Coercion and Warfare in the Rise of State Societies in Southern Zambezia

Researchers have raised a wide range of variables to account for the emergence and governance of complex polities. Warfare and investment in military power, along with an expansionist ideology, are often raised as catalysts for the emergence of state societies and hierarchical forms of leadership. In southern Africa’s Zambezian region, complex polities arose during the Later Iron Age, presently dated to the early second millennium CE. Wealth accumulation in the form of arable land for grazing cattle, as well as the development of a highly regulated elite ideology coupled with favorable climatic conditions, factored into this trajectory of sociopolitical development. This paper explores the role coercion may have played in cultural changes associated with increased political complexity in Zambezia. Coercive and persuasive leadership is often challenging to recognize archaeologically. Do we have sufficient visible datasets to support coercive power and conflict as a dominant factor for cultural change in this region? Was conflict a significant driver of change in the prehistoric Shashi-Limpopo Basin? How does the evidence stand up to scrutiny when evaluated against known archaeological signatures for warfare?     

The Egyptian Predynastic and State Formation

When the archaeology of Predynastic Egypt was last appraised in this journal, Savage (2001a, p. 101) expressed optimism that “a consensus appears to be developing that stresses the gradual development of complex society in Egypt.” The picture today is less clear, with new data and alternative theoretical frameworks challenging received wisdom over the pace, direction, and nature of complex social change. Rather than an inexorable march to the beat of the neo-evolutionary drum, primary state formation in Egypt can be seen as a more syncopated phenomenon, characterized by periods of political experimentation and shifting social boundaries. Notably, field projects in Sudan and the Egyptian Delta together with new dating techniques have set older narratives of development into broader frames of reference. In contrast to syntheses that have sought to measure abstract thresholds of complexity, this review of the period between c. 4500 BC and c. 3000 BC transcends analytical categories by adopting a practice-based examination of multiple dimensions of social inequality and by considering how the early state may have become a lived reality in Egypt around the end of the fourth millennium BC.     

日本的首长制社会与国家的产生

本文概述日本国内有关古代国家形成的各种学说并阐述了作者自己的观点。他认为,把统治组织及其统治对象的人民作为国家的基本标志,是必要的。但是,还需要重视反映在首长制社会中的、在日本前近代社会底层流动的本质,采用分层社会的多线进化理论,更适合日本列岛的实际情况。有关国家形成理论的研究,一方面需要从微观与宏观的不同角度来观察日本列岛各地丰富多彩的历史发展过程;另一方面,无论是从当代课题的关系上,还是为了寻求历史模式,都需要在东亚或是亚洲的范围内考察日本的历史。     

State Absence and State Formation in Solomon Islands: Reflections on Agency,Scale and Hybridity

This article engages ethnographic research on perceptions of disputation, justice and security in rural Solomon Islands to reflect on issues of agency, power and scale in areas of limited statehood. Set against widespread popular perceptions of state retreat in Solomon Islands, the authors situate their study within the literature which addresses engagements with conflict‐affected and fragile countries and, in particular, literature with an interest in the spaces created by prolonged state absence as potential sites of innovation and transformation. The article examines the role of agency and power at different scales in the highly contested processes of state formation underway in post‐conflict Solomon Islands. Taking issue with the presumed privileging by local actors of non‐state over state forms that runs through much of the hybridity literature, the authors suggest that international ‘state‐building’ interventions, such as that recently experienced in Solomon Islands, require a more nuanced and historically informed understanding of local agency vis‐à‐vis the state in fragile and conflict‐affected settings.     

Indo-European Warfare

Abstract

The Indo-European languages comprise the largest language family in the world and by the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age occupied a broad expanse of Eurasia from Ireland to western China and India. The inherited vocabulary of the Indo-European languages provides us with an image of the prehistoric language(s) that was spoken at least from the late Neolithic onwards and sheds light on the actual names of weapons, types of defensive architecture, terms for aggressive behaviour, trauma, institutions and poetic diction associated with warfare. In addition, there is also a body of ethnographic and mythological data that purports to provide a picture of the social organization and attitudes toward warriors shared by the earliest Indo-Europeans.     

