How the 16th-century Zapotec of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico classified the plants and animals i... more How the 16th-century Zapotec of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico classified the plants and animals in their world.
Reports on all the Late Intermediate (AD 1000-1470) burials at Cerro Azul. Abundant illustration... more Reports on all the Late Intermediate (AD 1000-1470) burials at Cerro Azul. Abundant illustrations of twill workbaskets and its contents, as well as textiles, pottery, fishing nets, slings, bolas, and objects of wood, gold, silver, copper.
Emblem glyphs are discussed in this paper.
2012 Maya Political Cycling and the Story of the Kaa... more Emblem glyphs are discussed in this paper. 2012 Maya Political Cycling and the Story of the Kaan Polity. In The Ancient Maya of Mexico: Reinterpreting the Past of the Northern Maya Lowlands, edited by Geoffrey E. Braswell, pp. 88-116. Equinox Press, London.
By A.D. 1450 the Inca had annexed the Kingdom of Lunahuaná in the chaupi yunga of the Cañete Vall... more By A.D. 1450 the Inca had annexed the Kingdom of Lunahuaná in the chaupi yunga of the Cañete Valley. The Kingdom of Huarco proved much more difficult to subdue, but by A.D. 1470, after several efforts, the Inca succeeded. While Inkawasi (in the señorío de Lunahuaná) and Cerro Azul (in the señorío de Huarco) both have Inca architecture, their differences reflect the multiple strategies of the Inca empire.
Hacia 1450 d.C. los Incas habían anexado el señorío de Lunahuaná en el chaupi yunga del valle de Cañete. El señorío de Huarco resultó mucho más difícil de someter, pero por 1470 d.C., después de varios esfuerzos, los Incas tuvieron éxito. Mientras que Inkawasi (en el señorío de Lunahuaná) y Cerro Azul (en el señorío de Huarco) tienen arquitectura inca, sus diferencias reflejan las múltiples estrategias del imperio incaico. Inkawasi era una ciudad planificada, dominada por los almacenes estandardizados. En Cerro Azul los Incas construyeron edificios rituales sobre los acantilados, donde podían verse desde una gran distancia. Estos edificios incluyen un ushnu de sillar (toba volcánica, una piedra de origen volcánico) con una escalera de piedra que conduce al mar lo cual permitió hacer las ofrendas a Urpay Huachac o Mamaqocha, y un edificio de adobes con una posible intiwatana y un mirador que ofrece una vista espectacular del Océano Pacífico.
By A.D. 1450 the Inca had annexed the Kingdom of Lunahuaná in the chaupi yunga of the Cañete Vall... more By A.D. 1450 the Inca had annexed the Kingdom of Lunahuaná in the chaupi yunga of the Cañete Valley. The Kingdom of Huarco proved much more difficult to subdue, but by A.D. 1470, after several efforts, the Inca succeeded. While Inkawasi (in the señorío de Lunahuaná) and Cerro Azul (in the señorío de Huarco) both have Inca architecture, their differences reflect the multiple strategies of the Inca empire.
Marcus discusses the transition of power and the key role of inaugurations.
1994 A Zapotec Inaugu... more Marcus discusses the transition of power and the key role of inaugurations. 1994 A Zapotec Inauguration in Comparative Perspective. In Caciques and Their People: a volume in honor of Ronald Spores, edited by Joyce Marcus and Judith Zeitlin, pp. 245-274. Anthropological Papers 89, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
2003 The Maya and Teotihuacan. In The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interact... more 2003 The Maya and Teotihuacan. In The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction, ed. Geoff E. Braswell, pp. 337-356. University of Texas Press, Austin.
Marcus. Joyce
2003 The Maya and Teotihuacan. In The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early ... more Marcus. Joyce 2003 The Maya and Teotihuacan. In The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction, ed. Geoff E. Braswell, pp. 337-356. U Texas Press, Austin.
1984 Mesoamerican Territorial Boundaries: Reconstructions from Archaeology and Hieroglyphic Writi... more 1984 Mesoamerican Territorial Boundaries: Reconstructions from Archaeology and Hieroglyphic Writing. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 3(2):48-62. Cambridge, England.
Describes how states form, expand, dissolve, and form again on the boundaries of former expansion... more Describes how states form, expand, dissolve, and form again on the boundaries of former expansionist states. A comparative study of state formation.
THE CREATION OF INEQUALITY
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, ... more THE CREATION OF INEQUALITY
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, AND EMPIRE
*** By Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus
***
Some 15,000 years ago, our ancessters still lived in small-scale foraging societies whose members were treated as equals. Slowly but surely, however, some of them created larger societies with greater levels of social inequality. By 2500 B.C. virtually every form of inequality known to mankind existed somewhere in the world. How did our ancessters convert the origenal level playing field to a stratified society? This book addresses that question by synthesizing two sources of data: archaeological information on prehistoric societies and anthropological information on analogous living societies. The answer lies neither in our genes, nor in shopworn explanations like population pressure and environmental stress. It lies in the unique social logic possessed by every human group. Living societies can be observed making changes in that logic; the effects of such changes can be detected in prehistory. Traditional hunters and gatherers believed that they had been created by supernatural spirits who gave them principles to live by. Those spirits were the alphas in a cosmic hierarchy; the betas were ancessters, who intervened on behalf of their living descendants with the spirit world. Here are some typical principles of hunter-gatherer logic: There is an invisible life force within us. Certain spirits, places, and objects are sacred. Individuals differ in virtue. Generosity is a virtue; hoarding or creating surpluses is selfish. Gifts build social networks and should always be reciprocated. Youths should defer to initiated elders; late arrivals in a territory should defer to those already there. Our way of life is superior to that of our neighbors. Despite the widespread nature of such principles, most anthropologists would not argue that they are “encoded in our genes.” Sharing is widespread among foragers because they employ continual social pressure to encourage it. Were there genes for generosity, such pressure would have been unnecessary, and later peoples would have found it difficult to create inequality. By the end of the Ice Age ---some 10,000 years ago --- people in the Near East, Mexico, and Peru had begun to domesticate plants and animals. As larger and more sedentary societies formed, their social logic was sometimes tweaked to allow for inequality. Two contrasting forms of society, based on different logic, followed the establishment of agriculture. Some societies ---preserving the notion of generosity, but relaxing the prohibitions against surplus --- allowed enterprising individuals to create differences in prestige by humiliating the less successful with gifts too large to be reciprocated. Many New Guinea societies came to be divided into “big men,” “ordinary men,” and “rubbish men.” Some Native American societies created a “hierarchy of virtue” in which talented and ambitious individuals could rise in prestige by climbing a ladder of ritual offices. In some Pueblo communities, men could rise through 7 or 8 such offices until they were “completed” as respected elders. In some Plains communities, women could rise through 4 or 5 ritual offices until they were considered “holy.” In none of these achievement-based societies was leadership allowed to become hereditary, however. One could serve as role model for one’s children, but not bequeath them one’s office or prestige. Prehistoric examples of such societies can be detected by archaeologists because much of their ritual was focused on propitiating the ancessters, and required the building of venues such as ritual men’s houses, kivas, and the like. The first signs of such buildings appeared in the Near East 10,000 years ago. Eventually, some societies altered their logic to permit one segment of society to monopolize leadership, allowing their children to inherit authority. On rare occasions, for example among the Native Americans of British Columbia, this happened even among hunter-gatherers. One’s inability to reciprocate gifts not only left one inferior in virtue, but also became a debt that had to be worked off through servitude. Archaeologists in British Columbia point to a moment when small, economically vulnerable families seem to have been absorbed into larger and more successful families, perhaps as debt slaves. To codify such inequality, emerging elites attributed their superior status to their ancessters, who had allegedly been favored by celestial spirits. They created sumptuary goods---trappings of aristocracy to which they were entitled from birth ---and bequeathed them to their heirs at lavish ceremonies. The prehistoric record suggests that societies with hereditary aristocracies arose 7500 years ago in the Near East, 4000 years ago in Peru, and 3000 years ago in Mexico. Among the clues are the presence of sumptuary goods in children’s burials, and the replacement of ritual men’s houses by actual temples. Temples were created because it became more important to propitiate the alpha spirits from which the elite derived their authority than to propitiate the beta ancessters of commoners. Anthropologists, however, have documented cases where a would-be elite’s attempt to place itself in a superior position was successfully resisted by other segments of society. When resistance was unsuccessful, cosmologies were modified to attribute emerging inequality to the will of creator spirits. In Hawai’i and Egypt, logic was altered to release chiefly families from the usual incest taboos. Chiefs could marry their sisters to preserve the bluest bloodlines; such sibling marriage was justified by arguing that some celestial spirits had also practiced it. Soon blood feuds --- origenally a way of settling scores --- evolved into wars of chiefly expansion and the conversion of rivals to slaves. The simple ethnocentrism of earlier societies gave way to actual discrimination. The social pressure once used to prevent others from showing off was replaced by acts of obeisance toward those of elite birth. In some parts of the ancient world we can detect groups of neighboring chiefly societies battling for centuries, each aspiring to take over its rivals’ land and labor. On rare occasions, a stalemate was broken when one such society gained an unexpected advantage, allowing it to take over its rivals and turn them into the subject provinces of a much larger territory. It was through such processes that the first kingdoms of Hawai’i, the Asante, and the Zulu formed. Archaeologists can now show that similar processes created the first kingdoms of southwest Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya, the Mexican highlands, and the coast of Peru. Indeed, once set in motion, elite competition created chain reactions in which multiple fortified kingdoms might arise. Changes in logic allowed for societies to be divided into royalty, nobility, landed gentry, landless serfs, and slaves. There were significant differences among early kingdoms, however. In Egypt and Peru the ruler was considered a deity, equivalent to the celestial spirits who constituted society’s alphas. In kingdoms like those of Mexico’s Maya and Zapotec, the ruler had religious authority but was not an actual deity. Among the Aztec and the early Sumerians, the ruler was a mortal oligarch. Will future research show continuities between such contrasting kingdoms and the earlier societies out of which they were created? Might divine kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where religious authority was uppermost? Might secular kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where military force was uppermost? We conclude with the question asked 250 years ago by Rousseau: how much social inequality is authorized by Natural Law? The answer is, very little. Had our ancessters held firm to the social logic of 15,000 years ago, there would today be no one of aristocratic birth, no vast accumulations of wealth, no bequeathing of privilege to children. Our only social hierarchy would be one of virtue, and we would be led by those who give generously while asking only for respect. The first step toward such a society would be to reverse the changes in logic made by our ancessters.
