (Finley 1983: 18–
20). (Tyrannies were indeed attempts to centralize the means of coercion,
that is to create a State). As for police, it seems to be agreed that the ancient
polis ‘never developed a proper police system’ (Badian 1970: 851); the
nearest thing to it was usually a ‘small number of publicly owned slaves at
the disposal of the different magistrates’ (Finley 1983: 18).
The absence of public coercive apparatuses meant that the ability to ap-
ply physical threat was evenly distributed among armed or potentially
armed members of the community, that is, the citizen-body. Thus, as Lintott
has observed, policing was done by self-help and self-defense (that is with
the help of friends, neighbors, family) (Lintott 1982; Rihll 1993: 86–87).
There was no public prosecution system, and cases were brought to the
popular courts either by interested parties or by volunteers. In the same
manner, court orders were not carried out by the officials but by the inter-
ested parties, sometimes by self-help.
In Athens, for instance, what could be seen as a State law-enforcement
apparatus, were the Eleven who had the charge of the prison and execu-
tions, and who, like most Athenian magistrates, were ordinary citizens cho-
sen by lot for one year. The Eleven did not normally make arrests on their
own initiative. Those were carried out by self-help, by interested individu-
als or by volunteers (Lintott 1982). In other words the prisoners were
brought to the Eleven. Further, imprisonment was not normally a form of
punishment imposed by the courts in the classical polis (Todd 1990: 234)
(which is not surprising, since prisons are typically part of the bureaucratic
machinery of the State); in Athens it was more usual to detain people in the
public prison under the supervision of the Eleven until they were tried or
while they were awaiting execution (by the Eleven)4. The Eleven were also
responsible for the execution without trial of kakourgoi, that is, robbers,
thieves and other criminals who were caught red-handed and confessed.
Again the kakourgoi were not arrested by the Eleven but brought to
them by ordinary citizens (Hansen 1976: 9–25)5. There was also in Athens
a corps of Scythian archers ‘probably more decorative than useful, espe-
cially for keeping order in law-courts and assemblies’ (Badian 1970: 851).
Anyway, they were not ‘any kind of police force in the general modern
sense’ (Hansen 1991: 124)6.
To the extent that this apparatus could be described as a police force, its
rudimentary character becomes obvious when one is considering the size of
the population in Attica (that is above 200,000 including non-citizens
(Gomme and Hopper 1970: 862). Thus Finley emphasizes that:
Neither police action against individual miscreants nor crisis meas-
ures against large scale ‘subversion’ tells us how a Greek city-state or
Rome was normally able to enforce governmental decisions through the
whole gamut from foreign policy to taxation and civil law, when they
evidently lacked the means with which, in Laski's vigorous language, to
coerce the opponents of the government, to break their wills, to compel
them to submission (Finley 1983: 24).
As for the differentiation or the separation of State institutions ‘from the
rest of social life’, Finley has noted also that Athens, with all its impressive
political institutions and empire, had virtually no bureaucracy at all (Finley
1977: 75). Athens's political institutions, the Assembly (ekklesia) the Coun-
cil (boule) and the Law-courts (dikasteria), were popular, not differentiated
from the demos7. The various offices in Athens (most of the magistrates,
including the archons but not the generals [strategoi]) were designated by
lot for one year (Finley 1977: 75). Designation of political offices by lot for
short periods is another way of preventing the differentiation of a state. It
also bore directly on the “constitutional” and actual power of those offi-
cials. ‘This leads to the elision of anything that could properly be termed an
executive power, and reduces officers to individuals not distinct from the
demos’ (Osborne 1985: 9).
In Athens it is possible to distinguish also between ‘government’ in the
sense of political institutions and officials, on the one hand, and ‘govern-
ment’ in the sense of people who formulated policy. While the political in-
stitutions and offices were staffed by amateurs, thus exhibiting no division
of labor, one can speak of a certain kind of a division of labor considering
the ‘professional politicians’ in Athens, that is the demagogues and those
who proposed and spoke in the assembly. Yet in the sense that these people
could be called a government, this was certainly a non-State government.
The Athenian leader did not have any formal position and State coercive
apparatus at his disposal. He was simply a charismatic individual, a dema-
gogue, who could persuade the people in the Assembly to accept his poli-
cies, but still risked losing his influence (and his life!), and having his poli-
cies rejected at any moment (Finley 1985: 24).
B. S L A V E R Y
The existence of exploitation (notably slavery) or of privileged groups (no-
tably the citizens) and the fact that to a certain sense the citizens did have a
monopoly on the application of physical force have led to attempts to mod-
ify (Gellner's) model of the agrarian State in order to make it suitable for
the ancient Greek world. An analysis of these modifications could elaborate
further on the differences between the polis and the agrarian or early State.
The most obvious modification for the model of the Agrarian State
would be to follow I. Morris in drawing the main horizontal line (which
separates rulers from ruled) between the citizens and the slave population
(Morris 1991: 46–49). Again, seeing the citizens as a ‘ruling class’ conflicts
with Gellner's model of the agrarian State because the absence of a division
of labor: the citizens were not professional soldiers or administrators. Thus
a further modification seems to be suggested by Runciman who says that
two necessary conditions are paramount in a polis:
First, a polis must be juridically autonomous in the sense of holding
a monopoly on the means of coercion within a territory to which its laws
apply. Second, its form of social organization must be centered on dis-
tinctions between citizens, whose monopoly of the means of coercion it
is, who share among themselves the incumbency of central government
roles, and who subscribe to an ideology of mutual respect, and non-
citizens, the product of whose labour is controlled by the citizens even if
the citizens do the same work (when not under arms) (1990: 348).
Runciman still considers coercion in what he calls ‘a citizen-state’, as a
means of appropriation of surplus production. His model assumes that the
citizen-body acts as a sort of a centralized body towards the slaves or the
non-citizens in general. Is this view justified?
With the conspicuous exception of Sparta, the absence of any organized
militias or otherwise professional bodies for internal policing is recognized
today. How, then, were the slaves controlled?
Ancient Greece was characterized by chattel slavery; that is, slaves were
usually owned by individual masters and not by the public. Further, and this
is important, the control of the slaves was also ‘private’, that is, by self-
help. In an illuminating passage in the Republic Socrates equates the slave
owner with the tyrant. It is the business of the slave-owner to control the
slaves. But why is it that ‘Such slave-owners ... don't live in fear of their
slaves’. The answer is that ‘the entire polis (pasa e polis) would run to
help (boethei) him’ (Plato, Republic 578d-e. Plato, Republic 361a-b.)8. That
Socrates refers here to self-help rather to any organized or professional help
becomes more obvious from what follows: But imagine now that ‘some god
were to take a single man who owned fifty or more slaves and were to
transport him and his wife and children, his goods and chattels and his
slaves, to some desert place where there would be no other free man to help
him; wouldn't he be in great fear that he and his wife and children would be
done away with by the slaves?’ (Plato, Republic 578e).
The emphasis here is not on the absence of a State in some desert place,
and not even on the absence of citizens, but rather on the absence of other
free men who constitute the natural group from which help could come. In
Xenophon's phrase in a similar passage all the slaveowners in the commu-
nity act together as ‘unpaid bodyguard’ (Xen. Hiero, 4.3; and see Fisher
1993: 71–72).
The absence of any ready militia to crush slave-revolts is complemen-
tary to the fact that ‘slaves never represented a cohesive group either in
their masters' or their own mind so for all their exploited situation they did
not engage (for the most part) in social conflict’ (Figueria 1991: 302; see
also Vidal-Naquet 1981: 159–167), and that we don't know of any slave
revolts in ancient Greece again with the conspicuous exception of Sparta.
As for the latter, the Helots were not at all chattel slaves but a local popula-
tion which was enslaved by Sparta and were only able to revolt outright
because of their ethnic and political solidarity, while ‘these conditions did
not obtain for chattel slaves of classical Greece’ (Cartledge 1985: 46)9.
And indeed the Greeks had already discovered that slaves were easy to
handle when they were disoriented, thus Aristotle says that:
This is the way in which we suggest that the territory of our polis
should be distributed, and these are the reasons for our suggestions. The
class which farms it should ideally, and if we can choose at will, be
slaves – but slaves not drawn from a single stock, or from stocks of a
spirited temper. This will at once secure the advantage of a good supply
of labor and eliminate any danger of revolutionary designs (Aristotle,
Politics VII. 10, 1330a 24–29)10.
Disorientation and deracination were important tools for the control of
the slaves. Another was manumission and a certain incorporation into the
Greek society. In their analysis of slavery in Africa Kopytoff and Meir sug-
gest that while emphasis has been usually laid on ‘how slaves are excluded
from the host society ... the problem for the host society is really that of in-
cluding the stranger while continuing to treat him as a stranger’ (Miers and
Kopytoff 1977: 15–16). Consequently African slave societies offer social
mobility to the slaves from the status of the total stranger towards the in-
corporation into the kinship group in what Kopytoff and Meir call the ‘slav-
ery to kinship continuum’ (ibid.: 19–26). In classical Greece manumission
and a certain mobility existed along with what might be called a ‘slavery to
citizenship continuum’. One potential source of large scale manumission in
the polis were shortages in warriors and rowers for the army and the navy
(Fisher 1993: 67–70). The fact that usually the process of incorporation was
arrested at a very early stage and full incorporation of slaves into the citizen
body was rare and could have taken more than one generation does not un-
dermine its existence and importance (Morris 1991: 174). It is important to
note that Greek slaves were incorporated also culturally into the Greek so-
ciety. Plato's and the Old Oligarch's complaints that in Athens slaves could
not be identified by their physical appearance were perhaps an overstate-
ment of this phenomenon. In other words, the cultural horizontal cleavages
which Gellner sees as characteristic of stratified agrarian communities were
absent in the Greek case.
The absence of coercive apparatuses made the polis less equipped for
domination through conquest. The price of such domination would have
been the creation of a Spartan-type community, that is turning the commu-
nity into a military camp11. Consequently, in many cases, though Greek
colonization started indeed with a conquest, the new poleis preferred either
to annihilate the local inhabitants, or expel them, or to sell them as slaves,
rather than to enslave them and create a Spartan-type community (Rihll
1993: 92–105). The absence of coercive apparatuses also prevented the in-
crease of the number of slaves beyond a certain point. Thus the relative
number of slaves within the total population seems also to conflict with
Gellner's model of the agrarian State. While in the latter the rulers form
only a tiny fraction of the total population, in the Greek polis the slaves
(‘the ruled’ in this case) were at most 35–40 percent of the total population
(Fisher 1993: 34–36; Cartledge 1993: 135).
C. E X P L O I T A T I O N
The idea that the (agrarian) State was an instrument for the appropriation of
surplus production is not confined to Marxists, and it is agreed today that
the early State played a significant role ‘in the direct exploitation of the
producers through taxation, compulsory labor and other obligations’
(Khazanov 1978: 87). This feature of the polis, according to which internal
coercion was not organized or professional but rather exerted by self-help,
that is, by volunteers, means that the polis was not a State, but rather, as
Aristotle says, an association or partnership (koinonia). This does not
mean, of course, that the polis' economy was not based also upon the ap-
propriation of surplus production of the slaves (or the ‘poor’ in general), but
that exploitation and slavery could exist in stateless conditions. This point is
made clearer when we examine to what extent modes of exploitation asso-
ciated with the agrarian State existed in the polis. Khazanov observes that:
...‘one characteristic of most, if not all, early states deserves special atten-
tion because it may well turn out to be one of their distinctive features. I am
referring here to the significant role played by the early state in the direct
exploitation of the producers through taxation, compulsory labor and other
obligations’ (ibid.)12.
In their Pre-capitalist modes of production Hindess and Hirst include di-
rect State taxation, appropriation and compulsory labor in the ancient mode
of production (Hindess and Hirst 1985: 86–87). Among modern historians
Ste. Croix applies the same modes of exploitation to the Greek polis. He
distinguishes between what he calls direct and individual exploitation on
the one hand (wage-laborers, slaves, serfs, debtors etc.) and indirect or col-
lective, that is State exploitation, on the other. The latter is defined by Ste.
Croix as ‘when taxation, military conscription, forced labor or other ser-
vices are exacted solely or disproportionately from a particular class or
classes ... by a State dominated by a superior class’ (Ste. Croix 1981: 44).
Let us examine to what extent these modes of State-exploitation (taxes,
forced conscription and forced labor), existed in the polis.
As for taxation, Ste. Croix himself admits that ‘in the cities before the
Hellenistic periods it may often have been quite light’ (Ste. Croix 1981:
206). In fact the absence of direct taxation of citizens has been a recognized
feature of the polis (Austin and Vidal-Naquet 1977: 121; by contrast there
was no hesitation in taxing non-citizens. See, ibid.: 122–123). Taxation
usually characterized tyrannies, yet the latter were indeed attempts to create
centralized power, that is to create a State. Further, not only was direct taxa-
tion not imposed on the poor of Athens, it was also the legal duty of the rich
to undertake liturgies. The liturgy-system was a system whereby the rich
carried a large financial burden and were recompensed by corresponding
honours. It points to the fact that generally speaking the economic burden
of the polis fell directly upon the rich rather than the poor citizens and
points further to the Greek polis being an association rather than a State. Of
course, it could be still claimed that the economic burden fell indirectly on
the poor – the rich exploited the poor. Yet this was ‘individual exploitation’
rather than ‘State-exploitation’.
If we move to Ste. Croix's second mode of State-exploitation, that is
forced conscription of the poor, Ste. Croix himself admits that, ‘In the
Greek cities military service ... (the hoplite army) was a “liturgy” expected
of those I am calling “propertied classes”’ (1981: 207). However, invoking
Marx who has already noted that ‘Military service hastened to so great an
extent the ruin of Roman plebeians’, Ste. Croix (1981: 208) maintains that
while conscription bore heavily on the poor it ‘presented no really serious
burden on the well-to-do, who did not have to work for their living’ (Ste.
Croix 1981: 207–208).
However, as Paul Millett says, while this was true for the Roman plebe-
ians, ‘in Athens, if anything, the reverse seems to have been the case, with
wealthier citizens bearing the costs of the campaigns while the mass of the
people enjoyed any benefits’ (Millet 1993: 184; Pritchett 1991: 473–485).
Ste. Croix's claim that military service impoverished the poor ignores the
centrality of war in the economy of agrarian society in general and the polis
in particular. War also promised the participants a direct share of the booty
(Pritchett 1971: 82–84; 1991: 363–401, 438–504) and through soldiering
people could escape poverty, that is could be fed and paid (Pritchett 1971:
458–459)13.
Further, the history of Athens becoming a democracy shows that, from
the class point of view (though perhaps not from the individual point of
view) conscription was a privilege, not a duty. It was the invention of the
infantry hoplite army which hastened the downfall of the aristocracy-cum-
oligarchy, and the centrality of the Athenian navy in maintaining the empire
hastened the development of democracy. From the opposite reasons and
from a purely class point of view it was not in the interest of the oligarchy
to arm the masses (that is to ‘conscript’ them). Aristotle has pointed out
their dilemma:
Changes may happen in oligarchies owing to internal reasons and
without any attack from outside alike in war and in peace. They happen
in war when members of the oligarchy are compelled by distrust of the
people to employ an army of mercenaries. If a single man is entrusted
with the command of these mercenaries, he frequently becomes a tyrant,
as Timophanes did at Corinth; and if command is vested in a number of
persons, they make themselves a governing clique. Fear of such conse-
quences sometimes forces oligarchy to employ a popular force, and thus
to give the masses some share in constitutional rights (Politics V. 6,
1306a 20–26, and see also Plato, Republic 551e).
It is exactly the decentralized and relatively egalitarian nature of the po-
lis which made forced ‘conscription’ the enemy of class domination. Con-
sequently, arming the masses, that is increasing the military participation
ratio, had to be accompanied by the increase of the political participation
ratio. Thus ‘conscription’ was not forced upon the disenfranchised but
rather was forced by external conditions, like wars, upon the franchised.
It seems, then, that when one examines closely Ste. Croix's argument
about class exploitation in the Greek polis his argument is very weak con-
cerning what he calls ‘indirect and collective’ exploitation by a ‘State
dominated by a superior class’.
The absence of public coercive apparatuses was, then, complementary to
absence of these modes of State-exploitation which characterized early
States. Consequently to a large extent the Greek polis was not an instrument
for the appropriation of surplus production. Here a major question arises:
how did the Greek achieve the ‘good life’? or in other words, how did they
manage to sustain civilized life? Slavery was one way to achieve the ‘good
life’, but it could not be enough, probably because there were not enough
slaves. We must remember that in agrarian States, the small civilized mi-
nority who appropriates the surplus production of the vast majority, consists
of tiny fraction of the entire population, while in Athens the slaves were at
most 35–40 percent of the total population. The absence of coercive appara-
tuses made the increase in the number of slaves beyond a certain point im-
possible and dangerous.
Thus slavery had to be reinforced and supplemented by war. This should
not surprise us. As Gellner has pointed out, in the agrarian world wealth can
generally be acquired more easily and quickly through coercion and preda-
tion than through production. Whether in a certain agrarian society violence
would take the form of coercion or predation depends on how the means of
coercion are distributed. Most agrarian societies are authoritarian, that is
stratified State-societies, where the means of coercion are centralized or
monopolized by a ruling class. In such societies coercion takes the form of
State domination and State appropriation of surplus production. Yet there is
another kind of agrarian societies – egalitarian stateless communities. These
societies are characterized by a high Military Participation Ratio, that is,
almost everybody carries arms in wartime. What characterizes such com-
munities is that they resist coercion. In such stateless communities violence
would take the form of defense, predation and war against the outside world
(Gellner 1991: 62–63).
The centrality of war and booty in the economy of the polis has long
been recognized. In the Phaedo Plato says that ‘All wars are undertaken for
the acquisition of wealth’ (66c) and Aristotle points out five modes of ac-
quisition ‘the pastoral, the farming, the freebooting, the fishing, and the life
of the chase’ and he sees war as a ‘natural mode of acquisition’ (Aristotle,
Politics I. 8, 1256b 23). Indeed ‘warfare in the ancient Greek world was a
mode of production’ (Rihll 1993: 105)14. And Finley comments on this as
follows:
Why did the Greek poleis war with each other incessantly? No sim-
ple answer is available. In the present context, the suggestion may suf-
fice that Greek poleis lacked the resources in men, land and materials
with which to provide for their citizens the “good life” that was the
avowed purpose of the state. They could overcome chronic scarcities
only at the expense either of a sector of their own citizenry or other
states (Finley 1981: 33; 1985: ch. 6, esp. 158–159).
THE TWO PLANS OF GOVERNMENT.

SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE GREEK POLIS
A. S OCIAL A NTHROPOLOGY AND THE M YTH OF THE G REEK S TATE
The statelessness of the Greek polis makes social anthropology a proper
discipline for its analysis. Yet social anthropology not only ignored the
statelessness of the ancient polis, but on the contrary reinforced the myth of
the classical ‘Greek State’ while adding to it another myth, that of the ar-
chaic ‘Greek Tribe’.
It was the evolutionist tradition which prevailed in social anthropology
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which reinforced the
idea of the classical Greek State. According to evolutionism, human socie-
ties have been constantly evolving following the same pattern, though not
necessarily the same timetable. The existence of primitive stateless com-
munities (such as the Iroquois of North America) meant, according to evo-
lutionism, that each historical western societies had also gone through this
tribal stage before they evolved into their State-form. The task of historians
and anthropologists alike was to try to establish the various evolutionary
stages in history for every society (Kuper 1988: 1–7; Crone 1986: 56–58).
Greek society was not exempted; on the contrary, it was used to exemplify
the first historical transition from a tribal community into a State. As Lewis
Henry Morgan put it in his Ancient Society
It may be here premised that all forms of government are reducible
to two general plans, using the word plan in its scientific sense. In their
bases the two are fundamentally distinct. The first, in order of time, is
founded upon persons, and upon relations purely personal, and may be
distinguished as society (societas). The gens is the unit of this organiza-
tion; giving as the successive stages of integration, in the archaic period,
the gens, the phratry, the tribe, and the confederacy of tribes, which consti-
tuted a people or a nation (populus). Such ... was the substantial univer-
sal organization of ancient society; and it remained among the Greeks
and the Romans after civilization supervened. The second is founded
upon territory and upon property, and may be distinguished as a state
(civitas). ... Political society is organized upon territorial areas, and deals
with property as well as with persons through territorial relations. ... It
taxed the Greeks and the Romans ... after they had gained civilization, to
... inaugurate the second plan of government, which remains among civi-
lized nations to the present hour’ (Morgan 1877 [1964]: 13–14).
It is not only the assumption that the classical Greek polis was a State
which is important here, but the idea of duality, that is that in principle there
could be only two modes of government, tribal (and stateless, though Mor-
gan does not use this term) on the one hand, and States on the other. An-
other important duality which appears in the above quotation is that of State
= private property on the one hand and tribal (and stateless) community =
commune, on the other. Consequently if private property and ‘class’ con-
flict could be found in classical Greece, than the polis must have been a
State (see, for example: Starr 1986: 43–45). A third important duality used
by Morgan is that of tribe = primitive on the one hand and State = civiliza-
tion on the other. From this one might conclude that if the Greek polis was
civilized, then it must have been a State.
Here, of course, the contribution of classical Marxism to the notion of
the Greek ‘State’ should be emphasized. There could be little surprise that
Morgan's theory was accepted enthusiastically by Marx and Engels and was
incorporated into the canonical Marxist teachings (Gellner 1988b: 39–68).
The classical Marxist text in this matter is Engels's ‘Origins of the Family,
Private Property the State’. According to Engels the first evolutionary stage
of the Greeks was a stateless commune: ‘The gentile constitution had
grown out of a society which knew no internal contradictions, and it was
only adapted to such a society. It possessed no means of coercion except
public opinion’ (Engels 1884 [1972]: 228).
However, such society was not equipped to deal with private property
and class-conflict once they appeared, thus it needed a State:
But here was a society which by all its economic conditions of life
had been forced to split into freemen and slaves, into the exploiting rich
and the exploited poor; a society which not only could never reconcile
these contradictions, but was compelled always to intensify them. Such a
society could only exist either in the continuous open fight of these
classes against one another or else under the rule of a third power, which
apparently standing above the warring classes, suppressed their open
conflict and allowed the class struggle to be fought out at most in the
economic field, in the so called legal form. The gentile constitution was
finished. It was shattered by the division of labour and its result, the
cleavage of societies into classes. It was replaced by the state’ (Engels
1884 [1972]: 228).
Engels leaves no doubt as to the ‘State’ character of the ancient polis:
The people's army of the Athenian democracy confronted the slaves
as an aristocratic public force and kept them in check; but to keep the
citizens in check as well, a police force was needed ... This public force
exists in every state; it consists not merely of armed men but also of ma-
terial appendages, prisons and coercive institutions of all kinds (Engels
1884 [1972]: 230).
A contemporary Marxist interpretation of the so called ‘class struggle’
in ancient Greece could be found in Ste. Croix's The Class Struggle in the
Ancient Greek World where he says:
We can accept the fact that what we call “the state” was for the
Greeks the instrument of the politeuma, the body of citizens who had the
constitutional power of ruling. ...Control of the State, therefore, was one
of the prizes, indeed the greatest prize, of class struggle on the political
plane. This should not surprise even those who cannot accept the state-
ment in the Communist Manifesto that “political power, properly so
called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing an-
other”15.
Indeed, the notion of class struggle as offered by Greek sources in which
the ‘classes’ fight for domination on more or less equal terms seems to fit
neatly into the classical Marxist notion of class struggle. Let us take the
following numerical calculation put forward by Aristotle when he advo-
cates the rule of the middle ‘class’, the middling group of citizens:
It is clear from our argument, first, that the best form of political so-
ciety is one where power is vested in the middle class and, secondly, a
good government is attainable in those poleis where there is a large mid-
dle class – large enough, if possible, to be stronger than both of the other
classes, but at any rate large enough to be stronger than either of them
singly; for in this case its addition to either will suffice to turn the scale,
and will prevent either of the opposing extremes from becoming domi-
nant (Politics IV. 11, 1295b: 34–39).
While it seems to fit neatly into the classical Marxist scheme, this de-
scription is problematic from standpoint of the model of the early agrarian
State proposed by Gellner. According to Gellner in agrarian stratified State
– societies politics is limited to struggles within the ruling elite, thus
there is no question of the ruled, the vast number of unarmed direct produc-
ers (which suppose to be the equivalent of the Greek ‘poor’), assuming con-
trol of the State. In fact, it is here where Gellner's model seems to conflict
with classical Marxism (Hall 1985: 28–32). Consequently from Gellner's
point of view what Aristotle describes here is a decentralized and egalitar-
ian community. The ability to use force is distributed among armed or po-
tentially armed members of the community, thus each class can command
force, and, as expected in an egalitarian community, force is directly related
to the size of the group. It might be related also to the type of weapons
available to the various groups. Thus the rich could probably afford to be
fewer than the poor, since they could afford better arms (such as the hoplite
armor). However, society is still egalitarian and decentralized, since the
disadvantage of the poor in weapons could be overcome by their numbers.
From Aristotle's calculation it is also obvious that the various elements of
society are, if not of the same size, at least of a similar order of magnitude.
The situation in agrarian stratified State-societies is different. In the latter
the ruling classes are only a tiny minority of the total population while the
vast majority are peasant producers. Thus force is totally divorced from
numbers. Further, as already noted, in agrarian stratified communities poli-
tics is limited to struggles within the ruling elite, thus there is no question of
the ruled, the vast number of direct producers, assuming control of the
State16.
We may reach here an interesting conclusion: the only reason classical
Marxism was able to read into the Greek sources its notion of class strug-
gle, a notion in which every class could potentially prevail, was exactly
because the Greek polis was not an (agrarian) State, but rather a stateless
and relatively egalitarian community.
It is important to note the ‘middle class’ in Aristotle's quotation above
prevails because it is large enough, not because it establishes dominance
over the other sections of the community. It has no means to do so: the ar-
mies engaged in the so called ‘class struggle’ or stasis are non-professional
citizen armies, and they exist only as long as the hostilities last. There is, of
course, the possibility that a victorious party would want to achieve domi-
nation, and that it would not dissolve and disarm itself, but rather go on to
establish a tyranny. Tyrannies were indeed attempts to gain and centralize
power, that is to create a State, and the only case where militias or body-
guards were available for the purpose of ruling.
Yet, normally the purpose of stasis was not the establishment of tyranny
but rather change or appropriation of the constitution. The most obvious
aspect of a constitutional change was a decrease or increase of the citizen
body. Citizenship, quite apart from the implications of political, legal and
religious status, carried with it substantial economic gains. Thus only citi-
zens could own land, [in the Athenian case] only citizens could share the
profits of the mines. Only citizens had access to public funds (liturgies,
booty, and (in the Athenian case) the levies that came from the empire).
Only citizens had the right to assistance with respect to food supply. Fur-
ther, as Aristotle tells us, the constitution was an arrangement of offices and
it determined the offices and their distribution within the various ‘elements’
of the citizen body. Sometimes offices carried with them profits, as in the
case of the Athenian juror, the dikastes (Finley 1976; reprinted in Finley
1981: 81–82; Garnsey 1988: 80).
Thus, though each ‘class’ wished to impose its constitutional prefer-
ences upon the others, this was not meant to be done by a government
which imposed law and order, but rather by the vivid memory of the out-
come of the last armed struggle, or stasis, plus the new constitutional ar-
rangements. In other cases, such the one which Aristotle advocates, in
which one group or class was ‘large enough’, the outcomes of stasis could
be foreseen in advance and the threat of stasis could be enough to bring
about the constitutional preferences of the dominant group (see also Berent
1998).
B. S OCIAL A NTHROPOLOGY AND THE M YTH OF THE G REEK T RIBE
While modern social anthropology enhanced the myth of the Greek State it
was also partially to be blamed for the creation of another myth, that of the
‘Greek tribe’.
Indeed, the traditional view, dominant until recently, was that the classi-
cal polis had evolved from the archaic polis which was tribal. There is no
doubt that the myth of the ‘Greek tribe’ was directly related to that of the
‘Greek State’: from 19th century evolutionist point of view the classical
Greek State must have evolved from tribal forms. The notion of the latter
seemed to be supported by the existence of the Athenian phylai, gene and
phratries, which looked like lineage systems. Yet the notion of the Greek
tribe has in the last two decades come under fierce attack which has started
by the works of two French scholars, F. Bourriot and D. Roussel (Bourriot
1976; Roussel 1976). According to these two scholars the tribal model of
archaic Greece was mainly a product of late nineteenth- and early twenti-
eth-century rationalizing. Heavily influenced by the evolutionist anthropo-
logical theories of the day, historians postulated that primitive Greeks must
(like Morgan's Iroquois) have had ‘tribes’, ‘phratries’ and ‘clans’ (Donlan
1985: 295–296; Roussel 1976: 99–103). Roussel and Bourriot refuted
the notion of the archaic Greek tribal community basically by pointing out
there is no literary evidence in Homeric and Archaic literature of clan prop-
erty, clan cults and joint family, nor that the obligation of assistance in
blood-feuds (that is, self-help) rested within a joint family; rather they
showed that the word genos is used in its normal meaning of birth or family
origins (Smith 1985: 53; see also Bourriot 1976: 240–300; Roussel 1976:
30–31)17. Further, they showed that there is no archaeological evidence
which supports the existence of continuous burial plots form the Dark-Age
to the classical times (Bourriot 1976: 850–899; Smith 1985: 54–55).
Finley, who adopted enthusiastically Roussel's findings suggested that
the notion of the tribal ‘polis runs counter to the evidence’ and that ‘In so
far as it is not merely the by product of a linear theory of human social evo-
lution, it reflects a fundamental confusion between family and clan or tribe’
(Finley 1983: 444–445; 1985: 91; Murray 1990: 13).
Comparing the archaic Greek social structure with contemporary theo-
ries of tribal structure gives reasons for further doubts over the alleged
tribal nature of archaic Greece. Segmentary theory, which is associated with
the works of E. E. Evans-Pritchard and E. Gellner, suggests that when a
tribal community is divided in times of conflict, the division should be ac-
cording to lineage. However, the divisions within the polis were usually ad-
hoc associations. Self-help was exerted on an ad hoc basis by family,
friends and neighbours in order to respond to particular situations or emer-
gencies. The Greek political divisions in the case of civil war, the staseis,
were ‘temporarily organized groups of citizens’ (Wheeler 1977: 168) and
were not identical with the so-called Greek kinship units. The absence of
segmentation in the Greek polis should be added to the proof that these
were not kinship groups (at least as those are envisaged by segmentary theory).
It is important to emphasis that the inadequacy of social anthropology to
the ancient Greek arena goes far beyond the shortcomings of evolutionism.
Contemporary social anthropology has still retained the classical evolution-
ist basic assumption of the ‘two plans of government’ and its derivatives
and it still identifies the stateless community with the tribe, or, as Gellner
put it, social anthropology rejects the Hobbesian notion of the individualis-
tic state of nature:
Long before modern social anthropology made the same discovery,
Ibn Khaldun knew full well that the state of nature is not individualistic,
but tribal. ... in the wilderness, the state of nature is a reality: the mainte-
nance of order and the righting of wrongs is in the hand of an armed
population itself, and not of a specialist law enforcement agency, i.e. the
state. But this statelessness is not individualistic. Those who partake in it
feel affection for their fellows of the same lineage. Order is maintained,
at least in some measure, by the mechanisms of stateless tribal organiza-
tion (1981: 24–25).
In another place Gellner says that ‘agrarian man seems to face the di-
lemma of being dominated either by kings or by cousins’ (1991: 64). Thus if
one assumes, within the framework of social anthropology, that the polis
was stateless one has also to assume that it was tribal. Yet, the Greek polis
was neither a State nor a tribe and consequently the Greek citizen was
dominated neither by kings nor by cousins. To a large extent the Greek
‘state of nature’ was indeed individualistic.
Further, contemporary social anthropology accept Morgan's supposition
and still considers the (tribal) stateless community as primitive and the
State as a necessary condition for civilization. Thus Sahlins observes that
A civilization is a society both massive and divided within itself. The
population is large, perhaps ethnically diversified, divided by its labors
into specialized occupations and, by unequal interests in the means of
power, divided into unequally privileged classes. All the cultural
achievements of civilization depend on this magnitude and complexity
of organization. Yet a society so large, heterogeneous, and internally di-
vided cannot stand without special means of control and integration...
The cultural richness that we call civilization has to be instituted in state
form’ (Sahlins 1968: 6–7; Khazanov 1978: 89–90; Crone 1986: 49–50).
Yet, the Greek polis and Greek society in general were both civilized
and stateless. Further, Greek society was civilized in a manner which was
different than that of authoritarian agrarian communities. While in the latter
civilized life pertain only to a tiny minority which composed the ruling
classes, in the Greek world civilization was shared by all. The Greeks in-
deed emerged form the Dark-Age as the Nation of Homer and the cultural
development of Archaic Greece pertained to the life of almost everyone in
the Greek world (Snodgrass 1980: 160–161).
It is obvious, then, that the notion of the ‘two plans of government’ em-
ployed by social anthropology is inadequate for the ancient Greek arena.
We need now a ‘third plan’ which would be able to explain the existence of
civilized life in the stateless conditions of ancient Greece. Yet, in the ab-
sence of the State, how were the internals divisions and the various interests
checked? Further, in the absence of a central authority which symbolized
and imposed identity, on the one hand, and the absence of kinship identity
(and, in fact, also a territorial one18), on the other, how did the Greek polis
manage to keep its cohesion? The answers to these questions lie beyond
the scope of this paper.
NOTES
* First published in Bondarenko, D. M., and Korotayev, A. V (eds.), Civiliza-
tional Models of Politogenesis, Moscow: Institute for African Studies of the Rus-
sian Academy of Sciences, 2000, pp. 228–254 under the title ‘Greece (11th – 4th
Centuries B.C.)’.
1
This paper was extracted from my Cambridge Ph. D. thesis. I owe special
thanks to the late Professor Ernest Gellner who commented on my thesis and on
earlier versions of this paper and to my supervisor Dr. Paul Cartledge who has also
helped me to bring this paper to its present form.
2
I have already argued some of the main points which appear in this section in
previous papers. I repeat them here for the clarity of the argument. See, Berent
1996: 36–59; 1998.
3
Gellner's position is different from that of classical Marxism. According to the
latter, stratification, or the emergence of classes, must precede that of the State.
Thus, classical Marxism sees the State as a ‘third power’ and the prize of the class-
struggle between the ruling and the ruled. Gellner, on the other hand, identifies the
ruling classes with the (agrarian) State and limits struggles for power to the ruling
strata only (that is, in Marxist terms he identifies only ‘one power’ – the ruling
classes). See, Mann 1988: 48–49. And see also below.
4
Also a man condemned to pay a fine could face imprisonment until he paid it
(MacDowell 1978: 257).
5
However, ephegesis was a process (rarely mentioned by the sources) in which
arrest was carried out by the Eleven probably because the prosecutor lacked the
power to make the arrest (Hansen 1976: 24–27).
6
Sparta had a ‘secret police’ (the krupteia), but only for use against the Helots
and not against the Spartiates (Badian 1970: 851; Cartledge 1987: 30–32). Even so,
Sparta is an exception which would need a special discussion.
7
This is the traditional view. However, Hansen argues that the dikasteria, the
law courts, were a differentiated body. See, for instance, Hansen 1989: 102.
8
Tr. Desmond Lee, 2nd revised ed., Harmondsworth, 1974. Here, I must say, the
traditional translations are imbued with statism, thus P. Shorey translates ‘because
the entire state is ready to defend each citizen’ (Loeb edn, London 1935) and Des-
mond Lee translates ‘Because the individual has the support of society as a whole’.
What is missing is the notion of self-help which is projected by the verb boethein.
Boe means a shout and also a cry for help. The boe was a main way of calling the
neighbours for help and people were supposed to run in response to a cry for help.
The verb boethein became one of the standard Greek words for giving assistance.
See Lintott 1982: 18–20.
9
The Helots were not slaves in the ordinary sense. They were an identifiable
and cohesive population who have been enslaved en bloc by conquest. They were,
therefore Greek, not foreign; they tended to be property of the city as a whole, not
just owned by individuals. Hence Garlan in his Slavery in Ancient Greece ch. 2
classifies them as ‘community slaves’. Since these were actually communities many
scholars (e.g., Ste Croix in his ‘Class Struggle’) find it helpful to classify them as
‘state-serfs’ rather them as slaves (Fisher 1993: 23–24).
10
Plato (The Laws 777) says that ‘The frequent and repeated revolts in Mes-
senia, and in states where people possess a lot of slaves who all speak the same
language, have shown the evil of the system often enough ... if slaves are to submit
to their condition without giving trouble, they should not all come from the same
country or speak the same tongue, as far as it can be arranged’ (Plato, The Laws,
Tr. Trevor J. Saunders. Penguin edn, 1970), and see Garlan 1988: 177–183).
11
Such communities also existed on the island of Crete, in Thessaly, Heraclea
on the Black Sea, Syracuse and few others. See Fisher 1993: 32–33.
12
Khazanov does not consider the Greek ‘State’ to be an Early State but ‘the
next, higher state of development’ (1978: 77).
13
Another matter is the fact that one of the prime targets of war in ancient
Greece had been the destruction of crops and other agricultural resources (see Fox-
hall1993: 134–136). Thus long invasions did not affect all alike – farmers were hit
harder than those without land and some farmers were hit harder than others (see
Osborne 1987: 154; Foxhall 1993: 142–143).
14
Millett says ‘As far as the Greek themselves were concerned warfare was
conceived as potentially profitable’ (1993: 183–184).
15
Ste. Croix 1981: 287.
16
As Michael Mann observes, the direct producers and expropriators could
unite against the State political elite, not to transform it, but to evade it. Thus when
the ruled are involved in class conflict in agrarian States, they are not aiming at the
control of the State, but rather at its disintegration (see Mann 1988: 51–56).
17
These features formed the traditional nineteenth – century notion of the tribal
community based on the definition of the genos originally formulated by George
Grote and modified by Lewis Morgan.
18
That the polis, as a political entity, or political system (to distinguish it from
the polis in the sense of the city), was not defined by territorial terms was pointed
out by Finley, Hansen and others. Finley says: ‘The polis was not a place, though it
occupied a defined territory; it was people acting in concert...’ (Finley 1963: 56;
1982: 3–4; Hansen 1991: 58–59).
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17
Rome: Socio-political Evolution in the
8th – 2nd Centuries B.C.*
Dmitri V. Dozhdev
Institute of State and Law, Moscow
The possibility to generalize the Ancient Roman evidence theoretically

