A Primer on Chiefs and Chiefdoms

A Primer on Chiefs and Chiefdoms PDF Author: Timothy Earle
Publisher: Eliot Werner Publications
ISBN: 1734281847
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Chiefs are political operatives who hold titles of leadership over groups larger than intimate kin-based communities. Although they rule with the consent of their group, they are all about building personal power and respect. Many scholars have viewed chiefs as problem solvers--defending groups against aggressors, resolving disputes, providing support under hardship, organizing labor for community projects, and redistributing goods among those in need. Chiefs do these things, but much of what chiefs do is accumulate benefits for themselves, staying in power and legitimizing control. Anthropological archaeology is well suited to pursue the study of chiefs, their leadership institutions (chiefdoms), and long-term historical processes. The author argues that studying chiefdoms is essential to understanding the role of elemental powers in social evolution. As an illustration, he studies chiefs and their power strategies in historically independent prehistoric and traditional societies and discusses how they continue to exist as powerful actors within modern states.

A Primer on Chiefs and Chiefdoms

A Primer on Chiefs and Chiefdoms PDF Author: Timothy Earle
Publisher: Eliot Werner Publications
ISBN: 1734281847
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Get Book Here

Book Description
Chiefs are political operatives who hold titles of leadership over groups larger than intimate kin-based communities. Although they rule with the consent of their group, they are all about building personal power and respect. Many scholars have viewed chiefs as problem solvers--defending groups against aggressors, resolving disputes, providing support under hardship, organizing labor for community projects, and redistributing goods among those in need. Chiefs do these things, but much of what chiefs do is accumulate benefits for themselves, staying in power and legitimizing control. Anthropological archaeology is well suited to pursue the study of chiefs, their leadership institutions (chiefdoms), and long-term historical processes. The author argues that studying chiefdoms is essential to understanding the role of elemental powers in social evolution. As an illustration, he studies chiefs and their power strategies in historically independent prehistoric and traditional societies and discusses how they continue to exist as powerful actors within modern states.

A Primer on Chiefs and Chiefdoms

A Primer on Chiefs and Chiefdoms PDF Author: Timothy K. Earle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781633600584
Category : Chiefdoms
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
"Chiefdoms are traditional societies that are relevant for our modern world. The author argues that studying chiefdoms is essential to understanding the role of elemental powers in social evolution. As an illustration, he studies chiefs and their power strategies in historically independent prehistoric and traditional societies and discusses how they continue to exist as powerful actors within states. Chiefs are political operatives who hold titles of leadership over groups larger than intimate kin-based communities. Although they rule with the consent of their group, they are all about building personal power and respect. Many scholars have viewed chiefs as problem solvers-defending groups against aggressors, resolving disputes, providing support under hardship, organizing labor for community projects, and redistributing goods among those in need. Chiefs do these things, but much of what chiefs do is to accumulate benefits for themselves, staying in power and legitimizing control. Anthropological archaeology is well suited to pursue the study of chiefdoms, their leadership institutions, and long-term historical processes more generally"--

Etowah

Etowah PDF Author: Adam King
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817312242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
This a reconstruction of the waxing and waning of political fortunes among the chiefly elites at an important centre of the prehistoric world.

Chiefdoms and Chieftaincy in the Americas

Chiefdoms and Chieftaincy in the Americas PDF Author: Elsa M. Redmond
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813016207
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
"Stake[s] out a position that will affect future discussions of the emergence of chiefdoms. . . . promises to greatly increase our understanding of the emergence of inequality and institutionalized leadership positions."--John Scarry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill These compelling essays about Native American chiefs and their rise to power break new ground in the study of chiefdoms and their origins. Archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists bring up to date the information about many complex chiefdoms that flourished throughout the Americas, in which numerous villages and regions were ruled single-handedly by hereditary chiefs. The book's focus on the leadership of chieftains offers a new perspective for examining the development of complex chiefly societies in the Americas. The geographically and chronologically diverse case studies highlight the dynamics of the temporary chieftaincy and the development of permanent, hereditary chiefdoms. Contents Foreword by Neil L. Whitehead Preface by Elsa M. Redmond Introduction: The Dynamics of Chieftaincy and the Development of Chiefdoms, by Elsa M. Redmond 1. What Happened at the Flashpoint? Conjectures on Chiefdom Formation at the Very Moment of Conception, by Robert L. Carneiro 2. Less than Meets the Eye: Evidence for Protohistoric Chiefdoms in Northern New Mexico, by Winifred Creamer and Jonathan Haas 3. In War and Peace: Alternative Paths to Centralized Leadership, by Elsa M. Redmond 4. Investigating the Development of Venezuelan Chiefdoms, by Charles S. Spencer 5. Tupinambá Chiefdoms? by William C. Sturtevant 6. Colonial Chieftains of the Lower Orinoco and Guayana Coast, by Neil L. Whitehead 7. War and Theocracy, by Pita Kelekna 8. The Muisca: Chiefdoms in Transition, by Doris Kurella 9. Social Foundations of Taino Caciques, by William Keegan, Morgan Maclachlan, and Brian Byrne 10. Native Chiefdoms and the Exercise of Complexity in Sixteenth-Century Florida, by Jerald T. Milanich 11. The Evolution of the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom in Virginia, by Helen C. Rountree and E. Randolph Turner III Elsa M. Redmond, research associate in the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, is the author of Tribal and Chiefly Warfare in South America and A Fuego y Sangre: Early Zapotec Imperialism in the Cuicatlán Cañada, Oaxaca.

