Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-lpg2g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-15T19:08:16.765Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Process and Agency in Early State Formation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2009

Kent V. Flannery
Kent V. Flannery
Affiliation:
Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Most pristine states formed in the context of competing chiefdoms, when one of the latter succeeded in incorporating its rivals into a larger polity. Some of the processes evident during state formation include chiefly cycling, biased transmission, territorial expansion, and the gaining of competitive advantage. In some archaeological circles, however, it has become fashionable to reject ecological, demographic, and technological processes, and seek agent-based or ideological explanations for state formation. This essay, delivered as the tenth McDonald Lecture, examines five agents who modified ideologies and created states from chiefdoms. It concludes that process and agency are complementary, rather than antithetical, perspectives; thus the latter is unlikely to make the former obsolete.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , April 1999, pp. 3 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adams, R.M., 1992. Ideologies: unity and diversity, in Demarest, & Conrad, (eds.), 205–21.Google Scholar
Anderson, D.G., 1994. Tlie Savannah River Chiefdoms: Political Change in the Late Prehistoric Southeast. Tuscaloosa (AL): University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Blanton, R.E., 1998. Beyond centralization: steps toward a theory of egalitarian behavior in archaic states, in Feinman, & Marcus, (eds.), 135–72.Google Scholar
Blanton, R.E., Feinman, G.M.Kowalewski, S.A. & Peregrine, P.N., 1996. A dual-processual theory for the evolution of Mesoamerican civilization. Current Anthropology 37, 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P.J., 1985. Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Brown, M., 1979. Madagascar Rediscovered: a History from Early Times to Independence. Hamden (CT): Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Brumfiel, E.M., 1983. Aztec state making: ecology, structure, and the origin of the state. American Anthropologist 85, 261–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brumfiel, E.M., 1998. Huitzilopochtli's conquest: Aztec ideology in the archaeological record. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 8(1), 3–13.Google Scholar
Carneiro, R.L., 1981. The chiefdom: precursor of the state, in The Transition to Statehood in the New World, eds. Jones, G.D. & Kautz, R.R.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 37–79.Google Scholar
Carneiro, R.L., 1992. Point counterpoint: ecology and ideology in the development of New World civilizations, in Demarest, & Conrad, (eds.), 175–203.Google Scholar
Davenport, W., 1969. The ‘Hawaiian cultural revolution’: some political and economic considerations. American Anthropologist 71, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, W.V., 1987. Egyptian Hieroglyphs. London: British Museum.Google Scholar
Delivré, A., 1974. L'Histoire des Rois d'Imerina: Interpretation d'une Tradition Orale. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Demarest, A.A. & Conrad, G.W. (eds.), 1992. Ideology and Pre-Columbian Civilizations. Santa Fe (NM): School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Dewar, R.E. & Wright, H.T., 1993. The culture history of Madagascar. Journal of World Prehistory 7, 417–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diakonoff, I.M., 1974. Structure of Ancient Society and State in Early Dynastic Sumer. (Monographs of the Ancient Near East 1(3).) Malibu (CA): Undena.Google Scholar
Donnan, C.B., 1976. Moche Art and Iconography. (UCLA Latin American Center Publications.) Los Angeles (CA): University of California.Google Scholar
Drennan, R.D., 1976. Fdbrica San Jose and Middle Formative Society in the Valley of Oaxaca. (Memoirs 8.) Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology.Google Scholar
Duminy, A. & Guest, B. (eds.), 1989. Natal and Zululand: From Earliest Times to 1910. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press.Google Scholar
Emery, W.B., 1961. Archaic Egypt. [London] & [Harmonds–worth]: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Feinman, G.M. & Marcus, J. (eds.), 1998. Archaic States. Santa Fe (NM): School of American Research.Google Scholar
Flannery, K.V., 1972. The cultural evolution of civilizations. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 3, 399–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flannery, K.V., 1986. A visit to the master, in Guild Naquitz: Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico, ed. Flannery, K.V.. New York (NY): Academic Press, 511–19.Google Scholar
Flannery, K.V., 1995. Prehistoric social evolution, in Research Frontiers in Anthropology, eds. Ember, C. & Ember, M.. Englewood Cliffs (NJ): Prentice-Hall, 1–26.Google Scholar
Flannery, K.V. & Marcus, J., 1994. On the perils of ’politically correct’ archaeology. Current Anthropology 35, 441–2.Google Scholar
Gazzaniga, M., 1998. The Mind's Past. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gluckman, M., 1940. The kingdom of the Zulu of South Africa, in African Political Systems, eds. Fortes, M. & Evans-Pritchard, E.E.. London: Oxford University Press, 25–55.Google Scholar
Gluckman, M., 1960. The rise of a Zulu empire. Scientific American 202(4), 157–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, I., 1970. Ancient Polynesian Society. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gowen, H., 1919. The Napoleon of the Pacific: Kamehameha the Great. New York (NY): Flemming H. Revell.Google Scholar
Hodder, I., 1986. Reading the Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hole, F. (ed.), 1987. The Archaeology of Western Iran: Settlement and Society from Prehistory to the Islamic Conquest. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Jacobsen, T., 1943. Primitive democracy in ancient Mesopotamia. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 2(3), 159–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, G.A., 1987. The changing organization of Uruk administration on the Susiana plain, in Hole (ed.), 107–39.Google Scholar
Kamakau, S.M., 1961. Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii. Honolulu (HI): The Kamehameha Schools Press.Google Scholar