from the viewpoint of politogenesis still remains a problem, in spite of the
traditional character of this approach. To elucidate the regularities, a re-
searcher has to expand the field of his studies and establish precise phasic
analogies with the traditional societies, whereas this task proves unrealiz-
able both because the Roman evidence themselves are used, as a rule,
overtly or covertly, as a basis for comparisons, and because many stages of
the politogenesis had been left behind in Europe by the Iron Age, and there-
fore the conventional comparisons lead to an unjustified archaization of the
Roman society without weakening the subjective character of the evalua-
tions. For instance, many authors still attempt interpretation of the military
alliances of the archaic epoch (from the heroes of the Trojan War and Pene-
lope's fiances to Spartan syssitiae and Roman sodalitas) as male houses
(Andreev 1964) and treat the unity of the genealogical and potestal charac-
teristics, reflected in the term of patres senatores (‘fathers-senators’)
(Dozhdev 1993b: 34ff.) as a social reality of the so called ‘early stage of the
primary formation’, namely age classes (Ivanchik and Kullanda 1991: 192–
216, esp. 195–197). It is not surprising that this approach results in the in-
terpretation of the formal fixation of the conscription age as, again, an indi-
cation to the age classes, and an attempt to reconstruct the rules of succes-
sion of royal power in early Rome may lead even to the ‘discovery’ of the
system of cross-cousin marriages among the ruling houses of Latium (Kop-
tev 1998: 27–52, 28, 30–36).
The negative experience of including the ancient societies into universal
(unilinear) models of overcoming the clan system and military democracy
still hampers an unbiased analysis of concrete historical phenomena. Even a
Dozhdev / Rome: Socio-political Evolution in the 8th–2nd Centuries B.C., pp. 388–418
Dozhdev / Rome: Socio-political Evolution… 389
real progress in studying the most ancient Roman society is still based on
the clan theory: the thesis on the neighbor character of the primary commu-
nities was contrasted with its earlier postulated clan character (Sereni 1955;
Mayak 1983: 260; Shtaerman 1984: 151); Servius Tullius's reform, though
interpreted not as the introduction of territorial-administrative division of
the population but as its perfection (already in: Last 1945), is contrasted
nevertheless with the alleged earlier genealogical system of recording
membership of a community (Gjerstad 1972: 151; De Martino 1979a: 162–
182; Tondo 1981: 92; Capogrossi Colognesi 1990: 41–42); finally, the very
formation of statehood in Rome is still studied on the basis of contrasting
the patrician clan system with the more progressive (military-democratic)
plebeian one (Palmer 1970: 152f; De Martino 1979b: 51–71). As it was
pointed out (Moreau 1978: 48), the very assessment of the clan relation-
ships in the early Rome is usually based on a misleading idea of coinci-
dence of parental and social structures and inevitably results in false gener-
alizations (Franciosi 1978; 1988). The study of the most ancient Roman
society in isolation from the parallels that suggest themselves, in the context
of a polylinear development of statehood, even if it does not facilitate the
task, ensures the necessary methodological purity of the research and seems
to clarify the question to an extent. The below picture of the formation of
the Roman state, the suggested legal evaluations and the attempt to find out
a continuous line that determines its specific features as a version of the
political development are based on the recognition of the civil community
(civitas) as the phenomenological and conceptual kernel of the problem.
Rome was founded in the urban epoch.
All the Latin cities, united in the Latin League of 30 cities (Dionys.,
3,31,4; 34,1), were colonies of Lavinium or Alba (which was considered, in
its turn, subsequently a colony of Lavinium), Rome being the latter's colony
(Liv., 1,52,2; Dionys., 1,45,2; 66,1; 67,2; 3,31,4). The undesirability or
even impossibility of exceeding the number of 30 may explain both the col-
legial character of the leadership of the colonist groups that founded Rome,
led by two brothers instead of organizing two expeditions (cf. Dionys.,
2,53,4), and the initial practice of sending additional colonists to the exist-
ing cities, which was often accompanied by their reassignment to Rome,
instead of founding new ones (Dionys., 2,53,2 sq; 36,2; 50,5; 53,4). As in
the subsequent epochs, a scheme was employed during the foundation of
Rome that went back – in accordance with the mythological approach that
required that any creative activity should reproduce the divine creation act
(Eliade 1995: 37ff.) – to the primary practice of founding a city (metropo-
lis). The fixed number of the colonists, 3000, reflects the magic of the num-
ber of 30, suggesting that a hundred of warriors was the basic unit. Hun-
dred is represented also in the ancient procedure of land delimitation (cen-
turiatio) – allocation of a parcel of 200 jugers (Varro., de 1.1., 5,35;
Paul.Diac., 46 L). Each hundred of warriors got its lot of land when Rome
was founded (Dionys., 2,7,4). The primary people was divided by Romulus
in 30 parts called curiae (Cic., de rep., 2,8,14; Dionys., 2,7,47). The struc-
tural correlation between the grouping of warriors and land delimitation
demonstrates the military-administrative character of a curia, the primary
structural unit of the Roman society.
The conception of the colonial origin of Rome, on the one hand, permits
one to match all data on the initial set-up of its society and, on the other
hand, poses the problem of elaborating a new strategy of the phasic inter-
pretation of early Rome and possible study of politogenesis on the basis of
its data. Really, if Rome was a derivate formation, all innovations made by
its founder kings (both those ascribed to Romulus and those dated to later
periods due to the first kings' legendary functional specialization), which
form a series of constituent acts that followed each other over a period of
time, must be perceived as aimed at reproducing the traditional procedures
in the new city. Generally, their appearance among the Latins must be con-
sidered a much earlier event (before the mid-8th century B.C.), whereas the
Roman institutions proper, which met the requirements of the community in
question, its numerical strength, geographical environment, military and
foreign policy tasks, should be treated as a possible (but not necessary) re-
action to the concrete historical context of the first centuries of the Roman
history.
It is apparent that the primary local social structures cannot avoid the
impact of both the emergence of an urban center and further urbanization
on the Tiber banks. There are even less reasons to postulate the existence of
principal differences in the previous epoch, although it is often described as
pre-urban. It is an arduous task to distinguish the sought-for qualitative
leap. Scantiness of the available data, their inevitable doubtfulness and lack
of agreement in the suggested conceptual generalizations doom the inter-
pretation of the Roman archaic data to be hypothetical and time-serving.
Besides, the use of the models created on the basis of traditional societies is
productive only if it presupposes the unilinear development of the public
organization of the society, and it is the latter thesis that is questioned
nowadays. The construction itself of a consecutive series of progressive
changes in the community set-up, which may serve as a kind of scale for
the phasic interpretation of other societies (as it was conventional to use the
Roman data in the scholarly researches of the 19th and 20th
390
centuries) will become possible only after a relevant criterion is established
to put in order, first of all, the Roman evidence itself.
The emergence of an urban center on the Tiber bank is secondary to the
earlier settlements (vici − villages) and their associations – rural communi-
ties (pagi). Thus, the inclusion of those communities into a united people
may be presented only as a result of their merger (synoecism). However,
this reconstruction does not make it clear was the foundation of the city a
consequence of the merger process or, on the contrary, a catalyst for the
merger trends. In the latter case, the origin of the urban center and its in-
habitants proves to have nothing to do with the local population, and fa-
mous synoecism is a result of the inclusion of the communities into a new
entity. This interpretation agrees with the tradition concerning the division
of the Roman population into 30 curiae by the chief of the settlers, the king
who founded the city. The opposite former interpretation relies on the in-
formation on the initial existence of less than 30 administrative centers in
the vicinities of Rome. For instance, the procession that crossed the City
performing the ancient ritual of the Argean festival stopped 27 times in
various places. Starting from this, De Francisci substantiated the secondary
and artificial (administrative) character of a curia (De Francisci 1959: 484).
Then the tradition concerning the division of the population into curiae and
of land among them proves a result of projecting the later organizational
structures into the antiquity, to the very moment of the emergence of Rome,
whereas actually the local centers were just gradually included into the new
association, the latter itself proving a product of the centripetal trends of
those primary formations. A possibility appears in this context to assume a
degree of independence of the ‘primary’ rural communities, which persisted
within the framework of the new entity, even if one recognizes their neigh-
bor rather than clan nature. This very circumstance seems to be the decisive
factor that caused modern scholarship to prefer the theory of synoecism: a
‘natural’ origin of the curiae, their autonomous, self-governed character,
the fact that their internal structure was supposed (expected) to be primary
to the megacommunity permitted the establishment of a conceptual succes-
sion with the habitual clan theory, which is already unacceptable in its clas-
sical form.
However, the facts that the subdued Latins were shifted to Rome and di-
vided into curiae, which accompanied and expressed granting of citizenship
to them (Dionys., 2,46–47; 50; 55; 62,2; 70; 3,29,7; Liv., 1,28,7; 30,2), con-
tradicted the thesis of a natural character of the curiae. Attempts were made
to overcome the latter obstacle by indicating that, beginning with Marcus
Ancius (the fourth king), the settlers were not attached to curiae (Mayak
1993b: 66–68). The supposed new practice is interpreted as a testimony
to the closeness of the clan curiae to strangers and, following Niebuhr (Nie-
buhr 1811: 180–189), as the source of the plebs, contrasted with the patri-
cian populus (people-host). In our case, the ex silentio argumentation,
which is unsound methodologically by itself, creates more problems than it
solves. Really, it does not explain how curiae could adopt new settlers ear-
lier and how they could develop their alleged clan nature (Niebuhr 1811:
371ff.; Mommsen 1864: 146; 1888: III, 69) afterwards.
The postulate on the plebeians' secondary and external origin is no less
contradictory. Anyway, after Servius's centurial reform, when, according to
the followers of the conception under criticism, the united patrician-
plebeian populus formed (Mayak 1989: 79–80), the curial assembly also
was supposed to represent the whole people (Dionys., 6,89,1; 9,41,2; Macr.,
Sat., 1,15,10; Cic., pro Corn., 1, fr. 23 apud Ascon). Recognizing plebeians'
presence in curiae after Servius, this doctrine has to explain how had they
been admitted thereto. Then, one has to assume a radical change in the na-
ture of curiae, which became structural units of a new, civil organization
after the reform (Tokmakov 1998: 78), although the latter created the cen-
turial organization parallel to the curial one without affecting the curiae.
Such reasonings overturn the only (speculative) argument advanced much
earlier concerning the expulsion of the plebeians from curiae: otherwise,
why was the centurial organization needed? This is how the entire construc-
tion loses the last signs of logic.
As a matter of fact, the sources directly mention the inclusion of the
peoples resettled by Ancus Marcius into the ranks of citizens (Liv., 1,33,2–
3; 5; Cic., de rep., 2,18,33), and Dionysius tells about their attachment to
‘tribes’ (tribus − a larger unit of people comprising 10 curiae) (Dionys.,
3,37,4). The numerical disagreement with 27 sanctuaries in the Argean rit-
ual may testify not to a gradual formation of the alliance of 30 curiae, con-
sidered a result of a purposeful advance towards the cherished sacred num-
ber, but to the conservation of the social reality that preceded the colonists'
advent, was close to synoecism and was realized within the military struc-
ture of the group from Alba Longa. If a curia had been a natural alliance,
transformed into an administrative one later on, the purpose of achieving
the cherished number of 30 in the course of the formation of the Roman
community might emerge only after such a change in the nature of the cu-
riae. Then, 27 Argean sanctuaries would testify to the concluding stage of
that path, when the social units had already acquired the qualities of admin-
istrative subunits of the homogenous society.
Not to mention that the identification itself of the Argean
392
sanctuaries with curial ones starts from the hypothesis concerning a gradual
increase in the number of curiae until it reached 30, it is dubious that it was
practically possible to ‘make up’ the necessary number by adding new cu-
riae (or to oust the ‘excess’ ones, if any). A strict numerical limitation
would rule out any other criterion of the inclusion of a local community or
village into the new association, which means that the existing curiae, too,
would be considered administrative units, which makes no difference with
the described tradition of dividing the whole people into 30 parts. Finally,
the hypothesis concerning a gradual increase in the number of curiae to 30
presupposes a long-term policy aimed at a merger or conquest with magic
purposes and therefore the primary nature, even though ideological one, of
the ‘artificial’ number with reference to the ‘natural’ social reality. Thus,
without solving the problem of the origin of the numerical series based on
the figure of 30 (Palmer: 15ff.), this hypothesis itself cannot avoid the as-
sumptions it was supposed to overcome.
At the same time, the evidence of the tradition, confirmed by the most
reliable sources among the available ones, namely, the information on reli-
gious festivals, testify invariably that the number of the curiae was 30 as
early as the time of Romulus. For example, Dionysius (Dionys., 1,38) men-
tions 30 (not 27) Argean sanctuaries; quoting Varro's Archaeology, he re-
ports (2,21) that Romulus instituted 60 priest positions in order to perform
rites for the sake of the whole community in phylae and phratries, each cu-
ria electing two of them. When the second king Numa ruled (Dionys.,
2,64), a special kind of hierurgy appeared, performed by 30 curios, who
made common sacrifices on behalf of phratries. The cult of Vesta, too, was
exercised by curia chiefs in each of the 30 ‘phratries’ separately (Dionys.,
2,65). Besides the hearths of the phratries, Numa created a common hearth
in Forum (Dionys., 2,66). Perhaps, an echo of this tradition may be found in
the definition of curia made by Fest, who also reports that Romulus created
sanctuaries for each of the 30 parts he had divided his people into. During
the Fordicidia festival, which belongs to the cycle of the fertility festivals
(Gjerstad 1972: 148; Mayak 1983: 104), a part of cows was sacrificed at the
Jupiter temple and 30 of them in the curiae (Ovid., Fast., 4,635–636; Varro,
de l.l., 6.15). This testimony corroborates the primordial nature of the num-
ber of 30, which was primary at least with regard to the supposed synoecism
of the curiae.
Curial hierurgies were often accompanied by joint dining (Dionys.,
2,23; 65–66; Paul.Diac., 49 L), which confirms the parallel with Spartan
syssitiae (Plut., Lyc., 10), egalitarian associations (brotherhoods) of mess-
mate warriors, found in the deep antiquity (Rathje 1990). According to Ar-
istotle (Arist., Pol., 4,9–11) they were introduced in Italy be legendary
Italus (!). The character of the warriors' association is emphasized also by
the conventional etymology (Walde 1938) of the word curia < *co-vir-ia
(‘co-manhood’), which rules out a natural character of that unit. The ety-
mology corresponds to the archaic social notion viritim (‘per man’), which
describes both the voting procedure in the curial assembly (Liv., 1,43,10 –
contrasted with the classes of the centurial organization, the term expresses
homogeneity and atomicity of the association) and the procedure of land
allocation to warriors (Varro, de re rus., 1,10,2 – on the act of egalitarian
and universal land distribution during the foundation of the city; the word
meant ‘per head’).
The idea of egalitarian equality in a curia was represented by the struc-
ture of the priest collegium of Salii: 12 identical pedestrian warriors, armed
by small round shields and still ignorant of the hoplites' armaments (Taglia-
latela Scafati 1988: 48f). The tradition ascribes its creation to Numa. The
primary nature of this collegium is confirmed also by its geography, which
reflects the earliest stage of the development of the Roman community:
Salii Collini and Salii Palatini were connected with the Septimontium terri-
tory (Quirinal and Palatine). It is the Salii's hymn that mentions numerous
poploi (in text poploe − the ancient plural form: Hoffmann and Leumann
1963: 271ff.) instead of the single Populus Romanus (Fest., 224 L s.v. Pi-
lumnoe poploe). This fact indicates the geographically central location of
these poploi, contrasted with the rural autonomous subcommunities around
the City rather than the stage that preceded synoecism of various communi-
ties in the region, which formed the united populus subsequently (e.g.,
Pliny (Plin., HN, 3,68) quotes the list of the populi of pre-Roman Latium,
who correspond to rural settlements, pagi, and are contrasted with oppida,
urban settlements). The military and egalitarian character of the priest col-
legium that existed in the colles' and montes' territory permits us to consider
the said poploi separate curiae − subunits of the Roman troops (pilumnoe
meaning ‘armed with pila’; pilum − a typical hoplites' spear: Snodgrass
1964: 138), components of the populus (infantry, phalanx: Valditara 1989:
204ff.; 225ff.).
Servius's commentary to Verg., Aen., X. 202 also supports this under-
standing of the term: ‘gens illi triplex, populi sub gente quaterni’ (‘its tribe
is triplex, each tribe is of four peoples’), he writes about Mantua. The same
idea of a division into homogenous parts is expressed in Laelius Felix's
(Gell., 15,27,5) reasoning on the kinds of assemblies: ‘Cum ex generibus
hominum suffragium feratur, “curiata” comitia esse, cum ex sensu et aetate
“centuriata”, cum ex regionibus et locis, “tributa”...’ (‘When
394
voting is based on the divisions of people, the assembly is curial; when it is
based on qualification and age, the assembly is centurial; when it is based
on regions and territories, the assembly is tributal’). Genus (‘genre’) con-
sists of numerous homotypic phenomena, resulted by divisio (division on a
specific basis) and is contrasted with ‘species’, a unique phenomenon dis-
tinguished within a genre by definitio (‘definition’). For instance, Paulus
Diacon writes in his epitome quoted in Fest's dictionary (Paul. Diac., 137
L): ‘Maiores flamines appellabantur patricii generis, minoris plebei’ (‘the
flamines from among a patrician class were called senior and those from
among a plebeian one junior’). Here the word genus means a group, a class
and may be omitted from the translation at all (unlike Mayak 1993b: 71).
The contradiction between synoecism of the communities and parts of
the City and interpretation of a curia as a military subunit of a united host is
resolved by recognizing the administrative functions of a curia, which
served later as a cell for the inclusion of conquered Latins into the Roman
community. Relative autonomy of curiae, which manifested itself in the
Fornacalia festival, does not contradict their military-administrative charac-
ter. On the other side, the features that draw a curia close to the syssitiae as
a sacral brotherhood of warriors do not permit us to consider its egalitarian
and military aspect a secondary component and believe that it developed
only after the final number of these units, which had been allegedly natural
earlier, was fixed, when a curio is deemed to be a relic of an independent
kinglet of the epoch that preceded synoecism. The latter interpretation leads
to mixing different stages of the historical development that manifested
themselves in the military and administrative functions of a curia, and their
formation seems simultaneous and mutually conditioned.
The social reality of the epoch when the City was founded, as well as
the development level of military science and arms, presupposes an already
differentiated (ranked) society with chariot battles as the customary military
technique. To harmonize autonomy of curiae and both political (king and
curial assembly) and religious unity of the Roman community (synoecism)
in the Septimontium epoch, to explain identity of the terms (populus – pop-
loi) and to date Salii's military egalitarianism to the pre-hoplite epoch, one
cannot do without recognizing a curia a subunit of the colonist group that
settled near the Seven Hills – a structure based on the principles of equality
and commonness, on a warrior's right for spoils of war (Sinaiskij 1907: 55)
and corresponding to the equality among the people who were subject to the
king's charismatic authority (Coli 1973: 321 sqq.).
Side by side with the egalitarian populus (people-host), the tradition
mentions gentes (‘clans’), hierarchical autonomous formations within the
primary Roman community, witnessed also in the historical period (Dio-
nys., 6,47,1; 7,19,2; 10,43). They differ from military-administrative units
not as much in their size as in the principles of collective organization.
Gens is quite a numerous (sometimes some thousands of warriors) group of
persons united by a common name, common territory, common cemetery
and common objects of worship. The hierarchy that distinguishes a ‘clan’
from a ‘people’ is formed by gentiles (‘clan-mates’) proper, who originate
from a legendary ancestor, sodales (companions), noble and rank-and-file
warriors connected with the group chief (princeps gentis, ‘military chief’)
by a loyalty oath (coniuratio: Nemirovsky 1983: 125), and clients, people
of humble origin who turned for protection (venire in fidem) of one of the
heads of the patriarchal families that formed the gens.
Some characteristic features make a client resemble the patron's (pa-
tronus ‘pater-like’, pater (familias) – ‘head of the family’) close relative. A
client bears the patron's clan name (nomen gentilicium) and takes part in the
clan hierurgies (Dionys., 9,19,1). Testimonies are known to the effect that a
client needed the patron's permission to marry (Plut., Cat.Maj., 24,2–3;
Liv., 39,19,5), like a dependent son. Describing the details of the clientele
founded by Romulus, Dionysius compared clients with close relatives three
times. A patron must do everything for his client what a father does for his
son (or a head of the family, the master of the house for his dependent) in
the field of monetary operations and contracts (Dionys., 2,10,1); the clien-
tele relations are succeeded by a younger generation from elder ones and do
not differ even a little from the succession among blood relatives (2,10,4); a
client must help his patron in exercising public offices as relatives do
(2,10,2).
At the same time, unlike a dependent free (not slave) member of a fam-
ily (familia), is an object of another person's right (subject to another's au-
thority), ‘persona alieni iuris (alienae potestatis subiecta)’ (see Albanese
1979: 56ff.; Smirin 1985: 10ff.; Dozhdev 1993b: 58ff.; Franciosi 1992), a
client is an independent person – ‘persona sui iuris’ (object of his own
right). This fact manifested itself in the fixation of certain occasions when a
client had to pay his patron (redemption from captivity, marrying out a
daughter, etc.: Dionys., 2,10,2; Plut., Rom., 13,2) and in the contractual
character of the initial relations with the patron. Despite an inequality of the
parties as the main precondition of the emergence of the clientele relations
(Mommsen 1864: 356), a client acted as an independent and active person
when they were established. This independence was drawn from nothing
but the client's public status as a citizen: being a male warrior, he was per-
ceived by the community in all respects as an equal participant of
396
comitiae, host, land distribution, the right to be tried by the king, etc. Being
involved into clientele, he waived independence in the private sphere. For
instance, taking part in court proceedings, a client always could count for
the patron's protection as a vindex, as well as for representation in the pro-
ceedings, when a patron litigated to protect his client's interests on his own
behalf. Similarly, adoption of a nomen gentilicium and comparison of cli-
ents with children not only express their membership in the gens, as Mag-
delain believed (Magdelain 1971: 103) but mean that the normal conse-
quence of the establishment of the clientele relations was forfeit of the so-
cially important individuality of one's own, its assimilation and absorption
by the patron's authority (cf. Lobrano 1984: 31ff.).
The most ancient clientele regime demonstrates that there were other au-
thorities than the king in the community, whose influence was private (the
clan hierurgies were called ‘sacra privata’, private hierurgies, unlike those
exercised by the curia) but universal, characterizing the primary commu-
nity. The tradition mentions the clientele establishment among Romulus's
first constituent acts (Dionys., 2,9,2; 10; Cic., de rep., 2,9,16; Plut., Rom.,
13), thus fixing its pre-urban origin. Competing with a warrior's egalitarian
and public status, the attractiveness of a client's position reflects, apart from
the real differentiation within the community, the existence of a non-
egalitarian principle of its set-up. This principle was institutionalized in the
royal council of ‘fathers’ (patres). According to the ancient ideas on the
magic of words, the semantics of this term, studied by G. Mancuso
(Mancuso 1972: 18–26), expresses the essence of this institution, too, by
pointing to the authority the patres had enjoyed as bearers of a special cha-
risma even before they became members of the royal council. Developing
this approach (Dozhdev 1993b: 39, 49), one can demonstrate that the au-
thoritarian semantics of the term (pater − ‘lord’) is combined with the ge-
nealogical one (patres – ‘ancestors’), which is sufficient to state that the
council was created (simultaneously with the foundation of the City) at
such a stage of the development of the ideas on public authority when it
was ascribed to the eldest persons in the genealogical line (cf. similar com-
bination of two meanings in the term princeps − ‘forefather’ and ‘chief’)
and, from the genealogical standpoint, the founders (‘progenitors’) of the
clan or its branch were considered charismatic leaders.
Side by side with the king and the assembly, the patres (council) was a
fundamental structure in the public authority system. Politically, the coexis-
tence of patres and populus manifested itself in two different acts of the
approval of a king's inthronization: auctoritas patrum, performed by the
‘fathers’, and lex curiata de imperio, issued by the people at the curial as-
sembly (Tondo 1981: 81ff.). The two social groupings, which were dis-
tinct in the military sphere, were institutionalized as two organs of political
power, playing equal roles in the formalization of the king's public authority
as the only embodiment of the community's unity.
Thus, the tradition concerning the beginning of Rome fixed a binary di-
vision of the community into equestrians and pedestrians, patrons and cli-
ents, senators and people, patricians and plebeians. Historicity of the evi-
dence on the structural distinction between the equestrians and pedestrians
within the initial Roman host is confirmed by the trend towards connecting
the division into three tribes exactly with the equestrians and believing that
the traditional names of ‘Titienses, Ramnes, Luceres’ belonged to them
alone (Liv., 1,13, unlike Cic., de re pub., 2,8,14). Such versions of the tradi-
tional description of the division of the people (host) by the founder king
cannot be a product of secondary retrospective construction and undoubt-
edly reflect the most ancient reality. The distinction is confirmed by opposi-
tion ‘magister equitum − magister populi’ (Valditara 1989: 139ff.), known
at the end of royal and beginnings of the republican period (Liv., 2,6,6;
2,8,4), but which can be traced back to the times of Ancus Marcius (Dio-
nys., 3,40,4; 3,41,4; 4,3,2; 4,6,4). Anyway, the equestrians are considered
here a formally defined group within the initial community and host and,
their rank is deemed equal to that of the pedestrian warriors.
The universal character of the distinction between the patrons and cli-
ents in the traditional societies does not permit a sufficiently accurate
judgement on the level of social differentiation within the early Roman so-
ciety. However, being indefinite by itself, this division becomes heuristic
enough with regard for other oppositions. Specifically, the distinction be-
tween the cavalry and infantry indicates that the development stage that
corresponds to the chariot battle, when a chief stands on the chariot and
hurls spears supplied by virtually unarmed armor-bearers (as described in
the Iliad), had been already overcome. Thus, the achieved level of social
differentiation was not limited to the ‘patron − client’ dichotomy, which
overlapped with the differentiation of the new groups of the military and
administrative nature with a special organization, which were distinct func-
tionally and socially. The said opposition appears amorphous and therefore
primary with respect to them. In that epoch, it had already no public impor-
tance: it did not coincide with the universal military and administrative di-
vision of the population, remaining a widespread and easily accessible but
just a particular method of establishment of formal social relations.
The clear-cut division of the nobility's and people's political influence,
its institutional formalization and fixation in the separate organs of
398
power – the senate and the assembly – mean not so much segregation of the
two estates (the nobility was represented in the assembly) as the universal
character of the representation principle, equally applied to both the people
and the nobility. The society proves shaped completely, organized as an
integer, and political participation becomes a duty rather than a right, the
mode of an individual's existence in a civil collective, which acquires a to-
talitarian character of an organization that absorbs and rejects whatever in-
dividual will other than that presupposed by the existing form. Private ini-
tiative is ousted beyond the framework of the political organization, which
encompasses not only the people, organized in an egalitarian manner, but
the genealogically constructed hierarchy of the nobility.
The land use principles applied by the aristocracy are connected with its
nature, with the structure of gentes and the role of patres. It is not a chance
that Fest connected the latter term with the principles of land use by a gens
in his definition (Paul., ex Fest., p. 288 L): ‘Patres senatores ideo appellati
sunt, quia agrorum partes adtribuerant ac si liberis propriis’ (‘The fathers-
senators are called so because they allot a part of their land to the weakest
persons, as if they are their own children’). The identification of the ‘weak-
est’ (‘poorest’) people with clients, commonly accepted by the scholarship
(Mommsen 1888: III, 83, Anm. 2; De Martino F. 1972: 1, 29), is expressed
in their comparison with children. However, the latter is connected in this
text not with the clients' legally fixed position (weak like children) but with
their role in the land allocation itself: they are granted land parcels ‘like
one's own children’. In other words, the land allocation is conditioned by
the recipient's subordinate position, construed as the inclusion into the
sphere of the benefactor's authoritarian power (his genealogical line or fam-
ily group), as loss of the client's independent individuality. This situation is
totally opposite to the reason for the land allocation to warriors based on the
recognition of the individual value of each of them by the public authori-
ties, when parcels are distributed on the per man (viritim) basis.
Fest's indication, the only firm basis for the reconstruction of the patri-
cian landownership, has long been interpreted as a testimony to the apart-
ness of the nobility's landed estates: the so-called ager gentilicius (‘clan's
lands’) is a term that does not appear in the sources and was introduced by
Th. Mommsen (1936: 252). This interpretation presupposes that such lands
were at the patrician gentes' disposal and were exempted from the commu-
nity's (the king's) general control. From this standpoint, it proves unaccept-
able to identify ager gentilicius with public lands (ager publicus) seized by
the patrician gentes and their clients, allegedly as an expression of the
equality of the patriciate's civil rights (Mayak 1993a, 1993b: 127ff.); this
approach is widespread within the framework of the conception of the
initial ‘clan’ character of the Roman community. This conception is based
on numerous evidence testifying that ager publicus was seized by the patri-
cians in the first centuries of the republic, whereas the plebeian tribunes
declared such seizures (occupationes, possessiones) unholy and illegal (ini-
uria) and demanded allocation of land to poor plebeians (Tibiletti 1949: 29).
Agrarian agitation always accompanied political one (the plebeians
waged struggle for the access to the supreme magistratures − Serrao 1979),
and at last the plebeian tribunes made the authorities adopt a package of
laws − leges Liciniae Sextiae – in 367 B.C. The political component of the
reform was that one of the consuls should be a plebeian thenceforth. The
agrarian component (lex Licinia de modo agrorum, whereto a special im-
portance was attached) consisted of the imposition of a land occupation
ceiling of 500 jugers, which, probably, stopped land seizure and permitted
the poor strata to get land in the newly conquered territories. As a matter of
fact, ager publicus is considered public because of being conquered by the
Roman people (populus) and belonging to the whole community until being
transferred to citizens as private property (dominium ex iure Quiritium −
‘ownership on the basis of the Quirites' right’). In the royal epoch, such
lands belonged to the king, so the possibility of its unauthorized seizure was
doubtful, whereas the existence of the nobility's vast landed estates could
become an expression of the patriciate's civil privileges in the very royal
epoch (before Servius's reform), when, according to this conception, the
Roman people was formed by the clan nobility alone (together with clients).
Since the ‘inclusion’ of the plebs into the category of citizens cannot be
dated to the republican epoch (although it is very tempting to explain the
patriciate's exclusive right to be elected by the fact that citizenship was their
privilege) − it would contradict the data on the plebs's attempted ‘secession’
from Rome at the very beginning of the new epoch, in 494 B.C. − to pre-
serve the harmony of the theory, its adherents have to connect the patrici-
ate's exclusive ‘access’ to ager publicus with their political privileges that
emerged after the republic was established. The politically dominant group,
thus, realizes its advantages in the economic sphere (Burdese 1952: 54).
Since it is a gens-based (i.e., ‘clan’ in terms of the dominating theory)
group, one can detect a conflict between the classes-estates in the agrarian
and political struggle of the first centuries of the republican epoch, one of
the parties being a survival of the ‘clan’ system and another a ‘progressive’
and democratic force, and the said struggle is classified then as the histori-
cal conflict between the statehood and clan-tribal structures. Contrary to the
implied methodological task, this view does not permit a clear-cut
400
distinction of the stages of the state formation, for the historians have to
distinguish the patrician, clan (‘gens-based’), i.e., a pre-state civitas from
the patrician-plebeian civitas, which represented the state proper. It already
smacks of a political scientist's deafness. It was not a chance that Shtaerman
considered political successes of the plebs the most important factor that
hampered (not promoted) the state formation in Rome (Shtaerman 1981:
102). Besides, the conception under criticism ignores a number of essential
facts, whose analysis leads to a different historical reconstruction.
The problem of the correlation between clientele tenure of the patrician
lands and public land allocation (adsignatio) is often discussed on the basis
of the tradition concerning the shift of Atta Claus, a noble Sabine, to Rome
in the first year of the republic. Claus was accompanied by relatives, so-
dales, clients (Plut., Popl., 21,5), who numbered in total up to 5 thsd. All of
them were granted citizenship and given land across the Anion (Liv.,
2,16,5: ‘his civitas data agerque trans Anienem’), a place for the cemetery
(Suet., Tib., 1,1) and for houses (Serv., in Aen., 7,706; Plut., Popl., 21,9) in
the City; Claus became a senate member and thus the progenitor of the fa-
mous patrician clan of Claudii (princeps gentis − Suet., Tib., 1,1).
The sources differ while describing the land allocation procedure. Dio-
nysius says (Dionys., 5,40,5) that Atta Claus himself received land to dis-
tribute it among his people; Plutarch (Plut., Popl., 21,9) reports that, apart
from houses in the City, the people who accompanied Claus were given 2
jugers of land each, and Claus himself received 25 jugers; Suetonius distin-
guishes the land across the Anion for the clients and that in the city near the
Capitol for a cemetery to bury his clan-mates, emphasizing that it was allo-
cated on a public base (publice accepit − Suet., Tib., 1,1). Thus, on the one
hand, there are indications to centuriation (2 jugers per head) made by the
public authorities, and, on the other hand, a common land expanse was al-
located to be disposed by the head of the settlers at his discretion. Agreeing
that an authentic reconstruction of the events is impossible (Capogrossi Co-
lognesi 1981: 252ff.), one cannot but note a clear-cut opposition between
two principally different land allocation procedures. It is natural to explain
the predominance of the public aspect by the fact that the emergence of the
gens Claudia within the Roman community, as well as that of the tribus
Claudia (the rural area named after the Claudii), is secondary; this structure
was assimilated into the social organisms that had already formed in the
Roman community by the emergence of the republic. Dionisius's report on
the land allocation to Claus's clients by himself after he had received it from
the Roman community, which describes a procedure that obviously contra-
dicts the usual centuriation practice, could not appear without reasons and
may be considered a reliable testimony to the patricians' principal inde-
pendence in the land distribution in the territories that were far from the
center.
Turning to the analysis of the agrarian struggle of the 6th to 4th centuries
B.C., one should first of all pay attention to the fact that the plebeians de-
manded not an access to ager publicus but its public delimitation (centuria-
tion) and transfer to private owners (Capogrossi Colognesi 1981: 17ff.).
The Quirite (based on the right of a citizen, a Quirite) regime of civil own-
ership (dominium ex iure Quiritium), recognized in public and fixed in ac-
cordance with the civil community's law (ius civile − ‘civil law’), is con-
trasted with the nobility's unauthorized presence (possessio) on the Roman
people's lands, proclaimed unlawful (iniuria). To continue, after Licinius's
law was adopted, the agitation against the occupation of public lands
ceased, in spite of its violations. Licinius himself, the plebeian who au-
thored the bill, was among the violators of land ownership ceiling (Liv.,
8,6,9; Dionys., 14,12(22); Plut., Cam., 34,5; Va.Max., 8,6,3; Vell. Pat.,
2,6,3). An impression forms that the plebeians had not been debarred before
it from ager publicus, and in 367 B.C. the nobility's possessions only
changed their status on the basis of a lex piblica (‘public statute’ − the main
form of ius civile) and were no longer considered iniuria.
In our opinion, it was Capogrossi Colognesi who was most successful in
the interpretation of the latter definition, demonstrating that the point is that
the regime of land use by the patricians was alien (before lex Licinia) to the
ius civile system. He suggested a reconstruction, where lex Licinia appears
as not a mere limitation of the occupation scale but its qualitative transfor-
mation, application of the categories of the Quirites' rights thereto. Con-
trasting the old system of use of ager publicus with the new regime of pri-
vate possession, Capogrossi proclaims the former a form of existence of
famous ager gentilicius, an alleged relic of the precivil social relations. The
plebeian possession of ager publicus proved a phenomenon of the same
rank as the information about the plebeian gentes, an exception from the
rule, an imitation of the patrician nobility. The plebs as an ordo (‘estate’)
appears as an agent of the ius civile principles, under which the clan stan-
dards lose their importance and are no longer applied (Gai., Inst., 3,17: ‘to-
tum gentilicium ius in desuetudinem abiisse’). To continue this line (not
completed logically by Capogrossi, see Dozhdev 1993a: 226), one has to
identify the plebs with the populus Romanus Quiritium and to proclaim the
patriciate an anachronism, which was alien to this social reality. Anyway, if
one follows this conception, identifying iniuria with gentilicia for no other
reason than that it is alien to the principles of Quirites' private
402
ownership (and possession), the plebs, characterized negatively in respect
of (through) gens, appears as a collective of Quirites. This quite legitimate
view negates the theories that suppose that the source of plebs might be
outside Rome. In spite of admitting the secondary character of the trans-
formation of the plebs into an ordo, as it became customary in the Roman
studies after the works by Momigliano and Richard (1978), this approach
leads to the question on the relationship between the patriciate and populus
in the royal epoch, making it unacceptable to identify them, as it was done
since the time of Niebuhr and Mommsen.
Dealing with the early Roman social reality, one should distinguish the
populus – the host under the king's command – and gentes – aristocratic
autonomous alliances, which were in a political and historical opposition to
the royal power. Whereas the populus is a group based on the principles of
a universal egalitarian military organization, the gentes are alliances with a
hierarchical structure, the criterion of the hierarchy being the character of
the personal relations with the leader: from kinship to subordination of in-
dependent persons on the basis of the identification (fides) of the interests
and socially important individuality of the participants of such an alliance.
The origin of the populus is from the colonist group from Alba Longa,
while gentes are secondary to it, but they are formations based on the social
units that emerged before the City was founded. Territorially and geo-
graphically, populus correlates with Urbs and gentes with pagi, transformed
communities of the pre-urban epoch (see De Francisci 1959: 161 ff.; Mayak
1983: 210–211).
The geographical aspect of the said dichotomy is fixed most definitely
on the basis of the historical sources. The most important fact is the coinci-
dence of the names of 10 tribus rustici, rural administrative regions, with
those of the largest patrician gentes, noted by Mommsen (1936: 85; 1988: I,
77). As it was demonstrated by Alföldi (1963: 307ff.), those tribus were
situated around the most ancient ager Romanus, located on the basis of
studying the geography of the most ancient Roman cults, and were a result
of the patrician expansion thereto. Alföldi himself dated those events to the
5th century B.C., whereas the antiquity of the cults he studied testifies to an
earlier chronology of the supposed expansion (cf. Humbert 1978: 58ff.).
Actually, the dating problem is limited to the relationship between the Fa-
bii's expedition to Cremera and emergence of the tribus Fabia in that re-
gion. In our reconstruction, the Fabii's expedition is a relic of the ancient
practice rather than its culmination. The other six tribus, located near the
city walls, had territorial names, as well as the later ones, other than the
aforesaid 10 tribus. The land parcels of the tribus of the inner belt were
used by the united populus who were not divided into individuals, while
the outer tribus were occupied by the patrician gentes. Centuriation was
performed on the lands conquered by the whole populus, led by the king.
The expansion of the populus Romanus, connected with the emergence of
the 14 tribus rustici (not named after patricians), next to the tribus Claudia
founded in 495 B.C., permits an identification of the principles of the occu-
pation of the most ancient territories united in 6 central tribus (named after
the localities rather than the gentes), which amounts to recognizing that
land was allocated there per head on the basis of universality and equality.
The tradition concerning Atta Claus's settlement in Rome testifies to a
compact location of the land parcels of clan members and their clients as
the reason for naming the whole region after the gens afterwards. The same
narration demonstrates the process of the formation of that social organism
from the chief's companions who settled compactly in a new territory and
were named after their chief. A similar behavioral paradigm – a military
expedition to the frontier and subsequent settlement on agricultural lands –
is seen in the gens Fabia's expedition (for details, see Dozhdev 1993b: 31ff).
In the beginning of the 20th century, Vasilii Sinaiskij (1913) advanced a
theory on founding ancient cities on private persons' initiative. His well-
documented conception was based chiefly on the Greek data. In another
work (Sinaiskij 1923), he applied his scheme to the Roman history to re-
construct the process of the gradual emergence of territorial curiae in the
region of Seven Hills (he distinguished a curia as a military subunit of the
Roman host and as a territorial unit). According to Sinaiskij, the motive of
founding new curiae was the necessity to build fortresses in the outskirts of
the Roman territory in order to protect the frontiers: an initiative group set-
tled around such a fortress, becoming a territorial-administrative subunit of
the Roman community in the course of time. The same process, albeit better
coordinated with the spatial geographical characteristics (frontier fortresses
were not needed to protect the Septimontium population, who had numerous
fortresses in colles and montes) and socio-political realities of the early
Roman history (what was the difference between the new and old curiae
and where are their traces in the socio-political institutions of early Rome),
should be considered the basis of the emergence of the patrician gentes at
the beginning of the royal epoch. On the initiative of authoritative persons,
groups of warriors were sent to the lands that bordered upon the ager Ro-
manus to guard the Roman frontiers round the year. They built fortresses
and cultivated land around them, as the Fabii and their 4 thsd. clients did
(Fest., p.450 L; Gell., 17,21,13; Serv., in Aen., 6,845). That land belonged
to the group itself according to the right of war, unlike the land con-
404
quered by the host commanded by the king (populus). In the course of time,
the inhabitants of such a settlement, easily identified with a pagus, adopted
the name of their chief (whence the clan names of the rural tribus along the
outer belt of the initial Roman possessions), thus indicating that they were
from among the expedition participants or their scions, which entitled them
for privileges, first of all, political ones, because the chief of such a group
used to become one of the patres, members of the royal council.
If one recognizes an egalitarian curia-syssitiae and hierarchical gens
phasically distinctive social structures, the difference between the regimes
of landownership of patricians (nobility) and plebeians (the hoplite host,
populus of the early Republic) may be interpreted as a projection of two
historical versions of the socio-economic development into the sphere of
agrarian relations of a single epoch, and the conflict between the estates
becomes a projection into the sphere of political relations, at the same time
giving the most convincing explanation of the formulation of the claims on
patrician lands as unholily seized ager publicus made by the plebeians (or
rather ideologists of the civil collective who defeated the nobility).
Methodologically, it is important to admit that egalitarianism could not
be achieved in that epoch (the Iron Age) without a large-scale alliance with
a strong leadership. True, the same condition was required to allegedly fix
the number of the natural units and therefore inequality of populus and
gentes and unavoidable conflict between them as early as the Roman com-
munity was just forming.
The Roman king was an absolute monarch, bound only by the very na-
ture of his power, which was not subject to outer institutional limitations.
There was a council (consilium) of elders (patres) under the king, which
became the senate later on. The initially charismatic and then traditional
idea of superiority of the elders was institutionalized in the council on the
community (universal) level. They were considered closest to the ancestors,
the forefathers of the families who formed the community. The council had
consultative functions (Cic., de rep., 2,14; Dionys., 2,56,3; Plut., Rom.,
27,1; Dio Cass., fr.5,11). The council did not compete with the king, but the
very necessity of its formation and functioning (cf. Tarquinius's tyranny;
the tradition reports him to ignore the senate – Liv., 1,49-3-7) testifies to its
both limiting and legitimizing role. Legitimation applies to individual deci-
sions rather than to the royal power as such and consists, first of all, of de-
fining the procedure, the formal technical aspect of the anticipated action. A
similar role, though more abstract and elevated ideologically, belonged to
various priest collegia, whose main function was divination – appeal to the
gods in connection with the planned actions (Catalano 1960: 124ff.). Most
often they asked the gods whether the plans were timely, whether the
day in question was auspicious for such an action (not whether the king's
decision was pleasant to the gods). However, realization of the plan might
be stopped for a long period, if not postponed at all.
Such limitations were formal and not connected with the natural limits
of the royal power or the character of the tasks it accomplished. They made
the royal will be expressed through the will of the whole people and their
agencies, which imposed the framework of a generally recognized and valid
procedure on the king and subordinated him to universal requirements.
Sieved through such mediations, which fulfilled the function of modern
bureaucracy, the royal power lost the character of direct and arbitrary coer-
cion of the community into obeying one man's will, acquiring the features
of a legal institution, based on universal principles and generally valid and
recognized standards. That power embodied the will of the whole commu-
nity, which became abstract (independent of a concrete purpose) and gen-
eral (independent of a specific person or group) as a normative requirement
thanks to the mythological, ritual and procedural fixation by various spe-
cialized agencies, which acted permanently on the basis of stable ideas,
shared by everybody.
The king was surrounded by bodyguards (celeres), the mounted guard
recruited from three tribes. From the standpoint of this institution, the king
was a function of the community, a derivate (meta)formation that com-
pleted the hierarchy of community associations (which appeared a system
of subunits from the standpoint that took the king as the reference point).
Notably, the tradition connects the names of the three tribes − ‘Tities, Ram-
nes, Luceres’ − with the said three celeres detachments, each being 100
people strong.
The king appointed also two quaestors, the assistants with judicial and
police functions (so-called quaestores parricidi − quaestors for grave
crimes, quaestor being from quaestio, inquest). It is significant that the
quaestors were approved by the assembly, so that the king publicized his
decisions not only about the rules of behavior, declaration of war and peace
conclusion (Dionys., 2,14,3; 4,20,4; 6,65,3; Liv., 1,32,13) but on the forma-
tion of his suite, who acquired the importance of officials of the community
level thereby. Tacitus (Annals, 11, 22) reports that the quaestors, who had
appeared as early as the royal epoch, were appointed by the consuls in the
republican period and then, 63 years after the abolition of the royal power,
elected by the people (populus, i.e., centurial assembly). Obviously, the
quaestors were appointed initially by the kings themselves, who confirmed
their choice at the assembly. Tacitus mentions the curial law on
406
power, restored by Junius Brutus with respect to consuls, which made the
consulate regime resemble the royal power and seems to confirm that there
had been an ancient practice of presentation of quaestors by kings at the
assembly. This interpretation is confirmed by Plutarch's information (Rom.,
20,3) and Ulpian's text in the Digest (quoting Junius Gracchus) about the
history of this magistratus: ‘ipsi [scil. Romulus et Numa Pompilius] non
sua voce, sed populi suffragio crearent’ (‘they, i.e., Romulus and Numa
Pompilius, appointed them to the office not by their ordinance but by the
people's voting’). Approval of the royal decisions on behalf of the Roman
people visualizes the functional limitations of the royal power, which had
the community as its object and audience, was a derivate of the community
and instrumental with reference to it.
Rome acted as the Roman people in its international relations rather than
as the king or kingdom (regnum). The most ancient formula of declaration
of war, taken by Livius (Liv., 1,32,13) from the archives of fetial priests,
reflected the situation of the royal epoch. It read as follows: ‘...quod popu-
lus Romanus Quiritium bellum cum Priscis Latinis iussit esse senatusque
populi Romani Quiritium censuit consensit conscivit...’ (‘since the Roman
Quirite people decided to wage a war with the ancient Latins and the sen-
ate of the Roman Quirite people decreed, agreed, recognized...’). More-
over, the assembly enjoyed certain authorities independently of the kings.
For instance, quoting pontifices' and augures' books, Cicero (Cic., de rep.,
2,54) claims that the rule of appealing to the people's assembly (provocatio
ad populum) against a death sentence was known as early as the royal ep-
och. Being doubtful concerning the possibility of disputing a decision made
by the king himself, Cicero's information is confirmed (and concretized) in
Livius's narration (Liv., 1,26,5 sq.; cf. Dionys., 3,22,6) about the murder of
Horatia by her brother, who won the fight between the Horatii and Curiatii.
Sentenced for the murder by special judges (duoviri perduellionis, an office
instituted by king Tullus Hostilius), Horatius appeals to the people and is
forgiven. Thus, the royal authority proves dependent on the people in gov-
erning the community, and, creating specialized organs of power as the sys-
tem becomes complicated, it indirectly creates also new functions of the
people's assembly, strengthening the people's role in the government of the
community and institutionalizing the assembly as a universal body for con-
trol and legitimation of political decisions.
Civitas is a civil community: here full political participation reigns, de-
termined by the fact that every male warrior (vir) is recognized as a citizen
(political subject). The civil society and the state coincide. The civil collec-
tive enjoys political authority by itself: the people's assembly represents the
whole people-host (populus), and that is why its decisions apply to eve-
rybody, have universal validity, corresponding to the modern notion of law
(lex publica) both in name and in essence. The assembly's supreme legisla-
tive authority was combined also with the supreme judicial authority, which
manifested itself in the most important question: a Roman citizen could
only be sentenced to death only by the people's will (provocatio ad popu-
lum). At the same time, being a subject of political law did not mean par-
ticipation in government: the division into the governors and governed did
not coincide with political participation. The principal difference between
the republic (res publica) and royal system (regnum) manifested itself in
nothing but selectivity, limited term and accountability of magistrates.
Formally, a king was inthronized by Jupiter, and his power derived from the
god (Liv., 1,18,9). The people were always in a subordinate (governed) po-
sition, which corresponded to the situation when individuals were not law
subjects. Electivity of officials, whose authority derived from the people's
sovereignty, is not only a vivid tool for the realization of direct democracy
but a form used to overcome self-government, which was impossible with
the given level of the division of the political functions, determined in the
final analysis by the achieved scale of population.
Coincidence of the qualifications of a citizen and an owner, of political
and civil society, of the public and the private deprives the people (the
community as a whole) of the status of a law subject, with the exception of
international relations. The impossibility to exercise specifically political
authority over a territory, clearly distinct from the property right prevents
civitas from collection of the estate taxes, deprives the community of its
supreme title to land, with the exception of the land expanse specially allo-
cated to it (ager publicus). Analysis of the land ownership on ager publicus
which is commonly regarded as a constitutive feature of the civil commu-
nity, permits to recognize specific social and political role of nobility within
civitas. Contrasted with collective of citizens, nobility assumes, thus, a sig-
nificance of a special function proper to this type of the statehood.
The people (populus) is not an owner and therefore not a political sover-
eign regarding the objects in its territory. The objects that belong to the
community (including public land) are granted a special regime as the
things withdrawn from commercial circulation (res extra commercium).
They either cannot be individualized or have an immanently public impor-
tance (Dozhdev 1996: 304 sqq.). The latter are deemed to be owned by the
community as a whole (by the people), ensuring, thus, materially the exis-
tence of that collective abstraction and embodying its status of a subject.
Technically, such public (people's) property may form in two ways.
408
Such objects either are created specially for the whole people to satisfy the
whole community's requirements, such as a fleet, ports, bridges, roads,
markets, theatres, etc., or become the whole people's property until being
privatized, which requires a certain period of time. Then, the period of uni-
versal ownership is an indispensable stage of the ownership of such objects.
In this case, their public origin is due to the public act of their acquisition as
a result of a conquest (new territories) or purchase at the community's ex-
pense (bread to be distributed free of charge), so that the emergence of the
whole people's ownership is always a consequence of a common need and
respective activity as the content and realization of a community's unity.
Such pragmatic interpretations as the thesis about the conscious creation of
a reserve of vacant land miss a substantial aspect of the ownership institu-
tion: formalized (recognized) possession constitutes the formal status of a
subject (social recognition) of the possessor himself, thus being a necessary
kind of activity of any institutionalized subject. When it is stated that an
army and fleet are the attributes of statehood, such explanations are nearer
the gist of the matter.
The consumption properties of publicly owned objects are inessential
for their role as attributes of a civil community: for instance, in arable lands
have the status of public property, which is typical of them. But the public
objects that can yield fruits and return are subject also to a special manage-
ment regime and play a special role in the functioning of the civil commu-
nity as a complicated social formation. A community is interested in ex-
ploiting such objects and using the return they yield for public needs,
whereas the productive use of objects necessarily presupposes isolated, in-
dividualized activity, which inevitably conflicts with the collective nature
of the subject of static ownership of such property. A peculiarity of such a
situation is that, whereas managing activities may be exercised, indeed, by
the executive bodies of a community (magistrates), the economic activities
(production, exchange, distribution) require private initiative alone, unless
public slaves' labor and public agencies' managing activities are resorted to.
The question requires special studies as to why this organizational form of
the use of public income sources, which is possible in principle, did not
develop in the ancient civil community, where there were no economic
ministries or agencies. To begin with, it may be pointed out that the ex-
change relations between a public manager and a private employee or en-
trepreneur contradict the principles of the public relations of domination
and subordination, and the relations of public nature connected with per-
formance of duties cannot be realized within the framework of the relations
regulated by private law (property relations), which can exist only between
individually free (formally independent) persons. A free citizen as an
employee or entrepreneur cannot pay compulsory public duties, otherwise
his activity the duties are connected with loses its private character (and
freedom becomes a service, a duty), and a magistratus cannot be legally
entitled to impose a rent, for he is not a private (legal) person, unlike, e.g., a
modern state-owned company.
The universal and direct character of civil participation deprived the
public authority in a civitas of its necessary apartness by ruling out the pos-
sibility of such a degree of the individualization within the public sphere
that would be sufficient to formally mediate the relations with private per-
sons: the Roman public authority could not act as a legal person in property
relations. So, the problem of the management of public property required a
parapublic initiative, recognition of the public importance of a private man-
ager and respective removal of property interest outside the public organi-
zation. The all-embracing character of the civil organization, which em-
braced the private property relations, too (when secularized public relations
– the state in the purely political sense – were possible only in the military
sphere as a remarkable exception), at the same time endowed an individual
citizen with a public potential that was sufficient to entrust him with essen-
tially public functions. This very entrusting opened the door to the official
admission (and recognition) of private interest to the public property
sphere. It is logic that this role fell to the lot of the nobility, who demon-
strated the strongest structural distinction against the background of the
general public organization and functionally enjoyed the political monop-
oly. This is the basis of the farming system, which was not characteristic of
the Roman republic alone, but it was there that it reached the highest degree
of development (Rostovtsev 1895).
To get access to the public revenue sources, one had to overcome a se-
ries of transitions from the public to the private. The first stage was a mag-
istratus (censor or quaestor) whose decision (lex − an ordinance of norma-
tive importance) was needed to transfer a piece of public property to com-
mercial use in the interests of the Roman people, namely: the citizens re-
ceived the right to use that property on the condition of periodical rent (vec-
tigal) payment. The next stage was a publican (farmer), manceps (or a pub-
lican company, societas publicanorum), who paid the whole amount of the
stipulated payments (Fest., 508 L: s.v. Vectigal aes) to the Roman people's
exchequer, after which the magistratus granted him the right (ius vectigalis)
to collect the revenue or rent (duties) for the said property. The publican
himself acquired the status of a public official (Pseudo-Asconius, in Verr.,
33 (p. 113 ed. Baiter): ‘Mancipes... rei publicae
410
repraesentant’ (‘Farmers... represent the republic’). Finally, the chain
ended with a rent payer, a private person who immediately carried out eco-
nomic activity using the public property on the basis of the magistratus's
ordinance. Formally, the access to a public revenue source was conditioned
by rent payment; on the other hand, the performance of this duty ensured
public importance and official recognition of a ‘leaseholder's’ presence it-
self. All links of this chain proved included into the public sphere, and their
private property interest was transformed into the performance of a public
duty of a property character.
Let us emphasize that the Roman people had no alternative to this form
of management of public property. The nobility realized their political
dominance in the form of preferential access to the public wealth. The op-
posite aspect of the objective dependence of the public property interest on
the private initiative was unavoidable concentration of the private entrepre-
neur initiative in the public property sphere. The very existence of the civil
community and the fact that it possessed certain revenue sources proved the
condition and context of the development of the property component of
power, when the advantage of enjoying public authority was embodied in
its officially recognized management function, which led to personal en-
richment at the expense of the public wealth. As is clear from permanent
protests of plebeian tribunes and existence of a series of special legal insti-
tutions, advance payment of the expected amount of proceeds to the peo-
ple's exchequer was not a real practice (Labruna 1971: 241 ff.): a publican
presented only a guarantee (guarantor or pledge), receiving free hand to
manage a piece of public property in exchange.
The most ancient form of the guarantee was as follows: a publican pre-
sented bails (guarantors) – praedes (Pauli ex Fest., 249 L: ‘Praes est is, qui
populo se obligat...’, i.e., ‘Praes is one who is under an obligation to the
people...’), who immediately depended on the creditor (people), so that
when the publican failed to meet his commitment, recourse was taken upon
their persons. As the potential character of responsibility developed, when
the role of a (potential) bail might be played by the debtor himself, who
remained personally free at the fulfillment stage, publicans became person-
ally responsible. The commitment was made in the form of a special ritual
(mancipatio), whence the word for a publican – manceps (Pauli ex Fest.,
137 L: ‘Manceps dicitur, qui quid a populo emit conducitve, quia manu
sublata significat se auctorem emptionis esse: qui idem praes dicitur, quia
tam debet praestare populo, quod promisit, quam is, qui pro eo praes factus
est’ − ‘Manceps [one who takes by hand] is one who concludes a purchase
or lease contract with the people, because by putting his hand he demon-
strates that he acts as an obliged party to the contract; he is also called
praes, because he must ensure [praestare] to the people that his promise
will be fulfilled as firmly as one who vouches for him’). A defaulting publi-
can was reduced to the condition of an insolvent debtor (nexus), which was
close to debt slavery, until he found a sponsor who would redeem him. De-
scribing the condition of such a publican, the law of the municipium of Ma-
lacitana employs the formula of the cancellation of a binding transaction
and redemption of the debtor (solutio per aes et libram – Gai., 3,174): ‘qui
eorum soluti liberatique non sunt’ (lex municipii Malacitani, 64, 29).
At a more advanced stage, guarantors or publicans themselves presented
land parcels (praedia – Varro, de l.l., 5,40; see Wesener 1974: col. 450) as
securities for their commitments (fides mancupis), which might be sold by
the people at public auctions ‘ex legi paediatoria’ to compensate the loss
(ibid., 64, 47–59; Cic., de dom., 18,48; pro Balb., 20,45; Phil., 2,78).
However, the praes enjoyed the preferential right to redeem his parcel in
this situation (lex municip. Malacit., 65) and thus might avoid the loss of
the property by paying its auction price. This mortgaging regime, which
differed from that regulated by private law (Gai., 2,61), requires a special
study as a specific transaction between a pseudo-public person and a public
body (the people) with private property as its object. Perhaps, it was the
publican's special public status that ensured his right to redeem the mort-
gaged parcel (Karlowa 1902: 58).
It is clear that the occupants of public lands who imitated rent payment
belonged to the same circle as publicans or even to the same company: the
common risk enabled the companion who played the role of a publican to
compensate the possible expenses for the redemption of the mortgaged par-
cel at a public auction. The broad field for misuses provided by this public
property management scheme is, in our opinion, anything but a class strata-
gem, it seems an unavoidable consequence of the system that enabled a
community as a whole to appropriate a sizable share of the revenue sources,
when the impossibility to individualize a subject required a private initiative
from outside to make such a property efficient and profitable. The said op-
portunities for misuses are anything but mandatory though natural under
such a system: it differs from modern mafia by being recognized and pro-
tected by the public authorities as their immediate product (their common
features are as follows: the farming system presupposes an underdeveloped
state, insufficient apartness of the public sphere, absorption of the civil so-
ciety by public connections, domination of the patronage-clientele relations
and of a respective ideology).
It was to protect private possession of public lands that the
412
institution of possessor protection emerged in the Roman law: there was an
administrative prohibition (interdictum) of use of force in order to alienate a
piece of property that belonged factually to a person. Payment of rent
(which coincided with the estate tax in its legal characteristics, because
such a tax cannot exist but as rent in the setting of a civil community) le-
gitimizes a private owner's presence on a public parcel, ensuring his protec-
tion from competitors. The public character of the occupation, provided for
by a special ordinance of a magistratus (lex censoria or lex quaestoria),
ruled out direct physical conflicts among the occupants of the public
wealth, transforming the claimants' informal leadership into formally equal
relations, regulated by administrative order. At the same time, the basis of
the protection was the fact of the recognized presence, so that the competi-
tion among the oligarchs acquired extralegal forms of the division of
‘dainty morsels’ both at the occupation stage and in the course of competi-
tion among the publicans.
This construction outlasted centuries. Whereas all private possessions on
public land (ager publicus) in Italy were transformed into private property
(ager privatus) under the agrarian law of 111 B.C., the Roman provinces
preserved the farming system on municipal lands up to the end of the Ro-
man empire (Kühn 1864: 35ff.; Liebenahm 1900: 424ff.; Kolb 1984). Lit-
urgies (public duties connected with property expenditures for the mainte-
nance of public structures, post, fire brigades and other local services) were
distributed by a municipal council (curia) among its members, who were
made responsible for the management of certain public revenue sources
(land, mines, ports, bridges, etc.). Emperors, who resided in Constantinople
in that period, regularly interfered in municipal affairs, instructing decurios
(local council members) to put the urban services in order, sending special
officials to cities to exercise the duties of an all-imperial importance (who
got involved into the curial system of urban self-government and changed
their status: Sil'vestrova 1999), compelling decurios to pledge their property
for municipal duties and, finally, prohibiting refusal to perform duties and
resignation from curia (Ausbuttel 1988: 11 ff.).
A notable measure, which bears an information about the principle of
the functioning of the urban services, was the reassignment of municipal
offices (functions) through confiscation of urban lands in order to use the
proceeds received therefrom for the urban needs (Jones 1964: 131ff.) con-
sidered most important by the imperial authorities (such as repair of the city
walls when the menace of barbars' attacks existed). Due to such measures,
the persons who were in charge of the respective spheres formally retained
their municipal status but actually became the emperor's officials, acting
thenceforth under his instructions rather than exercising local self-
government (Delmaire 1989: 645 ss). It is clear that these changes were
necessitated by inefficiency of the earlier system, inherited from the repub-
lic, as a result of permanent misuses. Here the caste character of the estate
of senators acquires an opposite form: in the course of time the emperors
totally banned resignation from the curia (whereas admission thereto con-
tinued), imposing hereditary membership of the councils: a synthesis of
public and civil relations was created artificially in a sector of the commu-
nity, its apex, with whose activity the all-imperial state interests were con-
nected (Kotula 1982: 102 ss).
The place of the people was occupied in the new administrative set-up
(where an individual civil community, municipium, was a management ob-
ject within the framework of the bureaucratic monarchy) by the aristocracy,
for it alone was perceived as a subject capable of bearing responsibility and
therefore not merely representing the whole urban community but identical
to it. This new universality of public participation created the socio-political
context wherein the ancient civilitarian model organically reproduced its
typical features: elimination of the public participation in the public prop-
erty management, imparting a pseudo-public character to private entrepre-
neur activities in the public sector, farming out (both literally and figura-
tively) the public functions to influential representatives of the elite.
NOTE
* First published in Bondarenko, D. M., and Korotayev, A. V. (eds.), Civiliza-
tional Models of Politogenesis, Moscow: Institute for African Studies of the Rus-
sian Academy of Sciences, 2000, pp. 255–286 under the title ‘Rome (8th – 2nd
Centuries B.C.)’.
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18
Early State and Democracy
Leonid Grinin
‘Uchitel’ Publishing House
The present article is devoted to the problem which is debated actively to-
day, namely whether Greek poleis and the Roman Republic were early
states or they represented a specific type of stateless societies. In particular,
Moshe Berent examines this problem by the example of Athens in his con-
tribution to this volume. He arrives at the conclusion that Athens was a
stateless society. However, I am of the opinion that this conclusion is
wrong: and I believe that Athens and Rome were early states. Therefore
the present article is in many respects a direct discussion with Berent (as
well as with other supporters of this idea).
In this contribution a specific aspect of the problem of multilinearity in
sociopolitical evolution is examined. So to a certain degree it is an organic
continuation of my another article (‘The Early State and Its Analogue: A
Comparative Analysis’) in the present volume. On the one hand, simultane-
ously with early states there coexisted complex non-state societies compa-
rable to the states in size, population, other parameters and functions. Else-
where I have termed such polities the analogues of the early state (Grinin
1997, 2000, 2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2004; Bondarenko, Grinin, and
Korotayev 2002). On the other hand, the diversity of sociopolitical evolu-
tion is expressed also in a tremendous variety of the early states proper
among which the bureaucratic states represent just one of many types. The
democratic early states without bureaucracy were early states of another
type. In this article I analyze Athens and the Roman Republic as examples
of this very type.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS
The problem as to whether Athens and the Roman Republic were early
states is important in itself. However, attempts to settle it inevitably result
Grinin / Early State and Democracy, pp. 419–463