Ritual and Economy in a Pre-Columbian Chiefdom

Ritual and Economy in a Pre-Columbian Chiefdom PDF Author: Kenneth Hirth
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1646424751
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
This volume examines the organization and ritual economy of a pre-Columbian chiefdom that developed in central Honduras over a 1,400-year period from 400 BC to AD 1000. Extremely applicable and broadly important to the archaeological studies of Mesoamerica, Ritual and Economy in a Pre-Columbian Chiefdom models the ritual organization of pre-Columbian societies across Honduras to expand the understanding of chiefdom societies in Central America and explore how these non-Maya societies developed and evolved. As part of the ritual economy, a large quantity of jade and marble artifacts were deposited as offerings in the ritual architecture of the El Cajón region’s central community of Salitrón Viejo. Over 2,800 of these high-value items were recovered from their original ritual contexts, making Salitrón Viejo one of the largest in situ collections of these materials ever recovered in the New World. These materials are well dated and tremendously varied and provide a cross-section of all jade-carving lapidary traditions in use across eastern Mesoamerica between AD 250 and 350. With a complementary website providing extensive additional description, visualization, and analysis (https://journals.psu.edu/opa/issue/view/3127), Ritual and Economy in a Pre-Columbian Chiefdom is a new and original contribution that employs an “economy of ritual approach” to the study of chiefdom societies in the Americas. It is a foundational reference point for any scholar working in Mesoamerica and Central America, especially those engaged in Maya research, as well as archaeologists working with societies at this scale of complexity in Latin America and around the world.

Making of the World

Making of the World PDF Author: Mahbub H. Khan
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1039185800
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Humanity was once scattered into small-sized, nomadic groups that barely knew each other. Each lived inside its bubble of myths and beliefs. The notion of one single community, related by a common origin and similar aspirations—the world—began to evolve along with the founding of early civilizations. It was an auspicious development that has changed not only the way we live but also how we think. We are the only species probing the mysteries of nature and life. Curiously, the story of how wandering Homo sapiens, who had lived off nature for hundreds of thousands of years, created civilization is less well-known compared to the awareness about biological evolution. If you have wondered what led to the establishment of advanced societies in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Central America, and the Andean Highlands, this book is for you. Making of the World: Sapiens’ Journey from Wilderness to Civilization leads the reader through an absorbing narrative that canvasses the broad sweeps of human history. The book brings readers up to date on trusted research findings in archaeology, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology. In so doing, it dispels the fog of ideologically biased interpretations of history. Students planning to pursue higher education in humanities will find in the book a suitable introduction to a wide range of topics, including the origin of cities and governments, poetry, and philosophy.

Three Great African Chiefs

Three Great African Chiefs PDF Author: Edwin Lloyd
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description


 PDF Author:
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 149624124X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description


Truth and Power in American Archaeology

Truth and Power in American Archaeology PDF Author: Alice Beck Kehoe
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496236653
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Key writings of Alice Beck Kehoe provide students and scholars of anthropology an overview of methodological and ethical issues in Americanist archaeology over the last thirty years.

Mizo Chiefs and the Chiefdom

Mizo Chiefs and the Chiefdom PDF Author: Suhas Chatterjee
Publisher: M.D. Publications Pvt. Ltd.
ISBN: 9788185880723
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The book deals with the cultural heritage of the Mizos. The mizo system of economy was the political and legal system which controlled the social behaviour as well as the military strategies. Personal relationship of the husband and wife, chief and the slaves, father and the children, individual and society that helped flourishing of distinctive Mizo culture in the gerontocratic social order has been depicted in a simple and crisp language.