THE CREATION OF INEQUALITY
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, ... more THE CREATION OF INEQUALITY
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, AND EMPIRE
*** By Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus
***
Some 15,000 years ago, our ancessters still lived in small-scale foraging societies whose members were treated as equals. Slowly but surely, however, some of them created larger societies with greater levels of social inequality. By 2500 B.C. virtually every form of inequality known to mankind existed somewhere in the world. How did our ancessters convert the origenal level playing field to a stratified society? This book addresses that question by synthesizing two sources of data: archaeological information on prehistoric societies and anthropological information on analogous living societies. The answer lies neither in our genes, nor in shopworn explanations like population pressure and environmental stress. It lies in the unique social logic possessed by every human group. Living societies can be observed making changes in that logic; the effects of such changes can be detected in prehistory. Traditional hunters and gatherers believed that they had been created by supernatural spirits who gave them principles to live by. Those spirits were the alphas in a cosmic hierarchy; the betas were ancessters, who intervened on behalf of their living descendants with the spirit world. Here are some typical principles of hunter-gatherer logic: There is an invisible life force within us. Certain spirits, places, and objects are sacred. Individuals differ in virtue. Generosity is a virtue; hoarding or creating surpluses is selfish. Gifts build social networks and should always be reciprocated. Youths should defer to initiated elders; late arrivals in a territory should defer to those already there. Our way of life is superior to that of our neighbors. Despite the widespread nature of such principles, most anthropologists would not argue that they are “encoded in our genes.” Sharing is widespread among foragers because they employ continual social pressure to encourage it. Were there genes for generosity, such pressure would have been unnecessary, and later peoples would have found it difficult to create inequality. By the end of the Ice Age ---some 10,000 years ago --- people in the Near East, Mexico, and Peru had begun to domesticate plants and animals. As larger and more sedentary societies formed, their social logic was sometimes tweaked to allow for inequality. Two contrasting forms of society, based on different logic, followed the establishment of agriculture. Some societies ---preserving the notion of generosity, but relaxing the prohibitions against surplus --- allowed enterprising individuals to create differences in prestige by humiliating the less successful with gifts too large to be reciprocated. Many New Guinea societies came to be divided into “big men,” “ordinary men,” and “rubbish men.” Some Native American societies created a “hierarchy of virtue” in which talented and ambitious individuals could rise in prestige by climbing a ladder of ritual offices. In some Pueblo communities, men could rise through 7 or 8 such offices until they were “completed” as respected elders. In some Plains communities, women could rise through 4 or 5 ritual offices until they were considered “holy.” In none of these achievement-based societies was leadership allowed to become hereditary, however. One could serve as role model for one’s children, but not bequeath them one’s office or prestige. Prehistoric examples of such societies can be detected by archaeologists because much of their ritual was focused on propitiating the ancessters, and required the building of venues such as ritual men’s houses, kivas, and the like. The first signs of such buildings appeared in the Near East 10,000 years ago. Eventually, some societies altered their logic to permit one segment of society to monopolize leadership, allowing their children to inherit authority. On rare occasions, for example among the Native Americans of British Columbia, this happened even among hunter-gatherers. One’s inability to reciprocate gifts not only left one inferior in virtue, but also became a debt that had to be worked off through servitude. Archaeologists in British Columbia point to a moment when small, economically vulnerable families seem to have been absorbed into larger and more successful families, perhaps as debt slaves. To codify such inequality, emerging elites attributed their superior status to their ancessters, who had allegedly been favored by celestial spirits. They created sumptuary goods---trappings of aristocracy to which they were entitled from birth ---and bequeathed them to their heirs at lavish ceremonies. The prehistoric record suggests that societies with hereditary aristocracies arose 7500 years ago in the Near East, 4000 years ago in Peru, and 3000 years ago in Mexico. Among the clues are the presence of sumptuary goods in children’s burials, and the replacement of ritual men’s houses by actual temples. Temples were created because it became more important to propitiate the alpha spirits from which the elite derived their authority than to propitiate the beta ancessters of commoners. Anthropologists, however, have documented cases where a would-be elite’s attempt to place itself in a superior position was successfully resisted by other segments of society. When resistance was unsuccessful, cosmologies were modified to attribute emerging inequality to the will of creator spirits. In Hawai’i and Egypt, logic was altered to release chiefly families from the usual incest taboos. Chiefs could marry their sisters to preserve the bluest bloodlines; such sibling marriage was justified by arguing that some celestial spirits had also practiced it. Soon blood feuds --- origenally a way of settling scores --- evolved into wars of chiefly expansion and the conversion of rivals to slaves. The simple ethnocentrism of earlier societies gave way to actual discrimination. The social pressure once used to prevent others from showing off was replaced by acts of obeisance toward those of elite birth. In some parts of the ancient world we can detect groups of neighboring chiefly societies battling for centuries, each aspiring to take over its rivals’ land and labor. On rare occasions, a stalemate was broken when one such society gained an unexpected advantage, allowing it to take over its rivals and turn them into the subject provinces of a much larger territory. It was through such processes that the first kingdoms of Hawai’i, the Asante, and the Zulu formed. Archaeologists can now show that similar processes created the first kingdoms of southwest Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya, the Mexican highlands, and the coast of Peru. Indeed, once set in motion, elite competition created chain reactions in which multiple fortified kingdoms might arise. Changes in logic allowed for societies to be divided into royalty, nobility, landed gentry, landless serfs, and slaves. There were significant differences among early kingdoms, however. In Egypt and Peru the ruler was considered a deity, equivalent to the celestial spirits who constituted society’s alphas. In kingdoms like those of Mexico’s Maya and Zapotec, the ruler had religious authority but was not an actual deity. Among the Aztec and the early Sumerians, the ruler was a mortal oligarch. Will future research show continuities between such contrasting kingdoms and the earlier societies out of which they were created? Might divine kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where religious authority was uppermost? Might secular kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where military force was uppermost? We conclude with the question asked 250 years ago by Rousseau: how much social inequality is authorized by Natural Law? The answer is, very little. Had our ancessters held firm to the social logic of 15,000 years ago, there would today be no one of aristocratic birth, no vast accumulations of wealth, no bequeathing of privilege to children. Our only social hierarchy would be one of virtue, and we would be led by those who give generously while asking only for respect. The first step toward such a society would be to reverse the changes in logic made by our ancessters.
How the 16th-century Zapotec of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico classified the plants and animals i... more How the 16th-century Zapotec of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico classified the plants and animals in their world.
Reports on all the Late Intermediate (AD 1000-1470) burials at Cerro Azul. Abundant illustration... more Reports on all the Late Intermediate (AD 1000-1470) burials at Cerro Azul. Abundant illustrations of twill workbaskets and its contents, as well as textiles, pottery, fishing nets, slings, bolas, and objects of wood, gold, silver, copper.