in a consideration of a wider problem of great importance: what polities
in general can be considered as early states. In particular, is it also pos-
sible to regard as such the democratically organized societies? As a
matter of fact, though quite a few scholars insist on the non-state character
of democratic polities directly, actually almost all the analyses of the early
states attributes explicitly (see e.g., Petkevich 2002: 148) or implicitly pro-
ceed from the idea that the early state was obligatorily a hierarchically ar-
ranged society of a monarchic type.
This idea determines some rather widespread views on typical features
of the early state. In particular that, first, the opportunities to influence poli-
tics are concentrated almost exclusively in the ruler's clan or in a rather nar-
row higher circle (e.g., see how Claessen [1978: 589; Claessen and Skalník
1978: 633] characterizes the discrepancies between inchoate, typical and
transitional early states). Second, the majority of population is excluded
from influencing politics. Thus the common people are only destined to
bear the duties (military, tax, and labor) and in order to fix such a distribu-
tion of duties the presence of a coercive apparatus is required. Berent's arti-
cle mentioned above is an excellent example to demonstrate the prevalence
of such views.
Of course, these phenomena can be observed quite often but not al-
ways. For example, in Athens and the Roman Republic monarchs were ab-
sent, the influence of patrimonial relations on authority was insufficient, the
system of staff selection was based on some different principles than in
other societies, the citizens were not excluded from political life and vio-
lence was applied irregularly upon them. Thus, the question, whether Ath-
ens and Rome were early states? is not vain. See, for instance, about Joyce
Marcus's ‘suspicion’ concerning ‘the Greek case’ ‘that societies called
“city-states” are often not states’ (Marcus 1998: 89).
Certainly, from the Marxist viewpoint they may be regarded as almost
classic examples of the state. It is not without reason that Engels paid so
much attention to the history of Athens and Rome in his ‘Origins of the
Family, Private Property and the State’ (1961). According to him, the an-
cient state was primarily ‘the state of slave-owners aimed at suppressing
slaves’ (1961: 179). Both these polities correspond well with Lenin's fa-
mous definition of the state as an agency with the help of which one class
exploits another class and keeps it in obedience (Lenin 1974: 24).
However, some Soviet historians always had problems with applying
the concept of historical materialism to the societies of their personal pro-
fessional concern. As for Greece and Rome, the problems originated pri-
marily from the fact that sometimes it was impossible to apply the notion of
Grinin / Early State and Democracy 421
social classes to characterize the social strata and early estates (see e.g.,
Shtaerman 1989: 81–85). Second, the notion of the state was firmly associ-
ated with bureaucracy and other features characteristic of Oriental despo-
ties. Meanwhile, in Rome and Athens the government officials bear little
resemblance to bureaucrats (see e.g., Osborne 1985: 9). Third, some diffi-
culties were encountered when dealing with other features considered
obligatory attributes of a state, such as for instance, compulsory taxation
(we will return to this point later). These and some other specific features of
ancient communities provided grounds for raising a number of complicated
questions including such as whether a polis was a state (Koshelenko 1983:
31; Utchenko 1965: 18) and whether it was a city at the same time? (Ko-
shelenko 1979: 5–6; 1983: 31; Marinovich and Koshelenko 1995).
At present, some Russian scholars regard Athens, some other Greek po-
leis, and the Roman Republic as stateless societies of a specific type alter-
native to the state as having comparable level of development and organiza-
tion complexity (Bondarenko 2001: 259; Bondarenko and Korotayev 2000:
10–11; Bondarenko, Korotayev, and Kradin 2002: 16; Korotayev, Kradin,
and Lynsha 2000: 37; Korotayev, Kradin, Lynsha, and de Munck 2000: 25).
Although I appreciate greatly many of these researchers' ideas, I find it im-
possible to agree with this statement. And, since to substantiate the idea of
the Greek polis and the Roman Republic's statelessness they refer to the
opinions of Berent and Shtaerman in the first place, I found it necessary to
criticize the arguments of these particular authors: Berent (2000a, 2000b)
and Shtaerman (1989, 1990).
Berent approaches Athens and other poleis as stateless communities and
Shtaerman insists that the Roman civil community or civitas in the times of
its flourishing was ‘a community restored at a new stage and headed by the
type of “authority” characteristic of communities and acting “for the com-
mon benefit” of the civic collectivity…’ (p. 89)1.
However, I would like to make a reservation that in this article there is
neither a possibility nor a necessity to analyze the peculiarities of numerous
Greek poleis. Athens would be sufficient. All the more so as Berent though
speaking about polis in general, basically pays attention to Athens. I pro-
ceeded from the assumption that, if it were possible to prove that Athens
was an early state, it would suffice to achieve my goal. On the other hand, if
my opponents were right that Athens was a stateless society, it would also
apply to many other poleis probably, with the exception of Sparta.
In the meantime, to maintain that all the poleis of Ancient Greece were
states would be, from my point of view, a bit precipitate. On the contrary, I
presume that some of the poleis, due to their small size and specific status,
simply did not need to have any state form (for such poleis, see An-
dreyev 1989:72; Koshelenko 1983: 10–11). So some poleis failed to over-
come the pre-state condition, while others succeeded in outgrowing it by
transformation into analogues of the early state. Thus, the Delphic polis
could probably be an analogue of the early state2 (Gluskina 1983a: 45,
71). But Athens, as well as many others, undoubtedly were states.
SOME WEAK POINTS OF BERENT AND SHTAERMAN'S

APPROACHES IN CONNECTION WITH THEORETICAL
PROBLEMS OF STATE FORMATION AND SOCIOPOLITICAL
EVOLUTION
First of all, I must formulate my personal viewpoint:
Athens and the Roman Republic cannot be considered as mature
states. They were early states. But they were early states of a specific
type essentially different from other (especially bureaucratic) types.
Unfortunately neither Berent nor Shtaerman actually make any differ-
ence between the mature and early state in their contexts, though the former
uses the term early state in the very title of his paper and the latter discusses
the problem of the border between the chiefdom and the early state at the
very beginning of her work. Very often their arguments against recognition
of the state in Athens and Rome are, in fact, the arguments against the exis-
tence of a mature or at least completed state there. That is the way a substi-
tution unnoticed by the authors takes place: at first it is proved that there is
no completed state and then the conclusion is made that there is no state at
all. For instance, Shtaerman writes, ‘Thus, during its heyday the Roman
classical civitas can hardly be regarded as a completed state. It was a com-
munity...’ (p. 89; emphasis added – L.G.). But not to be a completed state
does not mean at all to be stateless and not an early state. On the contrary,
as a rule early states were not completed ones.
Regrettably, the conviction that the early and mature states have the
same basic attributes is rather a common mistake. If it were so, the transi-
tion from the early state to the mature one would not be so dramatically
difficult. However, the majority of early states failed to become mature
states (see e.g., Claessen and Skalník 1978b; Claessen and van de Velde
1991; Skalník 1996). Why? The reason is the following. Early states devel-
oped under different conditions, their structures were quite different too,
and various political means were used to tackle their own problems. On the
one hand, such states were often quite up to the goals and circumstances of
the time. On the other hand, their organization lacked the mechanisms and
potentials that, under favorable conditions, could push them up to a higher
stage of the evolution ladder (or the required favorable conditions failed to
turn up). From the point of view of the social evolution theory it means that
there were different types of the early state. And the difference is not
only in size but also in the principle of organization.
From the aforesaid simple but important inferences follow logically.
First, the presence of different types of early states means that later on
some of them turned out to have evolutionary prospects while the others
evolutionary dead-ended. In its turn, this means that:
a) not all the political, structural and other achievements of early states
remained in demand in mature states;
b) however, although many institutions and relations were ‘useful’ only
under certain conditions and in certain societies, this does not mean at all
that the polities possessing them were not early states. Let me set a simple
example. In the course of evolution, the principle of direct succession of
throne (i.e. from father to son) was established. However, it does not at all
mean that the societies where the crown was passed not to the eldest son but
to the senior next of kin (like for example in Kievan Rus) were not early
states. The same applies to the principles of formation and functioning of
the state apparatus, army, political regime, etc. The very fact that monarchy
was the predominant type of state does not mean at all that democratic poli-
ties were not states for this only reason. The problem of characterizing such
polities should be solved on the basis of comparing them with pre-states
and state analogues, as I have already pointed it out elsewhere (Grinin
2002b: 24–66; 2003c) and what will be discussed in the present article later;
c) thus it is absolutely necessary to give up the unilineal approach to
evolution in general and evolution of the state in particular. If we are going
to regard as those of the state only the attributes that became the leading
ones later on, we shall narrow and distort greatly the state formation and
politogenesis processes (for details of the term politogenesis, see Bon-
darenko and Korotayev 2000b; Bondarenko, Grinin, and Korotayev 2002;
Grinin 2003c: 164; for the distinction between both terms, see Grinin 2001;
2002a).
Second, three main attributes of state namely: 1) existence of admini-
stration in the form of bureaucratic and coercive apparatus; 2) division of
population by the territorial principle; and 3) existence of taxes and taxa-
tion, are often pointed out. But these characteristics typical of many mature
states, сan hardly suit early states, as usually some of these attributes are
either missing or expressed not clearly enough (for more details, see Grinin
2002c, 2004). However, in many early states any of these attributes (which
were to become the leading ones in a mature state) could be substituted
with other ones, effective enough for solving particular problems. So in
this case my aim is to prove that in ancient Greek states law and court sub-
stituted developed administration bodies.
Third, if we speak about different types of the early state, the absence of
bureaucracy itself in the Greek polis and in Roman civitas cannot provide a
proof of their not being early states. This is a proof of something different:
the polis and civitas represented not the bureaucratic but a specific type
of the early state (for the similar opinions of some participants of the dis-
cussion on the Shtaerman's article, see e.g., Andreyev 1989: 71; Jacobson
1989: 77; Trukhina 1989: 74).
That is why when Berent and Shtaerman try to prove that there was no
state in Athens and Rome pointing out their distinction from large agro-
literate states, it means that they actually reduce the diversity of early-state
forms to the only one, just because that very form has become evolutionary
the leading one.
However, if we recognize the existence of different types of the early
state, we must treat all of them as ‘correct’ (valid) ones although some of
them resemble future mature states to a larger degree than others. It follows
that common features of early states should be established not through the
recognition of a single – a ‘standard’ and ‘correct’ – one among various
types of them, but that it should be done at a higher level of abstraction. I
mean that such abstract common features of the early state must correlate
with each type of the early state (for detail, see Grinin 2004).
TYPOLOGY OF THE EARLY STATE

Working out a typology of early states is a specific and quite a complicated
task. I am not trying to cope with it in this article. But it is absolutely obvi-
ous that one is perfectly rightful to speak about numerous types of the early
state. The polis and civitas (although sharing many features) each repre-
sents a specific type of the early state. Probably it can explain why their
evolutionary potentials turned out to be different. The Roman Republic,
though not without crises, transformed into a mature state. But the same
transformation turned out to be impossible for a small democratic polis
though a certain evolution took place there in the 3rd–2nd centuries B.C. (see
Sizov 1992: 72–73). Among other types of the early state the bureaucratic
states should certainly be singled out. The Third Dynasty of Ur in Mesopo-
tamia is a classic example of the type (D'jakonov 2000: 64–65; Vitkin 1968:
433–434). However, we can also speak about ‘sacral’ states where bureauc-
racy is not developed considerably (like, for example, the young states of
Oceania that formed at the end of the 18th–19th centuries after the arrival of
the Europeans, namely: Hawaii, Tonga, Tahiti); imperial non-
bureaucratic states like the Aztec state (Johnson and Earle 2000: 306);
predatory states (like ancient Assyria).
Ancient Rus and Norway provide examples of the druzhina type where
power of the ruler ‘was measured primarily by the number of his armed
followers’ (Gurevich 1980: 131). The druzhina (prince's armed forces or
retinue) was formed of the prince's closest supporters who helped him to
rule the army and the princedom (Gurevich 1970: 173; Shmurlo 2000: 107).
We can also speak about military-trading states, particularly in regard to
the nomadic ones (like the Khazar [Pletnyova 1986; 1987: 206–207;
Shmurlo 2000: 38] and Turk [Gumilev 1993: 42] Khaganats). A number of
medieval European states, Moscow Rus in 15th –16th centuries, the early
Ottoman Empire as well as its predecessor in Asia Minor in the 11th –13th
centuries, the Seljuquid state were nothing but military-servant (military-
feudal) states (Gordlevsky 1947: 69; Petrosyan 1990: 91; Stroeva 1978: 5–
11), etc.
A typology of early states can be provided along different lines like for
example, the monarchic and democratic ones. In this case, one cannot
help taking into account the fact that any democratic (at least to some ex-
tent) state differs from a monarchic one as its citizens with the right to vote
are the supreme power while in the monarchic state the supreme power is
the monarch's will based on his peculiar rights and privileges. That is why
the democratic lifestyle is necessarily associated with a regular transfer of
power or replacement of government when such procedural moments as
organization of elections, decision-making, etc. become of major impor-
tance. As for the monarchies, the questions of making and executing deci-
sions become important at a much higher level of development.
It is worth pointing out that in their theoretical constructions Berent and
Shtaerman do not give enough consideration to the specific character of
democratic states in comparison with monarchies. So when they point out
some features of Athens and Rome (for example, short term of office) as
proofs of the absence of a state in these societies they do not take into ac-
count that such traits were in fact quite typical of other democratic states
(the Italian medieval republics in particular). In other words, some features
that make Athens and Rome different from the oriental states are not the
differences between states and stateless polities but the differences between
the democratic early states and monarchies.
NATURALNESS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PATH

