What makes Native California societies unique among North American indigenous groups? This is the question provocatively explored by Robert L. Bettinger in Orderly Anarchy. Bettinger argues that the adoption of the bow and arrow brought profound changes to hunter-gatherers in California and the Great Basin, fostering the privatization of food procurement and favoring smaller groups lacking strong government. The end result, still in effect at the time of European contact, was a state of “orderly anarchy,” with many small, independent sociopolitical groups. Such an evolutionary pathway runs counter to the sequence of band-tribe-chiefdom-state—driven by the adoption of agriculture—and often presented as the inevitable course of sociopolitical development. Bettinger's analysis is based on a subset of 66 groups from Jorgensen's (Western Indians: Comparative Environments, Languages, and Cultures of 172 Western American Indian Tribes, 1980) cross-cultural sample, supplemented by additional examples from archaeological and ethnographic case studies.
Bettinger begins by discussing his sample and California's significance for the study of hunter-gatherer sociopolitical evolution. He next uses his extensive knowledge of western Great Basin prehistory to examine the economic transformation from nonintensive to intensive hunting-gathering economies, and how that intensification affected group sizes and settlement patterns. As he has argued elsewhere, Bettinger sees a strategic shift in procurement from one requiring mobility to one emphasizing resources needing greater processing but supporting more people per unit area. He contends that the introduction of the bow and arrow set these changes in motion, because large hunting groups with atlatls were no longer necessary. More independent hunting led to a dispersal into smaller groups, private plant resource procurement, and family band autonomy. The spread of Numic speakers from a presumed homeland in eastern California, linked to a population expansion across the Great Basin, was a result.
Bettinger next describes how a similar trajectory occurred west of the Sierra Nevada, producing organizational changes that eventually led to orderly anarchy through most, if not all, of the California culture area. Acorns were more reliable than piñon nuts and supported larger groups than in the Great Basin. For example, Cahuilla patrilineal bands evolved into patrilineal “sibs” (referred to elsewhere as clans). When independent patrilineal kin groups united to protect privately owned resources, patrilineal tribelets developed, as among the Valley Yokuts. In north-central California, bilateral tribelets formed among the Pomo and their neighbors as resource-defense needs declined, reducing the need for patrilineal social organization. Finally, in northwestern California, independent, bilateral family bands became the norm, with highly developed individual property ownership.
Having established his theoretical stance, Bettinger turns to the development of shell-bead currency, which he sees as an outstanding consequence of intensification and privatization. While societies elsewhere used wealth goods as status markers, California exchange economies made use of bead money as fixed-value currency. Money arose as a way to share resources between small-scale groups during times of scarcity. The use of money also resulted in a more equitable distribution of wealth within groups, weakening inherited social inequalities and reinforcing orderly anarchy.
To test his hypothesis that orderly anarchy represents a hitherto underappreciated evolutionary outcome of hunter-gatherer sociopolitical development, Bettinger devises methods for measuring individual autonomy and organizational authority in regional groups. In empirical tests using these variables, nearly 75 percent of the societies scoring high for individual autonomy and low for organizational authority were in California. Bettinger concludes that groups based upon orderly anarchy seem to have an evolutionary advantage over more complexly organized hunter-gatherer societies.
Bettinger's thesis and analyses are innovative, thought-provoking, and demonstrate a familiarity with the relevant literature. Nonetheless, there are occasional errors in some his assertions. For example, he contends (p. 125) that only the Sierra Miwok used Omaha kin terminology, associated with patrilineal descent groups; however, Omaha nomenclature also occurred among certain Pomoan, Wintuan, and Yokuts groups (Murdock, Ethnographic Atlas, 1967:106). He uses the term Yokut inaccurately, as if it were a singular form for Yokuts. A greater weakness, and one that Bettinger acknowledges, is that his sample does not include the maritime-adapted Chumash, perhaps the most politically complex and populous group in aboriginal California. However, Bettinger occasionally discusses patterns in the Chumash region that were at variance with sociopolitical developments elsewhere. For example, he addresses how and why local sociopolitical organization responded differently to the bow and arrow (p. 109) and proposes a new hypothesis (pp. 156–159) as to why the Chumash uniquely practiced matrilocal postmarital residence. In summary, Bettinger's book represents a major contribution to anthropological analyses of aboriginal societies in Native California, and it will stimulate research that will amplify and further test his model and interpretations.