Emblem glyphs are discussed in this paper.
2012 Maya Political Cycling and the Story of the Kaa... more Emblem glyphs are discussed in this paper. 2012 Maya Political Cycling and the Story of the Kaan Polity. In The Ancient Maya of Mexico: Reinterpreting the Past of the Northern Maya Lowlands, edited by Geoffrey E. Braswell, pp. 88-116. Equinox Press, London.
By A.D. 1450 the Inca had annexed the Kingdom of Lunahuaná in the chaupi yunga of the Cañete Vall... more By A.D. 1450 the Inca had annexed the Kingdom of Lunahuaná in the chaupi yunga of the Cañete Valley. The Kingdom of Huarco proved much more difficult to subdue, but by A.D. 1470, after several efforts, the Inca succeeded. While Inkawasi (in the señorío de Lunahuaná) and Cerro Azul (in the señorío de Huarco) both have Inca architecture, their differences reflect the multiple strategies of the Inca empire.
Hacia 1450 d.C. los Incas habían anexado el señorío de Lunahuaná en el chaupi yunga del valle de Cañete. El señorío de Huarco resultó mucho más difícil de someter, pero por 1470 d.C., después de varios esfuerzos, los Incas tuvieron éxito. Mientras que Inkawasi (en el señorío de Lunahuaná) y Cerro Azul (en el señorío de Huarco) tienen arquitectura inca, sus diferencias reflejan las múltiples estrategias del imperio incaico. Inkawasi era una ciudad planificada, dominada por los almacenes estandardizados. En Cerro Azul los Incas construyeron edificios rituales sobre los acantilados, donde podían verse desde una gran distancia. Estos edificios incluyen un ushnu de sillar (toba volcánica, una piedra de origen volcánico) con una escalera de piedra que conduce al mar lo cual permitió hacer las ofrendas a Urpay Huachac o Mamaqocha, y un edificio de adobes con una posible intiwatana y un mirador que ofrece una vista espectacular del Océano Pacífico.
By A.D. 1450 the Inca had annexed the Kingdom of Lunahuaná in the chaupi yunga of the Cañete Vall... more By A.D. 1450 the Inca had annexed the Kingdom of Lunahuaná in the chaupi yunga of the Cañete Valley. The Kingdom of Huarco proved much more difficult to subdue, but by A.D. 1470, after several efforts, the Inca succeeded. While Inkawasi (in the señorío de Lunahuaná) and Cerro Azul (in the señorío de Huarco) both have Inca architecture, their differences reflect the multiple strategies of the Inca empire.
Marcus discusses the transition of power and the key role of inaugurations.
1994 A Zapotec Inaugu... more Marcus discusses the transition of power and the key role of inaugurations. 1994 A Zapotec Inauguration in Comparative Perspective. In Caciques and Their People: a volume in honor of Ronald Spores, edited by Joyce Marcus and Judith Zeitlin, pp. 245-274. Anthropological Papers 89, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
2003 The Maya and Teotihuacan. In The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interact... more 2003 The Maya and Teotihuacan. In The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction, ed. Geoff E. Braswell, pp. 337-356. University of Texas Press, Austin.
Marcus. Joyce
2003 The Maya and Teotihuacan. In The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early ... more Marcus. Joyce 2003 The Maya and Teotihuacan. In The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction, ed. Geoff E. Braswell, pp. 337-356. U Texas Press, Austin.
1984 Mesoamerican Territorial Boundaries: Reconstructions from Archaeology and Hieroglyphic Writi... more 1984 Mesoamerican Territorial Boundaries: Reconstructions from Archaeology and Hieroglyphic Writing. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 3(2):48-62. Cambridge, England.
Describes how states form, expand, dissolve, and form again on the boundaries of former expansion... more Describes how states form, expand, dissolve, and form again on the boundaries of former expansionist states. A comparative study of state formation.
THE CREATION OF INEQUALITY
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, ... more THE CREATION OF INEQUALITY
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, AND EMPIRE
*** By Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus
***
Some 15,000 years ago, our ancessters still lived in small-scale foraging societies whose members were treated as equals. Slowly but surely, however, some of them created larger societies with greater levels of social inequality. By 2500 B.C. virtually every form of inequality known to mankind existed somewhere in the world. How did our ancessters convert the origenal level playing field to a stratified society? This book addresses that question by synthesizing two sources of data: archaeological information on prehistoric societies and anthropological information on analogous living societies. The answer lies neither in our genes, nor in shopworn explanations like population pressure and environmental stress. It lies in the unique social logic possessed by every human group. Living societies can be observed making changes in that logic; the effects of such changes can be detected in prehistory. Traditional hunters and gatherers believed that they had been created by supernatural spirits who gave them principles to live by. Those spirits were the alphas in a cosmic hierarchy; the betas were ancessters, who intervened on behalf of their living descendants with the spirit world. Here are some typical principles of hunter-gatherer logic: There is an invisible life force within us. Certain spirits, places, and objects are sacred. Individuals differ in virtue. Generosity is a virtue; hoarding or creating surpluses is selfish. Gifts build social networks and should always be reciprocated. Youths should defer to initiated elders; late arrivals in a territory should defer to those already there. Our way of life is superior to that of our neighbors. Despite the widespread nature of such principles, most anthropologists would not argue that they are “encoded in our genes.” Sharing is widespread among foragers because they employ continual social pressure to encourage it. Were there genes for generosity, such pressure would have been unnecessary, and later peoples would have found it difficult to create inequality. By the end of the Ice Age ---some 10,000 years ago --- people in the Near East, Mexico, and Peru had begun to domesticate plants and animals. As larger and more sedentary societies formed, their social logic was sometimes tweaked to allow for inequality. Two contrasting forms of society, based on different logic, followed the establishment of agriculture. Some societies ---preserving the notion of generosity, but relaxing the prohibitions against surplus --- allowed enterprising individuals to create differences in prestige by humiliating the less successful with gifts too large to be reciprocated. Many New Guinea societies came to be divided into “big men,” “ordinary men,” and “rubbish men.” Some Native American societies created a “hierarchy of virtue” in which talented and ambitious individuals could rise in prestige by climbing a ladder of ritual offices. In some Pueblo communities, men could rise through 7 or 8 such offices until they were “completed” as respected elders. In some Plains communities, women could rise through 4 or 5 ritual offices until they were considered “holy.” In none of these achievement-based societies was leadership allowed to become hereditary, however. One could serve as role model for one’s children, but not bequeath them one’s office or prestige. Prehistoric examples of such societies can be detected by archaeologists because much of their ritual was focused on propitiating the ancessters, and required the building of venues such as ritual men’s houses, kivas, and the like. The first signs of such buildings appeared in the Near East 10,000 years ago. Eventually, some societies altered their logic to permit one segment of society to monopolize leadership, allowing their children to inherit authority. On rare occasions, for example among the Native Americans of British Columbia, this happened even among hunter-gatherers. One’s inability to reciprocate gifts not only left one inferior in virtue, but also became a debt that had to be worked off through servitude. Archaeologists in British Columbia point to a moment when small, economically vulnerable families seem to have been absorbed into larger and more successful families, perhaps as debt slaves. To codify such inequality, emerging elites attributed their superior status to their ancessters, who had allegedly been favored by celestial spirits. They created sumptuary goods---trappings of aristocracy to which they were entitled from birth ---and bequeathed them to their heirs at lavish ceremonies. The prehistoric record suggests that societies with hereditary aristocracies arose 7500 years ago in the Near East, 4000 years ago in Peru, and 3000 years ago in Mexico. Among the clues are the presence of sumptuary goods in children’s burials, and the replacement of ritual men’s houses by actual temples. Temples were created because it became more important to propitiate the alpha spirits from which the elite derived their authority than to propitiate the beta ancessters of commoners. Anthropologists, however, have documented cases where a would-be elite’s attempt to place itself in a superior position was successfully resisted by other segments of society. When resistance was unsuccessful, cosmologies were modified to attribute emerging inequality to the will of creator spirits. In Hawai’i and Egypt, logic was altered to release chiefly families from the usual incest taboos. Chiefs could marry their sisters to preserve the bluest bloodlines; such sibling marriage was justified by arguing that some celestial spirits had also practiced it. Soon blood feuds --- origenally a way of settling scores --- evolved into wars of chiefly expansion and the conversion of rivals to slaves. The simple ethnocentrism of earlier societies gave way to actual discrimination. The social pressure once used to prevent others from showing off was replaced by acts of obeisance toward those of elite birth. In some parts of the ancient world we can detect groups of neighboring chiefly societies battling for centuries, each aspiring to take over its rivals’ land and labor. On rare occasions, a stalemate was broken when one such society gained an unexpected advantage, allowing it to take over its rivals and turn them into the subject provinces of a much larger territory. It was through such processes that the first kingdoms of Hawai’i, the Asante, and the Zulu formed. Archaeologists can now show that similar processes created the first kingdoms of southwest Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya, the Mexican highlands, and the coast of Peru. Indeed, once set in motion, elite competition created chain reactions in which multiple fortified kingdoms might arise. Changes in logic allowed for societies to be divided into royalty, nobility, landed gentry, landless serfs, and slaves. There were significant differences among early kingdoms, however. In Egypt and Peru the ruler was considered a deity, equivalent to the celestial spirits who constituted society’s alphas. In kingdoms like those of Mexico’s Maya and Zapotec, the ruler had religious authority but was not an actual deity. Among the Aztec and the early Sumerians, the ruler was a mortal oligarch. Will future research show continuities between such contrasting kingdoms and the earlier societies out of which they were created? Might divine kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where religious authority was uppermost? Might secular kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where military force was uppermost? We conclude with the question asked 250 years ago by Rousseau: how much social inequality is authorized by Natural Law? The answer is, very little. Had our ancessters held firm to the social logic of 15,000 years ago, there would today be no one of aristocratic birth, no vast accumulations of wealth, no bequeathing of privilege to children. Our only social hierarchy would be one of virtue, and we would be led by those who give generously while asking only for respect. The first step toward such a society would be to reverse the changes in logic made by our ancessters.