OF STATE FORMATION AND ITS EVOLUTIONARY
NARROWNESS
TRANSFORMATION OF A POLIS INTO A STATE
As it is generally recognized, many elements of primitive democracy ex-
isted in the hunters-gatherers communities. Though to a lesser extent, de-
mocracy was spread rather widely among primitive farmers and cattle-
breeders. The stratification into nobility and common people, the wealthy
and the poor, those having more rights and less rights as well as the growth
of the society in territory and population, pushed it aside significantly.
However, due both to the long-standing tradition and difficulty for power
usurpation, democracy remained one of natural paths of politogenesis
for quite a long period.
The ‘choice’ of the democratic form of political organization was de-
termined by various reasons, actually by a complex set of them. Some of
these reasons will be discussed later on. One of the most important of them
is the community's geographic location as it can become an obstacle on the
way of smaller polities integration into larger ones (e.g., Korotayev 1995).
The polis belonged to such small polities. ‘Polis is a comparatively
small community (several hundred to several thousand) of citizens, whose
main occupation was farming, which was the basis of the polis economy’
(Koshelenko 1983: 30). It is easy to see that such a polis is an inherently
pre-state polity (Grinin 2003c) from the point of view of the state formation
stages3. A primitive early state usually incorporates at least from 5,000 to
6,000 people and even with that large population it is not obligatory for a
society to transform into a state. In fact, the formation of a state usually
required much larger scopes.
Consequently, the transition to the early state was connected with
the growth of the polis in size that led inevitably to changes in organisa-
tion of government.
Such an increase in size could take place:
– with the enhancement of wars and synoecism as a result of it. For even
a small polis was often formed by the fusion of several communities. The
polis was a civic community as a rule, resulted from the merge of territorial
communities (Koshelenko 1983: 36; 1987: 40; Kurbatov et al. 1986: 44).
That was enough to tear certain traditions apart;
– after victorious conquests and as a result the enlargement of a land
stock as in the case of Sparta's conquering Messenia in the 8th –7th centuries
B.C. (Andreyev 1983: 201). Of course the similar cases can be observed not
only in history of poleis. Such events happened very often during state for-
mation process as Carneiro (1970, 1978, 2000, 2002) brought out clearly.
Early Rome is the most vivid example of a military way of development;
– in the case of availability of free land resources what promotes natural
population growth (the case not typical of Greece with the exception of a
few colonies, but found in early Rome where free land, the so-called ager
publicus was always available);
– finally, with the change of the production basis, that is: a) introduction
of more intensive cultures (such as olives, grapes), and, b) increase of the
role of crafts, trade and work for market. This way turned out to be accept-
able for Athens and a number of other poleis.
There is no doubt that certain important preconditions for the emergence
and development of the democratic state already existed in the pre-state
polis.
First, traditions in many pre-state societies were strongly democratic.
Second, in the situation of population concentration on a small territory
– a typical situation for a city community – the government was based on
direct territorial closeness of people to power and the possibility for the
inhabitants to participate directly in governing. It contributed quite often to
the emergence of democratic forms of government as well as their evolu-
tion towards strengthening of institutionalization, formalism, of the legal
and procedural components of the power function. Under certain circum-
stances, especially at war times, it facilitated the transition of a city com-
munity into a state. The history of poleis is a good illustration of my idea
that a state is born in the situation of some abrupt changes and serious
deviations from the standard situation (Grinin 2003c: 155). Revolutions
and counter-revolutions of all kinds, migrations, tyrannies and their falls,
wars – all of them were able to facilitate the transition from traditional
forms of regulation to state forms.
Third, in the course of time the lack of space provoked the necessity for
a strict control over the number of migrants. For this reason at a certain
moment the community started to restrict their inflow. This is how the ide-
ology of special closeness of a definite number of people, the polis citizens,
appeared: it was easier to abandon the previously used principles of differ-
entiation according to belonging to a particular family, phratry, or tribe this way.
Fourth, the profane or restricted sacral character of the ruler (or chief) of
such a community was on the whole the reason for the weakness of the
royal power. Besides, a monarch did not have an effective coercive appara-
tus at his disposal. No wonder then that the Greek basileis lost their power.
And if we turn to the history of Rome, the reasons for the comparatively
easy revolutions and banishment of kings when they started to exceed their
authorities will become much clearer. Thus in Rome, according to some
researchers, a king: a) was a stranger; b) he had no right to demise his
power to a heir; c) in line with the tradition, almost all the Roman kings
were assassinated – some of them by the heirs (Nemirovsky 1962: 151–152).
To sum up, it can be stated that, just like the chief's strong power in a
chiefdom contributes to the formation of a kingdom, the primitive democ-
racy of a polis could grow into a democratic state. However, it should be
noted that the developed democracy of a polis does not evolve directly out
of the pre-state democracy. Using Hegel's expression, it is already the prod-
uct of the negation of the negation, of a long-lasting rivalry of various ten-
dencies: the aristocratic and demotic, tyrannical and democratic. It ‘has
been established long ago that the Greek polis, prior to acquiring the or-
ganization of a democratic state, had to pass a long way in its development,
through a number of intermediate stages’ (Vinogradov 1983: 394).
The political form quite often depended on particular circumstances and
results of political struggle. However, it can be admitted that the democratic
tendencies were enhanced by the development of crafts and trade4. And
there is no doubt that the growth of marketability, crafts, and commerce in
Athens led to the growth of political power of the demos which found its
expression in rough political events of the early 6th century B.C. According
to some researchers, in the 5th century B.C. the evolution of the Athenian
polis resulted in overgrowing the polis framework by the economic and
political principles, social structure, moral and political values (Gluskina
1983: 7).
EVOLUTIONARY RESTRICTIONS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PATHWAY
OF STATE FORMATION PROCESS
The direct democracy (that is a non-representative one) remains optimal up

to a certain level of development and a certain size of a society when popu-
lation can directly participate in governing and the government can easily
control the territory. That is why the states with immediate democracy
could only be of a small size (see Shtaerman 1968: 670). However, small
states were not the leading line of political evolution. This fact explains
why such a form of government as democracy was poorly spread in history
up to the recent centuries. The oligarchic and aristocratic republics (such as
Carthage or Rome) could expand and become large states5. But that was
quite a different type of democracy than in Athens and in a number of other
Greek poleis. Yet territorial expansion made even the aristocratic republics
inclined to dictatorship or monarchy as it happened in Rome.
There were some other reasons why the democratic city-states could not
become a popular enough form of state government.
First, the craft-and-trade basis of society was less common than the
agrarian one and less stable.
Second, because of the unstable political situation that contributed to
constant changes in the state structure itself and sooner or later led it to de-
cline.
Permanent political and constitutional overturns and revolutions were
typical not only of ancient Greece. The state structure of the Italian com-
munes was also ‘distinguished by extraordinary changeability and repre-
sented an amazing picture against the background of medieval life where
common law, immobility, and traditions were so important. A saying of
those days claimed that “the Florentine law holds on from evening till
morning, the Veronese – from morning till midday”’ (Skazkin et al. 1970:
240). In Florence, time of office – in any position – was from two to four
months, so the city lived in the atmosphere of permanent elections (Kras-
nova 2000: 58).
It can also be added here that up to a certain moment the development of
democracy allows a democratic state to compete with monarchies – and
even win. Is it not a fact that the political and cultural achievements of Ath-
ens were associated with the development of democracy? Or take for ex-
ample, Poland with its considerable political and cultural achievements in
the period of the so-called ‘szlachta democracy’ in the 15th – 16th centuries.
However, if democracy gets out of reasonable limits when according to
Aristotle (1983: 550) ‘people predominate over the law’ it may lead to a
crisis of the state and its decline. This is what happened in Athens where
according to Johann Droysen (1995: 18), the impossibility to introduce the
slightest restrictions of the democratic liberties brought this insecure form
of state organization into the most dangerous phase of its oscillation. The
transition of Poland to a feudal republic headed by an elected king in the
end of the 16th century (Livantsev 1968: 55) also meant the slow decline of
statehood. The unrestricted freedom of the szlachta, when the Sejm dele-
gates' unanimous vote was required for adoption of a decision, resulted in a
paralysis of the state machinery. Eventually, during the long reign of Au-
gustus III in the 18th century only one Sejm (in 1736) managed to complete
its work while the other 13 Sejms were deranged because of obstruction and
sabotage (D'jakov 1993: 81). As it is known, the result of this decay of the
state was the partition of Poland.
The Roman civitas as an aristocratic republic in certain respects was
considerably different from the Greek polis6. It is important to note that it
never reached the completeness of democracy as it was in Athens. This
aristocratic component made ancient and medieval democratic states a more
stable as well as a more perspective form than the broad democracy. Thus
for example, only Venice of all the Italian city-republics enjoyed internal
stability and hence existed ‘probably longer than any other city-state in
world history – for a whole millennium!’7 (Skazkin et al. 1970: 248). There
is quite a simple explanation of this fact: the political predominance of pa-
tricians, a graded and very complex system of elections, and limited suf-
frage (Skazkin et al. 1970: 248–249). Dubrovnik is another example. This
tiny city-republic on the Adriatic Sea coast existed for quite a long period in
the exceptionally difficult situation of the Turkish domination in the Bal-
kans: from the first half of the 15th till the 19th century (Mananchikova 2000:
50). The maximum of real authority in Dubrovnik was given to the Senate
whose members were representatives of the most distinguished families.
‘The aristocratism of the Venetian political constitution was not the last
factor to influence the aristocratic character of the Dubrovnik Senate’
(Mananchikova 2000: 55).
BERENT AND SHTAERMAN'S ARGUMENTS

AND THEIR DISPROOF
Now we can proceed to discussion of the arguments according to which
there was no state in Athens and the Roman Republic. To make the presen-
tation of material more convenient I have tried to formulate the basic argu-
ments of Berent and Shtaerman. They are numbered, indented, and itali-
cized. There was no point to give the exact page number in the works eve-
rywhere since either some ideas are repeated many times or I give the es-
sence of the authors' arguments given on quite a number of pages in my
own formulations. I have tried to give some sufficiently detailed objections
to every argument. Despite all my efforts, I could not avoid repetitions, so I
beg my readers' pardon.
1. There is no application of state apparatus and state power for ex-
ploitation (as well as control) of slaves that was a private business
(Berent, p. 229–231). ‘The statelessness of the Greek polis means ex-
actly that it was not an instrument for appropriation of surplus prod-
uct, and that the methods of exploitation characteristic of the early
agrarian states (taxes, compulsory labor, and other obligations – L. G.)
did not exist in the ancient Greek world (at least prior to the era of
Hellenistic empires)’ (Berent, p. 226).
Objections. First, in a number of cases such an application of the state's
potentials for exploitation and for appropriation of surplus production did
take place. It was, for instance, the exploitation of state slaves in silver
mines, in construction, as well as for the performance of the police func-
tions and clerks (scribes, secretaries, warders, etc.) in state offices or as
oarsmen and sailors (Struve et al. 1956: 246).
Second, it should be taken into consideration that such an application
was not just required at a large scale. Take for instance the United States
where the state apparatus was not used for exploitation of black slaves in
the South. Slave-owners did it perfectly well themselves. Neither they
needed a special police force to catch runaway slaves – they also did it
themselves or hired special people.
In Berent's argument mentioned above one can easily detect a syndrome
of the Marxist idea that the primary purpose of the state is always to use its
power against the oppressed classes. In fact, the need for the state can be
explained by various reasons, and almost in all cases there is an external
threat, conquests or other circumstances associated with foreign policy. So
wars were of great importance in the formation of early states (see e.g.,
Ambrosino 1995; Carneiro 1970, 1978). As for the appropriation of surplus
production, here the old means remained effective enough for a long time.
So Berent's conclusion that there was no state if the citizens could man-
age slave exploitation themselves is illegitimate. The cause-and-effect rela-
tion is quite the opposite here: if the citizens could manage quite well the
exploitation of slaves and keep them in obedience, why then the state
should assume this function? As a rule the state will do nothing if the situa-
tion is acceptable and the actions can be regulated by other means. It would
be quite a different matter if the citizens were unable to suppress slave re-
volts while the Assembly or administration refused to use power of the state
against the slaves. But this situation was simply impossible. On the con-
trary, it is known that in 462 B.C. Athens sent help headed by Cimon to
Sparta to subdue the Helot revolt in Messenia.
It follows that it was quite sufficient to have a state in Athens that
sanctioned slavery and did not object to keeping the slaves subdued
and managed by their masters. However, when required, the state could
interfere with the master-slave relations. Thus, for example, the Solon's
reforms banned slavery of citizens. The Poetelian law of 326 B.C. in Rome
was similar to them (Nemirovsky 1962: 262). The Solon's laws also prohib-
ited selling children into slavery (Kuchma 1998: 127). When the situation
was tough for the state, it could grant freedom to slaves and citizenship to
the semi-deprived of rights and even to slaves. Large-scale campaigns of
emancipation of to slaves also happened in Greek poleis (Fisher 1993:
67–70; Berent mentions this fact too – p. 231. See also Struve et al. 1956:
246). In Rome in 312 B.C. during the rule of censor Appius Claudius the
Roman citizenship was granted to freedmen (Bocharov 1936: 195), and
during the war with Hannibal a certain number of slaves was bought out
and joined the Roman troops (Kuzishchin 1994: 82).
As for the direct appropriation of surplus by the state through taxation, it
is worth mentioning that polis states exerted this method quite actively.
Athens, for instance, levied both indirect taxes on the citizens (as well as
direct but in special cases only) and direct taxes on the metics. Every metic
was obliged to pay the state tax of about 12 drachmas (Struve et al. 1956:
242). We will return to the question of taxes later.
It must be added that though the production basis in Athens was to a
very large degree non-agrarian, it is not rightful to insist as Berent does
throughout his article, that the means of accumulation of surplus in such a
polis and in agrarian states were the same.
2. ‘There could hardly exist a state that coincided with a community
of citizens and where there was no apparatus of coercion and sup-
pression separated from the people’, ‘standing above the society and
guarding the interests of a single class’ (Shtaerman, p. 86, 87).
Objections. Now let us discuss the relations between classes and state.
This problem literally, ‘tortured’ many Soviet historians who from time to
time ‘discovered’ ‘pre-class’ states in different epochs and in different re-
gions on the one hand, and classes in pre-state societies on the other.
For this reason Shtaerman's cited statement is, in fact, nothing but an ob-
jection to the attempts to discover a state that would perfectly fit the histori-
cal materialism conception of the state as an apparatus of coercion detached
from the people and acting in the interests of the class of exploiters
(Shtaerman, p. 77). But classes in Marxist interpretation of the notion ex-
isted neither in many early states nor, strictly speaking, in some mature
states. It is not for nothing that the discussions on the Asiatic mode of pro-
duction, ‘the oriental type of feudalism’ and similar theoretical construc-
tions went on for decades, and their most important aim was to explain the
existence of antagonistic classes in Oriental states in the situation of non-
existence or poor practice of private land ownership.
However, if one applies an extended interpretation of the social classes
concept, it turns out that they can be marked out in many early states8. By
making use of such an approach one can regard the patricians and the ple-
beians in the Roman Republic as social classes. Besides it is necessary to
mention that the state did exploit the plebeians, especially through military
service. Therefore, though in the early Roman Republic the state also fairly
coincided with the community of citizens (Shtaerman is right at this point),
the population of Rome by no means coincided with the community of citi-
zens. In other words, only a part of the inhabitants had political and eco-
nomic rights.
So I think that these social groups (the patricians and the plebeians) are
closer to the Marxist conception of classes than for example, a prince and
his retinue (the druzhina) in Kievan Rus. After all, in the first example, the
patricians had the privileges over the plebeians for hundreds years in the
main point according to Marxism – in the land-owning rights, i.e. the means
of production. And in ancient Rus the prince's main advantage was in mili-
tary force and status (though some scholars believe that the druzhina was a
new social class. See e.g., Shmurlo 2000: 107).
After the plebeians had achieved the equalizations of rights those were
classes of slaves and slave-owners that developed quickly in Rome. The
late Roman Republic gives us excellent examples of class struggle: the
slave revolts in Sicily, the revolt of Spartacus and their merciless suppres-
sion by the state force in particular.
Probably the class division was expressed even more vividly in pre-
Solon Athens of the 7th century B.C. than in early Rome: land was in the
hands of aristocracy, the peasants were becoming poor and getting in debt
dependence, the court as a body of reprisal was on the side of the landown-
ers and creditors, the debtors were sold in slavery. Later, in classical Athens
there always were many thousands of slaves, and also inhabitants who did
not enjoy full rights (the metics), they paid taxes and were involved in mili-
tary service but did not participate in governing9.
Thus, the Roman Republic and Athens used the state for creating
and keeping social and political inequality, economic exploitation and
privileges of one group over the others, and did it not worse but even
better than many other states.
3. In Athens and Rome power was not alienated from the citizens.
Objections. First, there are analogues of the state (e.g., Hawaiian com-
plex chiefdoms) where power is rigidly alienated from the population but
there is no state (see e.g., Johnson and Earle 2000; see also Grinin 2003a,
2003c: 142–144). Second, in democratic states the alienation of power is
also available only not permanently, but temporarily in the form of delega-
tion of power. This alienation of power is regularly authorized by a source
of power presented by the voters in democracy.
In general the alienation of power from the population in the process
of politogenesis occurs in different ways. The monopolization of power
became the main of them, and as a result the legal power was concentrated
(usurped) in the hands of a certain patrimonial group, family, narrow oli-
garchy. Such a system actually triumphed almost everywhere.
But also in ancient democratic societies in spite of the fact that the
population influences the formation of administration, or even directly
elects it, the alienation of power from the people is also present though it
has specificity of its own. After all if in the states with monopoly of power,
the supreme position in a society is very closely connected with a certain
clan, family, or stratum, in democratic states it is the office that is perma-
nent while the persons occupying it can fulfil the duties temporarily. Hence,
if the cities needed officials, court and military leaders, the alienation of
power from the population takes place inevitably. It is just this very al-
ienation of anonymous power, power of a post with a certain balance of
rights and duties that occurs but not the power of a certain clan, person,
family, or anointed sovereign in the given territory.
Thus, the voluntariness of delegation of power in the polis and civitas by
no means testifies automatically the state's absence. On the contrary, pure
power is detached here but not in connection with certain persons, families,
or clans.
Though the officials in Athens and Rome differed from officials in the
general modern sense, on the whole the administrative character of the state
machinery's activity is obvious enough. As Max Weber (1994: 392) noted
that in antiquity the common strata's complete or partial victory had an im-
portant consequence for management and the structure of political union
where an ‘administrative character’ emerged (about Rome, see also Kuzish-
chin 1989: 93).
Besides the opportunity of the population to participate in political life
and formal opportunity for any citizen to get the supreme positions did not
mean at all that it was easy even for a talented person. Especially if those
posts were unpaid or considerable expenses were required to get them.
Though it was more characteristic of Rome, but in Athens the supreme
magistrates of strategi were unpaid too, so mainly rich people were able to
occupy them, as well as the positions dealing with financial management.
Thus, ‘being a subject of political law did not mean participation in gov-
ernment: the division into the governors and governed did not coincide with
political participation’ (Dozhdev 2000: 276).
4. No special coercive apparatus was available in the polis and civi-
tas.
Objections. First, both in Athens and Rome some elements of this appa-
ratus were available for example, the lictors [lictóres] in Rome or the police
in Athens (see below). Besides in Athens and other poleis at the beginning
of the second half of the 5th century B.C. the contingent of mercenaries was
growing up and later it became the dominating one (Bocharov 1936: 195;
Marinovich 1975). Gradually the irregulars fell into such a decay that no
one took care even of the arms at all (Bocharov 1936: 161). But in Rome at
the end of the 5th century B.C. soldiers began to receive salary and then
state arms and foodstuffs (Bocharov 1936: 195). Further, as it is known, the
element of professionalism in the Roman army had been growing conse-
quently until the army finally became wholly professional as a result of re-
forms of Gaius Marius at the end of the 2nd century B.C.
Second, as it has already been mentioned, to cope with slaves, such an
apparatus was not even required. When it was necessary, the army perfectly
carried out the function as it was in Rome during the slave revolts in the
2nd –1st centuries B.C.
Third, some means of coercion were also available for the citizens.
Those were courts. The judicial authority can serve as a part of the adminis-
trative machinery, and the judicial functions can be a part of administrative
ones, when for example, a governor of a province or a liege in segnoria
concentrated the full power in his hands. However, the court can act as an
independent repressive body. In monarchy, power usually aspired to control
the courts. They were more independent in the polis and civitas.
It is quite possible to consider courts as an apparatus of coercion in
Athens and Rome, as they gave sanction to apply force though they quite
often left it to the interested part itself to execute the judgement (but in gen-
eral only in civil suits). Nevertheless, it was quite enough to have such
functions of the court. Anyway, both in Athens and in Rome the number of
judicial lawsuits was huge and it was increasing, people were afraid of
them, as well as they were afraid to ignore the judicial sessions as it could
draw adverse consequences (Kuchma 1998: 131, 216).
5. There was no government; there were no professional administra-
tors and experts in polis (Berent). The mechanism of the executive
power was insignificantly small in civitas (Shtaerman, p. 88).
Objections. Perhaps, the reference to the weakness of their apparatus of
government and violence and of the executive power on the whole, the
small number of professional officials, continuous replacement of the offi-
cials is the most important argument used to prove the absence of the state
in Athens and Rome. However, this argument does not work under an at-
tentive analysis of the problem.
Actually, the number of bureaucrats in the polis and civitas was small
(about Athens see e.g., Finley 1977: 75) as in any non-bureaucratic state.
However professional politicians were available there. And those were
high-class professionals whose activity was an example to follow for centu-
ries and also a base for establishing a new science about politics. ‘The prin-
ciple of the arrangement of polis assumed alongside with the national as-
sembly …[the presence of] groups of leaders who carried out direct imple-
mentation of work within the polis’ (Yajlenko 1983:180).
The officials were also available, sometimes even in a very considerable
quantity. These ‘functionaries of the polis’ (Weber 1994: 393) were provid-
ing the state machinery's activity satisfactorily enough, though the system
of their payment (or its absence) and designation (sometimes by lot), and
also the short terms of office did not make these employees a special social
group.
Thus, it is possible to say that the state apparatus was available both
in polis and civitas though it was of a specific type. But this way of gov-
erning perfectly met the level of development of the early state and pro-
vided a competition of the given states on the external arena. The fact that
the evolutionary opportunities of such political organization turned out to
be weak does not mean that it was stateless. Evolutionary, the majority of
the early state types and government systems turned out to be dead-end.
For example, let us consider Sparta. This type of the state, as well as its
administrative system, evolutionary turned out to have no prospects even to
a greater extent than a polis type. At the same time even the supporters of
the idea of polis as a stateless society, hesitate over denying Sparta's state
status10. There was almost everything that must be in a state: the armed and
‘idle’ privileged minority, the exploited unarmed majority deprived of any
rights, a professional army that since the 5th century B.C. had also included
mercenaries (Marinovich 1975: 18–23), regular and tough violence and
direct reprisals against the oppressed, the ideology of submission to the
leader, the system of election and administration, rigid control over military
leaders and ambassadors; regulation of citizens' life up to their style of
dressing and form of beards and moustaches (Andreyev 1983: 204–295).
But on the other hand, in Sparta we do not see several important features
typical of many early states including the polis and civitas. In particular,
there was no property stratification among the citizens for a long time, and
also there was a direct interdiction of normal money, trade, and crafts.
The features mentioned above emphasize figuratively once again the
important point that the early state is an incomplete state. In every such
polity there were some aspects missing which then arose in the mature
state (for detail, see Grinin 2004). Thus in every case a set of features
and attributes (as well as an absence of any of them) is peculiar or even
unique.
The same applies to the presence of customary government in the polis.
In Athens the Council of Five Hundred and the Board of Ten Strategi car-
ried out the role of government, i.e. the executive power. Nevertheless the
Athenians aspired to separation of delegated power and consequently their
executive power was much weaker than in a monarchy or even in Rome.
However, it does not prove the statelessness of Athens. In many early states
there was no complete set of branches of power or some of them were de-
veloped more and others less. In the early monarchic states the legislative
and even judicial power did not always exist as separate branches, more
often the executive power comprised both of them.
If evolutionary the model has triumphed where the state administration
is formed of professional officials and among the branches of power the
executive one becomes the main, it does not mean that there are no other
possibilities. The polis is one of them11. As it was a democratic state, it is
natural that the legislative and judicial powers were more developed there.
So the civil executive power could be weak. The executive military power
was much stronger. We shall come back in this paragraph to the detailed
analysis of the state administration in Athens and Rome.
In order to find out the presence of the early state in this or that so-
ciety, the main point is to determine whether there is a political and
governmental organization based on new principles, i.e. on the princi-
ples differing from those characteristic of pre-state societies. However,
these new principles of government were not necessarily connected just
with professional officialdom. It is easy to find an analogy. Today the court
may consist only of the professional lawyers but it also may be a jury, i.e.
non-professionals, who are constantly changing and whose activity is un-
paid. However, nobody will state that only the former can be called a fair
court.
6. The economic burden of the polis fell directly upon the rich rather
than poor citizens (Berent). It is possible to speak about the state
only in case when ‘extractions and obligations become compulsory
and are strictly spread on a certain part of society (peasants, crafts-
men)’ (Shtaerman, p. 93).
Objections. As it is known, in Athens and other poleis, the citizens
did not pay direct taxes, except some extraordinary (only customs duties,
trade taxes, and so on). But there were so-called liturgies, i.e. the rich peo-
ple's duty to pay for any common activity or to do something for the whole
society at their own expense: to construct and repair ships and so on. How-
ever, the metics and the freedmen paid direct taxes including extraordinary
ones and they were also involved in some liturgies alongside with the citizens
(Struve et al. 1956: 263–264).
In any case, the fact that in Athens the economic obligations were borne
basically by the rich people, in my opinion cannot be a serious argument
against the presence of the state there. Otherwise, we should deny the pres-
ence of the state in many modern countries where the rich citizens pay basic
taxes directly or indirectly. The fact that the polis in a certain sense sup-
ported the majority of the population, that is demos, is really not typical of
ancient states but on the whole it is not a unique case among states. Do not
modern states provide many advantages to the majority of the population
and modern demos? Do not the solvent tax bearers complain today that the
state distributes social allowance and other help too generously at their ex-
pense? This is a distinctive feature of a broad democracy.
By the way, tyrants frequently aspired to impose tax burden on the rich
part of the population (Berve 1997), and Berent considers tyrannies as poli-
ties of a type close to the state (p. 232).
The same can be said about Rome. If noble or rich people paid more for
the rent of public lands, they used them more. It was their privilege. If they
bore expenses for elections and performance of public positions, they tried
to get these posts by any means. But it is significant to mention that since a
certain moment Rome (and Athens since the moment of the Delian League
formation) had received the main incomes from tributary lands as it was in
the Assyrian, Inca, or Aztec empires as well as in some other early states.
Athens and the Roman Republic are also good examples of application
of the state structure in political and social struggle between rich and poor
people. However, the results of such confrontations and conflicts are not
predetermined. In other words, it is wrongful to think that rich people
should always win. Even in large empires there happened victorious revolts
of peasants and slaves in the past and in the 20th century there were revolu-
tions that resulted in the socially oppressed classes coming to power. In
poleis and civitas the outcome of the struggle between groups of the citi-
zens depended on many variables. It is natural that the victorious part of the
citizens began to use the state to change their status and to secure the results
of the victory. As Karl Kautsky wrote, ‘the class struggle becomes here (in
the states of Greece. – L. G.) a vital element of existence of the state. Par-
ticipation in such struggle was not considered reprehensible but, on the con-
trary, it became a performance of the civil duty. In Athens since Solon's
time there had been a law in effect that everyone who at a break of the in-
ternal struggle did not join any party and did not defend it with the weapon
in hands, lost his civil rights’ (Kautsky 1931: 334–335; see also Aristotle
1997: 277).
And although evolutionary the states with political domination of ruling
groups combined with their economic superiority began to prevail however,
there is no absolute correlation here. For example, in modern societies one
part of population can force the other to agree with its requirements through
elections. Therefore there is not any reason to regard the state as an organi-
zation where one part of a society constantly predominates. It is more cor-
rect to consider the state as an organization that helps one part of population
force constantly or temporarily the other part to agree with its wishes, or
both parts meet a compromise. If one applies such an approach, it will not
be a surprise that the demos established its political supremacy in Athens.
7. In the polis ‘application of violence is not monopolized by an
agency or a ruling class, and the ability to use force is more or less
equally distributed among the armed or potentially armed popula-
tion’ (Berent, p. 225). In Rome ‘coercion was applied only sporadi-
cally’, and ‘in time of distempers the matters were solved in street
fights without intervention of governmental bodies’ (Shtaerman,
p. 87, 88).
Objections. The monopoly of legitimate application of physical coer-
cion (Weber) is missing not only in many early states12 but also in the ma-
ture ones. Did not a serf-owner in Russia or slave-owner in the Southern
States have the right to apply violence towards their serfs and slaves? So,
such a monopoly cannot be a distinctive attribute of either the early state or
the state in general. As Ernest Gellner notes fairly, this Max Weber's prin-
ciple obviously takes the centralized state of the Western type as a sample
although there are states that neither wish nor are capable of ensuring the
observance of such monopoly (Gellner 1991: 28–29). Or we should rather
add, they do not consider it necessary and do not aim at it.
However, on the whole in the state formation process there was an evi-
dent tendency towards exactly the state concentrating the right to recognize
guilt or innocence, to authorize the application of coercion on the part
of individuals so that it would not be an obvious arbitrariness (for ex-
ample, towards a slave, a debtor and so on). So it is not only the monopoly
of application of coercion that is typical of an early state but the concen-
tration of lawful application of force. It could be expressed in monopoly on
some kinds of application of lawful violence (for example, in execution of
judicial verdicts) or in monopoly on the authority sanction to apply force
even if a verdict was carried out by the interested part, or in interdiction of
some types of violence (for example, regarding the blood feud; see e.g.,
about the Aztec state [Kurtz 1984: 307]) and so on.
A certain (and rather considerable) concentration of legitimate compul-
sion and violence took place in Athens and other poleis, as well as in Rome.
The power there first of all aspired to supervise the distribution of the sanc-
tion to violence. If the interested parties or activists were able to deliver the
accused people to the court themselves, it meant that no special state appa-
ratus was required for this purpose. In this case a more important fact is not
that the citizens had arms and quite often arrested the accused or criminals
to deliver them to the court but that the body that pronounced judgement on
the culpability or innocence, i.e. the court, as well as the execution of death
penalty verdicts, both were in hands of the state.
Thus, a developed apparatus of coercion is not strictly obligatory
for an early state. However it is evident that in the process of state system
development the combination of the tendency towards monopolization of
the right for violence on the one hand, and the formation of special bodies
of violence on the other hand, reveals itself as evolutionary leading and be-
comes the most widespread factor.
As for the settlement of disputes between groups of the citizens in
‘street fights’ it was not only typical of the Roman Republic but it took
place in other states too. In the Novgorod Republic in ancient Rus parties of
aristocrats (boyars) were at enmity and sometimes a meeting finished in
fights of debaters ([Bernadsky] 1967: 268; Froyanov and Dvornichenko
1986: 235, 238). But it is not an argument to name Novgorod a stateless
society.
8. In polis the imperious actions depend on the correlation of
strength of different social groups and groupings of the citizens. On
the contrary, in agrarian states the overwhelming majority is dis-
charged of power and main political actions are carried out between
parts of elite (Berent).
Objections. It is necessary to take into account once again that polis is a
democratic state. Any democracy, especially the one where it is honorable
to have political rights, is always connected with the electorate power.
Thus, we come back to the problem whether the early state should
only be the means of dictatorship of a social (class) minority or there
can be alternatives. I believe that though the first case was more spread
and evolutionary dominant, the situation could turn the other way round.
However, it is necessary to emphasize that even in the mature states of
the East the state rather frequently acted as an independent supra-class and
supra-estate force. As Alayev fairly remarks, in the medieval Asia ‘the state
as an apparatus was not the representative of class interests of feudal lords
(rent receivers as a whole) but on the contrary, was a structure built over the
main classes’ (1995: 623). So people of the lowest ranks together with their
supporters can take the helm of state machine when a revolt or revolution
succeeded.
Thus, the general features of the state as a machine that can be con-
ducted by different forces were available both in democratic and monarchic
societies. The only difference is that in the former such a rotation occurred
regularly while in the latter it was casual.
Undoubtedly, in the monarchic states in most cases ‘the main political
actions took place among parts of elite’. But let me point out that the more
despotic the state is the smaller is the role played by parts of elite. And the
main intrigues sometimes are simply transferred to the palace or harem of a
sovereign. So basically, the elite is already removed from influencing the
decision-making process. Besides, a reshuffle of personnel structure took
place quite often in bureaucratic states and thousands of officials lost posi-
tions and power.
On the other hand, when the power was in more difficult situations, de-
cisions were taken very frequently on the basis of ‘correlation of strength of
different social groups’ and their wishes. Then the parliaments, Estates
General, Zemskij sobor (the analogue of States General in Russia), and
similar bodies were called.
In the polis much depended on the correlation of power of the citizens'
different social groups and groupings. The vector of its social policy de-
pended on those who possessed the state power at a definite moment. Such
a system is rather typical of some medieval states for example, Italian city-
republics. Were there not many turnabouts in the social and economic pol-
icy in the 20th century because of the political victory in elections of a cer-
tain party? Was it not the way Nazism had been established in Germany?
Was it not in Chile in 1970 when socialists came to power? But anyway, in
modern societies the state is better conceived as an arena where competing
groups struggle to gain a greater share of social power but it is not an in-
strument under the collective control of a dominant class (Stuart-Fox 2002: 136).
Thus, in polis and in the Roman Republic (if we ignore the separation of
the slaves and people not possessing full rights from participation in public
life) the state acted as a special machine, as a special means of im-
menting
plementing
the goals
the goals
of theofgroups
the groups
that that
temporarily
temporarily
became
became
its masters.
its mas-
Meanwhile in most cases the state was a patrimony of certain royal families
having the specific sacral rights. Such a system ideologically unacceptable
for us, at the same time was evolutionary much more stable and conse-
quently progressive than the democratic polis system which is ideologically
closer to us.
However, we would like to argue once again that it is impossible to
consider the evolutionary crystallized type of the state as the only type
of the state in general.
ATTRIBUTES DISTINGUISHING THE EARLY STATE

