1. Examples of “Regional Polities”
Chiefdoms
Examples of “Regional Polities”

2. Some comments on J&E’s assessment of regional polities
Underestimate the size of acephalous societies
Overestimate
need for formal
organization
up to societies
~ 10,000 people

3. Macroevolution again Population pressure can’t be rate limiting step
What is?
Technology?
Social organization?
Many people suspect social organization
Douglas North, Bob Bettinger
The work-arounds hypothesis
Hard to adapt people to live in big complex societies
Social organization not observable” and not trialable

4. Some other important issues
Functional versus conflict theories of social complexification: untangling a major social science paradox
Leaders do have prosocial functions
Formal offices invariably (?) lead to social stratification
Polities do expand by violent conquest
Why not democracy?
Simpler societies egalitarian
Big Man system proto-democratic
Yet main path to complexity is via ranked lineages and hereditary elite classes
Group selection favors social system with best work-arounds
By conquest and by imitation
Slow process
More about this in Part II

5. Historical examples of social-organizational breakthrus
Shoshone minimalism
Chinese Confucian merit bureaucracy
Develops after ~ 600 BC
In West after ~ 1700 AD
Settling of California
Anglos pioneered as family units, but with cooperation via democratic institutions
Hispanics pioneered as larger extended family groups
Anglo frontier moved faster because of greater social flexibility

6. Marshall Sahlins (1963) Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia
Pacific islands as natural experiment
Melanesia versus Polynesia
Similar distribution of large and small islands
Melanesians have Big Man systems even on very big islands
Polynesians have chiefs even on small islands
Human social organization is conservative on millennial time scales: historical versus ecological causation?
Trobriand Islanders an exception? Melanesians with a chiefdom?
Big advances in Oceanian anthropology since 1963
Melanesia turns out to be culturally and biologically heterogeneous

7. Austronesian phenomenon: Patrick Kirch (2000) On the Road of the Winds

8. Language map

9. Lapita Phenomenon

10. Lapita pottery very diagnostic (oddly, Polynesians in the E
Lapita pottery very diagnostic (oddly, Polynesians in the E. Lapita realm later abandon pottery!)

11. Lapita expansion very rapid

12. Core technology: basic tropical horticulture plus

13. Lapita navigation strategy
Sailing leeward vs windward. Safe to beat to windward. If you get into trouble you can sail a jury rigged canoe downwind home.

14. Austronesian sailors could point fairly close to the wind

15. Austronesian exploration stategy

16. Ranked lineage social organization
Proto-Oceanic term for ancestor:
*tumpu
Polynesian clans patrilineal
Trobriand clans matrilineal
The novel element is formal
offices not dependent upon
the entrepreneurship of
an ambitious individual
In the Lapita case,
chieftainship in an
open environment
a stimulus to pioneering:
Every successful pioneer
a chief!

17. The Functions of Chiefs
“Domestic tranquility”—suppression of small-scale warfare so prevalent in local-group societies
Provision of food security
Store surpluses on large scale for redistribution
Investment in large scale production
Supervision of intertribal trade
Investment in high tech canoes
Provision of supernatural services (?)

18. Dysfunctions of Chiefdoms
Hereditary principle unreliable supplier of talent (but limits destructive competition for office??)
Stratification breeds intra-societal tensions
Violent conflict between chiefs often destructive
Ideological exploitation of human credulity

19. The Trobriand Islands Case

20. Pioneering ethnographer Bronislaw Malinowski studied Trobrianders 1914-1917

21. Subsistence: tropical horticulture & fishing

22. Gardening highly ritualized

23. Rather intricate gender division of labor in gardening

24. Mature garden

25. Fishing major protein source

26. Stratified social organization
Chief Touluwa

27. Chief and his storehouse

28. Ceremonial display of harvest

29. Modern yam shelter

30. Kula Trade system

31. Kula Ring trade
Kula Ring
trade

32. Armband

33. Necklaces

34. Ceremonial trade

35. Substantial canoes carry mundane cargo: clay pots, fine stone

37. Kula “market”

38. Evolution of Chiefdoms in Polynesia Rather Diverse
Open systems: small, highly competitive chiefdoms
Near-state systems
Tonga-Samoa: Division of religious and secular
authority
Hawai’i: Class-based distinctions

39. Marquesian Open Sytem

40. Easter Island: Collapse of open system

42. Hawai’i Large island system Notable for class system
Large population: 250, ,000
Several competing chiefdoms at contact
United by Kamehameha with trade guns
Notable for class system
Chiefs ranked three deep
Class of junior aristocrat managers
Commoners divorced from ranked lineage system

45. Chiefly display: feather cloaks

46. Economic intensification under chiefly supervision
Reef-flat fishponds

47. Pond-field irrigation systems

48. Population equilibrium?

49. Basseri Notable features Pastoral tribe Component of state
Tribal chief part of state elite

50. Conclusions
Tribes have formal leadership and usually inegalitarian, stratified social relations
Kinship still the dominant social institution
Chiefly economic functions various but important
Inter-chiefdom trade and warfare often highly organized
Easy to see how big chiefdoms become states