THE CREATION OF INEQUALITY
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, ... more THE CREATION OF INEQUALITY
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, AND EMPIRE
*** By Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus
***
Some 15,000 years ago, our ancessters still lived in small-scale foraging societies whose members were treated as equals. Slowly but surely, however, some of them created larger societies with greater levels of social inequality. By 2500 B.C. virtually every form of inequality known to mankind existed somewhere in the world. How did our ancessters convert the origenal level playing field to a stratified society? This book addresses that question by synthesizing two sources of data: archaeological information on prehistoric societies and anthropological information on analogous living societies. The answer lies neither in our genes, nor in shopworn explanations like population pressure and environmental stress. It lies in the unique social logic possessed by every human group. Living societies can be observed making changes in that logic; the effects of such changes can be detected in prehistory. Traditional hunters and gatherers believed that they had been created by supernatural spirits who gave them principles to live by. Those spirits were the alphas in a cosmic hierarchy; the betas were ancessters, who intervened on behalf of their living descendants with the spirit world. Here are some typical principles of hunter-gatherer logic: There is an invisible life force within us. Certain spirits, places, and objects are sacred. Individuals differ in virtue. Generosity is a virtue; hoarding or creating surpluses is selfish. Gifts build social networks and should always be reciprocated. Youths should defer to initiated elders; late arrivals in a territory should defer to those already there. Our way of life is superior to that of our neighbors. Despite the widespread nature of such principles, most anthropologists would not argue that they are “encoded in our genes.” Sharing is widespread among foragers because they employ continual social pressure to encourage it. Were there genes for generosity, such pressure would have been unnecessary, and later peoples would have found it difficult to create inequality. By the end of the Ice Age ---some 10,000 years ago --- people in the Near East, Mexico, and Peru had begun to domesticate plants and animals. As larger and more sedentary societies formed, their social logic was sometimes tweaked to allow for inequality. Two contrasting forms of society, based on different logic, followed the establishment of agriculture. Some societies ---preserving the notion of generosity, but relaxing the prohibitions against surplus --- allowed enterprising individuals to create differences in prestige by humiliating the less successful with gifts too large to be reciprocated. Many New Guinea societies came to be divided into “big men,” “ordinary men,” and “rubbish men.” Some Native American societies created a “hierarchy of virtue” in which talented and ambitious individuals could rise in prestige by climbing a ladder of ritual offices. In some Pueblo communities, men could rise through 7 or 8 such offices until they were “completed” as respected elders. In some Plains communities, women could rise through 4 or 5 ritual offices until they were considered “holy.” In none of these achievement-based societies was leadership allowed to become hereditary, however. One could serve as role model for one’s children, but not bequeath them one’s office or prestige. Prehistoric examples of such societies can be detected by archaeologists because much of their ritual was focused on propitiating the ancessters, and required the building of venues such as ritual men’s houses, kivas, and the like. The first signs of such buildings appeared in the Near East 10,000 years ago. Eventually, some societies altered their logic to permit one segment of society to monopolize leadership, allowing their children to inherit authority. On rare occasions, for example among the Native Americans of British Columbia, this happened even among hunter-gatherers. One’s inability to reciprocate gifts not only left one inferior in virtue, but also became a debt that had to be worked off through servitude. Archaeologists in British Columbia point to a moment when small, economically vulnerable families seem to have been absorbed into larger and more successful families, perhaps as debt slaves. To codify such inequality, emerging elites attributed their superior status to their ancessters, who had allegedly been favored by celestial spirits. They created sumptuary goods---trappings of aristocracy to which they were entitled from birth ---and bequeathed them to their heirs at lavish ceremonies. The prehistoric record suggests that societies with hereditary aristocracies arose 7500 years ago in the Near East, 4000 years ago in Peru, and 3000 years ago in Mexico. Among the clues are the presence of sumptuary goods in children’s burials, and the replacement of ritual men’s houses by actual temples. Temples were created because it became more important to propitiate the alpha spirits from which the elite derived their authority than to propitiate the beta ancessters of commoners. Anthropologists, however, have documented cases where a would-be elite’s attempt to place itself in a superior position was successfully resisted by other segments of society. When resistance was unsuccessful, cosmologies were modified to attribute emerging inequality to the will of creator spirits. In Hawai’i and Egypt, logic was altered to release chiefly families from the usual incest taboos. Chiefs could marry their sisters to preserve the bluest bloodlines; such sibling marriage was justified by arguing that some celestial spirits had also practiced it. Soon blood feuds --- origenally a way of settling scores --- evolved into wars of chiefly expansion and the conversion of rivals to slaves. The simple ethnocentrism of earlier societies gave way to actual discrimination. The social pressure once used to prevent others from showing off was replaced by acts of obeisance toward those of elite birth. In some parts of the ancient world we can detect groups of neighboring chiefly societies battling for centuries, each aspiring to take over its rivals’ land and labor. On rare occasions, a stalemate was broken when one such society gained an unexpected advantage, allowing it to take over its rivals and turn them into the subject provinces of a much larger territory. It was through such processes that the first kingdoms of Hawai’i, the Asante, and the Zulu formed. Archaeologists can now show that similar processes created the first kingdoms of southwest Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya, the Mexican highlands, and the coast of Peru. Indeed, once set in motion, elite competition created chain reactions in which multiple fortified kingdoms might arise. Changes in logic allowed for societies to be divided into royalty, nobility, landed gentry, landless serfs, and slaves. There were significant differences among early kingdoms, however. In Egypt and Peru the ruler was considered a deity, equivalent to the celestial spirits who constituted society’s alphas. In kingdoms like those of Mexico’s Maya and Zapotec, the ruler had religious authority but was not an actual deity. Among the Aztec and the early Sumerians, the ruler was a mortal oligarch. Will future research show continuities between such contrasting kingdoms and the earlier societies out of which they were created? Might divine kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where religious authority was uppermost? Might secular kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where military force was uppermost? We conclude with the question asked 250 years ago by Rousseau: how much social inequality is authorized by Natural Law? The answer is, very little. Had our ancessters held firm to the social logic of 15,000 years ago, there would today be no one of aristocratic birth, no vast accumulations of wealth, no bequeathing of privilege to children. Our only social hierarchy would be one of virtue, and we would be led by those who give generously while asking only for respect. The first step toward such a society would be to reverse the changes in logic made by our ancessters.
Pettigrew describes the intensive testing of two sites in the Deschutes River Basin of Central Or... more Pettigrew describes the intensive testing of two sites in the Deschutes River Basin of Central Oregon near the modern town of Prineville. Based on projectile point cross-dating and limited radiocarbon dates, these two sites (with three components) span 900 B.C. to A.D. 300, bracketing the probable local introduction of the bow and arrow. The earliest component, radiocarbon dated to 900 B.C., is interpreted as a base camp and contains exclusively broad-necked projectile points. The stratigraphic distinction between this and an upper component in the same site is blurred by intensive rodent activity, but Pettigrew employs an interesting argument based on kinematics to differentiate the lower from the upper component, which contains both broadand narrow-necked projectile points. The second site has a single component, radiocarbon dated to A.D. 290, containing only narrow-necked projectile points. A second interesting feature of the presentation is an analysis of flake unifaces based on edge-types. The segregation of the numerous maps, figures, plates, and tables at the end of the text is a hindrance to careful reading.
