Chapter 13

Reconstructing Social and Political Systems of the

Past

Outline

• Archaeology and Gender• Archaeology and Kinship• Archaeology and Social Status• Trade and Political Organization

Key Components of Human Society

• Gender - Assigning specific artifacts to men and women is difficult.

• Kinship is a major structuring principle of human social organization, but it leaves ambiguous traces.

• Social status - Many ancient societies may have been organized politically in ways that have no straightforward ethnographic analogies today.

Social Organization

• Rules and structures that govern relations within a group of interacting people.

• Societies are divided into social units (groups) within which are recognized social positions (statuses), with appropriate behavior patterns prescribed for these positions (roles).

Political Organization

• Formal and informal institutions that regulate a population’s collective acts.

• Chiefdom – A regional polity in which two or more

local groups are organized under a single chief.

– Chiefdoms consist of several more or less permanently aligned communities or settlements.

Archaeology and Gender

• Anthropologists distinguish between sex and gender, and between gender roles and gender ideology.

• Sex refers to inherited, biological differences between males and females.

• Gender refers to culturally constructed ideas about sex differences.

Gender

• Humans have two sexes, male and female—but there can be more than two genders.

• Some societies recognize men who live as women or women who live as men as a third gender. – In some Plains Indian tribes,

berdaches were men who chose to live as women, performing women’s roles.

Gender Role and Ideology

• Gender role refers to the different participation of males and females in the social, economic, political, and religious institutions of a cultural group.

• Gender ideology refers to the culturally specific meaning assigned to “male,” “female,” “sex,” and “reproduction.”

Cargo System

• Part of the social organization found in many Central American communities in which a wealthy individual is named to carry out and bear the cost of important religious ceremonies throughout the year.

Archaeology and Kinship

• Kinship refers to the socially recognized network of relationships through which individuals are related to one another by ties of descent and marriage.

• A kinship system blends biological descent with cultural rules that define some people as close kin and others as distant kin.

• Kin groupings condition the nature of relationships between individuals.

Bilateral Descent

• The standard kinship in North America, as well as many other industrialized nations. – An individual traces his or her

relatives equally on the mother’s and father’s sides.

– In bilateral descent, the nuclear family is the important economic unit.

Patrilineal and Matrilineal Descent

Patrilineal Descent

• In patrilineal descent, you acquire your patrilineage from your father.

• Patrilineal societies make up about 60% of the world’s known societies.

• They are associated with hunting-and gathering, agricultural, and pastoral societies.

• They are also associated with warfare with close neighbors.

Matrilineal Descent

• In matrilineal descent, you trace relatives through the female line.

• A matrilineal lineage includes you, your mother, her siblings and her sisters’ offspring, your mother’s mother, etc.

• Matrilineal societies compose only about 10% of the world’s societies.

• They are associated with horticulture, long distance hunting, and/or warfare with distant enemies.

Lineages, Clans, and Moieties

• Lineages are sometimes clustered into clans, a set of lineages that claim to share a distant, often-mythical, ancestor.

• Clans may be clustered into moieties. – Moieties often perform reciprocal

ceremonial obligations for each other, such as burying the dead of the other or holding feasts for one another.

Lineages, Clans and Moeties

Mikea Hamlet Map With Kinship Chart

Residence Patterns

• Patrilocal Residence- A newly married couple live in the groom’s village of origin; associated with patrilineal descent.

• Matrilocal residence - A newly married couple live in the bride’s village of origin; associated with matrilineal descent.

• Bilocal residence - The married couple reside either with the husband’s or the wife’s family.

Status

• The rights, duties, privileges, powers, liabilities, and immunities that accrue to a recognized and named social position.

• Ascribed status - Rights, duties, and obligations that accrue to a person by inheritence.

• Achieved status- Rights, duties, and obligations that accrue by virtue of what a person accomplishes.

Egalitarian Societies

• The number of valued statuses is equal to the number of persons with the ability to fill them.

• No individual wields complete authority over another.

• Members of egalitarian societies generally have equal access to life-sustaining resources.

Egalitarian Societies

• Small-scale egalitarian societies are called bands.

• The key to leadership is experience and social standing; a social position is not inherited in an egalitarian society.

• Gender and age are the primary dimensions of status in egalitarian communities.

Ranked Societies

• Limit the positions of valued status so that not everyone of sufficient talent can achieve them.

• Relatively permanent social stations are maintained with people having unequal access to life-sustaining resources.

• Economies that redistribute goods and services throughout the community, with those doing the redistributing keeping some for themselves.

Death and Social Status

• Mortuary remains are one important source of information on extinct political systems.

• Social ties existed between the living and the once living, and the ceremonial connections at death reflect these social relations.

• Mortuary rituals reflect who people were and the relationships they had with others when they were alive.

Mississippian

• A widespread cultural tradition across much of the eastern United States from AD 800–1500.

• Mississippian societies engaged in intensive village-based maize horticulture and constructed large, earthen platform mounds that served as substructures for temples, residences, and council buildings.

Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

• An assortment of ceremonial objects that occurs in the graves of high-status Mississippian individuals.

• Ritual exchange of these artifacts crosscut the boundaries of many distinctive local cultures.

A Map of the Site of Moundville

Hierarchical Social Clusters in Burials at Moundville

Human Trade Systems: Direct Acquisition

1. You go to the natural source of a raw material.

2. Extract the material3. Exchange goods or services for it

or receive an artifact or raw material as a gift.

Human Trade Systems: Down-the-line Trade

1. People acquire a raw material from people who have immediate access to it.

2. These people trade it to others who live farther away from the source.

3. They may in turn trade it to people living even farther away.

Hopewell

• A cultural tradition found in the Ohio River Valley dating from 200 BC–AD 400.

• Engaged in hunting and gathering and horticulture of indigenous plants.

• Known for their mortuary rituals, which included charnel houses and burial mounds; some central tombs contained exotics.

• They constructed geometric earthworks as ceremonial enclosures and effigy mounds.

Tracing an Artifact to it’s Source

• Energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence (XRF) Uses obsidian’s trace elements to “fingerprint” an artifact and trace it to its geologic source.

• Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) - Determines the trace element composition of the clay used to make a pot to identify the clay’s geological source.

Tracing an Artifact to it’s Source

• Petrographic analysis - Identifies the mineral composition of a pot’s temper and clay through microscopic observation of thin sections.

Quick Quiz

1. Societies are divided into social units within which are recognized _____ with appropriate ____ prescribed for these positions.

Answer: statuses, roles

• Societies are divided into social units within which are recognized statuses, with appropriate roles prescribed for these positions.

2. ___ refers to inherited, biological differences between males and females. _____ refers to culturally constructed ideas about sex differences.

Answer: sex, gender

• Sex refers to inherited, biological differences between males and females. Gender refers to culturally constructed ideas about sex differences.

3. If a newly married couple live in the groom’s village of origin, they are using the following pattern of residence:

A. MatrilocalB. BilocalC. UnilcoalD. Patrilocal

Answer: D

• If a newly married couple live in the groom’s village of origin, they are using the patrilocal pattern of residence:

4. In a ranked society, the number of valued statuses is equal to the number of persons with the ability to fill them and no individual wields complete authority over another.

A. TrueB. False

Answer: B. False

• In a egalitarian society, the number of valued statuses is equal to the number of persons with the ability to fill them and no individual wields complete authority over another.