Forms of Social Organization(Elman Service, 1962)

• Pre-State small-scale and kin-based “simple” societies:

bands and tribes: small-sized (10s to 100s autonomous social groupings, egalitarian, division of labor and status based on age, sex, and personal characteristics or achievements);

• Chiefdoms: medium-sized social formations(1000s to 10,000s), ranked kin-groups based on hereditary status (incipient classes), regionally-organized, integrated (non-autonomous) communities

• State (territory and class-based societies);

Large societies divided into stratified social classes, with centralized government, a ruling elite class, able to levy taxes (tribute), amass a standing army, and enforce law.

The Rise of Social Inequality and Complexity

• “Rank Revolution” • What led to the emergence of social stratification

(rise of social classes) and complexity (regional integration and institutional differentiation within communities)

• How were personal and social autonomy and egalitarian social structures transformed into societies in which people were subordinate to others based on birth and social position, at both community and regional levels

Chiefdoms

• simple “two-tiered” hierarchy: people are either elite or commoner, in part related to hereditary (incipient classes);

• generally based on semi-intensive economies;• various communities integrated into regional society,

typically showing a “bi-modal” or rank-ordered settlement pattern: one or a few large (first-order) settlements, with smaller (second-and third-order) satellite settlements linked to these;

• formal, even full-time specialists: religious specialists, warriors, chiefs, artisans;

http://www.ck/people.htm

Migrations of early Humans intoIsland SE Asia and Melanesia

New Guineatransition to farming

Kuk Swamp, New Guinea• Evidence for transition to agriculture from early hunter-gatherer

societies• forest clearing and possible water management (diversion), ca. 7000

BC• Early Holocene domestication of taro and banana, together with

some varieties of sugarcane and yams• More organized agricultural works, including mounding for cultivation

by ca. 5000 BC and grid-like ditching by 2000 BC, with evidence for more extensive forest clearing related to banana and taro cultivation

• Recent development of more complex systems related to introduction of sweet potato (the “Ipomean revolution”); food for pigs?

• Foundation for surplus production for exchange rituals in pigs and shel+ls (called “Big-man” systems)

Early “Vegeculture”

• In the 1950s, geographer Carl Sauer suggested that early agriculture occurred first in tropical forest regions of SE Asia

• Based on vegeculture, growing not by seeds by plant cuttings, of tropical forest plants, most notably root crops

• Happened along major rivers first, where early settled villages had emerged based on highly productive exploitation of rich aquatic resources

Abelam (Sepik River, New Guinea, decorated yams)

Peter Bellwood

The Austronesians

British-AmericanEnglish

Settlement pausesrelate to developmentof watercraft, notaby

outrigger canoes (pause 1) by 2000 BC

and “double canoe”in Polynesia

(pause 2)

1500 BC

1350-900 BC

500 BC-AD 1

AD 700-1250

Outrigger canoe

Double canoe

Lapita Colonization in Melanesia, 1350-900 BC (Proto-Oceanic Austronesian)

“Tattooed pottery”

Pigs, chickens, yams, dog, taro carried on sailing vessels

Lapita settlements, with distinctive decorated pottery, aretied to their maritime and horticultural economy, which included pigs, fowl, and dogs.

Sites average 1 ha (2.5 acres) with some larger sites (7-8 ha; 18-20 acres).In malaria-free regions, beyond Vanuatu, populations grew rapidly.

GroundstoneBone, andShell Tools

Tikis

Lapita pottery

Tapa (bark cloth)

Polynesian Colonization• Eastern Polynesia colonized ca. AD

700-1250 (according to Bellwood’s chapter)

AD 700-1250

500 BC – AD 1

APS

Ancient Polynesian Society

• The chiefdom was first clearly defined in Polynesia (Sahlins 1958; Service 1962)

• Societies based not only on reciprocity, but on redistribution economies: strategic resources were concentrated in the hands of a few (chiefs) who then redistributed these to lower ranking community members