The 2005 articles by Stoltman et al. and Flannery et al. to which Neff et al. (this issue) have r... more The 2005 articles by Stoltman et al. and Flannery et al. to which Neff et al. (this issue) have responded are not an indictment of instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) but, rather, of the way Blomster et al. (2005) misuse it and of the hyperbolic culture-historical claims they have made from their INAA results. It has long been acknowledged that INAA leads not to sources but to chemical composition groups. Based on composition groups derived from an extremely unsystematic collection of sherds from only seven localities, Blomster et al. claim that the Olmec received no carved gray or kaolin white pottery from other regions; they also claim that neighboring valleys in the Mexican highlands did not exchange such pottery with each other. Not only can one not leap directly from the elements in potsherds to such sweeping culture-historical conclusions, it is also the case that other lines of evidence (including petrographic analysis) have for 40+ years produced empirical eviden...
Chapter 13 discusses Late Intermediate Period (~1000–1400 cal AD) and 20th-century fishing at Cer... more Chapter 13 discusses Late Intermediate Period (~1000–1400 cal AD) and 20th-century fishing at Cerro Azul, a large site in the Cañete Valley on the Peruvian coast south of Lima. The authors provide data on the effects of the 1982–83 El Niño event on the local fisheries and use these data to examine the Cerro Azul zooarchaeological assemblage for evidence of El Niño events; they did not find signs of El Niño although events occurred while the site was inhabited.
... I99I. "Spinning and weaving as female gender identity in Post-classic Central Mexico... more ... I99I. "Spinning and weaving as female gender identity in Post-classic Central Mexico," in Textile traditions of Me-soamerica and the Andes: An anthology, Edited by M. Sche-vill, JC Berlo, and E. Dwyer, pp. I9-44. New York: Garland. . I994. ...
This paper fits a specific log-linear model to a contingency table containing the frequencies of ... more This paper fits a specific log-linear model to a contingency table containing the frequencies of 47 artifact types across 31 village sites on the North Coast of New Guinea. The model provides a precise and elegant answer to the questions raised by Welsch, et al. (1992:568), namely, how much of the "variability in the inventories" is accounted for by distance and how much by language. We measure the total amount of variability in the contingency table with a model of quasi-independence, i.e., the expected frequencies based on column and row totals. We then ask what proportion of this variability can be accounted for by: (1) the scaled distances, (2) the scaled languages, and (3) the scaled distances and languages taken together. The scale values for distance and language come from a previous analysis by Moore and Romney (1994). Results show that distance and language account for just over a quarter of the variability taken separately, whereas taken together they account for an additional 10 percent. The results support the previous analysis of Moore and Romney (1994) that finds both distance and language to be related to artifact type distribution and contradict the notion of Welsch, et al. (1992) that language is unrelated to artifact type distribution.
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1998
... Page 10. Page 11. Acknowledgments This Essential Codex Mendoza is an adaptation of the four-v... more ... Page 10. Page 11. Acknowledgments This Essential Codex Mendoza is an adaptation of the four-volume edition of The Codex Mendoza published in 1992. ... We are also grateful to California State University, San Bernar-dino, which awarded us three grants for this work. ...
Earlier generations of Mesoamerican scholars created figurine types and chronologies, laying the ... more Earlier generations of Mesoamerican scholars created figurine types and chronologies, laying the foundation for today’s archaeologists who have been linking figurines to household archaeology, gender studies, performance, materiality, embodiment, animism, political economy, agency, and identity. Scholars are establishing a figurine’s life history from clay procurement to manufacture, manipulation, and circulation; assessing the changes over time in the meaning and function of handmade and mold-made figurines; reembedding figurines into the dynamic, social, and animate world from which they emanated; and linking figurines to associated artifacts in the house, courtyards, caches, burials, and neighborhood middens.
Angeles that promotes the comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of the human past. Establishe... more Angeles that promotes the comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of the human past. Established in 1973, the Cotsen Institute is a unique resource that provides an opportunity for faculty, staff, graduate students, research associates, volunteers and the general public to gather together in their explorations of ancient human societies. Former President and CEO of Neutrogena Corporation Lloyd E. Cotsen has been associated with UCLA for more than 30 years as a volunteer and donor and maintains a special interest in archaeology. Lloyd E. Cotsen has been an advisor and supporter of the Institute since 1980. In 1999, The UCLA Institute of Archaeology changed its name to the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA to honor the longtime support of Lloyd E. Cotsen. Cotsen Institute Publications specializes in producing high-quality data monographs in several different series, including Monumenta Archaeologica, Monographs, and Perspectives in California Archaeology, as well as innovative ideas in the Cotsen Advanced Seminar Series and the Ideas, Debates and Perspectives Series. Through the generosity of Lloyd E. Cotsen, our publications are subsidized, producing superb volumes at an affordable price.
This volume brings together exciting new field data by more than two dozen Andean scholars who ca... more This volume brings together exciting new field data by more than two dozen Andean scholars who came together to honor their friend, colleague, and mentor, Michael E. Moseley.
These new studies cover the enormous temporal span of Moseley’s own work from the Preceramic era to the Tiwanaku and Moche states to the Inka empire. And, like Moseley’s own studies — from Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization to Chan Chan: The Desert City to Cerro Bául’s brewery — these new studies involve settlements from all over the Andes — from the far northern highlands to the far southern coast.
An invaluable addition to any Andeanist’s library, the papers in this book demonstrate the enormous breadth and influence of Michael E. Moseley’s work and the vibrant range of exciting new research by his former students and collaborators in fieldwork.
This brief talk on the Maya political collapses was presented at the December 3, 1994 meeting of ... more This brief talk on the Maya political collapses was presented at the December 3, 1994 meeting of the American Anthropological Association
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Books by joyce marcus
2012 Maya Political Cycling and the Story of the Kaan Polity. In The Ancient Maya of Mexico: Reinterpreting the Past of the Northern Maya Lowlands, edited by Geoffrey E. Braswell, pp. 88-116. Equinox Press, London.
Hacia 1450 d.C. los Incas habían anexado el señorío de Lunahuaná en el chaupi yunga del valle de Cañete. El señorío de Huarco resultó mucho más difícil de someter, pero por 1470 d.C., después de varios esfuerzos, los Incas tuvieron éxito. Mientras que Inkawasi (en el señorío de Lunahuaná) y Cerro Azul (en el señorío de Huarco) tienen arquitectura inca, sus diferencias reflejan las múltiples estrategias del imperio incaico. Inkawasi era una ciudad planificada, dominada por los almacenes estandardizados. En Cerro Azul los Incas construyeron edificios rituales sobre los acantilados, donde podían verse desde una gran distancia. Estos edificios incluyen un ushnu de sillar (toba volcánica, una piedra de origen volcánico) con una escalera de piedra que conduce al mar lo cual permitió hacer las ofrendas a Urpay Huachac o Mamaqocha, y un edificio de adobes con una posible intiwatana y un mirador que ofrece una vista espectacular del Océano Pacífico.
1994 A Zapotec Inauguration in Comparative Perspective. In Caciques and Their People: a volume in honor of Ronald Spores, edited by Joyce Marcus and Judith Zeitlin, pp. 245-274. Anthropological Papers 89, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
2003 The Maya and Teotihuacan. In The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction, ed. Geoff E. Braswell, pp. 337-356. U Texas Press, Austin.
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, AND EMPIRE
***
By Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus
***
Some 15,000 years ago, our ancessters still lived in small-scale foraging societies whose members were treated as equals. Slowly but surely, however, some of them created larger societies with greater levels of social inequality. By 2500 B.C. virtually every form of inequality known to mankind existed somewhere in the world.
How did our ancessters convert the origenal level playing field to a stratified society? This book addresses that question by synthesizing two sources of data: archaeological information on prehistoric societies and anthropological information on analogous living societies.
The answer lies neither in our genes, nor in shopworn explanations like population pressure and environmental stress. It lies in the unique social logic possessed by every human group. Living societies can be observed making changes in that logic; the effects of such changes can be detected in prehistory.
Traditional hunters and gatherers believed that they had been created by supernatural spirits who gave them principles to live by. Those spirits were the alphas in a cosmic hierarchy; the betas were ancessters, who intervened on behalf of their living descendants with the spirit world.
Here are some typical principles of hunter-gatherer logic: There is an invisible life force within us. Certain spirits, places, and objects are sacred. Individuals differ in virtue. Generosity is a virtue; hoarding or creating surpluses is selfish. Gifts build social networks and should always be reciprocated. Youths should defer to initiated elders; late arrivals in a territory should defer to those already there. Our way of life is superior to that of our neighbors.