FROM ITS ANALOGUES IN APPLICATION
TO THE POLIS AND CIVITAS
From my point of view, in order to prove that Athens and the Roman Re-
public were early states despite all their specificity, it is also important to
show that the four attributes I have formulated to distinguish an early
state from its analogues (Grinin 2002b, 2003c: 145–161) are characteris-
tic of poleis and civitas. The analysis of the state structure and political
functioning of Athens and the Roman Republic in such respect provides
additional proves for the argument that they were just early states but not
analogues.
I remind that I pointed out four distinctive attributes of the early states:
specific properties (attributes) of the supreme power;
new principles of government;
non-traditional and new forms of regulating social life;
redistribution of power.
Specific properties of the supreme power
Regardless of the way the political system of Athens and Rome can be in-
terpreted, the supreme power in these societies undoubtedly demonstrates
sufficient might, completeness of functions, and ability to self-reforming.
Sometimes there were too many changes and they happened too often that
made power for example, in Athens quite unstable.
But the role of the supreme power is different in large and small states.
For small states like Athens, the supreme power as I have already men-
tioned, is something quite inaccurate from the geographical point of view.
Actually, Athens gradually became the geographical center because of her
hegemony in the Delian League.
But in terms of supreme rights the strength of this power in Athens is
quite obvious. The supreme source of power, i.e. the assembly of citizens
(ecclesia), and bodies to delegate its power are available. It is combined
with a precise order and special procedure of making, processing, approv-
ing, and canceling decisions as well as of their performance supervision. It
is significant to remark that the power structure and system of division of
powers is getting more and more complicated in the course of time.
The role of the supreme power is self-evident in large states. The center
of an empire is the largest center of power affecting somehow all peripher-
ies. The city of Rome gradually became such a center. The orders pro-
ceeded from there and also the governors were sent to the provinces, set-
tlers left for the dependent lands, the victorious armies with loot came back
there, grain and other products from the conquered territories were also de-
livered there.
The specific properties of the supreme power do not mean that it always
acts reasonably, far-sighted, in the interests of the society, and so on. The
main point here is that the supreme power can impose its will, change im-
portant relations in a society, mobilize its forces to solve the major tasks,
levy or cancel taxes, and so on. Whom such a will proceeds from (the mon-
arch, aristocracy, national assembly, senate, etc.) depends on the state struc-
ture. But the important point here is that this is а) the will of not hundred
percent of a society; b) the decisions or requirements stated by this will are
the most legitimate; c) in order to change the already existing provisions,
the decision of the same supreme power and a special procedure are re-
quired; d) disobedience to this will and moreover, denying its rights is con-
sidered as a serious offence and is punished severely. In particular, in Ath-
ens in 410 B.C. a special law was adopted which declared a public enemy
everyone who would try to depose the democratic regime of Athens or take
any post during the deposition of democracy. Those who were guilty of this
crime were to be subjected to death penalties and their property was to be
confiscated. Everyone could easily kill such a malefactor and receive half
of his property. After the deposition of the government of the Thirty Ty-
rants this law was complemented by the permission to inform against those
threatening democracy (Berve 1997: 261–264; Vipper 1995: 253).
Both in Athens and Rome we see that the supreme power turns out to be
capable to implement active foreign policy and sustained wars, mobilize
resources, impose new taxes or cancel them, change radically the political
regime and territorial arrangement, expand as it was in Rome or narrow the
civil rights as it was in Athens, change the property relations13, etc.14 It can
be rather severe towards the citizens: to exile innocent people (the ostra-
cism in Athens), hand them over to the court, confiscate their property.
New principles of government
a) New phenomena in formation of the government apparatus
As it has been noted, not all the early states were bureaucratic ones. Some
of them were not bureaucratic at all because of their small size (for exam-
ple, the Anglo-Saxon states in 7–8th centuries (Blair [1966]: 240–241) or
their bureaucratization was relatively weak, especially in the conquered
territory as in the states like the Aztecs' (Johnson and Earle 2000: 306). I
consider it wrong not to refer such polities to the early states. Therefore
I tried to describe the new principles of government as generalized as pos-
sible in order to make them more eligible for both bureaucratic and non-
bureaucratic states.
Let me remind that I have pointed out the new approaches to the ad-
ministrative body (and/or armies) formation among the new principles
of government (Grinin 2002b, 2003c: 151–152). It means that essential
changes occurred in the methods of selection for administrative and military
posts in the early states; and also that the importance of the new types of
functionaries and warriors increased there in contrast to the situation in
state analogues. However, these changes in government are not connected
everywhere with the presence of professional officials, police, regular army,
etc. In many cases these institutions have been replaced with others.
For example, there were many functionaries and officials but few career
officers in Athens and Rome. Though the apparatus of management and
coercion in Athens and Rome was not so powerful as in bureaucratic coun-
tries, it was still quite numerous, especially in Athens. In the 4th century
B.C. there lived only 200,000 people including slaves and metics. At the
same time many hundreds of citizens were directly involved in administra-
tion (being elected or chosen by lot). If those who took part in sessions in
turn (as in the Council of Five Hundred where only fifty members worked
permanently during the 1/10 of a year) were added, the number of function-
aries would go over a thousand. The technical staff like secretaries was also
available in the Council of Five Hundred. Besides many officials operated
outside Athens (in the interests of the Navy and on diplomatic matters).
According to Aristotle (1997: 294), the number of such people was up to
700. There was also a judicial body (heliaia) of 6,000 (!) judges (but actu-
ally they were not professionals. The members of the court were selected by
lot)15.
So the main difference between Athens and Rome on the one hand and
bureaucratic states on the other is in the methods of staffing, replacement
and payroll payment of the officials. However, it is exceptionally important
to point out that the poleis and civitas form of government differed greatly
from the pre-state and state-analogue forms and should be regarded as an
early state. Let us give a more detailed consideration to this point.
One of the major innovations of the Athenian administration was that
the absolute majority of officials and judges received salary. Due to this the
major part of citizens could be supported. According to Aristotle, over
20,000 people were getting allowances from the state treasury. Besides the
officials mentioned above, there were ‘1,600 archers plus 1,200 horse-
men… When the war started later on, in addition to them there were 2,500
hoplites, twenty patrol ships, plus ships for transportation of 2,000 garrison
soldiers …and also warders in prisons’ (Aristotle 1997: 293–294). More-
over, the citizens began to receive payment for visiting national assemblies
and other public events.
We can give examples of pre-state and state-analogue polities where of-
ficials were selected by voting or by lot. There were also officials among
them, particularly judges who got some compensation (for example, in me-
dieval Iceland). However, I do not know examples of non-state polities
where the administrative posts were so widely used to keep the citizens'
well-being (the analogy with socialist states where everybody was either a
state worker or an employee can be drawn at this point). According to Vip-
per's calculations, about 150 talents that is 3/8 of the local (only Athenian)
budget, or 1/7 including the allies' payments, were spent on this purpose
during the rule of Pericles (Vipper 1995: 215).
The fact that the Athenian polity supported its citizens at the expense of
the taxes levied on the allies, state ownership and taxes imposed on the
metics, proves once again that it was an organization acting in the interests
of not the whole but a part of the population also aimed at exploitation of
other polities. In other words, it was an early state.
The repressive apparatus was also available. For example, the total
number of police sub-units in Athens was initially 300 and later 1,200 peo-
ple (Kuchma 1998: 121–122). Though certainly it was not police from the
modern point of view (Hansen 1991: 124).
Thus, some new principles of government were present in Athens.
Though there were not so many professional managers, some of them usu-
ally occupied the supreme positions (in particular, those of strategi) and the
others provided the continuity of management in various bodies as techni-
cians. It is worth reminding once again that the army gradually became
totally professional.
Quite a considerable number of officials was available in Rome too and
it was growing constantly (though on the whole there were much fewer of-
ficials than in Athens). Meanwhile, the hierarchical structure of magistrates
had been becoming more and more harmonious and distinct. The special
Roman officials (the prefects) worked in a number of Italic communities.
Unlike in Athens, most of the offices in Rome were unpaid. But, the ex-
ecutive power was stronger there than in Athens. The range of consuls' au-
thorities was always significant and their power was simply unlimited in
wartime including the right to adjudicate the death sentences that were irre-
versible (outside Rome). On the whole, a governor of a province, proconsul
or propraetor, had all the dictatorial authorities, i.e. full military, adminis-
trative, police, and fiscal power.
In addition, it is noteworthy that in Rome the magisterial service was
unpaid but it was combined with the fact that according to the approved
regulation all the officials had a certain number of low-ranked employees
(apparitores) paid from the state treasury. When a change of magistrate
took place this entire staff passed to the disposal of a new chief. The lictors
who performed the security functions and those of the guard of honor were
the most important among low-ranked employees. They could detain of-
fenders and punish them if a high-rank official ordered. The number of lic-
tors ran from six to twenty-four depending on the rank of magistrate. In
addition to the lictors the magistrate was also given messengers, heralds,
secretaries, clerks, accountants, and others. State slaves were given for the
affairs humiliating free people (Kuchma 1998: 165–166).
It is also significant that though the term of office for Roman magis-
trates was limited (normally a year) and it was forbidden for a person to
occupy several supreme posts in a row, however this rule was not strictly
observed or actually was not observed at all (Mommsen 1993: 41). More-
over, the senate had the right (which was used widely) to expand the offi-
cials' authorities after the expiration of the term of their service (however
not in the city of Rome). The main point here is that since the 4th century
B.C. it had been approved that ‘all those who had performed the duties of
consul, censor, praetor, or curule aedile were obligatorily included into the
structure of the Senate after the term of office had been over’ (Mommsen
1993: 42). Taking into account that the rank of senator was lifelong and that
proconsuls and propraetors got appointments in provinces, basically from
the former magistrates, it turned out that a man elected for one of supreme
magistracies for a year actually was included in the layer of governors for
his whole life. The law on the order of magistrate operation of 180 B.C.
strengthened the role of the Senate in the promotion of nominees for posi-
tions (Kuzishchin 1994: 92).
Hence, it is quite possible to speak about a certain stratum of pro-
fessional governors in Rome, and to provide such professional gover-
nors for the state was a tradition in many families. This layer gradually
managed to use its official position for deriving some material benefits
(Utchenko 1965: 125; Vipper 1995: 287–292).
The tendency of the Roman army towards becoming regular and profes-
sional has already been discussed.
b) Other changes
A new feature wide-spread in poleis and civitas, the reporting of the offi-
cials and supervision of their activity, should be noted. For example,
every four years the senators in Rome were approved again in their posi-
tions on the basis of the decision of special officials. (About such supervi-
sion in the Roman Republic see e.g., Mommsen 1993: 42; Vipper 1995:
287–291).
It is also easy to notice in Athens and Rome the development and in-
creasing importance of other new principles of management:
– delegation of power;
– new distribution of administrative functions (separation of decision-
making from execution).
Besides, one can also point out some other changes in management. It
was especially expressed in the development (sometimes even hyperdevel-
opment) of the procedure. It is necessary to note that the increasing com-
plication of government inevitably leads to a certain formalization and
complication of the procedural component of making, executing, and
checking decisions as well as management in general (actually just this
is the process of bureaucratization). However, in many city-states, in-
cluding of course the polis and civitas, such formalization sometimes be-
comes more important and more complex than even in some classical
states. Thus, in city-states there still was available an important element of
bureaucratization.
A high degree of development of the procedural part is characteristic of
Athens and Rome. In particular, in Athens decisions of the Assemblies
were recorded and kept in archives. A citizen could protest this decision as
‘unlawful’ by submitting a special complaint within a year. There were
some rules of speeches for orators, and the Assembly chairman could fine
the orator for their violation. It is necessary to point out the officials' ac-
counts (and not only financial) including those of every member of the
Council of Five Hundred as well as obligatory check of those assuming the
office (Kuchma 1998: 119–120).
In Rome somehow even a more complex procedure was used. While in
Athens the majority of appointments were defined by lot, in Rome filling a
post was always connected with competition during election campaigns.
Therefore there was a special system of admitting candidates to elections
and a number of special laws forbidding unfair methods of pre-election
struggle. The sanction for such infringements was a ten years exile16. The
majority of the officials were to submit reports after abdication as it was in
Athens, and in case of detection of any abuses they could be punished (Ku-
chma 1998: 157–159).
In Rome a rigid hierarchy of magistrate positions bringing together its
administrative system contributed to the final establishment of the bureau-
cratic states.
The officials both in Athens and Rome did not have any special rights
for a post (justified by a tradition, kin ties, etc. as it used to happen in other
societies). This right arose only as a result of delegation of authorities from
the source of state power (the national assemblies, the Senate and etc.). Cer-
tainly it was a weak point but also an advantage. This may be the reason
why there were practically no cases of separatism in the history of republi-
can Rome and Athens (of course I mean only the Athens polity proper but
not the Athenian navy).
It is necessary to note that development of the procedural part in bureau-
cratic societies usually resulted in the improvement of the system (form) of
transmitting the orders through the hierarchical ladder of employees as well
as through the procedure of control and report. Say, the order of inheritance
to the throne, appointment for supreme posts in the state, the volume of
power given to officials and so on, were regulated much more rarely.
Probably it is connected with the fact that the right for the throne and for
supreme power in monarchies was based not on acts of the law or juridical
collisions but on sacralization of the ruler or on the fist law. Besides in
monarchies the executive power did not want any restrictions upon its ac-
tivity (consequently the state and legal intention did not develop in this di-
rection).
On the contrary, in democratic states the citizens were always preoccu-
pied with the problem of escaping subordination to the executive power.
That is why they tried to secure themselves. Sometimes it got features of
excessive complexity. For example, in Venice in 1268 the governor (doge)
was elected in the following way. The Big Council chose thirty people from
its staff who in their turn selected nine people to elect forty electors among
the Council members and non-members. Then those forty people chose
twelve to elect forty-five people who in their turn selected eleven and, at
last those eleven defined forty-one people who finally named the doge
(Skazkin et al. 1970: 249).
Non-conventional and new forms of social life regulation
It is possible to point out the following non-conventional and new forms of
regulation of life in the polis and civitas:
increasing regulation of life by the Assembly, the Senate, officials in-
cluding a growth of importance of compulsion and interdictions for
the population outgoing from the officials;
amplification of the court's importance;
quite often reforms;
constant changes in laws.
It is worth mentioning that there was the so-called Board of archons of
nine people in Athens. The main duty of six of them was to provide annual
reports to the Assembly on contradictions and gaps in the law currently in
force alongside with proposals on their rectification (Kuchma 1998: 120). It
is worth marking out a huge role of the Roman praetors' lawmaking activity
as they actually created a new type of law (Kossarev 1986: 21, 44–47);
– increasing importance of compulsion and supervision of execution in-
cluding the institution of supervision over the activity of officials (exile,
reporting);
– monitoring loyalty of the population through spying (the sycophants in
Athens);
– large citizens' involvement in state activities.
All that led to a gradual change in various spheres of life including ‘con-
trol and regulation of some areas of social activity which in stateless socie-
ties are exclusive prerogatives of kin groups’ (Kurtz 1978: 183), for exam-
ple family relations. In particular, Solon's laws are an excellent example of
such interference. Besides one can observe the process of replacing tradi-
tions by political will, that is by assemblies' decisions, new laws, and new
bodies. So one can observe a growth of the rational aspect in reforming the
society regardless of traditions and other stagnancy. One of this process
indicators is ‘people's deliberate choice of social intermediaries for forced
regulation of civil cases’ (Kurbatov et al. 1986: 67).
Both the character of political life and means of its regulation are under
change in the new state polis. While in the Homeric polis according to An-
dreyev (1976: 104–105), everybody struggled against everybody and the
struggle of noble clans among themselves was in the first place (Ko-
shelenko 1987: 45), in the democratic state the struggle between social and
political but not patrimonial groups started to predominate. It was a new
phenomenon, too. The new laws, bodies and procedural rules start becom-
ing the means of regulation the leaders' and political groups' power and op-
portunity to provide a compromise between, and rotation of the officials.
It is important to note that in the Homeric polis according to some re-
searchers, ‘there was almost no “legal basis” protecting a person and prop-
erty’ (Koshelenko 1987: 45). Hence, the emergence of the state in this as-
pect also meant the enhancement of ‘a legal basis’ as a new instrument of
life regulation. The court served as the drive gear in the work of this new
instrument.
Ernest Gellner believed the state to be a specialized and concentrated
force to maintain the order. ‘The state is that very institution or set of insti-
tutions specifically concerned with enforcement of the order. The state ex-
ists where specialized order-enforcing agencies, such as police forces and
courts, have separated from the rest of social life. They are the state’ (em-
phasis added – L. G. [Gellner 1983: 4]). I have already mentioned that the
early state is first of all connected with providing sovereignty and external
safety. However, the Gellner's idea makes some sense.
Just in this aspect the ancient societies give us a good example proving
that we are dealing with real states. While police was not a very important
body, the court achieved a high degree of development and significance.
The court acted as the major body for keeping the internal order and regula-
tion of social life. Otherwise what would 6,000 judges do in Athens? 300
sessions of court per year is a large figure for a polis of 200,000 inhabitants
(see Koshelenko 1987: 69). It is not casual that in societies where exchange
relations are well developed, the court plays a much more important part
than in others. It was not occasional that a special trade court and most
likely, a special trade legislation were available there (Struve et al. 1956:
263). But the court preserved not the economic order only. In Athens in the
classical and subsequent periods the court protected the democratic regime
itself as a citizen could process a legal case against anybody whom he sus-
pected to damage state interests. The court was even used as a body of in-
ternational relations as for Athens it was a means of supervising the allies
(Golubtsova 1983a: 363, 364).
Redistribution of power
Elsewhere, I have defined redistribution of power as the process of redis-
tribution of power between the center and the periphery which makes
it possible for the supreme power not only to control the periphery but
also to redirect the streams of power functions and actions towards the
center where a considerable proportion of power, as well as of material
resources, is concentrated (Grinin 2003c: 56–59).
The redistribution of power in the early states (especially small ones) is
connected with the struggle for superiority between different centers (bod-
ies) of power or their unstable coexistence. In Athens the redistribution of
power is expressed in the struggle of groups of population and bodies
through which they can influence the state. Respectively some bodies get
more rights and others lose them. For example, in Athens in the 5th century
B.C. we observe the increase of the National Assembly's role and decrease
of that of the body of aristocracy, Areopagus, as well as of the aristocracy's
positions in general. According to Aristotle, in the 7th century B.C. the Are-
opagite Council took charge of the majority of the most important matters
in the state peremptory imposing penalties and punishments on all breakers
of order. But later, by the end of the 5th century B.C. it had almost lost any
political significance and had turned into a special court for trials of cases
related to religion. Moreover, due to the change in the system of staffing, it
also lost the role of the main body of the oligarchy (Aristotle 1997: 273;
Koshelenko 1987: 44, 68). Frankly speaking, this process was irregular and
rough. In particular, during the period of 478–462 B.C. the influence of
Areopagus increased again and finally weakened as a result of activities of
Ephialtes, Conon, Themistocles and others (see Aristotle 1997: 292–294;
for the description of the struggle between noble clans and also between
nobles and the demos in the 6th century B.C., see Zelyin 1964).
The whole history of Athens can be represented as the process of redis-
tribution of power from aristocracy and outstanding people to the demos
and the poor: the Solon's reforms that strengthened the foundation of de-
mocracy; the distribution of funds to the demos; the law on exile (ostra-
cism); the right of the population to participate in operation of courts; the
obligation of rich people to give money for state affairs; the restriction on
the number of people enjoying the right of citizenship; development of the
system of informing about the citizens' loyality; introduction of death pen-
alty for an attempt on democratic regime; introduction of payment for visit-
ing national assemblies at the beginning of the 4th century (for the latter see
Kovalyov 1936: 289; Struve et al. 1956: 399), and so on.
Certainly, the process of redistribution of power from aristocracy and
rich people to the poor cannot be really completed. However, in Athens it
went too far and that was one of the reasons why the Athenian early state
was unable to transform into mature one like the Roman.
The other lines in redistribution of power are also evident in the his-
tory of Athens (as well as of Rome). In particular, it is worth mentioning
the struggle of the National Assembly against concentration of too much
power in hands of any bodies or people. The famous law on exile (ostra-
cism) was aimed at it. Either the struggle of groups meant additional bodies
or additional representation. For example, the tribunes of the plebs (tribuni
plebis) in Rome were of this kind. The other point was the satisfaction of
the democratic layers' demands to introduce the written fixation of legisla-
tion as it was with Drako's code in Athens and the Law of the Twelve Ta-
bles in Rome (Frantsev 1956: 672; Kuzishchin 1994: 56).
In Athens and in some other large poleis since the 5th century the proc-
ess of redistribution of power had started moving in the classical direction
because of the growth of their significance as centers of the Delian League
(the Athenian navy) and the Peloponnesian League. In this case, the redis-
tribution of power from the allies to such poleis is observed. However, this
process did not go too far.
The classical process of redistribution of power from the periphery to
the center began in Rome on an earlier stage than in Greece states and made
it possible to reinforce the state mechanism and make it steadier. However,
in Rome there was also a struggle for determination of the bodies' authori-
ties and for the predominant role among those bodies. From this point of
view it is interesting to trace the development of the Senate that gradually
transformed the national assemblies (not so powerful as the Greek ones)
into a secondary body though formally these assemblies remained the su-
preme power holder. Theodor Mommsen wrote: ‘Little by little the Senate
had actually appropriated the right to cancel the decisions of a community
under the pretext that the community later on would approve its decision,
but the consent of a community normally was not asked after that’ (Momm-
sen 1993: 42; see also Andreyev 1989: 73; Utchenko 1965: 85). The power
of the Senate had become extensive, especially since 354 B.C. when it in-
cluded the supreme magistrates upon the termination of their service. ‘War
and peace, contracts, an appointment of the commander-in-chief, organiza-
tion of colonies, all the finance management issues were in the Senate's
competence, the Senate did not interfere only judicial cases, military issues,
and current administration’ (Mommsen 1993: 42) as it was the prerogative
of magistrates.
In Rome the process of redistribution of power then developed accord-
ing to the empire pattern when Rome joined Italic territories one by one and
one province after another. Respectively Rome as the victor appointed ab-
solute governors, redistributes lands, imposed taxes and plundered that ter-
ritory (especially provinces), and so on. Eventually in Rome the concentra-
tion of power over huge conquered territories, as well as the concentration
of slaves in Italy, reached such a high level that the whole state structure
could not survive. A reorganization was required. So in the late 2nd and dur-
ing the whole 1st century B.C. Rome saw attempts of radical reforms, dicta-
torships, civil and allied wars, slave revolts, reprisals and proscriptions – all
that what finally led to such changes.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my gratitude to Dmitri M. Bondarenko for his in-
valuable help with the preparation of this article. Needless to mention that
neither he, nor any of the other colleagues of mine should be held responsi-
ble for any defects in this article.
NOTES
1
If not indicated otherwise, all the quotations from Berent are taken from
(Berent 2000b), from Shtaerman are from (Shtaerman 1989).
2
Of course, there is not enough evidence on the domestic affairs and political
history of the Delphic polis. However there are some points able to prove this as-
sumption: the great role the Delphic oracle played in the community life, the control
over the temple property and lands exercised by so-called Amphictyonic League
(Delphic Amphictyony that consisted of representatives of different Greek tribes);
the small size and military weakness of this polity and also the other states' interfer-
ence in its affairs (Gluskina 1983a).
3
For such poleis only would be right the statement of Claessen (2002: 104) that
poleis as well as chiefdoms and large big-man conglomerates were earlier forms of
organization than state.
4
On the exceptionally tight connection of the development of navigation, com-
merce, the demographic growth and statehood in ancient Greek poleis during the
pre-classical period see e.g., Kurbatov et al. 1986: 40–43.
5
By the way, one cannot help mentioning the resemblance of the state struc-
tures in Carthage and Rome (as well as their similarity with Greek poleis), and this
fact is pointed out by many researchers (Harden 1971: 72; Tsirkin 1987: 105–106;
Vipper 1995: 266–267). This resemblance was already noticed by Aristotle (see Dova-
tur 1965: 12).
6
According to Roussel's opinion, in Rome a more distinctly expressed state sys-
tem proper appeared very early with the conception of the Senate and some magis-
trates' particular power (especially of the supreme ones with their typical im-
perium). This power could be opposed to the citizens' will (Roussel 1976; also see Ko-
shelenko 1983: 23).
7
It is quite possible that the Phoenician city-states existed longer but they
were monarchic and not republican polities.
8
In any case, considerable social inequality supported (or authorized) by the
state, was present in every early state. Actually, theorists of the early state em-
phasized the presence of at least two such classes (the rulers and the ruled) in the
early state as its obligatory attribute (Claessen 2002: 103; Claessen and Skalník
1978a; see also Majak 1989: 95–96).
9
According to Erenberg's calculations, in 360 B.C. in Athens there were 85–
120,000 citizens (of all ages and both sexes), 25–50,000 metics (including women,
children and old men), and 60–100,000 slaves (see Koshelenko 1983: 35; for some
other points of view regarding the population of Athens in the 5th–6th centuries B.C.
see also Struve et al. 1956: 241). Summing up different calculations Koshelenko
writes that the majority of students consider slaves to constitute from one quarter up
to 43 % of the population in Attica (1987: 57–58).
10
This is Berent's indistinct position revealed both in the articles and his doc-
toral thesis. He definitely refers to Athens and other poleis as to non-state polities
but hesitates either to reject Sparta's state status or to recognize it as a state for
rather doubtful reasons (see: Berent 1994: 181–200). In any case he regards Sparta
as the exception among other poleis, and that would require a special discussion
(Berent: 228).
11
Some Italian republics of the 13th–15th centuries can be regarded as another
variant when a foreigner was invited as a military leader, judge, etc. usually for a
year. He brought all his staff (including notaries, judges, etc.) and property with
him, and the city paid his service and charges. So a significant part of the executive
power was annually replaced too (Skazkin et al. 1970). In the Novgorod republic
they had something similar when a prince with his retinue were invited.
12
For example Russkaja Pravda (Russian Law) of Yaroslav the Wise (11th cen-
tury) recognized the blood feud (Shmurlo 2000: 112); the same can be said about
the laws of Moses in Israel (Anners 1994: 32–33).
13
For example, in the 4th century B.C. in Rome the laws of Licinius and Sextius
were adopted which limited the possession in a public field up to a norm of 500
jugers (approximately 125 ha [Kovalyov 1936: 81; Nemirovsky 1962: 261]). At the
end of the 2nd century B.C. the Gracchi brothers have renewed with some amend-
ments (about them see Nechay 1972: 187) the action of such restrictions. In the
result of the defeat of the Gracchi the law of Spurius Torius was adopted in 111
B.C., according to which revisions of community-state lands were forbidden, and
land allotments became a private property of their owners (Kossarev 1986: 61).
Theretofore, from the legal point of view the right for property to all lands (except
small sites handed over as the property to the citizens) belonged to the state (Luz-
zatto 1954: 53).
14
In this respect the supreme power in Athens and Rome corresponds with the
tasks which Carneiro (2000: 186) regards as indispensable for a government of a
state, namely: to have power to (1) draft men for war or work, (2) levy and collect
taxes, and (3) decree and enforce laws.
15
By the way, the number of professional officials in highly bureaucratic coun-
tries could be not so large. For example, at the beginning of the 19th century in
China the number of civil officials was about 20,000 people, of military ones –
7,000 (Kryukov et al. 1987: 34). More than 300 million people lived in China at
that time (ibid: 63). If we compare it with the above cited data on Athens we can
see that the latter could compete with the most bureaucratic states in the ratio of func-
tionaries in the state machinery and population.
16
They did not manage to overcome bribery of the voters. It became rampant by
the end of the Roman Republic's existence, so people came to elections already
bribed; the amount that made it possible to achieve supreme magistracies was
known beforehand. It was one of the most vivid expressions of the crisis of the re-
publican regime (see Utchenko 1965: 117).
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Part IV
Nomadic Alternatives
and Analogues
● William Irons
Cultural Capital, Livestock Raiding, and the Military
Advantage of Traditional Pastoralists
● Anatoly M. Khazanov
Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in Historical
Retrospective
● Nikolay N. Kradin
Nomadic Empires in Evolutionary Perspective
● Tatyana D. Skrynnikova
Mongolian Nomadic Society
of the Empire Period
19
Cultural Capital, Livestock Raiding,
and the Military Advantage
of Traditional Pastoralists*
William Irons
Northwestern University, Evanston
INTRODUCTION
Throughout the arid zone of the Old World (North Africa, the Middle East,
and Central Asia), until recently there were a number of pastoral nomadic
tribes that had a consistent advantage in military encounters with more sed-
entary groups. As a result of this military advantage states based in seden-
tary societies were often unable to control them. States at times dealt with
these groups as if they were dealing with other states making what
amounted to treaties. At other time, the state had a greater advantage and
the negotiation was not between equals, but nevertheless there was negotia-
tion and the tribes were in a position to use military force against the state
to back up some of their demands in negotiating with the state. At other
time, pastoral nomads, or more commonly large alliance of different group
including pastoral nomads along with other groups, would conquer states
and establish new dynasties of nomad origin or partial nomad origin. The
Mongol Empire was the most dramatic example.
This paper asks why this military advantage existed. The first to note in
writing for posterity the military advantage of the nomads was Ibn Khaldun
who suggested as a social law that whenever two armies met in combat,
other things equal, the more nomadic of the two armies would triumph. He
attributed this advantage to the fact that pastoral nomads were united on the
basis of kinship, while the armies of sedentary societies were based on citi-
zenship in a state where citizenship was granted to all the inhabitants of the
state's territory. Ibn Khaldun believed that kinship was more powerful as a
Irons / Cultural Capital, Livestock Raiding, and the Military Advantage of Traditional
Pastoralists, pp. 466–475
Irons / Cultural Capital, Livestock Raiding, and the Military Advantage… 467
tool for creating solidary groups than was citizenship in a territorial state. I
believe that Ibn Khaldun's social law is correct, but I think the causes of this
phenomenon are a little more complex than simple being a matter of kin-
ship versus citizenship.
In this paper, I will explore other bases of the military advantage in ad-
dition to kinship. My thinking is actually fairly close to that of Owen Latti-
more in Inner Asian Frontiers of Central Asia I see several reasons why
pastoral nomads had a military advantage over sedentary agriculturalists. I
have discussed several of these reasons in earlier publications (Irons 1971,
1974, 1975, 1979, 1994). The specific argument I wish to make here is that
pastoral nomads have a form of cultural capital that gives them a military
advantage. This is only one source of their military advantage and it com-
bines with other factors to confer an overall military advantage. The other
factors consist primarily of (1) residential mobility which makes it possible
for an entire society to retreat from an advancing army, (2) a good supply of
horses and/or camels as mounts for military purposes combined with exten-
sive knowledge of how to care for and use these animals, (3) residences in a
region where it is difficult for the armies of sedentary states to travel or ma-
neuver (usually arid regions where scarcity of water makes travel difficult
for sedentary armies, but sometime rugged mountains), (4) a form of or-
ganization such as a segmentary lineage system and/or a hierarchy of chiefs
that can organize large-scale military operations, (5) a belief in common
descent (Ibn Khaldun's kinship) as a rationalization of their unity for mili-
tary purposes.
CULTURAL CAPITAL:
THE CONCEPT AND AN EXAMPLE
Thomas Sowell introduced this concept to me in his book, Race and Cul-
ture. Cultural capital consists of values, skills, and knowledge that a person
acquires as part of growing up in a particular culture that can be used to
economic advantage in the original culture, but also in a new setting. Sow-
ell is interested in the fate of immigrants and having studies a large number
of immigrant groups that have migrated from and to various parts of the
world, he has conclude that the role an immigrant group plays in their new
environment is shaped extensively by the cultural capital they bring with them
from their original environment.
I can illustrate the concept briefly with an example that is familiar to me,
but far removed from the pastoralists of the Old World. In 1996 in collabo-
ration with Lee Cronk (Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University), I
did a brief stint of ethnographic field research on the Island of Utila, Bay
Islands of Honduras. In preparation of this field research, I read earlier an
earlier ethnography of the Island by David Lord (1975) which described the
recent history of the Island. The Utilians were part of an English speaking
population that moved west from Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in the
early 1800s and settled in the Bay Islands, Belize, and other areas along the
coast of Central America. The Utilians originally made their living by grow-
ing bananas and coconuts for export.
During the depression, their economy sank to a very low state, but dur-
ing World War II things turned around because of their cultural capital. The
American merchant marine had a shortage of able-bodied seaman during
the war. Most able-bodied men in the U. S. were serving in the military.
Around 1941 some American merchant marines happened to visit Utila
and discovered that the Utilians made good seaman. They had several
‘skills’ that qualified them. They spoke English the language of the Ameri-
can merchant marines. Because the lived on an island and had extensive
experience with boats, they did not get seasick, and they knew basic sea-
manship. Immediately the American merchant marines began hiring Util-
ians as seaman for what the Utilians thought were fantastic wages. This led
to the development of an island economy based on men leaving the island
to work as merchant marines for 9 to 10 months each year while sending
money back to their families in Utila. This tradition continued after the war
and Utilians continue, up to the present, to travel up to the U. S. to work as
merchant marines. Eventually they expanded into other lines of work, but
always one's that drew on their familiarity with the sea and seamanship.
During the time of my visit many still worked periodically as merchant ma-
rines. Other worked on oilrigs in the sea, or on tugboats on the Mississippi,
or in the various port facilities of various Honduran fruit companies. The
work they found always drew on their special skill as seamen.
THE CULTURAL CAPITAL OF PASTORAL NOMADS

The concept of cultural capital can also be applied to the pastoral nomads of
the arid zone of the Old World as well. Here the situation is the following.
Among pastoralists, the primarily form of wealth consist of livestock.
Wealth in this form is especially easy to steal. A consequence is that in so-
cieties that are pastoral and have no central authority to enforce law and
order, livestock theft and livestock raiding are especially common. Pastoral-
ists spend a large amount of effort protecting their own herds and, at the
same time, raiding their neighbor's herds.
Livestock raiding was almost a secondary economy in much of the Mid-
dle East before the establishment of effective government control in pas-
toral areas (Irons 1965). Young men in the age range of 18 to 28 have been
observed to be especially drawn to violent and risky activities (Daly and
Wilson 1988) and most probably young men in traditional pastoral societies
found livestock raiding an especially attractive activity. Such raiding could
be a way to raise bridewealth, to overcome the problem of a limited inheri-
tance, or to make up for livestock losses owing to disease of bad weather. It
also could be a means of enrichment for those who had enough but would
like to have more.
Typically livestock raids were conducted against neighboring groups
who were defined as socially distinct from the raiders. This makes good
sense. Stealing from members of ones own community would leave one
with enemies on one's home territory. Also many members of one's own
community would be close kin. It was much better to travel some distance
and rob people to whom one was not related and whom one would not en-
counter on one's home territory. The Yomut Turkmen whom I studied in
Iran in the 1960s and 1970s can serve as an ethnographic example of how
this worked.
The Yomut had a segmentary lineage system (Irons 1975: 39–65) that
defined a nested hierarchy of named groups based on genealogy ranging
from small lineages of a few household to larger descent groups of thou-
sands, and on up to the Yomut as a whole. The smallest subgroups of the
Yomut that were consistently internally peaceful were groups in the size
range (before recent population growth) of about 5,000 individuals (Irons
1975: 61–65). There were eleven of these groups and they occupied strips
of territory about 10 to 30 kilometers across from east to west and about
eighty or more kilometers long from north to south. Most of these territories
included land suitable for agriculture in the southern part of Yomut country
were rainfall was high and land suitable for livestock production in the
northern part of Yomut country were conditions were more arid. Typically
these groups were internally peaceful, but their relations with their neigh-
bors were hostile and included frequent raiding for livestock. More serious
forms of hostile interaction however were usually avoided with these
neighboring groups. Wars aimed at taking territory away from neighboring
groups were rare, and they did not raid one another for slaves. Slave raiding
was conducted further away south of the Elburz Mountains on the Iranian
Plateau. Thus the level of violence was keep at a level that the local people
felt they could live with. At the same time using their segmentary lineage
system as a charter, the eleven distinct tribes would make peace and unite
so that the Yomut as a whole could when necessary deal with a large
external threat such as an attempt by the Iranian Army to impose a degree
of control on the Yomut. As is typical of segmentary lineages, the Yomut
were able to unite groups of various sizes for military purposes. Thus be-
tween the level of the eleven tribes of the Gorgan Yomut, and the Yomut as
a whole there were two groups of intermediate size (the Choni and the
Sherep) who could also unite for military purposes. These groups of inter-
mediate size were likely to be activated when warfare over territory erupted
among smaller groups.
Patterns of raiding neighbors for livestock similar to those described
above for the Yomut were common throughout the arid zone of the Old
World before modern governments were able to take effective control of
pastoral populations. This pattern of raiding had the effect of giving the
young men of each tribe military training. They all became skilled a plan-
ning and executing small-scale military activities. The basic skills of caval-
rymen were thus part of growing up among politically independent tribal
groups in the arid zone of the Old World. This made it possible for tribal
leaders to call on skilled cavalry for military operations for time to time.
Yomut who were basically acephalous usually elected temporary leaders
during times of war. In addition to raiding neighbors for livestock, they
could use their military skills to collect tribute from caravans crossing their
territory or from sedentary village near their territory. They could also ne-
gotiation with state organizations to desist from raiding in return for a pay-
ment from the state to a leader of some tribal unit. These payments were
often described within the state as payment to a militia that would maintain
peace. Also tribal groups on occasion would agree with the state authorities
to supply military unites to be place under state command in return for rec-
ognition of the tribes independence within its own territory. Often tribal
groups occupied border areas and they would be paid by one state not to
raid that state's territory and to concentrate their raiding instead on an en-
emy state. Various Turkmen groups were at times allied with the Khans of
Khiva or Bukhara in this way against Persia to their south. There were
many permutations on what these tribal groups could do with their military
prowess. The could maintain their independence from state control and thus
avoid taxation and conscription, raid neighbors, collect tribute and serve in
effect as mercenaries. Most of these permutations could be found in one
place or another in the arid zone of the Old World. More important, these
groups use their military power to maintain their political independence
from the state.
Also at times, these tribal groups could unite large enough confederacies
to over power states and establish their own leaders as the dynasty of a sed-
entary state. A very high portion of the dynasties in the Middle East were of
nomad origin, or traced their origin to a confederacy of groups that include
a large pastoral nomadic contingent.
However, such dynasties of nomadic origin were usually not able to in-
definitely control the tribal groups from which they sprang (Lattimore 1940
documents this phenomenon for the inner Asian frontiers of China). Once a
dynasty was well situated in sedentary and urban society they tended to lose
contact with their tribal allies and these allies preferred to maintain their
own independence from the dynasties they gave rise to. They were also in a
position to prevent state control because of the inherent military advantage.
The cultural capital that developed among pastoral nomads as a result of
their constant involvement in raiding each other for livestock was not some-
thing planned. Rather it was a side effect of the fact that livestock are easy
to steal and the strong temptation to steal animals from those that are not
socially close in a social environment lacking centralized authority to main-
tain law and order. Among pastoral nomads in thinly inhabited arid regions
often the authority of the state was not able to prevent livestock raiding
even if in theory is controlled the area in question. Once the pattern became
well established other institutions, I suggest were built around it. The for-
mation of tribes of a size that allowed self-defense and the defining of a
social and geographic border with neighboring groups whom one could raid
was a natural outcome.
Conventions that limited the cost of such raiding also tended to develop
in many areas. Among the Turkmen the special role of the Ewlad, small
tribes that were putative descendants of the first four Khalifs and who had a
special holy status that made them neutral in all inter-tribal hostilities and
immune from livestock raiding. These groups could travel safely between
hostile groups and often did following raids that were especially successful.
In these cases they would plead on behalf the victims of the raid that a por-
tion of the livestock taken be return since the victims had been impover-
ished. The Ewlad were especially numerous near the no-man's land between
the Yomut and the Goklan, where the social distance between the two very
large genealogical distant descent groups made raiding especially common
and in fact caused the development of a strip of uninhabited territory – a no
man's land – between the two groups.
MILITARY POWER AMONG PASTORAL NOMADS
While I am suggesting that pastoral nomads derived a special set of skills
from the fact that their main form of wealth was easily stolen, there other
factors as well that contributed to their ability to prevent states from con-
trolling them. These were enumerated and in an earlier paper I elaborate on
residential mobility as another source of military power (Irons 1974). In this
same article, I also emphasized the significance for the Yomut of being
situated on the edge of a large desert into which they could retreat and not
be easily pursued by the armies of the sedentary, urban Persian state, and
the segmentary lineage system as a means of organizing their military ac-
tivities including their resistance to state control.
The actual extent to which any particular pastoral population was able to
maintain independence from state control depended on the exact extent to
which it enjoyed the various features above that aided in maintaining inde-
pendence. Some groups were unable to maintain independence from state
control at all and were, in effect, what Salzman call peasant nomads. They
were completely controlled by a sedentary state and usually as a result
eventually ended up as shepherds for sedentary herd owners. Other groups
like the Yomut, and the Teke Turkmen were able at time to maintain com-
plete freedom from state control.
MODERNIZATION
A number of recent historic changes have eliminated the military advantage
of pastoral nomads. These are mostly technological innovations that have
conferred advantages on the armies of states at the expense of nomads. The
first was artillery which nomads could not for the most part maintain. The
second was aircraft which again were available to the military organizations
of states but not of smaller nomadic pastoral populations. In more recent
time, innovations in military technology have changed the balance over-
whelmingly to the favor of sedentary states. The full effect of these innova-
tions has only been felt during the last century.
For a long period of history, pastoral nomads were able to enjoy a mili-
tary advantage over sedentary populations and to maintain a more alternate
to state organization in their own territories. Some times this alternative
organization was hierarchic as were states, but in other case the organiza-
tion of large pastoral nomadic populations was much more egalitarian that
state organization.
When these groups did have hierarchies of chiefs, they still differed
from states in that they lacked bureaucracies, and usually the chief was not
seen as having a right to monopolize the legitimate use of force.
IBN KHALDUN'S SOCIAL LAW
The social law postulated by Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century is
largely correct. It is clearly the case, that, throughout the arid zone of the
Old World before certain technological changes, whenever two armies met
in combat, other things equal, the more nomadic groups would prevail. Ibn
Khaldun attributed their superiority to the reliance on kinship rather that
citizenship in a territorial state as the basis of their solidarity. No doubt their
kinship in the form of a theory of common descent and their cultural homo-
geneity together were an effective source of solidarity. However, on the
basis of the considerations discussed above I think we can identify a num-
ber of other factors that contributed to the superiority of nomadic pastoral-
ists in the military sphere. Other factors, such a residential mobility and the
other features of nomadic societies mentioned above, have been discussed
in earlier publication (Irons 1974; Lattimore 1940). The one that is new in
this paper is the suggestion that livestock raiding provided a kind of mili-
tary training for the young men of nomadic societies. The skills acquired in
such raids can be seen as example of what Thomas Sowell describes as cul-
tural capital.
This process of constant raiding was an almost inevitable outcome of the
fact that livestock are easily stolen and that in thinly inhabited areas state
restriction of this activity is not easily made effective.
NOTES
* First publised in Kradin, N. N., Bondarenko, D. M., and Barfield, T. J. (eds.),
Nomadic Pathways in Social Evolution, Moscow: Center for Civilization and Re-
gional Studies RAS, 2003, pp. 63–72.
1
I use the word ‘tribe’ for groups of this type as a straight-forward translation of
the words I learned for these groups in Iran. For me, ‘tribe’ is a named group with a
political organization separate from the state that allows the group to maintain in-
ternal peace and to organize for military purposes separate from the state. Actually
the word ‘tribe’ is an especially appropriate word for groups of this sort because the
various groups describe in the English translations of the Old Testament as tribes
were groups of this type (cf. the description of ancient Hebrew ‘tribes’ in Friedman
1987). This is a usage of the word ‘tribe’ that is familiar to most speakers of Eng-
lish. A part of the history recorded in the Old Testament is a struggle by the various
monarchies that arose among the ancient Hebrews to supplant the tribes with a state
organization (Friedman 1987). This is a process that was acted out many times over
in the later history of the arid zone of the Old World. Until recent developments in
military technology, pastoral nomadic tribes were especially effective in resisting
the efforts of states to supplant their tribal organization.
2
Theory from evolutionary biology maintains many species of organisms
(including human beings) have an evolved propensity to be more helpful to, and
less competitive toward, close genetic kin (Hamilton 1963, 1964). However, the
kinship Ibn Khaldun was appealing to was not the same thing. Tribes of pastoral
nomads are too large to consist mostly of close kin. Distant kinship should not be
itself be a strong basis for solidarity. What is more likely is that the belief in com-
mon descent and the cultural homogeneity of these groups created a sense of soli-
darity that they described in the idiom of kinship. However, I would suggest that the
real basis of their solidarity was a form of reciprocity enhance by what game theo-
rists describe a hard-to-fake signs of commitment (Frank 1988). Sedentary states
with more cultural heterogeneity and greater differences of wealth were less able to
build solidarity in a similar way.
3
The political organization of tribes in the arid zone of the Old World com-
monly combines a hierarchy of chiefs and a segmentary lineage system. Tribes dif-
fer in the extent to which they emphasize a hierarchy of chiefs versus a system of
segmentary lineages. Some groups are organized mostly around the chiefly hierar-
chy while others are organized almost exclusively by lineages (Salzman 1999).
4
Knowing exactly how to count the tribes of the Gorgan Yomut is a little diffi-
cult. Residence groups and descent groups correspond only imperfectly. Eleven
corresponds to the named groups shown on the map on page 64 of Irons 1979.
Some of the eleven named residence groups are however composites of two descent
groups that are not closely related but have been allied for a long time; others corre-
spond to a single large descent group. Whether to refer to such composite groups as
a single ‘il’ of two ‘ils’ is a matter of context. One hears them describe both way on
different occasions. Fuller details are to be found in Irons 1979: 39-65.
5
See endnote 1. This ‘kinship’ is not the same as that discussed in Hamilton (1963,
1964).
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1988. Passions within Reason. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.
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1967. The Evolution of Political Society: An Essay in Political Anthropology.
Friedman, R. E.
1987. Who Wrote the Bible? New York: Harper and Row.
Hamilton, W. D.
1963. The Evolution of Altruistic Behavior. American Naturalist 97: 354–356.
1964. The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour. (I and II) Journal of Theo-
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1958 [1377]. The mugaddimah: an Introduction to World History. Vol. 1. Lon-
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Irons, W.
1965. Livestock Raiding Among Pastoralists: An Adaptive Interpretation. Pa-
pers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 50: 393–414.
1968. The Turkmen Nomads. Natural History 77: 44–51.
1971. Variation in Political Stratification Among the Yomut Turkmen. Anthro-
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1974. Nomadism as a Political Adaptation: The Case of the Yomut Turkmen.
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1979. Political Stratification among Pastoral Nomads. In Maison des Sciences
de l'Homme (eds.), Production Pastorale et Societe (pp. 361–374). New Rochelle:
Cambridge University Press; and Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme.
1994. Why Are the Yomut Not More Stratified? In Chang, C., and Koster, H. A.
(eds.), Pastoralists at the Periphery: Herders in a Capitalist World (pp. 275–296).
Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.
Lattimore, O.
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20
Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes
in Historical Retrospective*
Anatoly M. Khazanov
Wisconsin-Madison University
Extensive mobile pastoralism, including semi-nomadism and pure pastoral

nomadism in its most extreme forms, is, or rather was, represented by but a
limited number of types that reflect both its geographic diversity and eco-
nomic similarity1. In addition, their formation was also not infrequently
linked to historical circumstances, such as diffusion, borrowing, migration,
etc. Intermediate and marginal forms excluded, the main types of mobile
pastoralism are as follows: North Eurasian type (reindeer pastoralism of the
tundra zone); Eurasian steppe type, which occupied the temperate zone of
the steppes, deserts, and semi-deserts, from the Danube to North China, and
sometimes also the wooded steppe to the north; the Near Eastern type, in-
cluding Northeast Africa; the Middle Eastern type, which in some respects
is intermediate between the Eurasian steppe and Near Eastern types and
embraces the territory of contemporary Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan; the
East African type of predominantly cattle-breeders, who do not use trans-
port animals such as the horse and camel; and the High Inner Asian type with
the pastoralists of Tibet as its principal representatives.
These main types can easily be divided into sub-types, sub-sub-types,
etc., but typologies and classifications are not the subject of this paper,
which is mainly devoted to the pastoralism of the Eurasian steppes, semi-
deserts and deserts. The latter is fairly homogeneous, although it is possible
to single out its several sub-types: The Inner Asian (Mongol), the Kazak-
stan, the Central Asian, the East European (in the ancient and medieval pe-
riods), and the South Central Asian (Turkmen). The differences between
these sub-types, however, are not only economic, but cultural as well. Only
the South Central Asian type stands out on its own. On the territory of
Turkmenistan, the deserts of the temperate zone become the deserts of
Khazanov / Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in Historical Retrospective, pp. 476–500