Kantor, H.J., 1991. Chogha Mish, in Annual Report of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, 1989–1990, ed. Sumner, W.M.. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago, 29–37.Google Scholar
Kirch, P.V., 1984. The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kirch, P.V., 1992. Anahulu, vol. 2: The Archaeology of History. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kottak, C.P., 1980. The Past in the Present: History, Ecology, and Cultural Variation in Highland Madagascar. Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Kowalewski, S.A., Feinman, G.M., Finsten, L., Blanton, R.E. & Nicholas, L.M., 1989. Monte Albdn's Hinterland, part 2: Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in Tlacolula, Etla, and Ocotldn, the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. (Memoirs 23.) Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology.Google Scholar
Kuykendall, R.S., 1938. The Hawaiian Kingdom, 1778–1854: Foundation and Transformation. Honolulu (HI): University of Hawaii Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCaskie, T.C., 1995. State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mack, J., 1986. Madagascar: Island of the Ancestors. London: British Museum Publications.Google Scholar
McLeod, M.D., 1981. Vie Asante. London: British Museum Publications.Google Scholar
Maggs, T., 1989. The Iron Age farming communities, in Duminy & Guest (eds.), 28–48.Google Scholar
Marcus, J., 1974. The iconography of power among the Classic Maya. World Archaeology 6, 83–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, J., 1992a. Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Marcus, J., 1992b. Dynamic cycles of Mesoamerican states. National Geographic Research & Exploration 8, 392–411.Google Scholar
Marcus, J. & Flannery, K.V., 1996. Zapolec Civilization: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico's Oaxaca Valley. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Mayr, E., 1982. The Growth of Biological Thought. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mellen, K.D., 1949. The Lonely Warrior: the Life and Times of Kamehameha the Great of Hawaii. New York (NY): Hastings House.Google Scholar
Muller-Stellrecht, I., 1978. Hunza und China (1761–1891). Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
Oates, J., 1993. Trade and power in the fifth and fourth millennia BC: new evidence from northern Mesopotamia. World Archaeology 24, 403–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortner, S.B., 1984. Theory in anthropology since the sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History 26, 126–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pasztory, E., 1992. Abstraction and the rise of a Utopian state at Teotihuacan, in Art, Ideology, and the City of Teolihuacan, ed. Berlo, J.. Washington (DC): Dumbarton Oaks, 281–320.Google Scholar
Rattray, R.S., 1927. Religion and Art in Ashanti. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ritter, E.A., 1957. Shaka Zulu: the Rise of the Zulu Empire. New York (NY): G.P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar
Roberts, B., 1974. The Zulu Kings. London: Hamish Hamilton.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M.D., 1958. Social Stratification in Polynesia. Seattle (WA): University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M.D., 1964. Culture and environment: the study of cultural ecology, in Horizons of Anthropology, ed. Tax, S.. Chicago (IL): Aldine Press, 132–47.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M.D., 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M.D., 1992. Anahulu, vol. 1: Historical Ethnography. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Selby, J., 1971. Shaka's Heirs. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Service, E.R., 1962. Primitive Social Organization: an Evolutionary Perspective. New York (NY): Random House.Google Scholar
Service, E.R., 1975. Origins of the State and Civilization: the Process of Cultural Evolution. New York (NY): W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Shanks, M. & Tilley, C., 1987. Social Theory and Archaeology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Sidky, H., 1996. Irrigation and State Formation in Hunza: the Anthropology of a Hydraidic Kingdom. New York (NY): University Press of America.Google Scholar
Spencer, C.S., 1993. Human agency, biased transmission, and the cultural evolution of chiefly authority. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 12, 41–74.Google Scholar
Spencer, C.S., 1998. A mathematical model of primary state formation. Cultural Dynamics 10, 5–20.Google Scholar
Spencer, C.S. & Redmond, E.M., 1997. Archaeology of the Canada de Cuicalldn, Oaxaca. (Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 80.) New York (NY): American Museum of Natural History.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, I., 1974. The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York (NY): Academic Press.Google Scholar
Watson, P.J., Le Blanc, S.A. & Redman, C.L., 1971. Explanation in Archeology: an Explicitly Scientific Approach. New York (NY): Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Wilks, I., 1975. Asante in the Nineteenth Century: the Structure and Evolution of a Political Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Will, G.F., 1993. History of denial fails to accept fact of Holocaust. Ann Arbor News Sunday, August 29.Google Scholar
Wright, H.T., 1984. Prestate political formations, in On the Evolution of Complex Societies: Essays in Honor of Harry Hoijer, ed. Earle, T.K.. Malibu (CA): Undena, 43–77.Google Scholar
Wright, H.T., 1986. The evolution of civilizations, in American Archaeology Past and Future: a Celebration of the Society for American Archaeology 1935–1985, eds. Meltzer, D.J.Fowler, D.D. & Sabloff, J.A.. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press, 323–65.Google Scholar
Wright, H.T., 1987. The Susiana hinterlands during the era of primary state formation, in Hole (ed.), 141–55.Google Scholar
Wright, H.T., 1998. Uruk states in southwestern Iran, in Feinman & Marcus (eds.), 173–97.Google Scholar
Wright, H.T. & Johnson, G.A., 1975. Population, exchange, and early state formation in southwestern Iran. American Anthropologist 77, 267–89.Google Scholar
Wright, H.T. & Kus, S., 1979. An archaeological reconnaissance of ancient Imerina, in Madagascar in History, ed. Kent, R.. Berkeley (CA): Foundation for Malagasy Studies, 1–31.Google Scholar
Wright, J. & Hamilton, C., 1989. Traditions and transformations: the Phongolo-Mzimkhulu region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in Duminy, & Guest, (eds.), 49–82.Google Scholar