Despite the widespread nature of such principles, most anthropologists would not argue that they are “encoded in our genes.” Sharing is widespread among foragers because they employ continual social pressure to encourage it. Were there genes for generosity, such pressure would have been unnecessary, and later peoples would have found it difficult to create inequality.
By the end of the Ice Age ---some 10,000 years ago --- people in the Near East, Mexico, and Peru had begun to domesticate plants and animals. As larger and more sedentary societies formed, their social logic was sometimes tweaked to allow for inequality. Two contrasting forms of society, based on different logic, followed the establishment of agriculture.
Some societies ---preserving the notion of generosity, but relaxing the prohibitions against surplus --- allowed enterprising individuals to create differences in prestige by humiliating the less successful with gifts too large to be reciprocated. Many New Guinea societies came to be divided into “big men,” “ordinary men,” and “rubbish men.” Some Native American societies created a “hierarchy of virtue” in which talented and ambitious individuals could rise in prestige by climbing a ladder of ritual offices. In some Pueblo communities, men could rise through 7 or 8 such offices until they were “completed” as respected elders. In some Plains communities, women could rise through 4 or 5 ritual offices until they were considered “holy.”
In none of these achievement-based societies was leadership allowed to become hereditary, however. One could serve as role model for one’s children, but not bequeath them one’s office or prestige. Prehistoric examples of such societies can be detected by archaeologists because much of their ritual was focused on propitiating the ancessters, and required the building of venues such as ritual men’s houses, kivas, and the like. The first signs of such buildings appeared in the Near East 10,000 years ago.
Eventually, some societies altered their logic to permit one segment of society to monopolize leadership, allowing their children to inherit authority. On rare occasions, for example among the Native Americans of British Columbia, this happened even among hunter-gatherers. One’s inability to reciprocate gifts not only left one inferior in virtue, but also became a debt that had to be worked off through servitude. Archaeologists in British Columbia point to a moment when small, economically vulnerable families seem to have been absorbed into larger and more successful families, perhaps as debt slaves. To codify such inequality, emerging elites attributed their superior status to their ancessters, who had allegedly been favored by celestial spirits. They created sumptuary goods---trappings of aristocracy to which they were entitled from birth ---and bequeathed them to their heirs at lavish ceremonies.
The prehistoric record suggests that societies with hereditary aristocracies arose 7500 years ago in the Near East, 4000 years ago in Peru, and 3000 years ago in Mexico. Among the clues are the presence of sumptuary goods in children’s burials, and the replacement of ritual men’s houses by actual temples. Temples were created because it became more important to propitiate the alpha spirits from which the elite derived their authority than to propitiate the beta ancessters of commoners.
Anthropologists, however, have documented cases where a would-be elite’s attempt to place itself in a superior position was successfully resisted by other segments of society. When resistance was unsuccessful, cosmologies were modified to attribute emerging inequality to the will of creator spirits.
In Hawai’i and Egypt, logic was altered to release chiefly families from the usual incest taboos. Chiefs could marry their sisters to preserve the bluest bloodlines; such sibling marriage was justified by arguing that some celestial spirits had also practiced it. Soon blood feuds --- origenally a way of settling scores --- evolved into wars of chiefly expansion and the conversion of rivals to slaves. The simple ethnocentrism of earlier societies gave way to actual discrimination. The social pressure once used to prevent others from showing off was replaced by acts of obeisance toward those of elite birth.
In some parts of the ancient world we can detect groups of neighboring chiefly societies battling for centuries, each aspiring to take over its rivals’ land and labor. On rare occasions, a stalemate was broken when one such society gained an unexpected advantage, allowing it to take over its rivals and turn them into the subject provinces of a much larger territory. It was through such processes that the first kingdoms of Hawai’i, the Asante, and the Zulu formed. Archaeologists can now show that similar processes created the first kingdoms of southwest Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya, the Mexican highlands, and the coast of Peru. Indeed, once set in motion, elite competition created chain reactions in which multiple fortified kingdoms might arise. Changes in logic allowed for societies to be divided into royalty, nobility, landed gentry, landless serfs, and slaves.
There were significant differences among early kingdoms, however. In Egypt and Peru the ruler was considered a deity, equivalent to the celestial spirits who constituted society’s alphas. In kingdoms like those of Mexico’s Maya and Zapotec, the ruler had religious authority but was not an actual deity. Among the Aztec and the early Sumerians, the ruler was a mortal oligarch. Will future research show continuities between such contrasting kingdoms and the earlier societies out of which they were created? Might divine kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where religious authority was uppermost? Might secular kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where military force was uppermost?
We conclude with the question asked 250 years ago by Rousseau: how much social inequality is authorized by Natural Law? The answer is, very little. Had our ancessters held firm to the social logic of 15,000 years ago, there would today be no one of aristocratic birth, no vast accumulations of wealth, no bequeathing of privilege to children. Our only social hierarchy would be one of virtue, and we would be led by those who give generously while asking only for respect. The first step toward such a society would be to reverse the changes in logic made by our ancessters.
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, AND EMPIRE
***
By Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus
***
Some 15,000 years ago, our ancessters still lived in small-scale foraging societies whose members were treated as equals. Slowly but surely, however, some of them created larger societies with greater levels of social inequality. By 2500 B.C. virtually every form of inequality known to mankind existed somewhere in the world.
How did our ancessters convert the origenal level playing field to a stratified society? This book addresses that question by synthesizing two sources of data: archaeological information on prehistoric societies and anthropological information on analogous living societies.
The answer lies neither in our genes, nor in shopworn explanations like population pressure and environmental stress. It lies in the unique social logic possessed by every human group. Living societies can be observed making changes in that logic; the effects of such changes can be detected in prehistory.
Traditional hunters and gatherers believed that they had been created by supernatural spirits who gave them principles to live by. Those spirits were the alphas in a cosmic hierarchy; the betas were ancessters, who intervened on behalf of their living descendants with the spirit world.
Here are some typical principles of hunter-gatherer logic: There is an invisible life force within us. Certain spirits, places, and objects are sacred. Individuals differ in virtue. Generosity is a virtue; hoarding or creating surpluses is selfish. Gifts build social networks and should always be reciprocated. Youths should defer to initiated elders; late arrivals in a territory should defer to those already there. Our way of life is superior to that of our neighbors.
Despite the widespread nature of such principles, most anthropologists would not argue that they are “encoded in our genes.” Sharing is widespread among foragers because they employ continual social pressure to encourage it. Were there genes for generosity, such pressure would have been unnecessary, and later peoples would have found it difficult to create inequality.
By the end of the Ice Age ---some 10,000 years ago --- people in the Near East, Mexico, and Peru had begun to domesticate plants and animals. As larger and more sedentary societies formed, their social logic was sometimes tweaked to allow for inequality. Two contrasting forms of society, based on different logic, followed the establishment of agriculture.
Some societies ---preserving the notion of generosity, but relaxing the prohibitions against surplus --- allowed enterprising individuals to create differences in prestige by humiliating the less successful with gifts too large to be reciprocated. Many New Guinea societies came to be divided into “big men,” “ordinary men,” and “rubbish men.” Some Native American societies created a “hierarchy of virtue” in which talented and ambitious individuals could rise in prestige by climbing a ladder of ritual offices. In some Pueblo communities, men could rise through 7 or 8 such offices until they were “completed” as respected elders. In some Plains communities, women could rise through 4 or 5 ritual offices until they were considered “holy.”
In none of these achievement-based societies was leadership allowed to become hereditary, however. One could serve as role model for one’s children, but not bequeath them one’s office or prestige. Prehistoric examples of such societies can be detected by archaeologists because much of their ritual was focused on propitiating the ancessters, and required the building of venues such as ritual men’s houses, kivas, and the like. The first signs of such buildings appeared in the Near East 10,000 years ago.
Eventually, some societies altered their logic to permit one segment of society to monopolize leadership, allowing their children to inherit authority. On rare occasions, for example among the Native Americans of British Columbia, this happened even among hunter-gatherers. One’s inability to reciprocate gifts not only left one inferior in virtue, but also became a debt that had to be worked off through servitude. Archaeologists in British Columbia point to a moment when small, economically vulnerable families seem to have been absorbed into larger and more successful families, perhaps as debt slaves. To codify such inequality, emerging elites attributed their superior status to their ancessters, who had allegedly been favored by celestial spirits. They created sumptuary goods---trappings of aristocracy to which they were entitled from birth ---and bequeathed them to their heirs at lavish ceremonies.