Khazanov / Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes… 477
the sub-tropical zone (the so-called Iranian-Turanian or South Turanian
deserts); correspondingly, the pastoralism there acquired some characteris-
tics similar to the Middle Eastern or even Near Eastern varieties.
Inasmuch as pastoral nomadism still lacks a generally accepted defini-
tion, I have to start with arguing my own understanding of this phenome-
non. Some scholars pay particular attention to mobility and use the term
‘nomadism’ very broadly. They consider such different groups as wander-
ing hunters and gatherers, mounted hunters (the Great Plains Indians of
North America), all kinds of pastoralists, some ethno-professional groups
like Roma (Gypsies), the ‘sea nomads’ of Southeast Asia, and even certain
categories of workers in contemporary societies (the so-called industrial
mobility) to be nomads. Others perceive nomadism as a sociocultural sys-
tem or primarily in cultural terms of a specific way of living, lifestyle,
world view, value system, etc. These definitions, however, neglect the eco-
nomic side of nomadism, which, in my opinion, is the most important crite-
rion. Above all other characteristics, extensive mobile pastoralism is a spe-
cific type of food-producing economy that implies two opposites: between
animal husbandry and cultivation, and between mobility and sedentism.
The size and importance of cultivation in pastoralist societies, along with
ecological factors, determines the degree of their mobility and may serve as
a criterion for different varieties of pastoralism.
In this case, pastoral nomadism in its most specialized variety is based
on the following characteristics: (1) Pastoralism is the predominant form of
economic activity; cultivation is either absent altogether or plays a very
insignificant role. (2) Pastoralism has an extensive character connected with
the maintenance of herds all year round on free-range grazing without sta-
bles and without laying in fodder for livestock. (3) The pastoralist economy
requires mobility within the boundaries of specific grazing territories, or
else between such territories. (4) All, or at least the majority of the popula-
tion, participates in this mobility. (5) Pastoralist production is aimed at the
requirements of subsistence. The traditional pastoral nomadic economy was
never profit-oriented, although it was often considerably exchange-oriented.
(6) Social organization of pastoral nomads is based on kinship, and, in the
case of the nomads of the Eurasian steppes, and of the Near and Middle
East, also on various segmentary systems and genealogies, whether real or
spurious. (7) Pastoral nomadism implies certain cultural characteristics
connected with its mobile way of life, sociopolitical peculiarities, and some
other factors.
Any specialization implies dependency, and pastoral nomadism is no
exception. It was an innovative solution for assimilating certain, previously
underexploited ecological zones. The emergence of pastoralism, and
later of pastoral nomadism, was a crucial moment in the spreading of food-
producing economies in the arid, semi-arid and tundra zones of the oi-
kumene, because for a very long time they had an advantage there over all
other types of economic activity.
However, the shortcomings of pastoral nomadism are also quite evident.
First, its specialization was principally different from that in industrial and
even in traditional farming and urban societies. This was appreciable al-
ready in the early stages of Near Eastern history (Nissen 1988: 43ff.). Spe-
cialization in pastoral nomadism implied the division of labor between so-
cieties with different economies. The internal division of labor within no-
madic societies was very undeveloped.
Second, unlike many types of farming which had the potential for dia-
chronic technological development, in pastoral nomadism, once its forma-
tion was complete, the reproduction of similar and highly specialized forms
prevailed. Its ecological parameters significantly limited the capabilities for
economic growth through technological innovation; they also placed very
serious obstacles to the intensification of production.
Thus, an increase in productivity of natural pastures requires extensive
development projects that only industrial societies are capable of carrying
out. Even temporary maximization of the number of livestock could be
achieved mainly by increasing the production base through territorial ex-
pansion. As a rule, this was done by military means and/or by turning the
sown into pasturelands. Both ancient and medieval histories are abundant
with examples of such events. However, this extensive way of increasing
production could be neither permanent nor stable. It was too much at the
mercy of the balance of power between nomadic and sedentary societies.
Besides, sooner or later even the enlarged ecological zone of pastoral no-
madism would be completely filled out, which would make further growth
in stock numbers impossible.
There was another reason for the dependence of nomads on the outside
world. Pastoral nomadism as an economic system is characterized by con-
stant instability. It was based on a balance between three variables: the
availability of natural resources (such as vegetation and water), the number
of livestock, and the size of the population, all of which were constantly
oscillating. The situation was further complicated because these oscillations
were not synchronic, as each of the variables was determined by many fac-
tors, both temporary and permanent, regular and irregular. The simplest and
best known case of temporary imbalance was periodic mass loss of live-
stock and consequent famine due to various natural calamities and epizootic
diseases. In other cases, stock numbers sometimes outgrew the carrying
capacities of available pastures. It was just such cyclical fluctuations that
maintained the long-term balance in the pastoral nomadic economy, how-
ever ruinous they might be in the short run. In other words, the balance was
not static but dynamic.
One of the means of overcoming the deficiencies of the pastoral no-
madic economy was the creation of the farming sector. Actually, during
long historical periods, many if not most of those who roamed the Eurasian
steppes were not pure nomads but rather semi-nomads, practicing cultiva-
tion as a supplementary and secondary form of subsistence. However, as
the Soviet ‘virgin lands’ campaign has proven, even in the twentieth cen-
tury, cultivation without irrigation is a risky endeavor in the dry zones and
often results in overexploitation of productive ecosystems. In pre-modern
times, it was even less stable and reliable. Semi-nomadism was unable to
solve the problem of non-autarchy of the pastoral economy. Under this
situation, the nomads needed sedentary societies as a kind of external fund
vital to their survival. They invested little in this fund, but it was indispen-
sable to them when they got an access to its interest, and sometimes even to
its principal. But in order to get an access to this fund, pastoral nomadic
societies had to adapt to external sociopolitical and cultural environments.
An integral part of the nomadic ideologies was the antithesis between
nomadic and sedentary ways of life, which to some extent reflected the dif-
ferences in actual conditions of existence. As a manifestation of the univer-
sal ‘we – they’ opposition on a symbolic level, this antithesis played an in-
tegrating function within nomadic societies and a differentiating one re-
garding the sedentary world. Moreover, it created a negative view of the
sedentary way of life. Nevertheless, historical sources since the very first
mention of nomads make it clear that grains and other farm products
formed an important part of their dietary systems. These sources, as well as
numerous archaeological data, also demonstrate beyond doubt that the no-
mads procured a substantial part of their material culture from sedentary
territories. The economic dependence of nomads on sedentary societies, and
their various modes of adaptation to them, carried corresponding cultural
implications. As the nomadic economy had to be supplemented with prod-
ucts of cultivation and crafts from external sources, so too did nomadic cul-
ture need sedentary culture as a source, a component, and a model for com-
parison, borrowing, imitation, or rejection. Even ideological opposition was
relative. Suffice it to say that nomads never created any world and universal
religion, but made significant contributions to the dissemination of these
religions around the world (Khazanov 1993, 1994a). The nomads under-
stood very well certain social and military advantages of their way of
life. At the same time, they also comprehended that their culture was less
complex, rich and refined than that of their sedentary counterparts. Their
attitudes towards the latter had some similarities with the attitude towards
Western culture of many in the Third World. Experiencing its irresistible
glamour but being outside its socioeconomic sphere they reject it in princi-
ple, but strive to borrow some of its achievements. However, nomads did
not suffer from an inferiority complex and did not resort to terrorism. Bor-
rowings always underwent selection and filtration with regard to their cor-
respondence to nomadic culture as well as to their utilitarian value (Allsen
2001).
This is quite evident with regard to those nomadic states in which new
cultures emerged. Although the nomads, or, to be more precise, their elites,
initiated the formation of these cultures and were their main patrons and
consumers, they were created mainly by specialists from various sedentary
countries: artists, craftsmen, traders, religious preachers, intellectuals, lite-
rati. This is why these cultures were eclectic more than synthetic. Perhaps
they should be called state cultures because they were created to provide
comfort and luxury to ruling nomadic elites and, even more importantly, to
facilitate state management. Since these cultures were by no means ethnic
ones and were quite different from the synchronous cultures of ordinary
nomads, their fate was directly connected with that of the states which en-
gendered them. There was no Golden Horde people, but there was the dis-
tinctive culture of the Golden Horde (Kramarovsky 1991: 256–257). The
cultures of the Saljuq sultanates, of some Mongol states simultaneous with
the Golden Horde, to a lesser degree of the Turkic qaghanates, especially
that of the Uighur, the still obscure culture of the Khazar qaghanate, and,
perhaps, even the state culture of the Scythian kingdom may serve as ex-
amples.
There is a peculiar tendency in several Central Asian countries, and even
in some republics of the Russian Federation, that has become especially
noticeable in the post-Soviet period. It is connected with the specifics of
their nationalist mythologies, which, like in other countries, spare no effort
in attempting to glorify real or imaginary ancestors (for analysis and criti-
cism of nationalist mythologies in the former Soviet countries, see, for ex-
ample, Shnirelman 1996; Eimermacher and Bordugov 1999; Olkott and
Malashenko 2000). Since these ancestors, or at least some of them, not in-
frequently were nomads, a number of scholars and pseudo-scholars either
tend to overstate their development and achievements, or, on the contrary,
strive to prove that they were no nomads at all, but practiced instead a
mixed economy. To some extent, such attitudes are an overreaction to So-
viet concepts of historical processes that considered pastoral nomadism a
blind alley and praised the forced sedentarization and collectivization of the
nomads in the late 1920s and early 1930s as the only way of their economic
development.
In genuine scholarship there is no need, or reason, for any kind of ideo-
logical speculation and unbridled fantasy. The search for direct ancestors
prior to the early modern period is a hopeless endeavor considering the
specificity of ethnic history in the Eurasian steppes and in the adjacent re-
gions of Central Asia. However, if the glorious ancestors are really indis-
pensable for nation-state building, the nomadic ones are nothing to be
ashamed of.
The importance of pastoralism in general, and of pastoral nomadism in
particular, far exceeds their successful response to the challenge of climatic
and geographic conditions. In the political and ethno-linguistic history of
the Old World their impact is hard to overestimate (Khazanov and Wink
2001). Nomads played an enormous role in radical border changes, the de-
struction of some states and empires and the emergence of new ones. While
it is still unclear whether the original Indo-Europeans were nomads or in-
cipient agriculturalists, the spread of Semitic languages, of the languages of
the Iranian branch of the Indo-European linguistic family, of many Altaic
languages, especially the Turkic ones, and, apparently, of some African
languages, i.e. Nilotic, was certainly connected with the migrations, con-
quests, and/or political dominance of the pastoralists and nomads. In some
periods, the nomads served as organizers of and intermediaries in cultural
exchange between different sedentary societies. Their contribution to the
transcontinental circulation and transmission of goods and ideas was quite
significant. In this regard, polyethnic and polycultural empires created by
the nomads played a certain positive role (Bentley 1993).
Not only did sedentary peoples influence the cultures of nomads; no-
madic cultures in turn influenced those of their sedentary counterparts. The
invention of, or even more so the spread, of some cultural traits was their
indisputable achievement. Nomadic arms, ornaments, modes of fashion,
and traditions were often imitated in sedentary countries. Among other
things, this was reflected in the phenomenon of post-nomadism. The no-
madic system of values, the way of life, the rules of social behavior and
political traditions were considered prestigious and were imitated in certain
strata of sedentary societies long after the nomads themselves had sedenta-
rized or had ceased to be politically dominating.
Still, the indisputable fact is that in economic respects, the pastoral
nomads depended on sedentary farming and urban societies much more
than the latter on the nomads. Pastoral nomadic economies were never au-
tarkic and could never be so.
The nomads always strove for the acquisition of products from seden-
tary societies by all means possible. It was a matter of sheer survival for
them. This was noticed already by the great medieval sociologist, Ibn Khal-
dun (1967: 122), who wrote:
…The desert civilization is inferior to urban civilization, because not all
the necessities of civilization are to be found among the people of the
desert… While they [the Bedouins] need cities for their necessities of
life, the urban population needs [the Bedouins] for convenience and
luxuries. Thus, as long as they live in the desert and have not acquired
royal authority and control of the cities, the Bedouins need the inhabi-
tants of the latter.
Likewise, the nomads of the Eurasian steppes had to adapt not only to a
specific natural environment but also to external sociopolitical and cultural
environment. Their interrelations with sedentary societies varied from di-
rect exchange, trade, trade mediation and other related services, or merce-
narism, to raids, looting, blackmailing, occasional payments, more or less
institutionalized subsidies, regular tribute extraction, and direct conquests
and subjugations.
Nomadic conquests and their consequences always attracted great atten-
tion. However, a related question, why the nomads with their limited human
and economic resources were, for centuries and even millennia, so strong in
military respects, has not been sufficiently addressed. Each individual case
certainly depended on many circumstances and deserves a special study,
but in general terms the answer seems to be connected with the undevel-
oped division of labor and wide social participation, which provided the
nomads the edge in the military realm. With but few exceptions, in seden-
tary states, the war was a specialized and professionalized sphere of activi-
ties. On the contrary, in nomadic societies, every male commoner (and in
some of their pre-Islamic societies, even some female when necessary) was
a warrior, most of them mounted ones. Only this allowed the nomads, de-
spite their relatively small number, to mobilize sufficiently large armies.
Moreover, their specific way of life, among other things, implied an avail-
ability of a large number of horses and almost natural military training. In
terms of individual skills, only the medieval European knights and the Mid-
dle Eastern mamluks were a match to nomadic warriors; but the training
and military equipment of the latter sometimes reflected nomadic military
traditions (Nicolle 1976; Amitai-Preiss 1995: 214ff.; Smith and Masson
1997: 255ff.).
Thus, the economic and social backwardness of the nomads turned out
to confer military advantages in the interrelations with their sedentary coun-
terparts. Up to modern times, this advantage often allowed them to transfer
these interrelations from the purely economic, or cultural, onto a political
plane. Their military superiority gave them the leverage for political domi-
nation. This was particularly true for the great nomads of the Near and
Middle East and the Eurasian steppes capable of the large-scale intrusions
and conquests so numerous in ancient and medieval history.
There is still one more and very important factor that should be taken
into account in order to understand the functioning of pastoral nomadic so-
cieties. The necessary prerequisites for pastoral nomadism had first been
created by the transition from food-extracting to food-producing economies
usually labeled the Neolithic revolution (Shnirelman 1980; Clutton-Brock
1987, 1989). Both cultivation and animal husbandry contained the potential
for the dissemination with further specialization in different ecological
zones. However, for many millennia after the Neolithic revolution, food-
producing economies in the Old World were usually based on a combina-
tion, although in different proportions, of cultivation and animal breeding.
In my previous publications (i.e. Khazanov 1994: 85ff.; 1990: 86ff.), I ar-
gued that pure pastoral nomadism with complete separation from cultiva-
tion was a rather late development, although its many important technologi-
cal preconditions, such as horse riding (Anthony and Brown 1991), had
appeared much earlier. Even in the main indigenous areas of its dissemina-
tion, being the Eurasian steppes and the Near East, it emerged only around
the turn of the second millennium B.C. (I mean the forms that without dras-
tic modifications continued then to function for three thousand years). In
both areas, it developed from a mixed economy through intermediate forms
of extensive and mobile pastoralism with cultivation as supplementary ac-
tivity. In other areas, pastoral nomadism was formed and spread even later,
under the direct or indirect influence of the already existing forms.
This hypothesis still seems to me the most plausible, but not necessarily
exclusive. Inconclusive as most of the archaeological data are despite the
growing sophistication of their analysis (Bar-Iosef and Khazanov 1992),
they provide some materials for suggestion that primitive forms of pastoral
nomadism could from time to time appear in a few regions of the Eurasian
steppes as early as the Bronze Age, or even earlier (for example, Shishlina
2000). However, these were hardly more than a temporal adaptation to spe-
cific local conditions. Given its disadvantages, pastoral nomadism required
not only a trigger, a special motivating stimulus, to emerge, but also a
favorable external sociopolitical environment. Only in these conditions
could it become a viable economic alternative for extended historical peri-
ods. It seems that these requirements, which made possible a long-term
break of pastoralism from other forms of food-producing economies, were
met only by the end of the second millennium and start of the first millen-
nium B.C.
On the one hand, the desiccation of the climate noticeable at that period
had apparently modified the natural environment and required further spe-
cialization on the part of the pastoral economies. On the other, only from
the first millennium B.C. did the pastoral nomads form the periphery of
sedentary states emerging on the southern borders with the steppe zone.
Only at that time did they acquire their optimal milieu. My point here is that
for the most efficient and long-term historical functioning, pastoral nomads
not only needed simply sedentary societies, but those of a certain develop-
mental level – not primitive and not industrial, but traditional (i.e., pre-
modern or pre-industrial) societies that had already achieved the level of
statehood, such as the ancient and medieval states of the Near and Middle
East, Central Asia, or China.
Primitive societies were unable to supply all the products needed by the
nomads and even less to supply them in sufficient quantity. Considering
their lack of centralized political organization, the collection of whatever
surplus was produced would constitute a serious problem. These societies
could easily be robbed, but not systematically exploited. In the pre-colonial
period, such a situation existed in East Africa. It is hardly accidental that
pastoral nomads there lacked even stable and institutionalized leadership.
Horses and camels might have begun to be used for riding earlier than had
been assumed by scholars twenty years ago or so, but there is no evidence
of mass cavalries before the beginning of the first millennium B.C. After
all, in order to mobilize and maintain them, one should have adversaries
against whom they could efficiently be employed. It is worth remembering
that at the dawn of their history, the Cimmerians and the Scythians, in a
search for such adversaries, had to cross the Caucasus and invade the an-
cient Near East. On the contrary, modern and contemporary states have in
abundance everything that the nomads may dream of. However, they are
much stronger and almost always are on the offensive in their interrelations
with the latter.
Unlike primitive and modern societies, pre-modern states with stratified
social systems provided the optimal environment for pastoral nomads. Not
only did they produce a regular surplus product; they possessed mecha-
nisms for its extraction, distribution, and redistribution. In addition, they
had a fairly developed division of labor, exchange and trade, and a culture,
including the ‘Great Tradition’, on which nomadic cultures might depend.
The gap between these societies and their nomadic counterparts in the an-
cient and medieval periods was not very deep. After all, with the exception
of the reindeer pastoralists of the North and the cattle-breeders of East Af-
rica, pastoral nomadic societies were but varieties of the traditional ones.
This brings me to the specifics of sociopolitical development of the pas-
toral nomads. The Soviet studies of pastoral nomadism, however serious
and important they were in many respects, suffered from one important de-
ficiency. Their fundamental premise was the Marxist concept of universal
and progressive socioeconomic formations. In accordance with this, every
society had to develop in a similar way and in the same direction, and the
nomads were in no way considered an exception. Thus, ideology forced
Soviet scholars to deal with an unsolvable problem: how to prove that the
nomads were developing towards higher socioeconomic systems. This was
difficult to do with regard to many sedentary societies and even whole his-
torical regions; with regard to the nomads this was simply a hopeless en-
deavor, involving a long but fruitless discussion (for one of its last surveys
see Kradin 1992). Few scholars tried to avoid the Marxist dogmas (Khaza-
nov 1975; Markov 1976); many more wrote about nomadic feudalism; oth-
ers about the ‘military democracy’ (using Engels's term) as the develop-
mental level occupied by the nomads; still others imagined a specific ‘no-
madic formation’. There are also scholars who construct a more sophisti-
cated evolutionary sequence: the archaic empires – the barbarian states –
and the early feudal states; apparently in an attempt to prove that the his-
torical development of the Eurasian steppes followed the West European
model (Kljashtorny and Sultanov 2000: 82). The circular pattern for the no-
mads' development was sometimes admitted, since it was too striking to be
ignored. But this was often explained by the fact that the nomadic polities
which succeeded each other in the steppe had a somewhat different ethno-
tribal composition – thus, each time starting the development anew. In spite
of these differences of opinion, the emergence of nomadic statehood was
perceived as a spontaneous process, just as had been prescribed by Marxist
theory. External factors were either played down or completely ignored.
The whole problem, however, is farfetched. It exists only to the unilin-
ear evolutionists and Marxists, whose understanding of historical process is
essentially teleological. At present, only by a great stretch of the imagina-
tion and at the great expense of factual data can one adhere to the antedilu-
vian theory of universal socioeconomic formations. So far, the historical
process has never been universal and unidirectional. In different regions
and in different societies, it took on different patterns, forms, directions,
tempos, etc. As for similarities, they were at least connected as much with
movements of ideas and populations, cultural and technological borrow-
ings, or with forced imposition of external patterns, as with parallel indige-
nous developments. Still, even imitation or imposition of forms and patterns
alien to recipient societies have many limitations and are far from always
successful. This is demonstrated by the difficulties that the process of mod-
ernization, and globalization as its latest stage, are facing in many Third
World and some other countries. There is no reason to assume that in other
periods the situation was any different.
In my opinion, the major units of the historical process were not univer-
sal formations, but cultural regions. These are often called civilizations, but
I am reluctant to use this term because of its semantic ambiguity. It involves
a never-ending discussion about a number of civilizations and the criteria
for their definition. In other words, it involves many speculative and subjec-
tive taxonomic and culturological questions that I prefer to eschew. In any
case, serious long-term regional differences existed and were connected
with many factors of geographic, economic, social, political, cultural, and
many other orders. All major breakthroughs in human history were results
of unique combinations of many and various factors, some of which were
almost accidental. History is not a deterministic project. Actually, one can
observe only a few, if any, laws and regularities in history, and they are
mainly limited to a sequential order (Gellner 1988: 15ff.).
Be that as it may, for almost three thousand years the political develop-
ment in the Steppe region oscillated between similar forms of statelessness
and statehood; this very oscillation was connected not so much with spon-
taneous development, but mainly with the specifics of interrelations be-
tween nomadic and sedentary societies. For these same reasons, the devel-
opment was reversible but not completely circular, since the very character
and peculiarities of the nomadic polities to a large extent depended on the
character of their sedentary counterparts, which were quite different. The
pattern was more or less the same but in the course of history some modifi-
cations and innovations can be traced in the forms of nomadic statehood,
which reflected changes in the sedentary world.
The nomads of the Eurasian steppes were the most successful of all no-
madic conquerors. Their horses trampled the fields of France and Italy,
Syria and Palestine, India and Indochina. Noteworthy but not accidentally,
the level of their social organization was also higher than that of the no-
mads in other regions (one should also take into account that warriors on
horseback are much stronger than those on camelback – Sinor 1972, 1981).
Beginning from the first millennium B.C., fairly big polities appeared to
become quite common in the Eurasian steppes. They may be considered as
a functional, although not structural, analogue of chiefdoms well described
on the example of many sedentary societies. These nomadic polities are
alternatively called ‘tribal associations’, ‘tribal federations’, ‘tribal confed-
erations’, etc. I do not consider these terms sufficiently felicitous, because
most of these ‘federations’ and ‘confederations’ were created by force. But
after all, any terminology is conditional and, therefore, should be a matter
of consent, not debate. Much more important is to understand the nature of
the political organization of these formations.
Archaeological indicators of the emergence of these polities are the very
rich burial mounds which are not infrequently (and not always substan-
tially) called ‘royal’, by analogy with the Scythian ones. In many cases,
archaeological materials alone are insufficient in determining the exact
level of political development of nomadic polities. As a rule, this can be
done only when they are complemented by literary sources, especially if the
latter contain sufficient information on the interrelations between nomadic
polities and sedentary societies. Thus, we may assume with a high degree of
confidence that the Scythians and Hsiung-nu reached the state level, be-
cause we have sufficient knowledge about the economic bases of their
states. But one should be much more cautious with regard to those who left
such burial mounds as the Arzhan, Issyk, Pazaryk mounds, and several others.
Far from all segmentary forms of social organization are egalitarian.
Some of them are asymmetric. Structural relativity and balanced opposition
in them are upset, and a dominant lineage group acquired greater control of
resources and greater power than the others. I call such systems differential
or even stratified, and the latter two were the most characteristic of the no-
mads of the Eurasian steppes. Segmentary systems do not totally preclude
the possibility of the emergence of a central governance agency, but they
place serious obstacles to its functioning and limit the sphere of its activi-
ties. To a large extent, power in nomadic polities was diffused and was
mainly connected with military and managerial-regulatory functions. Corre-
spondingly, their composition was fluid; they were loose and short-lived
except in the cases when they underwent transformation as a result of their
specific relations with the outside world. In other words, internal require-
ments for political integration in nomadic polities were too weak to result in
irreversible structural change. Their leaders seldom acquired the monopoly
of legitimate violence, which, according to Max Weber, is the most impor-
tant characteristic feature of the state. There is even less ground to as-
sume that these polities were based on class divisions (an opposite opinion
was recently put forth by E. I. Kychanov [1997: 5]). Only in a few, rather
rare cases did internal development in nomadic societies lead to the emer-
gence of hereditary (although still reversible) social stratification. By and
large, ‘managers’ in nomadic societies were less expansive than ‘managers’
in their sedentary counterparts. Ordinary nomads might respect their author-
ity, high status, and even hereditary rank, but they were less inclined to pay
for this, especially when regular payments were required. For all these rea-
sons, nomadic aristocracies were not able to create an autonomous power
base within their own societies, which would provide them with sufficient
freedom of action.
To some extent, social stratification in nomadic societies increased
when their aristocracy succeeded in the subjugation of other nomadic
groups. However, such subjugations were seldom stable and lasting. The
history of various Turkic qaghanates proves this unambiguously. Inherent
deficiencies of the pastoral nomadic economy made the production of regu-
lar and fairly large surplus by the commoners very problematic. In cultural
respects, the problem consisted of the same way of life, which implied mo-
bility and, therefore, the possibility of break away and migration to new
territories of dissatisfied groups of nomads. In socio-political respects, the
problem was connected with a lack of strong machinery of coercion. The
example of the early medieval Turks, Mongols, and many others demon-
strates that the mobilization of many nomadic formations was indispensable
for the creation of a large nomadic state. However, only the anticipation of
benefits from joint exploitation of sedentary societies might for a while rec-
oncile subjugated nomadic groups with their dependence on other groups.
In the final analysis, the emergence of nomadic states and their charac-
teristic features, as well as their fate, were connected with specific forms of
exploitation of sedentary societies. As a matter of fact, the very term ‘no-
madic states’ is to some extent tentative. They were nomadic insomuch as
they were founded by the nomads and/or the nomads occupied the domi-
nant positions in them. However, in one way or another, all of them were
based on asymmetric relations with sedentary societies. Otherwise, nomadic
states were but rare and transitory exceptions, if such exceptions existed at
all. The history of nomadic statehood in Central and Inner Asia, from the
Hsiung-nu to the Mongols, and even to the Manchus (the latter were never
pure nomads, but in many respects followed the Mongol political tradition)
illustrates this point very well.
Following Lattimore (1940), Barfield (1989, 1991) has suggested an in-
teresting model for the explanation of cycles of Chinese dynastic history
and nomadic statehood in Inner Asia. He claims that all nomadic empires in
the Mongolian steppes and the Chinese dynasties that managed to unite the
whole country rose and fell together. By contrast, Manchurian states could
develop only in times of anarchy on the northern frontier, when central au-
thority in both China and in the steppe had collapsed. In my opinion, this
model has its weak points along with the strong, and, therefore, needs fur-
ther elaboration. For example, the Hsiung-nu state was founded in 206
B.C., when China was on the brink of civil war; it flourished in the early
Han period, when central power in the country was not yet completely con-
solidated (Yamada 1982). The Turkic qaghanate emerged in the middle of
the sixth century, at least thirty years before China, divided into local re-
gimes, was united again. Barfield's claim that the nomads never played an
important role in the collapse of unified Chinese empires is an overstate-
ment, although their impact was often indirect. Suffice it to mention the
Uighurs' assistance in the suppression of the An Lu-shan rebellion, which
for a time saved the Tang, but certainly ruined the country by turning it into
a huge hunting ground and, thus, contributed to the eventual collapse of the
dynasty (Pulleyblank 1955). It is also hard to agree with Barfield that the
Mongol conquest of China was an aberration of the steppe conquest pat-
terns and was almost accidental. The term ‘aberration’ does not deliver the
causes of the conquest and its success from explanation (on this see Franke
and Twitchett 1994). Still, the historical process of long duration in China
was much more connected with internal rather than external factors. Even
China's repeated failures to deal with nomadic threats should be attributed
to specifics of her socio-political system and political philosophy at least as
much as to the strength of the nomads. On the contrary, the character of
nomadic statehood in Inner Asia and its very existence to a large extent de-
pended on the vicissitudes of the political situation in China.
With a great degree of simplification and schematization one may single
out the two main types of nomadic states according to their relations with
sedentary societies. In the nomadic states of the first type, these relations
were mainly confined to vassal-tribute and other undeveloped and not al-
ways completely institutionalized forms of collective dependence. Some-
times sedentary states continued to exist2, in other cases, nomads and peas-
ants-townsfolk were joined within one and the same state. But even in the
last case their limited integration took place primarily in the political
sphere, without affecting the social and economic foundation of sedentary
societies.
Ordinary nomads in such states remained their main military and so-
cial support. With regard to their own society, or sub-society, the nomadic
aristocracy was positioned as the leading estate rather than as the dominat-
ing class. Correspondingly, redistributive mechanisms continued to func-
tion among the nomads. It is true that in almost all nomadic states of the
first type their own farming and urban sector emerged – in the main, owing
to voluntary or involuntary migrants from the sedentary territories. How-
ever, as a rule, it was too weak to provide for all of their economic require-
ments. Thus, these states could not do without towns, which were centers of
political power and to a lesser degree of handicrafts and trade. Admittedly,
their emergence looks somewhat artificial. It was not so much the state
which existed on their account as that they existed on account of the state.
They perished with the downfall of the states that had brought them into
existence. The fate of Itil, Karabalaghasun, Sarai-Batu, and Sarai-Berke is
very indicative indeed.
The Scythian and Hsiung-nu states, the Turkic qaghanates, the state of
Khitans (Qara-Khitay) in Central Asia, the Mongol Empire under the first
great khans, later the Golden Horde3, and some others, may serve as exam-
ples of nomadic states of the first type. Eventually, they either underwent a
transformation connected with their growing complexity or ceased to exist
when opportunities for the primitive exploitation of sedentary societies di-
minished and vassal nomadic formations broke away. Usually this was fol-
lowed by primitivization of the socio-political order. In more rare cases the
process of sedentarization took the upper hand, especially when the nomads
migrated to other ecological zones. As a result, the society ceased to be
nomadic and for the most part became a farming-urban society. It still could
preserve a significant pastoral sector, but its general development took quite
different directions. The Uighurs ousted by the Qirghiz to East Turkistan
may serve as an example.
The nomadic states of the second type not infrequently were the out-
come of a certain transformation of those of the first type. Among other
developments, it was connected with the integration of nomads, peasants,
and townsmen into a single political system. Most often this happened
when the nomads, after conquering sedentary states, moved onto their terri-
tories. In ancient times, nomadic states of the second type were represented
by the Kushans Empire; in the early medieval period by a number of states
created by nomads in North China in the fourth to sixth centuries; later by
the Khitan and Jürchen states in China, the Qarakhanid state in Central
Asia, and by the Saljuk state in the Middle East; in the Mongol period by
the Yüan in China and the Hülegüid state in Iran; and in the late medieval
period by the Shaybani state in Central Asia.
These states were created by the nomads and were ruled by dynasties of
nomadic origin. Social stratification in them to a certain extent coincided
with economic specialization and ethnic division. These characteristic fea-
tures allow them to be called nomadic. In such states, nomads and the sed-
entary population could even belong to separate sub-societies, but only so-
cially, not politically. The integration process usually started with the dy-
nasty and its immediate entourage; then affected all or part of the nomadic
aristocracy, which became the upper class of the sedentary population, or
one of its upper classes. Political synthesis in these states was somewhat
accompanied by a social synthesis, although in practice the latter was no-
where near always fully realized. Nevertheless, socioeconomic and even
political relations and characteristics of subjugated sedentary societies,
which were more developed than those of their nomadic conquerors, dem-
onstrated a remarkable resilience. In sedentary sub-societies the conse-
quences of nomadic conquest affected mainly the privileged strata. Not in-
frequently, the nomadic aristocracy, or the ruling strata of nomadic origin,
became a landed estate. But more often than not, even the turnover of ruling
elites was not complete, and a certain institutional continuity can be traced
in many cases. In the Muslim countries, it was much easier for victorious
nomads to replace ‘people of the sword’, the military estate of subjugated
countries, than ‘people of the pen’, their bureaucracy. Besides, those no-
mads who converted to Islam, such as the Saljuqs, Qarakhanids, and later
the Shaybanids, never considered, or dared, to encroach upon another group
of sedentary Muslim society: the religious nobility, the ulama, and the Sufi
shaykhs (Bartold 1968). In China, the literati officials survived all nomadic
conquests because they were indispensable for ruling the country. In this
regard, it is worth repeating once more the old and much-quoted aphorism
of the ancient Chinese orator, Lu Tsia, taught to the Great Khan Ögödei,
son and successor of Chinggis Khan, by his Chinese counselor, Yehlu
Ch'uts'ai: ‘Although you inherited the Chinese Empire on horseback, you
cannot rule it from that position’. Ögödei got the message, and allowed Con-
fucian scholars to be drawn into the civil administration (Munkuev 1965).
It seems that the change in the social and economic relations in the sed-
entary societies caused by nomadic conquests was often less drastic than it
is sometimes assumed. A permutation within the existing socio-economic
order was their more frequent consequence than radical transformation.
There are many examples of nomadic conquerors that willingly adopted
institutions of subjugated societies when they were considered expedient.
Thus, the Saljuqs adopted and extended the iqtā system because it facili-
tated their rule over a conquered sedentary population.
The main forms of dependence and exploitation in the nomadic states of
the second type were connected with the relations between the ruling class,
in which the nomadic aristocracy occupied the dominant position, and the
conquered sedentary population, in particular the peasantry. However, the
positions of the rest of the nomads did not remain immutable either, al-
though they never constituted the main class or even a single class or estate.
The nomadic sub-society was becoming more differentiated. The nomads
divided into the privileged, less privileged, and the non-privileged, depend-
ing on their ties with the dynasty and the nomadic aristocracy, their ethnic
and tribal membership, etc. Usually, they formed several intermediary es-
tates and strata, some of which were closer to the ruling class, and others to
the dependent ones.
As the integrative process developed, the nomadic aristocracy, and in
particular the dynasty, had to decide whether they should identify their in-
terests with those of the state as a whole and with the sedentary sub-society,
or to preserve the loyalty of nomadic sub-society and in doing do some-
times act against the interest of the state.
The dilemma was never an easy one, and a consensus was far from al-
ways taken on it, even by various groups of the nomadic aristocracy. As a
result, new conflicts often emerged in states of the second type, for exam-
ple, between the dynasty of nomadic origin and its supporters, on the one
hand, and the traditional nomadic aristocracy, on the other; between differ-
ent groups of nomads; between the dynasty and ordinary nomads, etc.
One of the widespread further developments of these states was their
eventual transformation into sedentary states, in which some nomads
gradually became sedentary, while others little by little turned into a back-
ward social and sometimes ethnic minority. They became encapsulated in
the more developed socioeconomic and political systems. Ottoman Turkey
may serve as an example of such development, but this is already another
story.
In all, the decisive factor in the emergence and functioning of nomadic
statehood was the specific relations between nomadic and sedentary socie-
ties. Still, the internal factor should not be dismissed completely. It was,
however, connected with the remarkable stability and continuity of the po-
litical culture in the Eurasian steppes rather than with the very dubious evo-
lutionary development. This culture was polyethnic and was by no means
confined to individual nomadic polities and states (Golden 1982, 2001;
Trepavlov 1993; Kljashtorny and Savinov 1994; Allsen 1996).
Ancient and medieval contemporaries of the nomads, as well as many
modern scholars, were often astonished by the swift rise of strong nomadic
polities, which seemingly sprung from out of nowhere and almost immedi-
ately initiated military campaigns against their neighbors, both nomadic and
sedentary. Perhaps this would be less surprising if one would take into ac-
count that already in the medieval period, most if not all of the nomads of
the Eurasian steppes were well acquainted with the idea and practices of
statehood. Knowledge, models, symbols, even some traditions of higher
forms of political organization continued to exist, though in their latent or
semi-latent forms, even in those polities that can hardly be characterized as
nomadic states.
Apparently, the original political culture had emerged in the Eurasian
steppes already in the first millennium B.C.4 This polyethnic culture was
represented by different synchronic and diachronic variants, but neverthe-
less bore many similar characteristics across the whole region. Despite
modifications, it also demonstrated remarkable stability. This should not be
too surprising, since the main characteristics of the sociopolitical organiza-
tion of the nomads also had many common and stable features. The politi-
cal culture of the nomads underwent substantial changes only after the cul-
tural space in the Eurasian steppes was fragmented by dissemination of dif-
ferent world religions, especially after most of the nomads converted to
Islam (Cohen 1968), and the Mongols converted to Buddhism. Still, some
of its traits were noticeable even much later (Manz 1989).
The sources of this political culture are far from being completely un-
derstood, and the search for them constitutes an intriguing problem. At the
moment, one may tentatively assume that it was based on the original no-
madic traditions in conjunction with borrowings from political traditions of
various sedentary states and societies which were adapted to nomadic con-
ditions. Likewise, mechanisms of transmission of this culture in different
ethnic and linguistic milieus are not yet sufficiently researched (see, how-
ever, Trepavlov 1993: 31ff.). The culture, however, was quite indigenous.
The sedentary contemporaries of the nomads, and their distant descendants,
might consider them barbarians, but they were rather sophisticate ‘barbari-
ans’. To prove this one may refer to several concepts and practices which
for many centuries have been widespread in the Eurasian steppes. They
included: the notion of the divine mandate to rule bestowed upon a chosen
clan, or even of the divine origin of this clan (Golden 1982, 2001)5, and
translatio imperii – the possibility of transfer of this mandate and, corre-
spondingly, of the legitimate supreme authority from one polity to another;
the notion of charisma – the Iranian farnah, the Turkic qut, the heavenly
ordained good fortune and the aura connected with this fortune (Bom-
baci 1956, 1966; Frye 1989; Gnoli 1990); a quite developed system of im-
perial (royal), noble, and administrative titles6; imperial symbolism, includ-
ing color; elaborate status and rank traditions and practices associated with
crowning, dressing, belting, robbing and headdress; special investiture
ceremonies (Allsen 1997: 85ff.); refugia, sacred territories and cult centers;
the notion of collective or joint sovereignty, according to which a state and
its populace belong not to an individual ruler but to all members of the rul-
ing clan or extended family as their corporate property, and a corresponding
appanage (ulus) system; specific succession patterns based on different
variations of the collateral or scaled rotating system and seniority within a
ruling clan (Fletcher 1979–1980); diets or convocations composed of mem-
bers of the ruling clan, nobles, and worthies, such as the Mongol quriltais; a
partial overlapping of administrative systems with the military organization
(bipartite or tripartite organization of polities, left-right military-political
division, decimal systems); a patrimonial mode of governance that implied
a redistribution of various kinds of wealth and goods among vassals, fol-
lowers, and even commoners; and several other concepts and institutions.
Such was the state of affairs in the Eurasian steppes for approximately
two and a half thousand years. Everything has changed only since the onset
of modern times. The ‘European miracle’, the transition to civilization
based on technological innovations, gradually began to influence the devel-
opment of the sedentary countries of Asia. The nomads, however, remained
the same. The great geographic discoveries and improvements in seafaring
sharply diminished the importance of transcontinental overland trade, as
well as the role of nomads as intermediaries in this trade (Steensgaard 1973;
Rossabi 1989). In Eurasia, caravels, and later steamboats, defeated cara-
vans. The centralized colonial empires of Russia, Ottoman Turkey, and
China created massive regular armies. They were increasingly employing
firearms with ever-growing lethal power (Headrick 1981). Against such
armies, the irregular cavalries of the nomads were ineffective. Bows and
spears were as toys compared to guns and cannons.
The consequences soon followed. Nomads were losing their independ-
ence and had to adjust to new situations beyond their control. Their grow-
ing dependence on colonial powers, and later on national governments, in-
deed on the outside world in general, all of which remained alien to the pas-
toral nomads, had many detrimental effects. It decreased their territories,
disturbed their migratory routes, overstressed their subsistence-oriented
economies, and undermined their sociopolitical organization, ideology, and
political culture. As a result, traditional pastoralism in the Eurasian steppes,
just as everywhere else on earth, cease to exist (Naumkin, Shapiro, and
Khazanov 1997; Naumkin, Tomas, Khazanov, and Shapiro 1999; Humphrey
and Sneath 1996, 1999; Khazanov 1998; Sneath 2000).
Still, climate and environment are not subject to even our post-industrial
civilization. It is worth keeping in mind that pastoralism was originally de-
veloped as an alternative to cultivation in the very regions where the latter
was impossible or economically less profitable. In many of these areas the
situation remains basically the same. In several arid ecological zones, mo-
bile pastoralism, if sufficiently modernized, may retain some advantages in
comparison with other forms of agricultural activity. Soviet communists,
and to a lesser degree their Mongol vassals, have already tried to modernize
it, but in their own characteristic fashion – i.e., by the worst and most inef-
ficient means possible. The results of this are well known. Now the trauma
of the past should be overcome. Now a great deal, if not everything, must
be rebuilt from the bottom up. The time has come to perceive that not only
the politics but also the economics of development are the art of the possible.
Modernization is a beneficial but cruel process. It has its own winners
and losers, but it does not allow anyone to simply sit on the fence. So far,
the post-communist period has not been marked by significant achieve-
ments in the (re)modernization of mobile pastoralism. On the contrary, at
present many tendencies can best be characterized as anti-modern. At the
same time, the traditional pastoralist way of life was destroyed in most
countries of the region, and many characteristic features of the traditional
pastoral culture were probably irreversibly lost. Not ecological and eco-
nomic factors, and not modernization per se, but abusive, corrupt, misman-
aging and exploitative state powers, since the nineteenth century almost
always alien to the pastoralists and detrimental to their interests, have ru-
ined extensive and mobile pastoralism in a region where it thrived for mil-
lennia, all without replacing it with any viable modern type.
At least since the Bronze Age onward, people have tried to predict the
future, but for better or for worse (personally, I think for the better), they
have never succeeded. It is impossible to know what will happen to mobile
pastoralism in the twenty-first century, but at present there appears to be
little cause for optimism.
NOTES
* First published in Kradin, N. N., Bondarenko, D. M., and Barfield, T. J. (eds.),
Nomadic Pathways in Social Evolution, Moscow: Center for Civilizational and
Regional Studies RAS, 2003, pp. 25–49.
1
For more details, see Khazanov 1994; 2000.
2
I want to use this opportunity to dispel one misunderstanding. Barfield
(1989: 7) criticized me for not taking into account that many nomadic states existed
without conquering sedentary regions. I am sufficiently acquainted with the history
of Eurasian nomads to ignore this fact, which I never actually did (see, for example,
Khazanov 1994: 231 ff.). What I held, and still hold, is that in order to exist the
nomadic states had to maintain asymmetrical relations with sedentary societies, i.e.
to be able to exploit them in one way or another.
3
After all, the Muscovite state began its career as a fiscal agent of the Golden
Horde. The Moscow princes were loyal vassals of and collaborators with the khans.
It is due to their obedience more than to any other factor that they were eventually
able to take the upper hand over the other Russian princes.
4
The still-enigmatic animal style, ornamental art with prevailing zoomorphic
designs, may serve as one of its earliest symbolic indicators. The semantics of this
style were apparently fairly complicated, being related to the nomads' aesthetic
concepts, religious beliefs, and system of values. In the context of this paper, it is
important to note that the animal style also had certain political connotations and in
its different varieties was widespread from the territory of contemporary Hungary
to China.
5
Rachelwitz (1973) suggested that the ideology of Heavenly sanctioned su-
preme power was borrowed by the Turks, and later by the Mongols, from sedentary
states. However, it had already been held by the Scythians (Khazanov 1975: 36ff.)
and the Hsiung-nu (Kradin 1996: 70ff.). Therefore, it can be considered common to
the nomadic states. The question of its origin remains open, but it seems that it
might have various sources (Crossley 1992).
6
Remarkably, the Turks borrowed many titles from their non-Turkic predeces-
sors (Golden 2001: 39 ff.).
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21
Nomadic Empires
in Evolutionary Perspective*
Nikolay N. Kradin
Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography, Vladivostok
INTRODUCTION
Social evolution among pastoral nomads has not been studied as well as the
problems of general evolution. In generalizing essays in cultural evolution,
nomads are only touched upon indirectly. The emphasis in these books is
on the evolution of agrarian cultures and civilizations (Sahlins 1968; Ser-
vice 1971; Adams 1975; Johnson and Earle 1987; Earle 1997 etc.). More
attention to this problem was given by Marxist anthropologists (see details
on this discussion in: Khazanov 1975; Markov 1976; Kogan 1980; Halil
Ismail 1983; Gellner 1988; Bonte 1990; Kradin 1992; Masanov 1995 etc.).
Because I have already considered the discussions of the Marxist anthro-
pologists concerning nomadic societies specifically, and have proposed my
interpretation of this problem (Kradin 1992, 1993, 1995a), I will not dwell
on the Marxist approach. Now, my prime interest is in the problem of plac-
ing complex pastoral society within a general scheme of a cultural evolu-
tion.
For years, in anthropology, there has been a tradition of following
G. Spencer in his understanding of social evolution as ‘change from a rela-
tively indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a relatively definite, coherent
heterogeneity, through successive differentiation and integrations’ (Car-
neiro 1973: 90).
As H. J. M. Claessen showed in his brilliant review of neo-evolutionism,
the current concepts of social evolution are much more flexible. It is appar-
ent that social evolution has no specified line. Many channels of evolution
do not cause a growth in complexity. The obstacles in the way of increasing
Kradin / Nomadic Empires in Evolutionary Perspective, pp. 501–524

