The study of chiefdoms has moved from a preoccupation with their formal characteristics to a concern with their dynamics as political institutions. The contributors are interested in how ruling elites retain power through control over production and exchange, and then legitimize that control through an elaborated ideology. The ten case studies look at particular chiefdoms, originating in specific historical conditions. Despite obvious differences between the chiefdoms, certain common underlying processes are revealed. The collection recognizes how complex and interdependent are the sources of...

By studying chiefdoms--kin-based societies in which a person's place in a kinship system determines his or her social status and political position--this book addresses several fundamental questions concerning the nature of political power and the evolution of sociopolitical complexity. In a chiefdom, the highest-status male (first son by the first wife) holds both authority and special access to economic, military, and ideological power, and others derive privilege from their positions in the chiefly hierarchy. A chiefdom is also a regional polity with institutional governance and some...

This integrated collection of new and newly revised essays by archaeologist Timothy Earle represents both a personal journey and a growing synthesis of how political economies emerged in human societies. Drawing in detail on the cases of chiefdoms in Hawaii, the Andes, and Denmark, Bronze Age Economics documents how intensification of economies, surplus mobilization, and controlled distribution of both staple and prestige goods fundamentally drove the political evolutionary processes that prefigured states. Representing as it does the trajectory of Earle's lifework, this book fairly...

A Companion to Archaeology features essays from 27 of the world's leading authorities on different types of archaeology that aim to define the field and describe what it means to be an archaeologist.

• Shows that contemporary archaeology is an astonishingly broad activity, with many contrasting specializations and ways of approaching the material record of past societies.
  
• Includes essays by experts in reading the past through art, linguistics, or the built environment, and by professionals who present the past through heritage management and...

The Bronze Age was a formative period in European history when the organization of landscapes, settlements, and economy reached a new level of complexity. This book presents the first in-depth, comparative study of household, economy, and settlement in three micro-regions: the Mediterranean (Sicily), Central Europe (Hungary), and Northern Europe (South Scandinavia). The results are based on ten years of fieldwork in a similar method of documentation, and scientific analyses were used in each of the regional studies, making controlled comparisons possible. The new evidence demonstrates how...