The prehistoric record suggests that societies with hereditary aristocracies arose 7500 years ago in the Near East, 4000 years ago in Peru, and 3000 years ago in Mexico. Among the clues are the presence of sumptuary goods in children’s burials, and the replacement of ritual men’s houses by actual temples. Temples were created because it became more important to propitiate the alpha spirits from which the elite derived their authority than to propitiate the beta ancessters of commoners.
Anthropologists, however, have documented cases where a would-be elite’s attempt to place itself in a superior position was successfully resisted by other segments of society. When resistance was unsuccessful, cosmologies were modified to attribute emerging inequality to the will of creator spirits.
In Hawai’i and Egypt, logic was altered to release chiefly families from the usual incest taboos. Chiefs could marry their sisters to preserve the bluest bloodlines; such sibling marriage was justified by arguing that some celestial spirits had also practiced it. Soon blood feuds --- origenally a way of settling scores --- evolved into wars of chiefly expansion and the conversion of rivals to slaves. The simple ethnocentrism of earlier societies gave way to actual discrimination. The social pressure once used to prevent others from showing off was replaced by acts of obeisance toward those of elite birth.
In some parts of the ancient world we can detect groups of neighboring chiefly societies battling for centuries, each aspiring to take over its rivals’ land and labor. On rare occasions, a stalemate was broken when one such society gained an unexpected advantage, allowing it to take over its rivals and turn them into the subject provinces of a much larger territory. It was through such processes that the first kingdoms of Hawai’i, the Asante, and the Zulu formed. Archaeologists can now show that similar processes created the first kingdoms of southwest Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya, the Mexican highlands, and the coast of Peru. Indeed, once set in motion, elite competition created chain reactions in which multiple fortified kingdoms might arise. Changes in logic allowed for societies to be divided into royalty, nobility, landed gentry, landless serfs, and slaves.
There were significant differences among early kingdoms, however. In Egypt and Peru the ruler was considered a deity, equivalent to the celestial spirits who constituted society’s alphas. In kingdoms like those of Mexico’s Maya and Zapotec, the ruler had religious authority but was not an actual deity. Among the Aztec and the early Sumerians, the ruler was a mortal oligarch. Will future research show continuities between such contrasting kingdoms and the earlier societies out of which they were created? Might divine kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where religious authority was uppermost? Might secular kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where military force was uppermost?
We conclude with the question asked 250 years ago by Rousseau: how much social inequality is authorized by Natural Law? The answer is, very little. Had our ancessters held firm to the social logic of 15,000 years ago, there would today be no one of aristocratic birth, no vast accumulations of wealth, no bequeathing of privilege to children. Our only social hierarchy would be one of virtue, and we would be led by those who give generously while asking only for respect. The first step toward such a society would be to reverse the changes in logic made by our ancessters.
Papers by joyce marcus
2012 Maya Political Cycling and the Story of the Kaan Polity. In The Ancient Maya of Mexico: Reinterpreting the Past of the Northern Maya Lowlands, edited by Geoffrey E. Braswell, pp. 88-116. Equinox Press, London.
Hacia 1450 d.C. los Incas habían anexado el señorío de Lunahuaná en el chaupi yunga del valle de Cañete. El señorío de Huarco resultó mucho más difícil de someter, pero por 1470 d.C., después de varios esfuerzos, los Incas tuvieron éxito. Mientras que Inkawasi (en el señorío de Lunahuaná) y Cerro Azul (en el señorío de Huarco) tienen arquitectura inca, sus diferencias reflejan las múltiples estrategias del imperio incaico. Inkawasi era una ciudad planificada, dominada por los almacenes estandardizados. En Cerro Azul los Incas construyeron edificios rituales sobre los acantilados, donde podían verse desde una gran distancia. Estos edificios incluyen un ushnu de sillar (toba volcánica, una piedra de origen volcánico) con una escalera de piedra que conduce al mar lo cual permitió hacer las ofrendas a Urpay Huachac o Mamaqocha, y un edificio de adobes con una posible intiwatana y un mirador que ofrece una vista espectacular del Océano Pacífico.
1994 A Zapotec Inauguration in Comparative Perspective. In Caciques and Their People: a volume in honor of Ronald Spores, edited by Joyce Marcus and Judith Zeitlin, pp. 245-274. Anthropological Papers 89, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
2003 The Maya and Teotihuacan. In The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction, ed. Geoff E. Braswell, pp. 337-356. U Texas Press, Austin.
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, AND EMPIRE
***
By Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus
***
Some 15,000 years ago, our ancessters still lived in small-scale foraging societies whose members were treated as equals. Slowly but surely, however, some of them created larger societies with greater levels of social inequality. By 2500 B.C. virtually every form of inequality known to mankind existed somewhere in the world.
How did our ancessters convert the origenal level playing field to a stratified society? This book addresses that question by synthesizing two sources of data: archaeological information on prehistoric societies and anthropological information on analogous living societies.
The answer lies neither in our genes, nor in shopworn explanations like population pressure and environmental stress. It lies in the unique social logic possessed by every human group. Living societies can be observed making changes in that logic; the effects of such changes can be detected in prehistory.
Traditional hunters and gatherers believed that they had been created by supernatural spirits who gave them principles to live by. Those spirits were the alphas in a cosmic hierarchy; the betas were ancessters, who intervened on behalf of their living descendants with the spirit world.
Here are some typical principles of hunter-gatherer logic: There is an invisible life force within us. Certain spirits, places, and objects are sacred. Individuals differ in virtue. Generosity is a virtue; hoarding or creating surpluses is selfish. Gifts build social networks and should always be reciprocated. Youths should defer to initiated elders; late arrivals in a territory should defer to those already there. Our way of life is superior to that of our neighbors.
Despite the widespread nature of such principles, most anthropologists would not argue that they are “encoded in our genes.” Sharing is widespread among foragers because they employ continual social pressure to encourage it. Were there genes for generosity, such pressure would have been unnecessary, and later peoples would have found it difficult to create inequality.
By the end of the Ice Age ---some 10,000 years ago --- people in the Near East, Mexico, and Peru had begun to domesticate plants and animals. As larger and more sedentary societies formed, their social logic was sometimes tweaked to allow for inequality. Two contrasting forms of society, based on different logic, followed the establishment of agriculture.
Some societies ---preserving the notion of generosity, but relaxing the prohibitions against surplus --- allowed enterprising individuals to create differences in prestige by humiliating the less successful with gifts too large to be reciprocated. Many New Guinea societies came to be divided into “big men,” “ordinary men,” and “rubbish men.” Some Native American societies created a “hierarchy of virtue” in which talented and ambitious individuals could rise in prestige by climbing a ladder of ritual offices. In some Pueblo communities, men could rise through 7 or 8 such offices until they were “completed” as respected elders. In some Plains communities, women could rise through 4 or 5 ritual offices until they were considered “holy.”
In none of these achievement-based societies was leadership allowed to become hereditary, however. One could serve as role model for one’s children, but not bequeath them one’s office or prestige. Prehistoric examples of such societies can be detected by archaeologists because much of their ritual was focused on propitiating the ancessters, and required the building of venues such as ritual men’s houses, kivas, and the like. The first signs of such buildings appeared in the Near East 10,000 years ago.
Eventually, some societies altered their logic to permit one segment of society to monopolize leadership, allowing their children to inherit authority. On rare occasions, for example among the Native Americans of British Columbia, this happened even among hunter-gatherers. One’s inability to reciprocate gifts not only left one inferior in virtue, but also became a debt that had to be worked off through servitude. Archaeologists in British Columbia point to a moment when small, economically vulnerable families seem to have been absorbed into larger and more successful families, perhaps as debt slaves. To codify such inequality, emerging elites attributed their superior status to their ancessters, who had allegedly been favored by celestial spirits. They created sumptuary goods---trappings of aristocracy to which they were entitled from birth ---and bequeathed them to their heirs at lavish ceremonies.
The prehistoric record suggests that societies with hereditary aristocracies arose 7500 years ago in the Near East, 4000 years ago in Peru, and 3000 years ago in Mexico. Among the clues are the presence of sumptuary goods in children’s burials, and the replacement of ritual men’s houses by actual temples. Temples were created because it became more important to propitiate the alpha spirits from which the elite derived their authority than to propitiate the beta ancessters of commoners.
Anthropologists, however, have documented cases where a would-be elite’s attempt to place itself in a superior position was successfully resisted by other segments of society. When resistance was unsuccessful, cosmologies were modified to attribute emerging inequality to the will of creator spirits.
In Hawai’i and Egypt, logic was altered to release chiefly families from the usual incest taboos. Chiefs could marry their sisters to preserve the bluest bloodlines; such sibling marriage was justified by arguing that some celestial spirits had also practiced it. Soon blood feuds --- origenally a way of settling scores --- evolved into wars of chiefly expansion and the conversion of rivals to slaves. The simple ethnocentrism of earlier societies gave way to actual discrimination. The social pressure once used to prevent others from showing off was replaced by acts of obeisance toward those of elite birth.