complexity are simply vast, and in addition, stagnation, decline and even
destruction are just as typical of the evolutionary process as any progressive
increase in complexity or development of structural differentiation. One can
agree with Claessen's characterization of social evolution as a qualitative
reorganization of society from one structural state into other (Claessen
1990: 234).
Nomadic societies are a good confirmation of these ideas. A cyclic
movement among pastoral cultures has dominated over development in
complexity. Nomads have many times united into political formations and
created great empires which have after time disintegrated. The xenocratic
empires of nomads represent the limits reached in the increasing complexity
of pastoral societies. Nomads did not independently evolve beyond this
stage of integration. This was an insuperable barrier determined by the rigid
ecological conditions of arid steppes. Such a view on the essence of no-
madic societies is shared by the majority of nomadologists of different
countries (Lattimore 1940; Bacon 1958; Krader 1963; Khazanov 1975,
1984; Markov 1976; Kradin 1992; Masanov 1995 etc.).
In another short publication, I stated my conclusions concerning no-
madism from the viewpoint of the theory of general evolution (Kradin
1994). I think that three levels of cultural integration of pastoral nomads are
revealed, falling into an order of increasing political complexity as follows:
(1) acephalous segmentary clan and tribal formations; (2) ‘secondary’ tribe
and chiefdom; (3) nomadic empires and ‘quasi-imperial’ pastoral polities of
smaller sizes. A changeover from one level to another could occur in either
direction.
It is the critical peculiarity of nomadic social evolution that transforma-
tion of the political systems did not correlate with other criteria of social
complexity. The political system of nomads could easily evolved from the
acephalous level to more complicated organizations of power and vice
versa, but such formal indicators as increase in population density, complex
technologies, increase in structural differentiation and functional specializa-
tion were instead essentially unchanged. When transforming from tribal
pastoral systems to nomadic xenocratic empires, only a growth in the total
population (due to the addition of conquered populations) takes place. The
political system becomes more complex and the total number of hierarchi-
cal levels increases.
In this paper, I will again discuss the social evolution of the most com-
plex pastoral societies - nomadic empires - despite the fact that my oppo-
nents believe that these empires represent a fortuitous or accidental and
short-lived episode in the history of nomadism (Kalinovskaya 1994). I think
Kradin / Nomadic Empires in Evolutionary Perspective 503
that this approach is incorrect. There were a great many of these ‘chance’
events, and they played too important a role in the cultural evolution of hu-
manity. This was a specific version of adaptation under the extreme eco-
logical conditions. The results of this adaptation were so specific that at-
tempts to include the nomads in general evolutionary schemes (chiefdom -
early state) run into serious problems.
FROM TRIBE TO NOMADIC EMPIRE

Possibly the most intriguing question in the history of the Great Steppe is:
what drove nomads to mass migrations and destructive campaigns against
agricultural civilizations? With regard to this, a great many diverse opinions
have been proposed. These opinions might be classified as follows: 1) di-
verse global climatic changes (drying according to A. Toynbee [1934] and
G. Grumm-Grzhimailo [1926]; humidification according to L. N. Gumilev
[1993: 237–340]); 2) the warlike and greedy nature of nomads; 3) over-
population of the steppe; 4) growth of productive forces and class struggle,
weakening of the agricultural societies in consequence of feudal division
(Marxist conceptions); 5) the need to replenish an extensive cattle-breeding
economy by means of raids on more stable agricultural societies; 6) unwill-
ingness on the side of the settled peoples to trade with nomads (the cattle
breeders had nowhere to sell their surplus products); 7) personal property of
rulers of the steppe societies; 8) ethno-integrating impulses (passionarity
according to L. N. Gumilev [1989]).
The majority of the factors listed here have a certain rationality of their
own. However, the importance of some of them has been overestimated.
So, the present paleogeographical data do not conform to a strict correlation
between periods of the steppe drying (hunidification with periods of de-
cline) and the prosperity of nomadic empires (Ivanov and Vasilyev 1995:
table 24, 25). The ‘class struggle’ thesis concerning nomads has proved to
be erroneous (Markov 1976; Khazanov 1984; Kradin 1992). The role of
demography is not entirely known because the livestock increased faster
than the human population. An increase in livestock has led to destruction
of grasses and crisis of the ecosystem. The nomadic life can, naturally, con-
tribute to the development of certain military characteristics. But the farm-
ers outnumbered them many times over, and they also had an ecologically
complex economy, reliable fortresses and a more powerful handicraft-
metallurgical base.
It seems to me that the following important factors should be taken into
account:
(1) Ethnohistorical studies of the present pastoral people of Asia and
Africa show that the extensive nomadic economy, low density of popula-
tion, absence of a settled way of life do not assume the need to develop any
legitimated hierarchy. Thus, one can assume that a demand in the state sys-
tem has not been intrinsically necessary for nomads (Lattimore 1940; Ba-
con 1958; Krader 1963; Markov 1976; Irons 1979; Khazanov 1984;
Fletcher 1986; Barfield 1992; Masanov 1995 etc.).
(2) The degree of centralization among nomads is in direct proportion to
the extent of the neighboring agricultural civilization. From the viewpoint
of the World-System approach, nomads have always occupied a place of
‘semi-pheriphery’ which has consolidated different regional economics into
a common space (local civilizations, ‘world-empires’). In each local re-
gional zone, the political structurization of the nomadic ‘semi-pheriphery’
was in direct proportion to the size of the ‘core’. That is the reason why, in
order to trade with oases or attack them, the nomads of North Africa and
the Near East have united into ‘tribal confederations’ of chiefdoms, nomads
of the East-Europe steppes living on the margins of the Ancient Rus' estab-
lished ‘quasi-imperial’ state-like structures while, in Inner Asia, for exam-
ple, the ‘nomadic empire’ has become such an important mode of adapta-
tion (Grousset 1939; Lattimore 1940; Barfield 1981, 1992; Khazanov 1981,
1984; Fletcher 1986; Fursov 1988; Kradin 1992, 1996a; Golden 1993 etc.).
(3) Thus, the imperial and ‘quasi-imperial’ organization of the nomads
in Eurasia first developed after the ending of the ‘axial age’ (Jaspers 1949),
from the middle of the First millennium B.C. at the time of the mighty agri-
cultural empires (Ch'in in China, Maur in India, Hellenistic states in Asia
Minor, Roman Empire in Europe) and in those regions first, where there
were available large spaces favorable to nomadic pastoralism (regions off
the Black Sea, Volga steppes, Khalkha-Mongolia etc.) and, secondly, where
the nomads were forced into long and active contact with more highly or-
ganized agricultural urban societies (Scythians and old oriental and ancient
states, nomads of Inner Asia and China, Hunns and Roman Empire, Arabs,
Khazars, Turks and Byzantia etc.).
(4) It is possible to trace a synchronism between the processes of growth
and decline in agricultural ‘world-empires’ and in the steppe ‘semi-
pheriphery’. The Han Empire and Hsiung-nu power appeared over one dec-
ade. The Turkish Khaghanat appeared just at that time when China has been
consolidated under the dominion of the Sui and T'ang dynasties. Similarly,
the Steppe and China entered into periods of anarchy one after another over
a short period of time. When, in China, the sedition and economic crisis
started, the system of remote exploitation of nomads ceased to work, and
the imperial confederation collapsed into separate tribes until peace and
order were reestablished in the south (Barfield 1992).
(5) Besides these general regularities, other more accidental factors
(ecology, climate, political situation, personal features of political leaders
and even luck) have played a part sufficient to determine the course of his-
torical development in each particular case.
There were four variants of the form of power on the steppe. The first
variant represents the classic internal integration of the tribal nomadic eth-
nos into a centralized empire. As a rule, this process was related to the ap-
pearance of a talented political and military figure who succeeded consoli-
dating all the tribes and chiefdoms (=khanates) ‘living behind felt walls’
into a common state (Maotun of Hsiung-nu, T'an-shih-huai of Hsien-pi, A-
pao-ci of Khitan, Chinggis Khan of Mongols). After the consolidation of
the nomads, the ruler must arrange an incoming of surplus product from
without to support the unity of the empire. If he had not succeeded in this,
the empire would have collapsed. As this variant of steppe empire forma-
tion is most often associated with the name of Chinggis Khan in can be
called Mongolian.
The second variant was related to formation, at the periphery of an al-
ready developed nomadic empire, of political consolidation with strong
centripetal tendencies. In the struggle for sovereignty, this union overthrew
its exploiter and occupied its place in the economic and political infrastruc-
ture of a region. This variant describes the interrelations between Turks and
Jou-Jans, Uighurs and Turks, Jurchens (with some reservations because
they are not entirely nomads) and Khitans. We will call this variant Turkic.
The third variant was connected with nomadic migration and subsequent
submission of the farmers to them. In the literature, the opinion has been
formed that this was typical of the origins of nomadic empires. However,
conquest of the great agricultural civilizations was in fact more often ac-
complished by already developed nomadic empires (Khitan, Jurchen, Mon-
gols). The formation of the state T'o-pa Wei was a classic example of this
version of nomadic empire formation (or more adequately ‘semi-nomadic’
or even agricultural-stock-breeding). However this model is found most
often, on a smaller scale, in the form of the ‘quasi-imperial’ formation of
nomads (Avarian, Bulgarian and Hungarian powers in Europe, period of
disturbance of 4–6 centuries in the North China [the ‘epoch of 16 states of
five barbarian tribes’ in Chinese chronicles], Kara-Khitans in East Turke-
stan). We agree to call this variant Hunnian.
Finally, there has been a fourth, quite peaceful variant. It was connected
with the formation of nomadic empires from the segments of the greater
‘world’ empires of nomads existing earlier. There were two such em-
pires: the Turkish Khaghanate and the Mongolian Empire. In the former
case, the empire divided into the East Turkish and West Turkish Khaghan-
ates (later, the Khazar Khaghanate and other ‘quasi-imperial’ formations of
nomads originated based on the West Khaghanate). In the Second case,
Chinggis Khan's empire had been divided among his heirs into the uluses of
Jochi (Golden Horde), uluses of Chaghadai, ulus of Helugu (Il-Khans of
Persia), Yuan Empire (Khalkha-Mongolia and China proper). Subsequently,
the Golden Horde collapsed into several independent Khanates. This variant
may be, for example, called Khazarian.
THE STRUCTURE OF NOMADIC EMPIRE

The Empire is one of the forms of the state. Specific signs of empires are:
1) the presence of large territories; and 2) the presence of a ‘metropolis’ of
the empire and ‘periphery’ subsystems dependent on a ‘metropolis’ (Thapar
1981: 410ff). The fundamental difference between the nomadic empires
was that their ‘centers’ were highly developed only in the military respect
while they fell behind the exploited or conquered territories in social-
economic development etc. and, actually, were ‘peripheries’ and ‘prov-
inces’ in themselves. In this case, the nomadic empire can be defined as
nomadic society organized on the military-hierarchical principle, occupying
a quite large space and exploiting the nearby territories, as a rule, by exter-
nal forms of exploitation (robbery, war and indemnity, extortion of ‘pre-
sents’, non-equivalent trade, laying under tribute etc.). One can identify the
following signs of ‘nomadic empires’: 1) multistage hierarchical character
of the social organization pierced at all levels by tribal and super-tribal ge-
nealogical ties; 2) dualistic (into ‘wings’) or triadic (into the ‘wings’ and
center) principle of administrative division of the empire; 3) military-
hierarchical character of the social organization of the center of the empire,
more often, on the ‘decimal principle’; 4) coachman service (yam) as a spe-
cific way of organizing the administrative infrastructure; 5) specific system
of power inheritance (empire is a property of the whole khan clan, institu-
tion of co-government, ‘kuriltai’); 6) specific character of relations with the
agricultural world (Kradin 1992, 1995a, 1996a, 1996c).
It is necessary to distinguish the classical nomadic empires from 1) the
similar mixed agricultural - pastoral empires in which the nomadic element
played a great role in their history (Arabian caliphate, state of Seljuks, Du-
nai and Volga Bulgaria, Osman Empire) and 2) the ‘quasi-imperial’ no-
madic state formations which were smaller than empires (European Huns,
Avars, Hungarians, Priazov Bulgaria, Kara-kitans, Tatar khanates after the
Golden Horde collapse). Three models of nomadic empires are identified:
1) nomads and farmers coexisting over a distance. The creation of surplus
products by nomads is accomplished through distant exploitation: raids,
extortion of ‘presents’ (actually, extortion; non-equivalent trade) etc. (Hsi-
ung-nu, Hsian-pi, Turks, Uighurs etc.); 2) farmers dependent on nomads;
exploitation form - laying under tribute (Golden Horde, Yuan etc.); 3) no-
mads conquering the agricultural society and moving to its territory. The
robberies and laying under tribute are replaced with a regular taxation of
farmers and townspeople (Kradin 1992, 1993, 1995).
Nomadic empires were organized in the form of ‘imperial confedera-
tions’ (Barfield 1981, 1992). The confederations had an autocratic and state
like look from the outside (they were created to withdraw the surplus prod-
ucts outside the steppe) but were consultative and tribal inside. The stability
of steppe empires has directly depended on the skill of the supreme power
at organizing the production of silk, agricultural products, handicraft arti-
cles and delicate jewels of the settled territories. As these products could
not be produced under conditions of a cattle-breeding economy, obtaining
them by use of force and extortion was the priority task of the ruler of no-
madic society. Being a sole intermediary between China and the Steppe, the
ruler of a nomadic society had a chance to control the redistribution of
plunder obtained from China and, thereby, strengthen his own power. It
allowed him to maintain the existence of an empire that could not exist on
the basis of the extensive pastoral economy.
The chiefs of the tribes which made up a steppe empire have been in-
corporated into the military hierarchy of the ‘hundreds’ and ‘thousands’,
however their internal policy was to a certain degree independent of the
policy of the center. This peculiarity has been thoroughly analyzed by
Thomas Barfield using the example of the Hsiung-nu empire (1981, 1992:
32–84). A certain autonomy of pastoral tribes has been determined by the
following factors: 1) economic independence made them potentially inde-
pendent of the center; 2) basic sources of power (predatory wars, redistribu-
tion of tribe and other external subsidies, external trade) were quite unstable
and outside the steppe world; 3) general armament restricted the possibility
of political pressure upon tribes; 4) for the tribal groupings displeased by a
policy of a Khan, the opportunity of moving to new places, desertion under
the protection of the agricultural civilization or revolt with the aim of over-
throwing the disagreeable ruler have been provided.
For this reason, political relations between the tribes and management
bodies of the steppe empire were not purely autocratic. Supertribal power
was kept by virtue of the fact that, on the one hand, membership in the ‘im-
perial confederation’ provided the tribes with political independence
from neighbors and a number of other important advantages and, on the
other hand, a ruler of nomadic power and his surroundings guaranteed for
the nomadic tribes a certain internal autonomy within the limits of empire.
A mechanism connecting the ‘government’ of the steppe empire and
pastoral tribes was the institution of a gift economy. By manipulating gifts
and distributing them among comrades-in-arms and tribal chiefs, the ruler
of the steppe empire strengthened his potential influence and prestige as the
‘generous khan’. Simultaneously, he has bound the persons receiving gifts
by the ‘liability’ of the return gift. Tribal chiefs receiving gifts might, on the
one hand, satisfy their personal appetites and might on the other hand,
strengthen their intratribal status by a distribution of gifts to fellow tribes-
men or by organizing ceremonial feasts. Besides, receiving a gift from the
ruler, the tribal chief felt as if he also received some part of the ruler's su-
pernatural charisma which contributed additionally to rise of his own prestige.
One can assume that an integration of tribes into the imperial confedera-
tion was performed not only by symbolic exchange of gifts between chiefs
of different ranks and the khan. The same purpose was achieved by inclu-
sion in the genealogical kindred of different stock-breeding groups, diverse
collective arrangements and ceremonies (seasonal meetings of chiefs and
festivals, battues, erection of monumental funeral structures etc.).
A certain role in the institutionalization of the power of the rulers of
nomadic societies has been played by their performance of the functions of
a sacred intermediary between a socium and Heaven (Tenggeri) which
would provide patronage and favor on the side of the otherworldly forces.
Subject to the religious conceptions of nomads, a ruler of a steppe society
(Shan-yu, Khaghan, Khan) has personified a society center and, in virtue of
his divine abilities, performed rituals which should provide prosperity and
stability to the society. These functions were of colossal importance for the
society. Therefore, in the case of natural stress or disease and loss of live-
stock, an unlucky Khan could weaken or lose his charisma. The unlucky
Khan or chief could be replaced in some nomadic societies or even killed.
But ideology has never been a predominant variable in power among the
nomads. The life of the steppe society has been always filled with real
alarms and dangers which have required from the leader active participation
in their overcoming. As a whole, as noted above, the power of rules of the
steppe empires of Eurasia has been largely based on external sources (Kra-
din 1992, 1996a).
SUPERCOMPLEX CHIEFDOM
Could the nomads create their own statehood? How should the nomadic
empires be classified in anthropological theories of political evolution? Can
they be considered states or pre-state formations? These questions are cur-
rently discussed by researchers of different countries and, especially, by
Marxist anthropologists (see details on this debates in: Khazanov 1975,
1984; Kogan 1980; Halil Ismail 1983; Gellner 1988; Bonte 1990; Kradin
1992; Masanov 1995 etc.). It should be noted that for the Marxist theory of
historical progress, nomadism has became the same stumbling-block as the
‘asiatic mode of production’. How could unchanged nomadic societies be
interpreted within a framework of the common marsh of the production
modes? A dialectic theory of social progress assumed, primordially,
changes from lowest economical forms to the highest ones. However, the
economic ‘basis’ of pastoral societies has remained unchanged: it is the
same among the modern Masaai and Arabs as among the ancient Hsiung-
nu. Thus, nomadism drops out of the Marxist dialectics of history. On the
other hand, if the economic ‘basis’ of society didn't change, then the ‘super-
structure’ should be unchanged. But the ‘superstructure’ of the pastoral
nomads didn't remain basis-like persistence. The nomads now have created
giant steppe empires, now have disintegrated to separate Khanates or
acephalous lineage societies and all of this has contradicted the principles
of Marxist theory (Gellner 1988: 93–97, 114).
The advocates of nomadic feudalism and the Engels – Stalin's scheme of
five modes of production ‘connived’ at the difference in economical and
cultural development between nomads and agrarian civilizations, thereby
overestimating the level of the economic ‘basis’ of pastoralism. In these
theoretical schemes , many facts were falsified and fitted to the Procrustean
bed of dogmatic Marxism. So, the erroneous division into ‘early’ (pre-
feudal and slave-owning societies in ancient Orient and West) and ‘late’
(medieval feudal) nomads has arisen.
Advocates of the concept of the pre-class development of nomads sub-
jected to criticism the ‘nomad feudalism’ (Markov 1976 etc.). As ‘true’
Marxists, they nested up on the development level of the economic ‘basis’
of pastoralists. If the ‘basis’ of ancient nomads was not a class one, then the
‘basis’ of the later pastoralists must not be class either. On the other hand,
primitive ‘superstructure’ should be adjusted to primitive ‘basis’. Therefore,
nomads in social evolution have approached at most the late primitive (pre-
class, pre-feudal etc.) stage.
This evolution in the discussions of Russian nomadologists was already
obvious. For example, the analysis of the samples from the ‘Atlas of World
Cultures’ of G. Murdoc indicates that almost all known ethnohistorical no-
mads have not approached the state level and class stratification (see
Korotayev 1991: 157, table XI). But the conclusion relative to the pre-state
nature of all nomads led to underestimating the development level of ‘su-
perstructure’ for a number of pastoral societies – steppe empires. These
empires were also declared pre-state, but was their political organization
really of the same type as that of the Nuers, Gottentots or Kazaks and Kal-
myks?
At present there are two popular groups of theories explaining a process
of origin and essence of the early state. The conflict or control theories
show the origin of statehood and its internal nature in the context of the
relations between exploitation, class struggle, war and interethnic predomi-
nance. The integrative theories were largely oriented to explaining the phe-
nomenon of the state as a higher stage of economic and public integration
(Fried 1967; Service 1975; Claessen and Skalník 1978, 1981; Cohen and
Service 1978; Haas 1982, 1995; Gailey and Patterson 1988; Pavlenko 1989 etc.).
However the majority of nomadic empires can not be unambiguously in-
terpreted as either chiefdoms or states from the viewpoint of either the con-
flict or the integrationist approaches. A similarity of the steppe empires to
the state clearly manifests itself in relations with the outer world only (mili-
tary-hierarchical structure of the nomadic society to confiscate prestigious
product from neighbors as well as to suppress the external pressure; interna-
tional sovereignty, specific ceremonial in foreign-policy relations).
At the same time, as to internal relations, the ‘state-like’ empires of no-
mads (except some quite explainable cases) were based on non-forcible
(consensual and gift-exchange) relations and they existed at the expense of
the external sources without establishment of taxation on the cattle-
breeders. Finally, in the nomadic empires, the main sign of statehood was
absent. According to many current theories of the state, the main distinction
between statehood and pre-state forms lies in the fact that the chiefdom's
ruler has only consensual power i.e., in essence authority, whereas, in the
state, the government can apply sanctions with the use of legitimated force
(Service 1975: 16, 296–307; Claessen and Skalník 1978: 21–22, 630, 639–
640 etc.). The power character of the rulers of the steppe empires is more
consensual and prevented a monopoly of legal organs. Shan-yu, Khan or
Khagan is primarily a redistributor and its power is provided by personal
abilities and know-how to get prestige goods from the outside and to redis-
tribute them among subjects.
For such societies which are more numerous and structurally developed
than complex chiefdoms and which are at the same time not states (even
‘inchoate’ early state), a term supercomplex chiefdom has been proposed
(Kradin 1992: 152). This term has been accepted by fellow nomadologists
(Trepavlov 1995: 150; Skrynnikova 1997: 49) although, at that time, clear
logical criteria allowing us to distinguish between supercomplex and com-
plex chiefdoms had not been defined.
The critical structural difference between complex and supercomplex
chiefdoms was stated by Robert Carneiro in the special paper (1992); he
further develops these ideas in Chapter 3 in Alternative of Social Evolution.
Actually professor Carneiro prefers to call them ‘compound’ and ‘consoli-
dated’ chiefdoms respectively. In his opinion, a difference of simple chief-
doms from compound ones is a pure quantitative in nature. The compound
chiefdoms consist of several simple ones and over the subchiefs of districts
(i.e. simple chiefdoms), the supreme chief is ruler of the whole polity.
However, R. Carneiro pointed out that when compound chiefdoms unite
into greater polities, they rarely prove capable of overcoming the separa-
tism of subchiefs, and such structures disintegrate quickly. He traced a
mechanism of the struggle against structural division using the example of
one of the great Indian chiefdoms inhabited in the 17th century on the terri-
tory of present-day American state of Virginia. The supreme chief of this
polity, Powhatan by name, dealt with the centrifugal aspirations of the
chiefs of the segments by replacing them with his supporters who were usu-
ally his near relations. This imparted an important structural impulse toward
further political integration.
Similar structural principles have been observed by T. Barfield in Hsi-
ung-nu history (1981: 49; 1992: 38–39). Hsiung-nu power has consisted of
a multi-ethnic conglomeration of chiefdoms and tribes included in the ‘im-
perial confederation’. The tribal chiefs and elders have been incorporated
into the all-imperial decimal hierarchy. However, their power was to certain
degree independent of the center policy and based on the support on the
side of fellow-tribesmen. In relations among the tribal members of the im-
perial confederation, the Hsiung-nu Shan-yu has relied upon support of his
nearest relations and companions-in-arms bearing titles of ‘ten thousand
commander’. They were put at the head of the special supertribal subdivi-
sions integrating the subordinate or allied tribes into ‘tumens’ numbering
approximately 5–10 thousand warriors. These persons should be a support
for the metropolis' policy in the provinces.
Other nomadic empires in Eurasia were similarly organized. The system
of uluses which are often known by the Celtic term tanistry (Fletcher 1986),
has existed in all the multi-polities of nomads of the Eurasian steppes: Wu-
sun (Bichurin 1950b: 191), European Huns (Khazanov 1975: 190, 197),
Turkish (Bichurin 1950a: 270) and Uighur (Barfield 1992: 155) Khaga-
nates, Mongolian Empire (Vladimirtsov 1934: 98–110).
Furthermore, in many nomadic empires, there were special functionaries
of lower rank engaging in support of the central power in the tribes. In the
Hsiung-nu empire, such persons were named ‘marquises’ Ku-tu (Pritsak
1954: 196–199; Kradin 1996a: 77, 114–117). In the Turkish Khaganate,
there were functionaries designed to control the tribal chiefs (Bichurin
1950a: 283). The Turk have also sent their governor-general (tutuks) to con-
trol the dependent people (Bichurin 1950b: 77; Taskin 1984: 136, 156).
Chinggis Khan, after the reform of 1206, appointed special noyons to con-
trol his relations (Cleaves 1982: §243).
The nomadic empires, as supercomplex chiefdoms, provide a real model
prototype of an early state. If the population of complex chiefdoms are as a
rule estimated in tens of thousands of people (see, for example: Johnson
and Earle 1987: 314) and if they are, as a rule, ethnically homogenous, then
the population of a multi-national supercomplex chiefdom makes up many
hundreds of thousand and even more people (nomadic empires of the Inner
Asia have amounted to 1–1,500,000 pastoral nomads) their territory (no-
mads, needed a great area of land for pastures!) was several orders greater
than areas needed for simple and complex chiefdoms.
From the viewpoint of neighboring agricultural civilizations (developed
preindustrial states), such nomadic societies have been perceived as inde-
pendent subjects of international political relations and, quite often, as equal
in status polities (Chinese called them go). These chiefdoms had a complex
system of titles of chiefs and functionaries, held diplomatic correspondence
with neighboring countries, contracted dynastic marriages with agricultural
states, neighboring nomadic empires and ‘quasi-imperial’ polities of nomads.
The sources of the urban construction (already the Hsiung-nu began to
erect fortified settlements, while the ‘headquarters’ of the empires of
Uighur and Mongols were true towns), the construction of splendid burial-
vaults and funeral temples for representatives of the steppe elite (Pazyryk-
sky burial mounds al Altai, Scythian burial mounds in Northern Black Sea
Area, burial placed in Mongolian Noin-Ula, burial mounds of Saks time in
Kazakhstan, statues of Turkish anf Uighur Khagans in Mongolia etc.) are
characteristic. In several supercomplex chiefdoms, the elite attempted to
introduce clerical work (Hsiung-nu), in others, the epic history of the peo-
ple was written down in runes (Turks), while there is a temptation to call
some of the typical nomadic empires (first of all, Mongolian Ulus of the
first decades of the 13th century) states. This is, in particular, supported by
the mention of the system of laws (Yasa) in the Secret History of Mongols,
legal organs of power, written clerical work and creation of laws (so called
Blue book - Koko Defter Bichik) and by attempts to introduce a taxation
under Ogodei (Kradin 1995b).
T. Skrynnikova has written an excellent book on the power in the
Chinggis Khan's empire (1997). In that monograph she considers that the
Mongolian empire could not be a state. In a conversation during the Inter-
national Hunnian Congress in 1996 in Ulan-Ude, she told me that my ear-
lier position concerning a pre-class character of the Mongolian empire
(Kradin 1992) seems to her to be more correct. It may be that my later opin-
ion is false. In the future, I intend to make a special study of the evolution
of medieval Mongolian society. However, Skrynnikova's position and mine
are principally similar. The nomadic empires are distinguished from the
settled agrarian states as nomads had no specialized bureaucratic organs and
no elite monopoly of the legitimated application of force.
NOMADIC HINTERLAND AND WORLD-EMPIRE DYNAMICS