• APS has its roots in earlier forms of hierarchical social organization in Lapita societies, and later diversified as it spread throughout Polynesia

• In Polynesia, chiefdoms developed complex forms of terrace fields, canal irrigation fields, and other semi-intensive forms of food production (fish ponds, pond fields), marked warfare and conquest, monumental architecture, and, in some cases (Hawaii, Tonga), highly stratified social organization

The Ramage or Conical Clan

• Internally ranked, or hierarchical, social organization based on primogeniture

• Tendency to “ramify,” that is subordinate lineages split off main group to found new communities

Over time this process

results in long-distance

migrations (island-hopping)

that helps explain colonization

of Polynesia by Austronesians

Trade, Interaction, Alliance

Shell necklace, a component of the famous Kula trade ring in the Trobriands

Trobriand (Melanesia) kula trading vessel

The Tui Tonga, the sacred ruler of the 160+ island polity of Tonga (western Polynesia), for instance, engaged in alliance marriages with daughters of ruling lineages from Samoa and Fiji, many hundreds of miles away.

Polynesian ocean map

The Navigators

Diversification: Population, ecology, and social structure (status rivalry)

As colonizing populations adapted to the unique

conditions of different islands, APS groups became increasingly

diversified and distinctive

Marshall Sahlins (1958) proposed that differences in environment and food production strategies were critical to divergent

cultural development through Polynesia(big, high islands supported larger groups, with more

Intensive economies and small, low islands less)

High islands, which provided the richest environments for human

exploitation, are where the largest and most complex

of the Polynesian chiefdoms emerged; Atolls were at the opposite extreme

Bora Bora

Fish Weirs

Marae (general term for shrine/temple in Polynesia)

Stone Houses

Langi: coral slabbed earthenburial mound for Tongan nobles

Mound for Tui Tonga, sacred ruler of Tonganempire (160 islands), at Tongatapu, the small

sacred capital where the Tui Tonga and related nobles lived

Latte, stone pillars (Marianas, Micronesia)

Yap, stone “money”The stones were made from

imported limestone (most from Palau,250 miles SW). Very rare and valuable. Expeditions to get stones led by chiefs

with select a group of brave and involved great peril, even death.

Nan Madol, Pohnpei(Caroline Islands, Micronesia)

Built from large basalt blocks, some weighing as much as fifty tons on an ancient coral reef, with hundreds of artificial structures, intersected by manmade canals.

Nan Madol

Easter Island (Rapa Nui)first settled ca. AD 900

(or earlier)

Moai (giant tikis)

Line of maoi on large platform (ahu)

Tallest 11.5 m (38 ft); built ca.AD 1100-1650

•Easter Island

Contact with South America?

Competition, Warfare, Deforestation, and Societal Collapse

Many moai toppledduring period of intense

warfare

“By the time Europeans discovered the island in 18th century it had beenrendered almost treeless, the carving of statues had apparently ceased, and the inhabitants were described as living a fairly wretched existence”

Written language (rongo-rongo)

First small colonist chiefdoms (AD 700 or earlier); rapid population growth from AD 1200-1400, led to development of larger,

regionally integrated, and later island wide paramount chiefdoms.

• Originally it was argued that rich wet areas of Hawai’i gave rise to largest, most powerful chiefdoms, but Patrick Kirch (1994) argued that in Hawai’i (and Futuna) the most aggressive and expansive chiefdoms originated in the risk-dominated (dry) areas, who came to dominate those societies in areas of fertile alluvial soils suitable for irrigated taro cultivation

Hawai’iPie-shaped distribution of territories (ahupua’a),

corresponding to ecological as well as social differences.

Hawaiians developed sophisticated technology to support their large population, as well as costly chiefly

and priestly ritual.

pondfields

Puukohola-heiau

Hale-o-pi-ilani-heiau

Hawai’i became the largest and most

complex of the Polynesia chiefdoms after, Chief

Kamehameha I consolidatedby force the five island polities

into a single multi-islandpolity in early 19th century

WAS IT A STATE?