夏威夷观鲸之旅

<正>夏威夷人将座头鲸称为"kohola",一种巨大却温顺的海洋哺乳动物,每年的12月至次年4月可以在夏威夷看到它们。这就是夏威夷之旅中不容错过的精华——夏威夷观鲸之旅。     

State Formation in Southern Africa: A Reply to Kim and Kusimba

Kim and Kusimba misunderstand the archaeological data pertaining to K2, Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe because they rely on secondary sources. Before these capitals can be categorized according to definitions of early states elsewhere, they need to be interpreted in their own terms. Ultimately, Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe are no less complex because they differ from early states in Asia or Middle America.     

Pathways to Social Complexity and State Formation in the Southern Zambezian Region

Theorists have put forth various anthropological perspectives on the variables leading to social complexity and the emergence of state-level polities. This paper incorporates data from the Zambezian region of Southern Africa in order to contribute to the literature on social evolutionary theory. It traces the cultural trajectories of communities that flourished during the region’s Iron Age within the Shashi-Limpopo Basin, leading to the emergence of the Great Zimbabwe polity. In examining the archaeological record, the authors discuss the emergence of state-like societies, offering a review of current interpretations and explanations for the emergent complexity. Les théoriciens ont émis plusieurs points de vue anthropologiques sur les variables qui conduisent à la complexité sociale et à l’émergence des états. Cet article est une contribution à la littérature sur la théorie de l’évolution des sociétés réalisée à partir des données de la région du Zambèze au sud de l’Afrique. Il retrace les trajectoires culturelles de communautés qui sont apparues au cours de l’age du fer dans le Bassin du Shashi-Limpopo et qui ont conduit à l’émergence de l’état du Grand Zimbabwe. En s’appuyant sur les données archéologiques, les auteurs discutent l’émergence de sociétés-états, offrant une revue des dernières interprétations et explications au sujet des complexités émergentes.     

Warfare in Prehistoric and Early Historic Eastern North America

Recent criticisms of the use of historically and ethnographically recorded conflicts as models for warfare in prehistoric times force archaeologists to reexamine assumptions about the frequency, severity, and effects of intergroup fighting. In eastern North America, skeletons of victims and palisaded settlements—the only information consistently available on intergroup hostilities—indicate that the prevalence of conflicts varied greatly over time and space. Occasionally the attacks, typically ambushes of small numbers of people, cumulatively resulted in numerous casualties.Variation in palisade strength is consistent with the organizational structure and warrior mobilization potential of late prehistoric societies in different parts of the Eastern Woodlands.     

Political Economies of Predynastic Egypt and the Formation of the Early State

Considered one of the world’s earliest examples of a pristine state, the ancient Egyptian state arose by ca. 3000 BC. State formation in Egypt became a focus of much research in the 1970s and 1980s, as investigations of the Predynastic period in Egypt, when complex society arose there, began to uncover new evidence of the indigenous roots of this phenomenon. More recently, archaeological investigations in the Delta as well as continued work in southern Egypt have provided new evidence for the changes that took place in the fourth millennium BC. But the specific events and processes involved in this major sociopolitical and economic transformation and the resultant state still remain incompletely understood. To better understand the problem in Egypt, this study looks at the contrasting polities in fourth millennium BC Egypt and Nubia from the perspective of the political economy and the strategies to power proposed by the dual-processual theory, which also helps elucidate processes of state formation and the type of early state that developed there. The territorial expansionist model helps explain where and when this state first emerged.     

Moche Politics,Religion, and Warfare

In this essay I briefly review the history of Moche studies, the essential features of this archaeological culture of the North Coast of Peru (ca. 1900–1100 B.P.), and its general economy. I then present current issues, discussions, and debates on Moche regional political organization, religion, warfare, and their interrelations. I suggest that the interpretation of Moche art has been and the interpretation of archaeology has lacked nuance. I question the proposal of warfare as ritual, that the temple mound complexes were centers of political power, that the elite buried in them were rulers, that the compounds and streets near them were cities, and whether proposals for a conquest Moche state are plausible. I suggest that these and other interpretations about the Moche are becoming accepted as facts without considering alternative interpretations of the data and that much information is lacking. Rather than having reached a stage when we can synthesize concepts about Moche culture we are only just beginning to understand it.