In accordance with the World-System approach, the main unit of develop-
ment was a great system which included the groups of polities rather than a
single country. In this group, the ‘center’ (core) is identified which exploits
a ‘periphery’. The core has a higher level of technology and production and
more complex internal structure and gets maximum profit. The centers
pump out the resources of periphery, draw up financial and trading flows,
arrange the economic space of the system (Wallerstein 1974, 1980, 1984;
Ekholm and Friedman 1979; Santley and Alexander 1982; Rowlands, Lar-
sen, and Kristiansen 1987 etc.).
I. Wallerstein identifies three modes of production: (1) mini-systems
based on reciprocation, (2) redistributive World-Empires, (3) capitalist
World-System (World-Economy) based on the commodity and money rela-
tions (1984: 160ff).
The World-Empires exist to exact tribute and taxes from provinces and
captured colonies which are redistributed by the bureaucratic government.
The distinctive feature of World-Empires is the administrative centraliza-
tion, predominance of policy over economy according to Wallerstein, the
compulsory component of the world economy's development is a downfall
of some World-Empires, shift of the development centers and prosperity of
other World-Empires.
However, such an opinion about the evolution of preindustrial systems
would be incomplete. It is necessary to note two important circumstances.
First, in addition to he hierarchical World-Empires, other peer-polity modes
of production. Ancient Greece and medieval Europe served as examples of
the coexistence of multi-polar centers of economy and power (see Ren-
frew and Cherry 1986). Andrey Korotayev has shown that the West was no
exception. In ancient Arabia, several centers and peripheral systems have
coexisted in what he proposes to call ‘multipolity’ (Korotayev 1995, 1996).
Therefore, in the preindustrial period, a division of labor between separate
elements of regional systems could be performed on the basis of different
models of interaction.
Secondly, it is necessary to clarify how many such models and preindus-
trial modes of production (I use here this term as it is understood by I.
Wallerstein) there could, in principle, be? This question was formulated by
Andrey Fursov who moved an emphasis from the traditional Marxist prob-
lem ‘how many modes of production have there existed in history’ to an-
other plane (1989: 298).
Two models of interaction are known: redistributive ‘World-Empires’
and polycentric ‘World-Systems’ (Chase-Dunn 1988). As to the modes of
production, it is more complex. Fursov has created a solid social philoso-
phical theory in which all the main present-day theories were synthesized.
In this opinion, living labor manifests itself in two forms - individual and
collective. The greater is developed production, the more independent is a
collective labor. In preindustrial systems, a relationship of a collective (C)
and individual (I) is fixed in the social organization (Gemeinwesen). Only
three types of relationship are possible: С>I, С=I, С<I. Is correspond to the
‘Asiatic’, ‘Ancient’, and ‘Germanic’ forms of Gemeinwesen identified by
Marx.
On this base, Fursov believes that there can be only three modes of pro-
duction (i.e. models of productions organization): (1) slave-owning – when
each of the citizens combined in a collective (policy) alienates individually
the labor of slaves who have no property (С ∏ I); (2) feudalism – when a
seignior alienates individually the labor of peasants possessing means of
production (I ∏ I); (3) Asiatic mode of production – when a despot and
state alienate the labor of the great mass of the population (I ∏ С). It is ob-
vious that it is the ‘world-empire’ (1989: 298–317).
A loss by a human of individuality in the case of slaveowning and feu-
dalism has an incomplete nature. A peasant has land and tools and in the
slaveowning society a concept of ‘freedom’ and free citizens occurs. In the
east, there is no freedom but there is a ‘general slavery’ (a term which was
evidently borrowed by Marx from Montesqueien). A. Fursov considers that
Gemeinwesen of K. Marx are the stages of the successive liberation of the
man's subject qualities from his collective nature. The world-wide historical
process is developed in two planes: deadlock Asiatic, where the system
dominates the individual and advanced western, where, in each higher so-
cial formation, successive emancipation of the subject is realized. With
formation of the capitalist World-System, the subjective West subordinates
the collectivist East and uses it as a ‘periphery’ (Fursov 1989, 1995).
I would like to change or add a few things to this classification. It is evi-
dent that Fursov's subject and system flows conform to the decentralization
World-Systems and tributary World-Empires. However, this classification
is short of one link: С ∏ С, when one collective exploits another one. I
think this place should be occupied by the nomadic empires. They were
also redistributive societies. But they differed from the agrarian empires
with the ‘Asiatic’ mode of production where a government levied a tribute
and taxes on its subjects, while the pastoral economy of nomads was carried
out within the family-related and lineage groups and based on mutual aid
and reciprocation. Redistribution has only affected the external sources of
the empire's income: plunder, tribute, trading duties and gifts. The nomads,
in a given situation, took the part of ‘class-society’ and ‘state-society’, ris-
ing as a building over the settled-agrarian foundation. For this, the nomad
elite performed the functions of bureaucracy and commanders, while the
ordinary pastoralist made the expansion and repressions. Such a society
might be called xenocratic (Kradin 1992, 1993, 1995a, 1996a, 1996b).
There is some similarity between the xenocratic pastoral polity and ‘Af-
rican’ mode of production of K. Coquery-Vidrovith (1969) as well ‘tribute-
paying’ formation S. Amin (1976: 13–19; 1991). They are made similar by
a dependence of the government on the external sources of subsistence as
well as by the semi-peripheral position in the international division of labor.
The concept of semi-periphery was introduced by Wallerstein to designate
the intermediate zone between the centre and periphery. The semi-periphery
is exploited by the core but itself exploits a periphery as well as being an
important stabilizing element in the world division of labor. I. Wallerstein
argues that the three-link structure is characteristic of any organization, the
transitional link which provides a flexibility and elasticity of the whole sys-
tem (centrist parties, ‘middle class’, etc.) exists always between polar ele-
ments.
The concept of semi-periphery was developed mainly to describe proc-
esses in present-day capitalist World-Systems. In the preindustrial period,
some functions of the semi-periphery could be performed by trading towns-
states of ancient times and the middle ages (Phoenicia, Carthage, Ganza,
Venice, Genoa), militarist states ‘satellites’ arising near the highly-
developed centre of the region (Accad and Sumer in Mesopotamia, Sparta,
Macedonia and Athens, Austrasia and Neistria of Franks state) (Chase-
Dunn 1988) as well as nomadic empires of the Eurasiatic steppes. The
empires of nomads were also the militarist ‘satellites’ of agrarian civiliza-
tion as they depended on a supply of products from there as this process
was figuratively pictured by O. Lattimore (1962): ‘barbarism is a result of
civilization’. However, the nomads have performed important intermediary
functions between regional World-Empires. Similar to seafarers, they have
provided the connection of the flows of goods, finances, technological and
cultural information between the islands of the settled economy and urban
civilization.
However, it would be an error to consider the nomadic empires as repre-
senting the semi-periphery in all senses. The semi-periphery is exploited by
the core whereas the nomadic empires have never been exploited by agrar-
ian civilizations. Any society of the semi-periphery aspires to technological
and production growth. The mobile mode of life of pastoral nomads has not
provided the opportunity to make considerable accumulations (cattle could
be accumulated but its quantity was limited by the productivity of the pas-
tures and this natural ‘bank’ could at any instant go bankrupt due to drought
or snowstorm) and their society was based on the gift economy. All plunder
was distributed by the rulers of the steppe empires between the tribal chiefs
and cattle-breeders and consumed during mass festive occasions. The no-
mads were doomed to remain Hinterland. Only conquest of the core al-
lowed them to become a ‘centre’. But for this purpose it was necessary to
cease to be a nomad. The Great Yeh-lu Ch'u-ts'ai realized this: ‘Although
you inherited the Chinese Empire on horseback, you cannot rule it from that
position’.
There is a close relationship between the prosperity of the agrarian
World-Empire (as well as World-Economy) and the power of nomadic em-
pires which existed at the expense of extortion of a portion of the resources
of the settled town states. In Inner Asia, this correlation is especially clear
for here there are many areas of pasture which made possible the formation
of a large steppe empire from tribes and chiefdoms. I will once again repeat
that the Han dynasty and Hsiung-nu Empire have appeared for one decade.
The Turkish Khaganate arose just as China was united under power of the
dynasties of Sui and, later, T'ang etc. And, in contrast, the periods of crisis
in 4th –5th and 10th centuries in China led to political entropy in the steppe
areas.
It gave ground to the Japanese historian J. Tamura to identity two long
cycles in the history of North Eurasia: (1) the cycle of ancient nomadic em-
pires within the arid zone of Inner Asia (2nd century B.C. – 9th century
A.D.): Hsiung-nu, Hsien-pi, Jou-jan, Turks, Uighurs; (2) the cycle of the
medieval conquest dynasties coming from the forest (Jurchen, Manchuri-
ans) or steppe (Khitans, Mongols) zones (10th century – beginning 20th cen-
tury): Liao, Chin, Yuan, Ch'ing. The societies of the first cycle have inter-
acted with China at a distance whereas the states of the second conquered
the agricultural South and established the symbiotic state structures with the
dual management system and original forms of culture and ideology (1974).
The concept of T. Barfield is more complex. He not only established a
synchrony between the growth and decline of the nomadic empires and
similar processes in China, but noted also that the conquest of China was as
a rule a business of the ‘Manchurian people’. The breakdown of centralized
power in China and in the steppe released the latter from pressure both on
the side of nomads and on the side if Chinese. Manchuria's people realized
from the external pressing have established their state formations and con-
quered the agricultural areas on the South. Especially, Khitan, Jurchen, and
Manchurian have succeeded in conquest. In Barfield's opinion, a cyclic
structure of political relations between people of China, Central Asia, Mon-
golia and Far east were repeated three times for a period of two thousand
years (Barfield 1992: 13 table 1.1).
Both these theories complement each other. The relation between flights
and crises of agrarian World-Empires and the activities of nomads is evi-
dent. In this paper, I pointed out already that the formation of early nomadic
empires (Scythia, Parthia, Hsiung-nu etc.) falls within the final period of the
axial age when the powerful agrarian World-Empires (Ch'in and Han in
China, Persia and Hellenistic states in Asia Minor etc.) are established. The
first global demographic crisis of our millennium (3rd –5th centuries) ob-
served at nearly the same time in different parts of the Old World (Biraben
1979: 13–24) did not by chance coincide with the epoch of the ‘great mi-
gration of peoples’. Notwithstanding the ordinary opinion, the nomads did
not at all seek to direct the conquest of the agrarian territories. They didn't
need this. To rule the agrarian society, the nomads should be ‘dismounted
from the horse’. And only during periods of crisis and collapse of the set-
tled societies, were the nomads forced to enter into closer relations with the
farmers and townspeople (according to figurative note of R. Grousset
[1939] ‘vacuum has sucked in them inside the agrarian society’).
The Sui and, subsequently, T'ang successes caused a new joining up of
all tribes and chiefdoms of Inner Asia in the imperial confederation of
Turks. It is possible that a particular effect on this process was exerted by
regular periods of a moister climate on the Mongolian steppes (Ivanov and
Vasiljev 1995: 205 table 25). The First Khaganate of Turks became the first
true Eurasiatic empire. It connected, through trade routes, China, Byzantia
and the Muslim World. But the unity was fragile. In the short run, the
Khaganate collapsed into western and eastern parts. The Second Khaganate
of Turks and Uighurs was unable to restore unity in Eurasia. As a result of
the next conflict in China and drought in the Mongolian steppes, the peo-
ples of Manchuria – Khitans and Jurchen – began to play the leading part.
The Mongolian storm of the 13th century coincided with a new period of
moistening in Mongolia and the steppes of East Europe (Ivanov and Vasil-
jev 1995: 205 table 25) and with a demographic and economic upturn in all
parts of the Old World and became a culmination of the history of preindus-
trial World-Empires. The Mongols merged a chain of international trade
into the united complex of land and sea routes. For the first time, all great
regional cores (Europe, Muslim area, India, China, Golden Horde) proved
to be united in the first World-System (Abu-Lughod 1989). In the steppe,
similar to fantastic mirages, there arose gigantic cities – centres of political
power, transit trade, multinational culture and ideology (Karakorum, Sarai-
Batu, Sarai-Berke). From this time, political and economical changes in
some parts of the world began to play a much greater part in the History of
other parts of the world.
The existence of the first World-System did not last long. The plague,
the ejection of the Mongols from China and the decline of the Golden
Horde became the most important links of the chain of events that condi-
tioned its downfall. Demographers mark the serious crisis in all its main
sub-centres in the period of 1350–1450 (Biraben 1979). At the beginning of
15th century, the first World-System disintegrated. Tamerlane's desperate
efforts to restore the transcontinental trade met, in the end, with failure. The
Ming resumed the traditional policy of opposing the nomads which resulted
in the regeneration of an older policy of the Mongols' remote control ex-
ploitation of China (Pokotilov 1976). In the new capitalist World-System,
the nomads were allotted quite another position. The machine technology,
fire-arms and new sources of energy have changed the balance to their dis-
advantage. Since that time, the steppe Hinterland has ceased to play any
noticeable role in the dynamics of the World-System processes.
NOTE
FEB RAS, 2000, pp. 274–288.
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22
Mongolian Nomadic Society
of the Empire Period*
Tatyana D. Skrynnikova
Institute of Mongolian, Buddhist, and Tibetian Studies, Ulan-Ude
Scholars have not yet come to a definite answer regarding the absence or
presence of the state among the Mongols. This is an issue under discussion
not only among mongologists but among nomadologists in general (cf.
Kradin 1992). The study of the internal workings of the development of
Mongolian society is not only important in itself, but could also contribute
to refining our typologies of medieval nomadic societies. Applying the
Mongolian data to problem of nomadic empire statehood is very promising,
because these data are better preserved than for any other nomadic structure
of a similar level of complexity. What is more, the respective sources are
rather authentic, as they are frequently simultaneous with the events they
describe, or were composed not long after the relevant events.
I would suggest considering this problem in two aspects: first the ques-
tion of the presence or absence of statehood among the Mongols proper,
and second the problem of the statehood of the Mongol Empire. The Mon-
gol Empire appears to have had certain characteristics of the state (territo-
rial organization, taxation system, and administrative apparatus), but of an
exopolitarian nature, as those institutes were aimed at the exploitation of
the sedentary population of the conquered states – and this should be a sub-
ject of special research. The aim of this paper is to describe the characteris-
tics of the social organization and structure of Mongol society proper at the
peak of its military activity.
The differences among the definitions offered for Mongol political or-
ganization (state, early state, or tribal confederation) stem from different
approaches towards interpreting the term ulus which reflected a certain
level of ethnosocial organization. It is also necessary to mention that most
Skrynnikova / Mongolian Nomadic Society of the Empire Period, pp. 525–535

theoretically orientated scholars use for their study of the Mongol soci-
ety structure European language translations of ‘Secret History’ which no
doubt introduces additional mistakes into the interpretation of relevant
terms. For this study I have singled out a few terms related to the Mongol
social organization and analyzed the relations between them within the texts
in order to determine the relations between the forms and phenomena of
social organization, which those terms denoted.
The most important role appears to have been played by the clan (obog),
affiliation to which was determined by the kinship links expressed through
the term urug. A group of people denoted by this term may exist within the
clan (obog), but may also split from it constituting a new clan. As a part of
a clan, urug denotes a lineage, and as such this term is used most frequently
in the text of the ‘Secret History’. It was necessary to be a kinsman (urug)
in order to have the right to take part in the clan sacrificial ritual at the bur-
ial place. The clan rituals could only be performed by the members of the
respective clans, and the regulation of the performance of such rituals was
one of the clan functions.
The second clan function among the Mongols of this age was, no doubt,
control over exogamy. In addition to the prescribed dual-clan marriage
typical for the pre-Chinggis age, a new form of marriage appeared in the
age of Chinggis Khan. This form broke the duality rule, as wives could now
be taken from the other clans (in addition to the prescribed one). But the
break of the duality and the consequent expansion of marriage links did not
abolish the rule of the clan exogamy - the ban on taking a wife from within
one's own clan. ‘The Secret History’ shows both the change of the Mongol
social structure, and the continuity of the clan function.
One can also trace in ‘The Secret History’ the relation between the no-
tions obog and irgen. This relation is expressed in the fact that the clan be-
comes the basis of another social unit which takes the clan's name. This
form is denoted in the source as irgen, ulus or ulus irgen, where those terms
appear to be virtually synonymous. The use of two different words derived
from the languages of two different linguistic groups (Turkic ulus and
Manchurian irgen) with the same meaning is explained by the complex
polyethnic composition of the Mongols who were in this age at the stage of
active ethnogenesis. In the Mongolian source the term irgen is also used to
denote, for example, the Tatars in general and particular groups of the Ta-
tars, the Mongols and the Kiyats (a part of the Mongols); the forest peoples
in general, or, say, one of these peoples, the Tumats etc. All this testifies
that here we are dealing with a rather typical cross-cultural phenomenon.
E.g., in the Byzantine sources the term ethnos was used to denote both all
the Hunns in general and their parts – the Avars, the Sabirs etc. Herodotus
Skrynnikova / Mongolian Nomadic Society… 527
used the term ethnos both for all the Scythians in general and for separate
peoples living in Scythia. The social unit denoted by the Mongolian terms
irgen and ulus was not a state. Both these terms are very close in their
meaning to the Greek ethnos with its meanings ‘people, ethnic group, tribe’.
The study of the terms irgen and ulus which were used both in the ethnic
and political senses has shown that in Mongol society of this age, political
consciousness coincided with ethnic consciousness, which testifies to the
undifferentiated character of the social consciousness and the pre-state or-
ganization of the Mongol society. The identity of ethnic and political con-
sciousness is witnessed not only by the ethnic/political polysemy of the
above-mentioned terms, but also by the partial identity of their meaning
with the meaning of the term obog.
The taxonomical hierarchy could be presented in this case in the follow-
ing manner: urug (lineage) – obog (clan) – irgen ulus (tribe). In the mean-
time the same ethnic name, ethnonym could be used with any of those
terms and in this way it could be transformed into a politonym, a name of
political entity - as a group of clans evolved from an ethnic linguistic-
cultural entity into a more or less consolidated socio-political entity whose
name was normally derived from the name of the ruling clan. Urug, being at
one time a lineage within a conical clan, could split from it and form a sepa-
rate clan.
The relation between the phenomena denoted by those terms is as fol-
lows: urug is marked by patrilineal kinship and thus can be viewed as a
rather homogeneous structure, obog (the Mongolian clan) was also patrilin-
eal and, hence, apparently homogenous; yet it included some persons who
entered it not having the patrilineal kinship relations with the other clansfolk
(e.g., through marriage), thus this homogeneity was far from being absolute.
Both of these terms denoted first of all ethnocultural entities.
The terms irgen and ulus denoted heterogenous socio-political entities,
whose aristocracy was constituted by the ruling clan, and which also gave
their names to the whole irgen/ulus. The limits of the entities denoted as
irgen ulus were determined not through territorial borders, though these
were relatively clear, but through the individuals who led their constituent
parts. Personal affiliation to such an entity was fixed in the genealogy.
Within one conical clan, relations of domination were structured by the
place of the lineage heads in the genealogical table, whereas special signifi-
cance within the clan belonged to its senior and junior members, which
were marked terminologically in a special way. Within an undifferentiated
society the social structure itself determined the character of the organiza-
tion, as it consisted of taxons which were hierarchically differentiated when
roles of each social unit were determined. Kinship was the main criterion of
the political organization not only vertically (the taxon hierarchy), but
also horizontally (the relations of the ethnosocial units of the same struc-
tural level. The forms of relations typical for such a society – which were
expressed in the anda terms (‘father – son’, ‘senior brother – junior
brother’) – witness to the point that this is a basically stateless organization,
as the relations between ethnosocial units within it were regulated through
the system of kinship terms.
The absence of the formal institutions of political power standing out-
side the clan traditions, of a fixed law system, of a taxation system (the text
of ‘The Secret History’ does not mention the term alba, used later to denote
tax, or any other word with this meaning), as well as the division of Mon-
gols according to clans, and not territory make it possible to denote the
Mongol society of the Empire Period as a supercomplex chiefdom (a proto-
state entity where a particularly important role was played by chiefs with
their military retinue and the council of the ethnosocial leaders – the khuril-
tai).
The supreme ruler contributed objectively to overcoming resistance to
the processes of social consolidation. It seems possible to note the co-
existence of two trends: 1) the liquidation of those chiefs who opposed the
political centralization process; the use by the new leader in his administra-
tion of the already existing clan system and the mechanisms stemming from
the clan-communal tradition, where even the so-called military ‘decimal’
system dubbed the clan one and did not reflect the actual number of the
warriors. Typologically speaking in this period of the Mongol politogenesis
one observes a combination of two directions: a) the military approach to
politogenesis when power was seized by military leaders on the basis of a
military democracy and military retinue, and b) the aristocratic approach
when power was concentrated by the traditional tribal leaders (Kubbel
1988: 134–136). Kubbel's classification seems to be identical with Weber's
idea of the charismatic and traditional forms of domination.
Both types of power relations – traditional and charismatic – were re-
flected in the division of the Mongol rulers in two groups. The first group
consisted of the hereditary aristocracy – beki, ebugen, ecige etc; The second
included those political leaders who achieved political power because of
their personal qualities – khan, ba'atur, mergen etc. However there was no
sharp distinction between those two groups, first of all because all the rulers
where leaders through their possession of charisma. The difference was that
the rulers of the first type inherited the charisma as clan elders descending
from the ancestor chosen by Heaven, whereas leaders of the second type
started new lines of power inheritance, though they often belonged to the
collateral branches of the same genealogy, being descendants of the clan
founder, but not the senior one. In their turn they fixed their rights in the
traditional way, through genealogies; thus for purposes of the justification
of one's right to rule, two types of legitimization were used, traditional and
charismatic.
A special place in the military hierarchy belonged to the possessor of the
title khan. At the beginning of the epoch of instability and active ethnopoli-
tical reconstruction, this title was a marker of the supreme power within the
Confederation, determined through election of the supreme leader by the
council of the Confederation leaders, with the monopolization of the su-
preme power by one clan (the one of Chinggis Khan). It then becomes he-
reditary and acquires a dynastic character, as the reign of Chinggis Khan
descendants continues up to the 20th century. The right to rule which be-
longed to them was confirmed by genealogy that sometimes might have
been fictive, as with Dayan Khan who led the Mongols in the 15th century.
The affiliation to the clan of Chinggis Khan (‘the Golden Clan’) was deter-
mined not only by transmission of the supreme power within the Confed-
eration according to the right of primogeniture with the inheritance of the
title khan/khaghan, but also through the marking of their members (till the
20th century) with the title Taiji.
An important role in the power structure of Mongol society was played
by the Council – khuriltai. In the 12th century this was the meeting of con-
federation leaders on a supratribal level, and was at first conducted in order
to elect the supreme leader of the confederation, whose role became more
and more important with the expansion of conquests. With the growth of
Chinggis Khan's power, and later that of his descendants, khuriltai was
transformed into a sort of ‘family council’ including the members of the
ruling lineage and their military retinue (nukers) who were summoned for
the enthronement of the new supreme leader or to choose the direction of a
new military campaign. The annual meetings of the members of the ruling
lineage (or the conic clan as a whole) for the performance of the New Year
rites were also called khuriltai. The chief stood out of the society as its
manifestation, concentrating within himself the relation of this society to its
land and ancestors who secured its well-being and was responsible for it
flourishing. That is why it is especially important to study the role of the
political leader in the ritual life of the society.
First of all it seems necessary to mention that the rituals were of two
types: stabilizing rituals (‘rituals of beginning’) and corrective rituals. The
rituals of the second type were performed by the black shaman, whereas the
rituals of the first (most socially significant) type could be performed by
various persons even within one ethnic group. One can trace the Mongol
world's characteristic division into the West and the East Areas up to the 1st
millennium B.C. when the border between two Areas ran along Khan-
gai. One finds that burial mound culture connected with Europeoids to the
west of it, while the culture of the slab burials, ‘Deer Stones’ and hereksurs
was connected with the Mongoloids to the east. This division seems to re-
main in the traditional culture of the Mongol peoples up to the present as
regards rituals and their performers. Within the Eastern Mongolian tradition
(as in the East Asian tradition in general) the khan combines political and
ritual functions, i.e. the secular leader performs the most socially significant
rituals, which distinguish this from the West Asian tradition where one ob-
serves a division of functions (cf. e.g., brahmans versus kshatris). The same
could be traced in the East Mongolian and East Buryatian traditions where
the ritual function is separated from the political, and is performed by the
white shaman. The ruler performed regular ‘center reproducing’ rituals - the
enthronement, the New Year, summer and autumn taylgans. All the above-
mentioned rituals included the rites connected with the cults of Heaven, the
landowning spirits, the banner, and the fire which also had some relation to
the ancestor cults. These regular rituals had a stabilizing character and rep-
resented a symbolic repetition of the act of creation sanctioning the new
order.
According to Mongol notions the ruler possessing the greatest sacred-
ness played a civilizing role towards the whole world. Such a universality
stemmed from the universality of Heaven whose son he was. This role was
actualized in two important aspects of the ritual. First, the ritual was per-
formed by the secular political leader – the ruler, the leader etc. – of the
traditional or charismatic type. Secondly, the ritual was always performed
in the places which were either considered the center of the world (a certain
mountain, or petroglyph, or tree), or were modeled as such with some spe-
cial attributes (trees stuck in the earth, banner, obo, hitching post etc). In
any case both the natural and artificial center of the world was connected
with the cult of the ancestors who are always situated in the center of the
cosmological model of the world. It is based on the idea that charisma can
be preserved on earth, in the society after the death of its owner, and can
manifest itself in various things – both in the anthropomorphic images
made from various materials – like felt, metal, stone, wood, and in other
ritual attributes – like posts, drums, banners, spears, stones.
One of the Mongolian terms denoting the ruler's charisma is sulde,
which in Mongolian ritual texts is characterized as temur-un qadaqasun
(‘the iron pillar’), or toru-yin qadaqasun (‘the pillar of toru’), i.e. as the
center of the world. Taking into consideration the importance of the notion
of toru and the fact that nobody appears to have paid sufficient attention to
it, I find it necessary to dwell upon it particularly. In ‘The Secret History’
the term is used in the following cases:
§ 121. ‘...for me, who has predicted such a high rank for you’ (Kozin
1941: 107) (toru-yi ji'aqsan gu'un-ni nimayi [Rachewiltz 1972: 51]). My
translation: ‘... for me, for me, for the person who has manifested the High-
est Law for you’).
§ 178. ‘Have I only forgotten the son? I have forgotten the law of truth’
(Kozin 1941: 136) (ko'ub-ece'en qaqacaqu-ju toro-dece qaqacaba [Ra-
chewiltz 1972: 90]). No doubt, the implication is that Wang Khan has devi-
ated from the Highest Law.
§ 208. My translation: ‘I am thinking about the Great Law’ (yeke tore
setkiju [Rachewiltz 1972: 119]). qaqacaqsan ulus qamtutqaqsan-u buta-
raqsan ulus bugutgelduksen tusas-u inu toro setkiju... minu uruq bidan-u
oro sa'uju ene metu tusa kiksen toro setkiju [Rachewiltz 1972: 119–120].
My translation: ‘/While thinking about/ the help in the unification of the
divided ulus, the disunited ulus, I think about the Law...The fact that my
urug is sitting on our throne is /the result of the fact that/ I think of the Law,
which has brought this help’).
§ 216. ‘According to the Mongolian Truth we have a custom of the ele-
vation to the rank of noyan – beki’ (Kozin 1941: 166) (mongqol-un toro
noyan mor beki bolqui yosun aju'ui [Rachewiltz 1972: 125]. My translation:
‘The Mongol Law is that the way of noyan is to become beki’). In this
paragraph yosun and toru are synonyms.
§ 220. ‘But as you insist that you did not dare make any harm to your
khan, then this means that you did not forget the Law, the Great Truth, Yeke
Toro’ (Kozin 1941: 168) (tende tus qan-iyan tebcin yadaqsan yosu yeke
toro-yi setkiju'ui [Rachewiltz 1972: 127]). In this paragraph yosun and toru
are synonyms.
§ 263, which mentions ‘the town laws (toru)’ of the Central Asian cities
(Kozin 1942: 189).
§ 281. ‘/Ugedey is saying/: I recognize my guilt that because of an irra-
tional sense of revenge I destroyed a man, who ... surpassed all in the exe-
cution of the Truth-toru’ (Kozin 1942: 199) (doro kiciegu [Rachewiltz
1972: 174]).
The above-mentioned data show the different meanings of toru. On the
one hand, toru is a synonym of yosun (§§ 216, 220), when both terms de-
note customary law. The use of two terms to denote one notion is explained
by the same cause as in the case of ulus and irgen. In this case toru is a
Turkic word whereas yosun is Manchurian. And the last word has the main
meaning of ‘customary law’. However, on the other hand, toru has a differ-
ent meaning. It seems possible to say that toru is something which is possi-
ble to know, to perceive, to have within (setkiku – §§ 208, 220), it may be
manifested to the others, and in this way the Great Will (Law) is mani-
fested – jiqaqu (§ 121). But within one's activities one might deviate from
the Law – qaqacaqu (§ 178). Thus it is possible to maintain that toru is
what the person must follow in his life, something existing outside his will,
something which is not created by him, but which is given to him from above
and of which he only becomes aware. Even khan does not create toru, but only
follows it. Hence, toru might be rendered as the Highest Law.
It seems that just this meaning of the term may help to understand the
following saying belonging to the Turkic tradition: ‘The state disappears,
/but/ toru remains’ (Trepavlov 1993: 41) and leads one to the supposition
that in the age of Chinggis Khan this term denoted the Law established by
Heaven. Here it seems relevant to mention that in the Ancient Turkic Period
this term was used to render the notion of dharma in Ancient Turkic (DTS:
581). For this context it is important to notice the still sacralized meaning of
the Law which secures the observance of order, rules and norms that in its
turn guarantees the harmony in Cosmos, Nature and Society, and this is
very characteristic of traditional Mongol Society.
The will of Heaven is executed on earth by the supreme ruler (khan).
This relation of the khan with the Highest Law might have been reflected in
the writing of this term in § 281 of ‘The Secret History’ – doro, in tune with
the writing of the word denoting the sacral spear – an attribute of Chinggis
Khan (= an analog of the world tree). The term meaning found in §§ 121,
178, 208, 281 is connected with the markers of the center. ‘Chinggis Khan,
being in the center the Ordos Tumen (which seems to mean the sacred cen-
ter of the Mongols – Ejen-Khoro, where the relics of Chinggis Khan are
stored – T. S.), became the ruler of a multitude of uluses’ (Ordos tumen-
iyen toblen sagugsan, Olan ulus-un ejen bolugsan Cinggis-qagan’
[Rintchen 1959: 67]).
The study of ritual texts also confirms my supposition on the special
place of toru in the Mongol perception of the functioning of society. First of
all toru is connected with those attributes which mark the center: ‘the four-
koltu black banner which has become the iron pillar, the bedrock of toru’
(toru-yin tusiy-e temur-un gadagasun bolugsan ... dorben koltu qar-a tug
[Rintchen 1959: 70]); ‘the four-koltu great banner (sulde, cf. tug of the pre-
vious passage – T. S.), which has become the pillar (the mediator having
the functions of the World Tree – T. S.) of toru ... the great sulde (charisma
– T. S.) of the sacred ruler (Chinggis Khan – T. S.), which became the bed-
rock of toru, which has materialized in the nine-koltu white banner (toru-
yin gadagasun bolugsan... bey-e-yin tusig bolugsan... dorben koltu yeke
qar-a sulde toru-yin tusig bolugsan... yesun koltu cagan tug-iyen bosqaju...
bogda ejen-u yeke sulde [Rintchen 1959: 74]; ‘the sacred queen (bogdo
qatun) ... – the bedrock of toru’ (toru-yin tusiy-e... bogdo qatun [Rintchen
1959: 98]).
To my mind, the connection of toru with the four-koltu banner acting as
its mediator is confirmed by the saying used by now by several ethnic
groups of the Buryat of which I was kindly informed by G. R. Galdanova:
sajin gurban koltei toru dorben koltei (literally ‘religion has three legs, and
toru has four of them’). This implies numerologically the supremacy of toru
over religion. The bedrocks of the religion are Buddha, the teaching and the
community, whereas in the second part of this saying one could see a clear
analogy with the four-koltu banner. In the prayers one can find the follow-
ing synonymous row to the black banner (qara sulde-yin ocig): the pillar of
toru (toru-yin gadagasun) – the bedrock of toru (toru-yin tusig) – the great
charisma (yeke suu jali) (Rintchen 1959: 73–74).
Being situated in the sacred center of the society, toru has some ten-
dency of growing, enlarging, expanding. This is defined as ‘ample happy
toru’ (arbin sayin toru [Rintchen 1959: 87, 102, 106]); ‘growing toru’ (or-
gejiku toru [Rintchen 1959: 87, 99, 101, 103, 106]).
Toru was directly connected with the ruler, who obtained (or accepted)
it. Chinggis Khan is mentioned in the following way: ‘Chinggis Khan who
was born by Heaven, who obtained toru of the peoples of the World’
(delekei-yin ulus-un toru-yi abugsan tngrlig Cinggis-qagan [Rintchen 1959:
63]). The obtaining of toru by the ruler (= Chinggis Khan) let to control
over those people led by the other, defeated ruler: ‘Chinggis Khan ... having
obtained toru of Wang Khan took possession of numerous kereits and ruled
/them/’ (Ong qagan-u toru-yi abugsan, olan kereyid-i ejelen medegsen
Cinggis qagan [Rintchen 1959: 63]). This stemmed from the point that the
ruler's toru was also toru of the respective society: ‘Chinggis Khan who
obtained toru of Dayan Khan, the ruler of the Naimans, who obtained toru
of all the great ulus’ (Naiman Dayan qagan-u toru-yi abugsan Narmai yeke
ulus-un toru-yi abugsan...Cinggis-qagan [Rintchen 1959: 63]).
Thus, the narrative data demonstrate that, according to traditional no-
tions of the medieval Mongols, the ruler's performance of the regulatory
functions within society is ensured by his special relation to toru – the
Highest Law which is manifested by Heaven through him. This form of
legitimization might be denoted as ‘sacred law’ (meaning A of toru) which
regulated the relations ‘society – cosmos’.
The above-mentioned synonymity of toru and yosun leads one to the
supposition that these terms were used to denote the unwritten customary
law (meaning B of toru), the traditions and customs which regulated rela-
tions within the society.
Sometimes (see § 227) the terms of group B are connected with the
terms of the inchoate civil law (group B): ‘decree (jasag, jarlig) issued
in accordance with the tradition (toru, yosun)’. The most widely used term
was jasag. Some of its meanings help to determine the semantic field of the
term: 1) to dispose, to rule; the judicial sphere seems to be implied here as
well, as the legislative, executive and judicial powers were not separated; 2)
administration, supervision, government; 3) command, decree, order. The
last meaning is more or less identical with the term jarlig (for more detail
see Rachewiltz 1993). It seems that the point is not that in the age of
Chinggis Khan a new form of legitimization emerged (Jasag). It is not clear
(and solution of the problem does not appear to be possible for the time
being) if all the decisions of Chinggis Khan in a Code of Laws during his
life, or the Great Jasag were worked out by his descendants in the Near East.
However, it seems possible to maintain quite confidently that this type
of law stemmed from the will of the secular leader, and for the age of
Chinggis Khan this was not a code of laws, worked out by professional ju-
rists on the basis of articulated legal practice. All the extant passages from
Jasag deal with the particular issues being frequently written references to
the working customary law; they did not determine the basic principles of
Mongol social life. To my mind, this is inchoate written law – the ruler's
decrees – the initial stage of the transition from customary law to civil law.
This is connected to one more genre denoted by the notion word (uge)
of the ruler. For example, it was according to the word of Khabul Khan that
Ambaghay Khan became the Mongols' leader (Kozin 1941: 84), and ac-
cording to his word Khutula became the Khan (Kozin 1941: 85).
The actual absence of a state structure among the Mongols led to the
disintegration of the Empire after the death of its founder, because during
his lifetime its different parts did not constitute an economic or political
unity, whereas the social unity was based on the affiliation of the leaders of
the ethnic-political formations to one conical clan. The description of Mon-
gol society of this age shows that contrary to some scholars' insistence upon
the Mongol clan being amorhpic, its difference from the classical clan or-
ganization, it remained a rather homogeneous structure comprising the
blood-kin (outmarried women never became members of their husbands'
clans; they could not take part in clan rituals). The rigorous counting of de-
scent was necessary, because the Mongol clan (obog) performed the cult
functions, and the function of marriage regulator; also the counting of jun-
ior and senior lineages secured the internal stratification of the clans. The
relations of domination were marked through the use of kinship terms (fa-
ther – son, senior brother – junior brother) for ethnosocial group leaders in
those cases when they were not regulated by genealogies, i.e. when they
belonged to different kinship groups. The performance by the clan of its
social and ritual functions was ensured by its leader – the bearer of the clan
charisma, who occupied in the sacral center of the clan community. The
leading role of the clan in the social life of the Mongol medieval society
makes it possible to consider the core of the nomad empires as a supercom-
plex chiefdom (for detail see Skrynnikova 1997 and Chapter 24). When
choosing the term to denote the respective level of political organization I
have decided to avoid the use of the term state, because it appears impossi-
ble to find its main characteristics among the Mongols.
NOTE
FEB RAS, 2000, pp. 294–301.
REFERENCES
DTS – Drevnetyurkskiy slovаr’ [Ancient Turks Dictionary]. Leningrad: Nauka.
Kozin, S. A.
1941. Sokrovennoe skаzаnie: Mongol'skаya hronikа 1240 g. [The Secret His-
tory of the Mongols]. Moscow – Leningrad.
Kradin, N. N.
1992. Kochevye obshchestvа [Nomadic Societies]. Vlаdivostok: Dalnauka.
Kubbel', L. E.
1988. Ocherki potestarno-politicheskoi ethnographii [Essay of Political An-
thropology]. Moscow: Nauka.
de Rachewiltz, I.
1972. Index to the Secret History of the Mongols. Vol. 121. Bloomington: Indi-
ana University Publications.
1993. Some Reflections on Chinggis Qan's jasag. East Asian History 6. Canberra.
Rintchen, B.
1959. Materiaux pour l'Etude du Chamanisme Mongol. Vol. 1. Wiesbaden.
Skrynnikova, T. D.
1997. Kharisma i vlast' v epokhu Chinggis-khana [Charisma and Power During
the Epoch of Chinggis Khan]. Moscow: Vostochnaia literatura.
Trepavlov, V. V.
1993. Gosudаrstvennyy stroy Mongol'skoy imperii XIII v. [The State Structure
of the Mongolia Empire in 13th century]. Moscow: Nauka.

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Editorial material © ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House

THE EARLY STATE, ITS ALTERNATIVES AND ANALOGUES

ISBN 5-7057-0547-6 Copyright © ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House, 2004

Issues of formation and evolution of the early (archaic) state continue

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

Printed and bound by Printing Center, Saratov, Russia

For further information on

Part II: Early States

Part IV. Nomadic Alternatives and Analogues

● Patrick Chabal, Gary Feinman, and Peter Skalník

It has always been peculiar to evolutionists to compare social and biological

Bondarenko, Grinin, and Korotayev / Alternatives of Social Evolution, pp. 3–27

Which of you by taking thought can add one

Carneiro / Was the Chiefdom a Congelation of Ideas? pp. 28–45

CULTURAL MATERIALIST INTERPRETATIONS

THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF IDEAS

THE BASIS OF CHIEFDOMS

IDEOLOGY AS A VALIDATION OF REALTY

THE TWO ASPECTS OF IDEOLOGY

SIMILARITIES OF STRUCTURE AND THEIR MEANING

QUESTIONS, THEMES, HYPOTHESES

Our understanding of the middle range society is largely based on Oceanic

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Claessen / Was the State Inevitable? pp. 72–87

It is recognized widely enough that a pre-state society in order to get trans-

Several dozen A medium early state An analogue of a medium

EARLY STATE ANALOGUES: CLASSIFICATION

ANALOGUES: SOME OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

PRE-STATE, ANALOGOUS AND EARLY-STATE

COMPARING THE EARLY-STATE

Chabal, P., Feinman, G., and Skalník, P.

● Charles S. Spencer and Elsa M. Redmond

● Richard P. Schaedel and David G. Robinson

Proussakov / Early Dynastic Egypt: A Socio-Environmental/Anthropological Hypothe-

‘ARCHAIC’ ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE:

‘HORUS IN A BOAT’: A RELIGIOUS-IDEOLOGICAL FACTOR

ENCLAVE STRUCTURE OF THE EARLY DYNASTIC

TO THE DISCUSSION: KHASEKHEM (WY) – WHO IS WHO?

A SOCIO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL VIEW: GIFT-EXCHANGE

GIFT-EXCHANGE AS A FACTOR OF POLITOGENESIS

Emelianov / The Ruler as Possessor of Power in Sumer, pp. 181–195

Every single primitive society without exception postulates the exis-

Rituals obviate disorder as dikes prevent inundation.

OF KINGS, SPIRITS, AND THE PRIMITIVE MUTUALITY

RELIGION AND POLITICS IN CHINESE SOCIETY

PROTO-BUREAUCRATIC RITUALS AND

OF SPIRITS, CONTRACTS, AND BUREAUCRATS

POLITICAL RITUALS AND RATIONALITY

RITUALISM AND THE ROUTINIZATION OF CHARISMA

KINSHIP AND POLITICAL STRATIFICATION

Charles S. Spencer and Elsa M. Redmond

MONTE ALBÁN: A MILITARIZED POLITY

Although the danzantes inscriptions of MA I are interpreted as depicting

SAN MARTÍN TILCAJETE:

tion data pointing to warfare include a burned wattle-and-daub temple on

LATE MONTE ALBÁN I PHASE (300–100 B.C.)

tions of a residential structure in Area P, located 50 m west of the south-

1990. Borrón y Cuenta Nueva: Setting Oaxaca's Archaeological Record