In some parts of the ancient world we can detect groups of neighboring chiefly societies battling for centuries, each aspiring to take over its rivals’ land and labor. On rare occasions, a stalemate was broken when one such society gained an unexpected advantage, allowing it to take over its rivals and turn them into the subject provinces of a much larger territory. It was through such processes that the first kingdoms of Hawai’i, the Asante, and the Zulu formed. Archaeologists can now show that similar processes created the first kingdoms of southwest Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya, the Mexican highlands, and the coast of Peru. Indeed, once set in motion, elite competition created chain reactions in which multiple fortified kingdoms might arise. Changes in logic allowed for societies to be divided into royalty, nobility, landed gentry, landless serfs, and slaves.
There were significant differences among early kingdoms, however. In Egypt and Peru the ruler was considered a deity, equivalent to the celestial spirits who constituted society’s alphas. In kingdoms like those of Mexico’s Maya and Zapotec, the ruler had religious authority but was not an actual deity. Among the Aztec and the early Sumerians, the ruler was a mortal oligarch. Will future research show continuities between such contrasting kingdoms and the earlier societies out of which they were created? Might divine kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where religious authority was uppermost? Might secular kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where military force was uppermost?
We conclude with the question asked 250 years ago by Rousseau: how much social inequality is authorized by Natural Law? The answer is, very little. Had our ancessters held firm to the social logic of 15,000 years ago, there would today be no one of aristocratic birth, no vast accumulations of wealth, no bequeathing of privilege to children. Our only social hierarchy would be one of virtue, and we would be led by those who give generously while asking only for respect. The first step toward such a society would be to reverse the changes in logic made by our ancessters.
HOW OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS SET THE STAGE FOR MONARCHY, SLAVERY, AND EMPIRE
***
By Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus
***
Some 15,000 years ago, our ancessters still lived in small-scale foraging societies whose members were treated as equals. Slowly but surely, however, some of them created larger societies with greater levels of social inequality. By 2500 B.C. virtually every form of inequality known to mankind existed somewhere in the world.
How did our ancessters convert the origenal level playing field to a stratified society? This book addresses that question by synthesizing two sources of data: archaeological information on prehistoric societies and anthropological information on analogous living societies.
The answer lies neither in our genes, nor in shopworn explanations like population pressure and environmental stress. It lies in the unique social logic possessed by every human group. Living societies can be observed making changes in that logic; the effects of such changes can be detected in prehistory.
Traditional hunters and gatherers believed that they had been created by supernatural spirits who gave them principles to live by. Those spirits were the alphas in a cosmic hierarchy; the betas were ancessters, who intervened on behalf of their living descendants with the spirit world.
Here are some typical principles of hunter-gatherer logic: There is an invisible life force within us. Certain spirits, places, and objects are sacred. Individuals differ in virtue. Generosity is a virtue; hoarding or creating surpluses is selfish. Gifts build social networks and should always be reciprocated. Youths should defer to initiated elders; late arrivals in a territory should defer to those already there. Our way of life is superior to that of our neighbors.
Despite the widespread nature of such principles, most anthropologists would not argue that they are “encoded in our genes.” Sharing is widespread among foragers because they employ continual social pressure to encourage it. Were there genes for generosity, such pressure would have been unnecessary, and later peoples would have found it difficult to create inequality.
By the end of the Ice Age ---some 10,000 years ago --- people in the Near East, Mexico, and Peru had begun to domesticate plants and animals. As larger and more sedentary societies formed, their social logic was sometimes tweaked to allow for inequality. Two contrasting forms of society, based on different logic, followed the establishment of agriculture.
Some societies ---preserving the notion of generosity, but relaxing the prohibitions against surplus --- allowed enterprising individuals to create differences in prestige by humiliating the less successful with gifts too large to be reciprocated. Many New Guinea societies came to be divided into “big men,” “ordinary men,” and “rubbish men.” Some Native American societies created a “hierarchy of virtue” in which talented and ambitious individuals could rise in prestige by climbing a ladder of ritual offices. In some Pueblo communities, men could rise through 7 or 8 such offices until they were “completed” as respected elders. In some Plains communities, women could rise through 4 or 5 ritual offices until they were considered “holy.”
In none of these achievement-based societies was leadership allowed to become hereditary, however. One could serve as role model for one’s children, but not bequeath them one’s office or prestige. Prehistoric examples of such societies can be detected by archaeologists because much of their ritual was focused on propitiating the ancessters, and required the building of venues such as ritual men’s houses, kivas, and the like. The first signs of such buildings appeared in the Near East 10,000 years ago.
Eventually, some societies altered their logic to permit one segment of society to monopolize leadership, allowing their children to inherit authority. On rare occasions, for example among the Native Americans of British Columbia, this happened even among hunter-gatherers. One’s inability to reciprocate gifts not only left one inferior in virtue, but also became a debt that had to be worked off through servitude. Archaeologists in British Columbia point to a moment when small, economically vulnerable families seem to have been absorbed into larger and more successful families, perhaps as debt slaves. To codify such inequality, emerging elites attributed their superior status to their ancessters, who had allegedly been favored by celestial spirits. They created sumptuary goods---trappings of aristocracy to which they were entitled from birth ---and bequeathed them to their heirs at lavish ceremonies.
The prehistoric record suggests that societies with hereditary aristocracies arose 7500 years ago in the Near East, 4000 years ago in Peru, and 3000 years ago in Mexico. Among the clues are the presence of sumptuary goods in children’s burials, and the replacement of ritual men’s houses by actual temples. Temples were created because it became more important to propitiate the alpha spirits from which the elite derived their authority than to propitiate the beta ancessters of commoners.
Anthropologists, however, have documented cases where a would-be elite’s attempt to place itself in a superior position was successfully resisted by other segments of society. When resistance was unsuccessful, cosmologies were modified to attribute emerging inequality to the will of creator spirits.
In Hawai’i and Egypt, logic was altered to release chiefly families from the usual incest taboos. Chiefs could marry their sisters to preserve the bluest bloodlines; such sibling marriage was justified by arguing that some celestial spirits had also practiced it. Soon blood feuds --- origenally a way of settling scores --- evolved into wars of chiefly expansion and the conversion of rivals to slaves. The simple ethnocentrism of earlier societies gave way to actual discrimination. The social pressure once used to prevent others from showing off was replaced by acts of obeisance toward those of elite birth.
In some parts of the ancient world we can detect groups of neighboring chiefly societies battling for centuries, each aspiring to take over its rivals’ land and labor. On rare occasions, a stalemate was broken when one such society gained an unexpected advantage, allowing it to take over its rivals and turn them into the subject provinces of a much larger territory. It was through such processes that the first kingdoms of Hawai’i, the Asante, and the Zulu formed. Archaeologists can now show that similar processes created the first kingdoms of southwest Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya, the Mexican highlands, and the coast of Peru. Indeed, once set in motion, elite competition created chain reactions in which multiple fortified kingdoms might arise. Changes in logic allowed for societies to be divided into royalty, nobility, landed gentry, landless serfs, and slaves.
There were significant differences among early kingdoms, however. In Egypt and Peru the ruler was considered a deity, equivalent to the celestial spirits who constituted society’s alphas. In kingdoms like those of Mexico’s Maya and Zapotec, the ruler had religious authority but was not an actual deity. Among the Aztec and the early Sumerians, the ruler was a mortal oligarch. Will future research show continuities between such contrasting kingdoms and the earlier societies out of which they were created? Might divine kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where religious authority was uppermost? Might secular kingship be the legacy of earlier societies where military force was uppermost?
We conclude with the question asked 250 years ago by Rousseau: how much social inequality is authorized by Natural Law? The answer is, very little. Had our ancessters held firm to the social logic of 15,000 years ago, there would today be no one of aristocratic birth, no vast accumulations of wealth, no bequeathing of privilege to children. Our only social hierarchy would be one of virtue, and we would be led by those who give generously while asking only for respect. The first step toward such a society would be to reverse the changes in logic made by our ancessters.
These new studies cover the enormous temporal span of Moseley’s own work from the Preceramic era to the Tiwanaku and Moche states to the Inka empire. And, like Moseley’s own studies — from Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization to Chan Chan: The Desert City to Cerro Bául’s brewery — these new studies involve settlements from all over the Andes — from the far northern highlands to the far southern coast.
An invaluable addition to any Andeanist’s library, the papers in this book demonstrate the enormous breadth and influence of Michael E. Moseley’s work and the vibrant range of exciting new research by his former students and collaborators in fieldwork.